His rigid features and suddenly closed eyes expressed an immutable resolve. Saint-Clair understood that, and did not persist. “Gentlemen,” he said, looking by turns at Klepton, the Admiral and Damprich, “here is one of our enemies. He is strong, he is cunning. He has accomplices everywhere, and I imagine that the obsequious maître d’hôtel at the Terminus in Palma must know something about that. We shall interrogate him, since Monsieur Thoth does not wish to cooperate. But what shall we do with Monsieur Thoth? To keep him here is dangerous, for we do not have enough men aboard to give him a permanent guardian. To entrust him to the Governor of the Congo is unsafe; he would escape…”
“Evidently,” said Klepton.
“On the other hand,” Saint-Clair continued, “the war that we’re fighting is a war to the death. The Fifteen have given sufficient proof of that, by having me thrown into the sea by Koynos, followed by Bastien. Bastien is dead and Koynos intended that I should die too. All that being taken into consideration, let us take note that Monsieur Thoth has usurped, in order to defeat us, the name and appearance of one of the most respectable men in the entire world, the illustrious and savant astronomer Camille Flammarion—which shows, at the very least, an extreme irreverence for science. Let us take note, and this is more serious, that Monsieur Thoth is evidently the direct cause of the abduction of my sister Christiane and the threat of death suspended over that child’s head. Gentlemen, what sentence shall we pass upon Monsieur Thoth?”
“Death,” said the Admiral, gravely.
“Death,” said Damprich, immediately.
“Death,” said Klepton, after three seconds of hesitation.
“Death it shall be!” said Saint-Clair, indifferently. “But let’s not forget, gentlemen”—his voice had an imperceptible tremor of emotion—“that the life of my beloved sister is hanging by a thread. We would have cut that thread by descending to an altitude of less than 500 meters above the esplanade. We would cut that thread by allowing the Fifteen’s accomplices to discover that Monsieur Thoth is dead. This, gentlemen, is what I therefore propose. The Condor will return to Lake Leopold II, which is about 900 kilometers from where we are. We shall descend by night to 500 meters above the lake. Monsieur Thoth will be shot silently, by mean of our detonation-less carbines, on the platform of the aeronef. His corpse will be put in a leather sack, to the two ends of which we shall attach empty shells, heavy enough to ensure that the sack, its contents and our secret will sleep eternally at the bottom of the lake. Gentlemen, is my proposal agreeable to you?”
The Admiral, Klepton and Damprich replied in unison: “Yes.”
“Did you hear that, Monsieur?” said the Nyctalope, turning to Thoth.
“I heard.”
“You have nothing to say on this subject?”
“Nothing.”
“Revelations, Monsieur, if they are useful to us, might save your life, and a sworn oath not to take any further part in the open war between us and the Fifteen might win your liberty.” Saint-Clair took out his watch. “It’s noon. You’ll be shot at 9 p.m. You therefore have nine hours to reflect.”
“All reflection is done, gentlemen,” said Thoth, firmly. “I shall make no revelation, I shall take no oath.”
“Repeat that, Monsieur, at 9 p.m., and you’ll be shot on the spot.”
Thoth bowed.
Five minutes later, so tightly bound that he could not make the least movement, Thoth was lying on the sofa in the chart-room. Damprich and the Admiral were watching him, while Saint-Clair and Klepton, having retired to their cabins, were taking a rest of which they were in dire need.
At 8 p.m., Pary woke them up. They went to the dining-room and ate a hasty meal. They were replaced at the table by the Admiral and Damprich, whom they relieved of their duty with regard to Thoth.
The Condor, in accordance with the orders received by the helmsman and the mechanic, was hovering above Lake Aquilonda, or Leopold II, which is in the west of the Belgian Congo.
At 8:59 p.m., all the crewmen having been assigned to their respective posts, Saint-Clair untied Thoth’s legs.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes, Monsieur,” replied the condemned man, calmly.
“Then follow me, please.”
The Nyctalope went ahead, Thoth following him, with the Admiral, Klepton and Damprich behind, armed with carbines. Saint-Clair was carrying a leather sack under his arm, in which two shells were rolled up, firmly attached to its two extremities.
The aeronef was maintaining its position, it wings fluttering and its ascensional airscrew turning at reduced speed, five hundred meters above the middle of the lake. The night sky, spangled with stars, was clear. The moon was rising on the invisible horizon. In spite of the purr of the airscrew and the quivering of the wings, there was a profound and solemn silence.
Saint-Clair led Thoth to the extremity of the platform and attached the rope that bound his hands behind him to the guard-rail. That done, he unrolled the sack that he had allowed to fall at his feet, opened it and displayed it. Then, standing up again and fixing his fulgurant nyctalopic eyes on the condemned man, he said in a clear voice: “Monsieur, will you talk and take the oath?”
“No revelations, no oath, Monsieur!” Thoth replied, calmly.
“You’re a brave man, Monsieur,” said Saint-Clair. “You’re about to die—adieu!”
He stood aside, and lifted his right arm.
“Fire!”
No detonation resounded, but three jets of flame lit up the darkness of that beautiful tropical night—and Thoth collapsed to his knees, his head slumping forwards.
Saint-Clair cut the rope binding the corpse to the guard-rail with a single stroke of his knife.
Two minutes later, a rebound sack was thrown over that same guard-rail by Saint-Clair and Klepton. It spiraled down, and a splash was heard as it hit the calm waters of the lake. There was a sort of rustling sound, then silence.
“That was a brave man!” said the Admiral.
“Yes,” said Saint-Clair. “But we would have been as brave as him, for he would not have spared us.”
“With Bastien,” Damprich said, “that makes two spies who have died for getting close to us.”
“Watch out for the third!” Klepton murmured.
And they all went back to the chart-room.
After that tragic scene, it seemed that none of the administrators of justice dared speak first. They sat down randomly at the large table covered with unrolled maps. Klepton, the Admiral and Damprich looked at Saint-Clair, who was deep in thought, with his head in his hands.
Long minutes went by.
Finally, Saint-Clair parted his hands and stood up. They saw, with some amazement, that he had been weeping. A few tears, at least, had left tracks on his pale cheeks.
“My friends,” he said, in a slightly halting voice, “that’s my final weakness. Excuse me—I was thinking about my little sister Christiane, who will die as a result of what I am going to do, if I do not succeed, or even if I am only partly successful.”
“What are you going to do, Leo?” exclaimed Admiral de Ciserat, profoundly moved.
“I shall go alone to the Fifteen’s base,” said the Nyctalope, quite simply.
“Alone!” they cried.
“It’s necessary! If the Condor descends to an altitude of less than 500 meters over the esplanade, Christiane will die. If we attack the mysterious pylon before October 18, Christiane will die. These men have said so, and you know that they are as implacable as they are powerful. So I shall go alone—alone, by night, by courtesy of my eyes, I shall explore, I shall search and I shall discover what I want to know.”
“Saint-Clair!” cried Klepton.
“No! I’ve decided. I’m in command here, by your own will, and I command it! If we go together, we shall be discovered and Christiane will die. If we renounce the enterprise—would you be able to, Admiral?—Xavière, Yvonne and their companions will be lost forever. So, no more discussion—obey me!”
> He got up—and such a sovereign majesty emanated from his noble visage that the Admiral, Damprich and Klepton bowed.
“Klepton,” said Saint-Clair, “You’ll set me down in the forest as close as possible to the esplanade. In order to remain unseen by any sentry—for they must have some—you’ll proceed with no lights. Once you’ve set me down, you’ll climb back to a height of 4000 meters. Keep watch day and night; a rocket will be the signal for you to descend to the esplanade as quickly as possible and land there. If no rocket has been fired by midnight on October 18, it’s because I’m dead. Then, Admiral, Damprich, Klepton, you will go to Paris and you will dedicate your strength and your fortune to finding Christiane and saving her, as I myself will have dedicated my strength, my fortune and my life to finding Xavière. Christiane is not with the others on Mars, since, at least as I have serious reasons to presume, the Fifteen can only go to Mars by departing from the terrestrial station that we have seen. Klepton, Admiral du Ciserat, Damprich, swear an oath for Christiane…”
The three men stood up and, their eyes darkened by emotion, gravely swore the oath.
“Thank you!” said Saint-Clair. “Klepton, get under way. I’ll make my preparations.” And the Nyctalope went to the armory, where equipment and weapons appropriate to the bold expedition to which he had committed himself were to be found.
Three hours later, the Condor was hovering 25 meters above a little clearing just large enough for it to be able to extend its quivering wings without touching the treetops.
Saint-Clair, Admiral de Ciserat, Klepton, Damprich, Maximilien Jolivet, Tory, Pary O’Brien and Bontemps were gathered in the hold where the gondola’s winch was located. Their faces were gravely thoughtful and all their eyes were damp with contained tears, which intense emotion causes to well up beneath the eyelids of even the strongest and most self-possessed of men.
Saint-Clair was clad in supple leather, which a thin layer of rubber had rendered impermeable. Sturdy boots reached up to his knees and a colonial helmet covered his head. Two automatic pistols, with a dozen bullets apiece, hung from his waistband, through which a sharp hatchet was also passed. He also had a powerful American carbine slung over his shoulder, furnished with a Maxim apparatus that suppressed any detonation.
But Saint-Clair was not going alone! He was not the only one whose eyes were dry and devoid of apparent emotion. One other had a face as impassive as his, and was similarly dressed in leather and just as formidably armed. It was only after mature reflection that Saint-Clair had decided to take a companion, to share with someone else the dangers, the adventures and the glory of the strangest and most enigmatic expedition that any man had ever undertaken. To be sure, everyone, from Admiral de Ciserat to Bontemps, had offered, but Saint-Clair had long singled out the most modest and self-effacing member of the little troop; he had noticed the signs of lively intelligence, courage, coolness, skill and physical vigor shown by young Maximilien Jolivet, the brother of one of the vanished young women.
On the other hand, if Saint-Clair were to take an auxiliary, he did not need a strong and valiant fellow, in the usual significance of those terms, but a man with a clear and agile but modest and submissive mind, a lively and cunning imagination and a light, athletic and nimble body. The courageous, skillful and wiry Parisian gamin that was Maximilien Jolivet fulfilled all these conditions. That was why Maximilien was standing there proud-eyed, a warrior of 17, his blond moustache arrogantly curled, beside Saint-Clair the Nyctalope, whom he considered to be a god-like hero!
“It’s time, my friends,” Saint-Clair said.
All hands were extended towards him; he shook them. Then it was Maximilien’s turn, his face radiant with happiness. The brave lad blinked away the emotional tears that came into his eyes and succeeded in maintaining pupils as clear and bright as a mirror to the Sun. Saint-Clair pushed him into the gondola, and followed him.
“God go with you!” said Admiral de Ciserat, gravely, expressing his hopes in the old mariner’s exclamation with all his cognizant and dolorous heart.
“Have confidence,” Saint-Clair replied. “But if I don’t come back, think of Christiane!”
“Think of Christiane, think of Xavière, of Yvonne, think of us, and come back!” cried Klepton, hugging Saint-Clair.
“Cast off!” commanded the Nyctalope.
Klepton depressed a lever. Immediately, a large trap-door opened and the gondola sank into it. The man on the Condor watched it descend, vanishing into the darkness at the end of the extending cable. Then they saw two imprecise forms leap out of the gondola: Saint-Clair and Maximilien Jolivet.
The empty gondola came back up, while the bold adventurers, on their way to the amazing terrestrial base of the XV, launched themselves into the mysteries, ambushes and terrors of the jungle…
First Interlude
When one examines with a curious eye and an attentive mind the enormous dossier entitled The XV and the planet Mars—a dossier that comprises no less than 34 thick files stuffed with thousands of documents, one is amazed that the tenebrous Society of XV was so completely unknown to the world in the very epoch that it carried out the crimes and exploits which, provoking the contrary exploits and noble deeds, ought to have rendered the already-notorious name of Saint-Clair the Nyctalope immortal. Yes, one can hardly believe that, for months on end, while the conflict between Saint-Clair and the mysterious XV was initiated and aggravated, none of the world’s police forces had the slightest inkling of the existence of that society—which, in stark contrast to many others with hermetic pretensions, really did keep itself secret.
Since the year of the Hictaner, Oxus had been able to found and extend this Society of XV, and to render it all-powerful by virtue of his regulations, the number and quality of his affiliates and accomplices, the incalculable wealth at his disposal, the inventions and scientific discoveries of which he jealously guarded the secrets—and never, during the period of 25 years which expired between the disappearance of Oxus and the abduction of 15 young Parisian women, had any policeman, no matter how clever or powerful he might be, suspected that 15 men existed who were extending the tentacles of their organization across the entire world, unintimidated even by the prospect of the conquest of Mars, whose inhabitants had themselves once failed to conquer the Earth, according to the tragic account of the historian H. G. Wells.
Even when 15 young Parisian women disappeared so mysteriously in a single night, no policeman elucidated the enigma of that abduction. Only one man discovered the strange trail that was to lead him into so many adventures; and by virtue of his mistrust of policemen, habitual prey to interviewers, that man—Saint-Clair the Nyctalope—only divulged his discovery of that trail to the companions who followed him in the expedition that he immediately undertook.
The abduction of the 15 young women had taken place on the night of September 17. By October 11, the combined efforts of all the police forces in the world had still found nothing to explain those disappearances.
Saint-Clair only having made public, as a result of his inquiry, the indubitable conclusion that the abductions had been carried out by means of airplanes, all owners of airplanes had been subjected to fruitless interrogations, in which they had been obliged to explain how they had spent their time during the fateful night of September 17. These interrogations, as evidenced by the dispatches that were accumulating by the minute in the office of Monsieur Henrion, the Prefect of Police, proved that, from England to China and Spain to Canada, no aviator, amateur or professional, had made use of his aircraft in any abduction whatsoever on the night in question.
The police forces of the entire world were, therefore, in disarray. Monsieur Henrion remained perplexed, and the public, in Paris as in New York, were beginning to laugh and get annoyed at the same time—as usually happens when police forces run around in circles without discovering anything—when, on October 11, a new fact emerged to augment that annoyance, that hilarity, that perplexity and that disarray to incredible proport
ions.
This fact was the disappearance—in broad daylight, while she was in a busy public place—of Mademoiselle Christiane Saint-Clair, whom everyone believed to be the Nyctalope’s sister.
This fact emerged in the most banal manner. At noon, when Christiane did not return, Madame Rondu, her worthy governess, spent five minutes grumbling, then began weeping with anxiety, and finally almost fainted with terror when the old maître d’hôtel, Baptiste, came back at 4 p.m., having searched the area around the Neuf-Routes crossroads in the Saint-Germain forest without result and fruitlessly interrogated the family friends with whom Christiane might, in case of sudden illness, have taken temporary refuge. And at 4:30 p.m., Madame Rondu, in tears, and Baptiste, in a fury, had gone to inform the Commissaire of the Saint-Germain police of Mademoiselle Christiane’s inexplicable disappearance.
The Commissaire, aided by 20 agents, all the forest wardens and 100 citizen volunteers, searched the forest all night—and, on the morning of September 12, having discovered no trace of her, he decided in desperation to leap into his monoplane and go tell the entire story to Monsieur Henrion.
The telegraph, the radiotelegraph and the radiotelephone advertised Mademoiselle Christiane Saint-Clair’s disappearance to all the courts and police forces of the world. The communiqué gave an exact and detailed description of the young woman and, by way of a postscript, did not fail to suggest that there was evidently some connection between the 15 events of September 17 and the single event of October 11. There was an uproar in the evening newspapers, and then an even greater uproar in the following morning’s papers. At noon on October 13, however, Monsieur Sanglier, the head of the Sûreté, went to see Monsieur Henrion and, without saying a word, set a letter and a telegram down before him. The letter was thus comprised:
The Nyctalope on Mars 1: The Mystery of the Fifteen Page 13