And its intensity increased further when it alighted on Mirande.
“Finally…it’s you! It’s you, my child,” Brion stammered, in a small and distant voice, pallid, vibrating between two tones, as if the vocal cords were unequally taut within the throat. Immediately, though, he turned his head toward his two guardians. “Leave us…I want to remain alone with Mirande…I have to talk to him…to him alone...”
The physician offered his further assistance with a gesture; and Catherine who did not seem to understand, leaned over to draw a bowl of hot water nearer to his feet.
Then he insisted: “Alone! Leave us alone!”
They obeyed, regretfully. Mirande reassured them with a sign. Then, when they had disappeared, he approached the scientist and held out his hands fervently.
The pitiable voice started speaking. “Closer, my child, closer. Oh, you did well to arrive! I feared…I have so much to tell you. I have to tell you something! You alone…for I’ve read in you…I’ve read…!”
“Master...”
“No, no, no futile effusions!” Brion protested. “We no longer have time. I can hardly breathe. The paralysis is rising…it’s reaching the head...it won’t stop. Notice my voice…can you hear me?”
“Quite clearly, Master.”
“Let’s talk, then...” But his face became suddenly anxious. “The door. If someone were to overhear...”
“Firmly shut,” affirmed Gabriel, after having made sure.
“Let’s talk, quickly. What did you do yesterday evening? What happened to you?”
“Oh, Master, let’s only concern ourselves with you,” Gabriel implored.
“I’m talking about me in talking about you,” Brion insisted, enigmatically. Then, with slight impatience: “Tell me. What’s happened since you left me?”
Mirande tried to describe his journey and he prodigious night in broad strokes. When he pronounced Simon’s name for the first time, Brion interrupted him.
“You loved her,” he said, softly.
“How do you know that?” said Mirande, alarmed.
But Brion reassured him with a pale smile. “What does it matter? I know. And you’ll understand, shortly. Go on. Quickly.”
As his story advanced, the old man’s excitement increased. When he heard about the young woman’s resurrection, an intense expression of triumph illuminated his face. Then, fatigued by the very excess of his joy, he murmured: “Unhoped for… unhoped for… prodigiously convincing. Yes, prodigiously...”
He returned a gaze shot through with victorious irony to his pupil. “You say that you heard Madame Castillan’s voice?”
“Evidently.”
“In spite of the obstacles? Those two sealed stones? The coffin? The voice of an exhausted woman, half-dead? When you can scarcely hear mine? Do you believe that?”
All the doubts that had assailed Mirande since dawn, and which he had wanted to submit to his old master, were imposed on his mind with a new form. All the implausibility of the adventure burst forth.
“And yet,” he said, to himself. “How could I have divined it otherwise?”
Then he wanted to reassure himself, to bring the alarming problem back to the limits of the possible. He returned to the hypothesis that had already crossed his mind. Perhaps he was endowed, that night, with a particular hyperesthesia, in the same fashion as hysterics who can hear sounds at a distance that healthy ears cannot perceive.
“Master,” he interrogated, “was I in my normal state? Was I not subject to an influence? Did I not have senses particularly stimulated by the injection that you gave me at the moment of my departure, under the pretext of giving me strength? Tell me, Master, is that it? What was in the serum that you injected into me?”
Again, Brion’s visage was resplendent. Overcoming the embarrassment of his lips, he said: “Finally, you’ve guessed! Well, yes, I tested a formidable discovery on you. Forgive me. It was necessary, in order to convince you…but I dared not hope for such a decisive proof. I wanted to confide my secret to you before dying…to you, who, alone among all, are worthy to possess it…to you, the brave, the great heart that I’ve read so often...”
He fell silent. Would he have time to reveal his discovery? His effort had exhausted him. Imminent death revealed itself to him. His eyelids lowered over his dull gaze. His head tilted in the posture of deep sleep.
Fortunately, it was only a faint. Mirande seized a bottle of salts from the table and approached it to his master’s face. The stimulation of the vapors soon reanimated him. His respiration resumed its jerky rhythm. And as he observed the anxiety of his pupil, he remembered, and he designated with his eyes, in the corner of the laboratory, a cupboard built into the wall near the chimney-breast.
“White cupboard…the key in my waistcoat, on the right,” he pronounced.
Mirande parted the covers, rummaged in his master’s pocket and took out a minuscule key with intricate teeth.
“Open...”
Mirande obeyed. The cupboard was armored like a strong-box.
“The box of ampoules…notebook beside...”
“I see them.”
“Leave them. Close it…and keep the key...you alone…no one else!”
After having given the lock a double turn, the disciple put the key into his fob pocket and came back to take his place beside he old man.
“Listen now…closer... I’ve discovered a talisman without rival. It’s the serum in the blue ampoule. In the notebook, the formula, the employment, my observations of myself...”
He stopped momentarily, like a wrestler gathering himself in order to launch himself triumphantly. Then, with a final contraction of all his facial muscles: “Whoever injects himself with that serum perceives the thoughts of another…as if he were hearing his voice…for some hours. One becomes a receiver…a wireless telegraph post...which vibrates to Hertzian waves... Only…the secret…keep the secret! At all costs! If not, they’ll think you’re mad... Keep the secret! It’s my last will...”
But his tongue, in the grip of the paralysis that was reaching the superior nervous centers, was suddenly immobilized. He tried to emit a few more sounds: a futile struggle. His eyes filled with tears. Was that the confession of his impotence? A supreme adieu to the threads of his thought?
Then his energetic head, falling backwards, mingled its white wisps with the fringes of the cushions. A few contractions of the face; one last glimmer in the gaze, and that was the end of the great seeker.
III
Outside, Mirande wondered whether he was awake. Had he not dreamed that supreme conversation with Brion? Several times, he forced himself to take an interest in the spectacle of the street, in order to prove that he was alive, that he was walking in full reality.
He dared not even measure the extent of the power that he had obtained from his master. At the very most, he tried to assure himself of the very existence of the discovery, to convince himself that Brion had not been speaking in delirium.
Timidly, he invoked the experiment that he had made without knowing it, the previous night. Certainly, without a superhuman power, he would not have perceived Simone’s feeble voice through so many obstacles. When he had thought he could hear the reflections of his aides and the physician, first behind the walls of their dwellings, and then over the tomb itself, he was glimpsing their thoughts without knowing it. And later, when Simone’s voice had seemed to fade away, when he had felt so isolated from all those men, doubtless the action of the serum was wearing off. Yes, the prodigy explained everything. And that alone could explain everything...
He arrived at the Rue Monge. He ran up the five flights of steps swiftly, glad to find Jeanne again after so many unusual events, to be able to tell her in detail about Simone’s resurrection. And at the same time for the first time, he regretted being bound by the master’s will not to reveal Brion’s prodigious discovery to his cherished confidante.
He searched the narrow lodgings. The bedroom door was ajar. Jeanne was sitt
ing by the window, her elbows on the table, her head leaning forward, her hands lost in her brown hair. A letter was open before her eyes. In the large letters that cut across the page, Mirande recognized Lacaze’s handwriting.
He deduced that she had been overwhelmed by a new blow, and put off until later telling her, carefully, about Brion’s death.
He was not mistaken. Oh, the ferocious and touching egotism of love...
When he had drawn her out of her dolorous reverie with a kiss on the forehead, she scarcely had a few rapid and distracted words for her old childhood friend, miraculously saved. Immediately, her own chagrin took hold of her again, entirely.
“Henri informs me of his imminent departure for the Île de Ré,” she said. “From there, he’ll be sent to Guyana. Here, read it—it’s atrocious.”
He scanned the first page with a glance.
My darling, I’ve never addressed you as tu, but I dare to do so today, for one can do that to the idol to whom one prays, whom one implores on one’s knees. My darling, it’s really the end this time. I’m going to leave for the Île de Ré, and from there to the prison colony. But you! You whom I adore, will you have the courage not to turn away from me, to remain faithful to the memories that bind us together? What does the shame matter to me, since I’m innocent? What does the unmerited punishment to which I shall be subjected matter, the torture of the odious contacts that await me? But to be separated from you, my darling! Oh, that torture is truly too cruel! Let them lacerate me, let them burn my flesh, but not tear me away from you, at the moment when my arms were about to envelop you! Do you understand what I’m losing? Do you understand that I’m hanging on to your phantom, desperately? Life without you, with the atrocious obsession that you might be subject to the abominable suspicion, that you might repudiate me, that you might reject my poor love, the only softening of my misery…of, if that’s what awaits me, tell me. Let oblivion carry me away. It won’t take long; I shall go toward death with such haste to finish with it…!
Jeanne interrupted him. “Isn’t it frightful? But I shall follow him. I shall marry him out there, as soon as I have permission to join him. For we can no longer save him. We’ll never get to the bottom of it. Oh, we’re too weak, you see...”
Too weak...
Suddenly, inspired by revolt and pity, Mirande glimpsed salvation. Why not employ the weapon that Brion had put in his hands, that divinatory faculty, in the struggle? By that means, he could acquire money, influence, everything that he lacked to vanquish human stupidity, indifference and malevolence. Too weak! Oh, they would cease to be...
He had to master himself, to invoke the august and sage will of his master, not to betray himself, not to cry out his hope and his confidence to the unfortunate Jeanne, who was isolated in the vision of a future sacrificed.
A ringing bell extracted them from their meditation. After negotiations in the antechamber, Francette, the maidservant, came in, familiar and abrupt.
“It’s a man.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. Tall, thin as a hundred nails, with a toothbrush moustache. He said that Monsieur was waiting for him. ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘You can wait there.’ Because, these days, one never knows eh? Need to be careful.”
She finished with a burst of laughter. A curious little individual, that Francette. In her, everything was contrast. Her nose, too large at the root, suddenly terminated in a malicious little point. Her milky complexion was dotted with red blotches. Behind lips that were too short, perfect teeth gleamed. The rude arc of her eyebrows sheltered a tender and meek gaze. The tumultuous flood of her coppery hair stopped short at her little straight collar. Finally, her short torso was planted on long legs with delicate ankles.
Was she pretty? Was she ugly? A mystery. But the ensemble was surprising, like a commonplace foodstuff that had been cleverly spiced.
Her language was as singular as her physical appearance. Free and frank, it was peppered with ludicrous images and argot. But in the two years that Francette had been in their service, Jeanne and her brother had become accustomed to her eccentricities.
In any case, how could they not be indulgent toward her? No devotion was comparable to hers. Since the day when the arrest of Lacaze had cast their abode into morning, Francette had consoled them ingenuously. She sustained their confidence with her naïve faith in the innocence of the accused. The rare glimmers of hope, reflected by her, suddenly took on a brighter radiance. Her spontaneous gaiety and her mischievous sallies held the most poignant anxieties in check.
And as, in those periods of crisis, Jeanne neglected the cares of the household, Francine had taken its direction. She defended its interests stubbornly. She reduced the pretentions of suppliers by using the familiar form of address. With a grimace, she obtained a good discount from the grocer, which she passed on to the purse of her employers. She washed, ironed and folded all the linen, polished the parquet, beat the carpets and found time to consult cookery books in order to concoct flavorsome dishes. When she understood that the household was short of money, that Lacaze’s defense had exhausted its savings, she even refused her wages and declared flatly that she too would make sacrifices for the cause. How, after that, could they take her to task for her liberties of language and behavior? One does not reproach the sunlight for entering into a house.
Her good humor had only known one eclipse. That was at the moment of Simone’s marriage. She had not been told about that intimate drama, but had doubtless divined it. At any rate, she had become unapproachable. She had been glimpsed in the kitchen maltreating the crockery and the pans, lavishing the most furious and crude insults on the oven. For a week, all the dishes were inedible. Then nature had regained the upper hand; again her laughter had rung out, and her face lit up the abode.
Thus, Mirande did not have the heart to scold Francette for having received an expected visitor in such a cavalier manner.
“That must be Monsieur Nitaud, the enquiry agent,” he said to Jeanne.
“That’s it—Nitaud; he told me his name,” said the soubrette, laughing again. “I thought at first he said Nigaud.”8 Curiously, she added: “Is he the policeman? Is he good?”
Nothing that was to do with the Lacaze affair left her indifferent. Mirande had to promise to inform her as to the policeman’s talents. She then consented to introduce him to the drawing-room, this time in a manner full of deference.
Monsieur Nitaud corresponded well enough to the description that Francette had sketched. He was a tall man with an enigmatic quality. His astonishingly mobile eyes compelled attention immediately. One only discovered afterwards the extreme development of the forehead, the short gray hair and the hollow cheeks, united by a thin brown moustache—Francette’s “toothbrush.” Under the maroon suit, one divined a powerful musculature, a deceptive thinness.
“It is Monsieur Mirande to whom I have the honor…?”
“Indeed, Monsieur Nitaud. I wrote to you in order to confide a difficult investigation to you. I can’t do better, it seems to me, than to address myself to the man who…”
With a gesture of his splayed fingers, the policeman rejected the compliment. He sat down, put down his soft hat and looked at Jeanne, whose presence he seemed to think superfluous.
“Mademoiselle is my sister,” Gabriel explained. “I’d like her to be present during our conversation.”
Nitaud nodded. “I’m listening, then.”
Mirande collected himself, his hand on his forehead. Then he began: “You must know, Monsieur, about the Lacaze affair?”
“I do indeed, but superficially. I was away when it unfolded, in America, where I was operating on behalf of the Russian government. A matter of nihilists. Like everyone else, I’ve been brought up to date by the newspapers.”
“From what you know, does the affair seem clear to you, cut and dried?”
“It seemed to me to be rather banal. Furthermore I’ll admit that the work of the Prefecture of Police doesn’t intere
st me much. I passed through it once, with the title of inspector, before setting up on my own account…nothing serious…scamped work.”
“It seemed to me, in fact,” said Mirande, “that the police did not conduct it with enough zeal and above all, impartiality. They only sought to doom our unfortunate friend, and we don’t believe him to be guilty.”
“Oh, no, we can’t believe it!” Jeanne added, ardently. “Lacaze is innocent! It’s therefore in you, Monsieur...”
For a second time, with a more impatient gesture, Monsieur Nitaud suspended the eulogy he anticipated. As positive in his questions as in his attitude, he interrogated: “You’d like to have the verdict overturned, then?”
“That’s our hope,” Gabriel admitted.
“Were there faults of procedure?”
“There were, but not sufficient.”
“You need new evidence, then—proof that the prosecution was mistaken on some point?”
“Yes, some discovery…I don’t know…the small clue capable of casting doubt into the minds of new judges—for the jury of the Seine that condemned Lacaze had no doubt. The penalty of forced labor for life was pronounced unanimously.”
“Oh, that’s abominable!” Jeanne protested. “Henri, a heart so honest, so upright...”
With his keen gaze, Nitaud scrutinized the young woman. He seemed to divine her, for he shrugged his shoulders in a compassionate manner. Then, in a tone less curt, he went on: “Let’s see…I’d like nothing better than to help you. It will be costly, of course. To recommence an investigation, find the witnesses, demolish the monument that the Prefecture has constructed, can’t be done without money. It requires sleuths. It takes time. Have you thought about that?”
“All that we have—everything! We’ll put it all at your disposal,” Jeanne affirmed.
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