On the Brink of the World's End

by Brian Stableford

  Yes, it was time.

  One last blow came to spur my desire to act without losing any time. For two days, the temperature dropped in proportions absolutely abnormal for the hothouse that Biskra is. The winterers were buttoning their overcoats all the way to the collar, and the ladies were wearing furs to go out. The drop on temperature was explained by snowfalls in the nearby Aurès; there were precedents—but personally, I immediately gave the event its veritable and disquieting significance. The Man of the Apocalypse was on the march! Roger was setting out to win his bet.

  Well, no, he wouldn’t win it.

  That same evening, while the lunatic was helping Barnett to empty bottles of gin and whisky, I went straight to the terrace where I had seen him set out the vats of acid. I was fully determined to remove the dangerous compound, to disperse it, to bury it in some corner of the desert.

  But I searched for the containers in vain; they were no longer there.

  Roger had certainly transported them outside to a location of which he alone was aware.

  I swore that that would be his last experiment, but this time, I needed help. Incontinently, I wrote to the Public Prosecutor of Batna, the administrative center to which Biskra is attached. I explained Roger’s case, recounted the lamentable story of his amour, insisted on the clear cerebral breakdown that had been manifest in him since Madame Berjac’s death. A false shame prevented me from going to the end, of revealing the terrible and disconcerting things that might happen if Livry remained at liberty.

  In addition, I would not have been understood.

  By virtue of my own experience, I sensed clearly that ordinary minds were unable to accept such conjectures right away, without revolt. In the very interests of my request, it was better to keep quiet and not risk becoming a madman in the eyes of those I wanted to convince.

  When I had finished my letter it was very late; I wanted nevertheless to put it into the box at the station myself.

  When I got back, I had to submit to a furious scene on Roger’s part.

  “Ah, finally, there you are!” he roared, as soon as he heard me go into my room. Almost brutally, he dragged me into his, and stood before me, his features contracted, his gaze hostile.

  “Look! Can you explain this letter that I’ve received from my stockbroker?”

  He threw the piece of paper in my face rather than handing it to me.

  I scanned the missive rapidly.

  In substance, the stockbroker informed Livry that it was impossible for him to realize the six millions in cash demanded urgently, for the good reason that all his clients movable assets had been transformed into bonds with a long expiry date.

  It had been necessary to expect that coup-de-théâtre one day or another, but it had arrived at a particularly deplorable moment.

  Roger exploded. “So that’s how you take care of my interests! By doing the opposite of my instructions and my desires!”

  “Calm down, Roger,” I replied, determined to weather the storm. “You knew in advance that I’m not a businessman. I did my best.”

  He threatened me with his fist, at the paroxysm of his fury. “You’re lying! You’re lying! You couldn’t be unaware that I needed funds disposable at the end of February to pay for the delivery of fifty grams of radium. Your operations should have been limited to collecting that money. Instead of that you’ve lent yourself to I don’t know what swindles...”

  “Oh, Roger!”

  The insult appeared to me to be so abominable, even in the mouth of a demented individual, that I did not have the strength to submit to it without protest.

  Insensible to the cry of my offended soul, however, the poor fellow continued, with an atrocious snigger: “Of course! I can see your game clearly! You wanted to stop my arm, raised to accomplish an act of justice, an act of reason, an act of regeneration. You’ve attempted to preserve the rotten world, because you were afraid for yourself. Yes, afraid, afraid, afraid...”

  He marched toward me, his arm raised, his eyes bulging. For a moment, I thought he was about to drive me into a corner, seize me by the throat, and strangle me in a fit of furious madness.

  In that moment of anguish I felt so miserable, so bruised, that I almost wished for that frightful end. It would be a conclusion!

  But his hoarse breath drew away from my face. He took a step backwards, and, pointing his finger at me, said: “Well, you won’t succeed! You can do what you like, I shall have my radium. And instead of eighty grams, I’ll buy the half-kilo that the Krafts of Nordlingen are offering me. Here, look at their letter! And I’ll pay cash...

  “Then, with the hundred and thirty liters of Omega acid I have, the Earth won’t be so heavy!”

  Mute with horror, I followed that rising tide of terrible arrogance. But Roger suddenly abandoned his comminatory tone, and with an accent full of bitterness, he expanded in reproaches.

  “You have no backbone, little Paul. Instead of remaining my ally, you’ve taken it into your head to set ambushes for me. What do you expect? I’ve replaced you in my confidence and my affection. Today, I have other allies, more faithful, who have associated themselves more courageously, without a hidden agenda, with the goal I’m pursuing...

  “I forgive you your treason, because the strong are ignorant of vengeance. But henceforth, I no longer know you. Go! You’re free!”

  His gesture was broader than the walls of the room—his gesture of expulsion.

  That was too much.

  Dejected, my head bowed, I head for the door. I’m about to reach it when I feel myself seized around the body. At the same time, I hear Roger’s voice, imploring: “Paul, Paul…don’t go! Don’t abandon me!”

  I turn round. Even more than the heart-rending timbre of his voice, the dolorous expression of his physiognomy stirs the very depths of my soul.

  And the hands retain me.

  “You don’t see, then, that I’m mad…you don’t sense my burning heart, my exploding head…oh, if you knew how I’m suffering!”

  With his closed fist, he hammered his forehead.

  “There, there, I feel something like a rasp passing back and forth through my brain. It’s horrible...”

  For a moment, I gazed into his eyes with a profound pity. “Why don’t you want to let anyone care for you?” I said to him, in a very soft voice.

  He smiled bitterly, and shook his head. “Care for me! My illness is incurable.”

  “Try anyway…I’ll help you with all my might.” I put the maximum of persuasive affection into the affirmation.

  “What’s the point?”

  Roger let himself fall into a chair, wearily. In my turn, I had the impression that I was about to render myself the master of my friend, when I heard galloping footsteps in the neighboring corridor, and then a frantic hammering on the door.

  “Hey, Master Livry! Gee up! Hurry!”

  Without waiting for anyone to open the door, the odious Barnett shoved the batten. He stuck his horrible face through the gap. I had the sensation that behind the death’s-head, madness and woe were mounting a triumphant offensive return.

  “Hurrah!” the monster continued, his green eyes gleaming like those of an owl. “Hurrah! You’ve won the million! Outside in the Oasis, the seguias are frozen.40 Ah, Monsieur friend of the Devil, tomorrow you’re going to show me the little device…then I’ll give you a check for as many millions as you please for the other affair, the great chambardement of the world, as you say in France.”

  At the first word, Roger had straightened up, his face blossoming. With an expression full of assurance and pride, he looked at me, and his gaze seemed to be saying: You see!

  Oh yes, again I saw the gulf opening under our feet.

  I was going to see many others. That frightful night had not yet tested me enough. After responding to Barnett’s vigorous handshake, Roger made a proposition: “No need to wait until tomorrow to show you how I produce the cold. Would you like to see now, Barnett?”

  “All right! You�
�re expeditious, worthy of being born American.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “Is it far?”

  “A few steps.”

  “Right! I’ll get Jim to follow with a basket of champagne. It’s perfectly appropriate to celebrate an event as sensational as the end of the world, in fact!”

  “Very true. Get Jim to bring a lantern too.” Turning to me, he said, in the most natural tone in the world: “Are you coming with us, Paul?”

  Since Barnett’s irruption, Roger seemed to have lost the memory of the violent tirade he had just inflicted on me. In the same way, his mind no longer conserved any trace of the moment of sane reason during which my poor friend had exhaled his dolorous plaint. In his brain on fire, the ideas and impressions were whirling like dead leaves whipped up by a storm wind.

  For my part, I was ashamed of having abandoned myself to a momentary weakness. Before the immense peril that Barnett’s intervention had just revealed to me, that weakness had become cowardice. Fortunately, Roger had not let me go!

  Now we’re outside, Roger, Barnett and I. A few paces behind, the negro Jim is following, with a basket full of bottles under his arm.

  It’s three o’clock in the morning. In spite of my overcoat, buttoned up to the neck, the cold penetrates me.

  Where is Roger going to take us?

  As soon as he takes the direction of the march, a suspicion invades me and causes me an indefinable malaise. A few paces more and the suspicion is confirmed. Another hundred meters, and it changes into a certainty.

  We’re outside the White Villa.

  XVI. Trinity of Demons

  Serenely, Roger has taken a bunch of keys out of his pocket—the keys glimpsed by Étienne. He opens the gate and goes into the garden. We follow him.

  For my part, I have the impression that night-prowlers and grave-robbers must have. How powerful my friend’s will-power or aberration must be, for him to dare to commit what I, personally, consider to be a sacrilegious violation.

  Without slowing down he scales the six steps of the perron, and puts the key in the lock of the vestibule. On entering the house of the dead, instinct makes me remove my hat, as in a tomb.

  This time, Roger wouldn’t be lying if he accused me of being afraid. In spite of the people surrounding me, I can’t rid myself of the grip of that nervous, irrational, stupid fear. It’s the “nocturnal terror” classified by physicians, which attacks children neurasthenics, the weak and the expressed. It’s the fear of noises and glimmers of light, the imprecise anxiety that evokes the abrupt intrusion of specters and phantoms, the expectation of something.

  Now, the something is there!

  Behind one of the doors that opens on to the vestibule—that of the kitchen—I can hear a slight rustling, a barely perceptible friction. Someone is there, moving with infinite precaution. Who can that someone by, if not a shade?

  Now the handle of the door is turning, slowly, slowly...

  A second, a century, and the door opens...

  My blood freezes in my veins.

  Through the gap, I white form presents itself, a head advancing with a feline prudence…a head...no, a fabric enveloping the appearance of a head. Can there be a material head within that white specter?

  “Don’t disturb yourself, it’s me.”

  From the passage, Roger has just directed those words at the specter. Then, a ray of lantern-light projected in that direction completes the breaking of the detestable spell. What my unhealthy imagination has mistaken for a phantom is an Arab enveloped in a burnoose, coiffed with a hood that prevents his facial features from being discerned.

  In any case, the Arab has stepped back, closing the door again.

  Who can that indigene be, chosen by Roger to guard the dead woman’s house? Undoubtedly, the one with whom the madman held the long conversations observed by Étienne. But where has Roger found that man of confidence?

  Those questions, I pose without having the clarity of mind necessary to fathom them. The chemist is already going upstairs, bringing my thoughts back to the cruel memories that haunt this place.

  On the first floor landing, he passes without pausing the door of the room where she died.

  I breathe!

  He continues going up to the door that gives access to the villa’s roof-terrace. We set foot on that terrace.

  On the concrete, the vats of acid that I saw being prepared are set out.

  With a gesture, he indicates them to the American. “There!”

  Barnett has the lantern moved closer. He gazes as the pale opaline substance formed by the mixture of the acid and the radium. A joyful grimace appears on his face; he puts out his hand...

  “Go on! You’re straight, Master Livry, and I’m your servant. I’ll write the check…”

  But the madman is able to resist that first success.

  “One moment! I want your conviction to be entire, absolute. Before accepting your word and your money, I want to give you a tangible proof of the power of my Omega acid.”

  “The cold’s falling on my shoulders; that’s sufficient for me.”

  “No. Cold is felt, it isn’t seen. I’m going to show you another application of my product, visible this time, and no less terrifying.”

  “All right! I’ll open my eyes wide.”

  “Help me to take the basins down, then. You too, Paul, please.”

  Like Barnett, I obey without knowing what Roger is going to do.”

  We each take hold of one of the porcelain receptacles by the edges. Trembling, I considered the frightful substance. Apart from a few phosphorescent gleams that are escaping from it, it seems inert; one might have thought it the kind of paste used for making impressions, for low-cost molding.

  On reflection, do not gun-cotton, melinite and all the most terrifying destructive agents offered to humankind by modern chemistry offer the same perfectly-inoffensive appearance?

  The vague anxiety into which Roger’s new determination has cast me at least has the effect of chasing away the specters prowling in my mind. We go back to the ground floor of the lugubrious house.

  Having reached the vestibule, Roger knocks on the door that opened before, and the white silhouette appears again.

  In a low voice, Roger exchanges a few words with the man in the burnoose. Afterwards he says to me: “Pass me the basin.”

  I still obey. He takes the object from my hands, hands it to the Arab, and does the same with the receptacle held by Barnett.

  “Two will be enough. Let’s keep the other two.”

  In a muffled voice, the Arab has murmured something.

  That voice! It seems to me that I’ve heard it before. An illusion, no doubt. What common point can exist between my memories and that indigene? In any case, all my attention is now attracted by the Arab’s maneuvers.

  He has just lit a lamp. Then he places an oil-heater on the floor-tiles of the kitchen, lights the wick, and sets a saucepan on top of it. With the aid of a ladle, he transfers the contents of the two vats of acid into the saucepan.

  What does this infernal cuisine signify?

  “Let’s go outside!” says Roger, who has thus far watched the strange preparations in silence.

  Now we’re in the garden.

  The Arab has followed us there, but he stays in the shadows, outside the zone of the radiance projected by the lantern. He is beginning to intrigue me greatly, that individual who persists in hiding beneath the hood of his burnoose.

  But Roger places a hand familiarly on Barnett’s shoulder, and in a tone pierced by a grim bitterness, he says: “You see this house…well, I condemned it to disappear on the day of my departure from Biskra. To show you my power, I’m going to destroy it immediately...

  Inside the house, a kind of sizzling is audible.

  “It’s starting,” said the chemist, becomes more excited. And with the dramatic tone of an evil genie in a fairy tale, he proclaims: “One…two…three…accursed dwelling, return underground!”


  That theatrical declamation might seem ridiculous but it sounded terrifying.

  At Roger’s invocation, a strange phenomenon occurred before our eyes. The white façade of the villa, made of stucco and molded plaster, suddenly vanished in the midst of a cascade of broken glass, and the noise of beams and furniture smashed to pieces.

  There was scarcely anything to be seen but a light mist, like vapor rising toward the sky.

  Abruptly, I understood. I had just seen a repetition of the terrible destructive process that hazard had delivered to Jobert. Thus had the millstone supports of the doorway of the Fontenay laboratory disappeared; thus had the calcareous foundations supporting the soil of Bouffarik and cemented the volcanic rocks of Messina disappeared.

  It was frightening to think that such a power of subversion might fall into human hands—and what hands! Those of madmen.

  With his arms, Roger indicated the formless heap of debris that lay on the ground. “Wood, a few bricks, a few bits of metal—not one stone! As soon as the Omega acid boiled, its vapors acted on the chalk like a spark on a powder-keg.

  “And now that you’ve seen Monsieur Barnett, I await your decision.”

  Without saying a word, the phlegmatic American took out of his pocket a supple red morocco folder containing his check book.

  Armed with a fountain-pen, he filled in the blanks of the printed forms.

  “First, the million of the bet. It’s yours.” He made as if to detach the check.

  Roger stopped him. “No need. Add that million to the two hundred others that you’re going to place at the disposal of the Kraft Company of Nordhausen for the first of March.”

  Barnett does not blink. “Time to cable New York, and the Krafts will be able to withdraw what they indicate from the Bank of Germany.”

  “I’ll take charge of the rest.”

  Then the terrible man utters a snigger of joy. “I was right just now—you’re the Devil.”

  “No, I’m the Man of the Apocalypse.” That was like a roar, in which an exacerbated pride was mingled with an atrocious dolor and a furious overexcitement.

  With a feverish movement, Roger takes hold of Barnett’s hands and shakes them frenetically. Then, running to the Arab, he seizes him in his turn and draws him toward the Yankee. He unites the hands of the two men.