“Barnett, this is our other companion. We shall be three to work without fear and without weakness on the destruction of abominable terrestrial life.
Instinctively, I had retreated two spaces. I remained the mute, horrified witness of that diabolical pact.
And, the hood of the burnoose finally having been removed, by the faint light of the lantern, I discover the features of the third demon.
That emaciated face, bistre by virtue of being earthen, those eyes illuminated by the gleam of folly, that mouth contracted by a rictus of hate, all belonged to Jobert.
I had before me the murderer and thief of Fontenay, the irresponsible author of the catastrophes of Bouffarik and Messina.
I say “irresponsible” because it was not possible to be mistaken about the advanced degree of mental alienation that was eating the wretch away; it was only necessary to look at him.
And without difficulty, I explained his presence. He had come running in answer to the appeal launched by the advertisements placed by Roger in the newspapers. Hidden under that Arab disguise, he had arrived in Biskra at the very moment when my unfortunate friend was sinking into the crisis unleashed by the death of Madame Berjac.
He arrived in time to complete the frightful trinity of dementia.
Such is the truth that my reason imposes.
At least I have an advantage over Jobert!
As soon as possible, I’ll notify the police of the location of the murderer of Fontenay. I’ll put an end to his dangerous exploits.
Why not immediately? I’m now invisible, outside the circle of light.
In the crisis of excitement that has taken possession of them, the three madmen seem to have forgotten me. Without attracting their attention, I can reach the extremity of the garden and climb over the low wall that surrounds the villa.
Another step backwards and I can escape.
Involuntarily, however, a spectacle perhaps even more poignant than the collapse of the building nails me to the spot.
Roger brandishes his fist menacingly at the rubble. “Before leaving,” he proclaims, “I want to leave nothing behind. Everything here belongs to me...even the memory.” And, turning to Jobert: “Bring me the gasoline.”
The fake Arab runs toward a shed that contains garden chairs and tools. A few seconds later, he comes back, his shoulders bending under the weight of six cans of gasoline.
“What are you going to do?” asks Barnett.
“Burn the last vestiges.”
“Hurrah! A fire of joy!”
“Of joy!” Roger repeats, in a frightening voice. “That’s right!”
Followed by Jobert, he runs toward the heap of beams, furniture, fabrics and the debris of household equipment. In order to proceed more rapidly, the two fanatics stave in the gas cans with a hatchet and spread the contents over the rubble.
A light shines, a flame shoots up as high as the treetops. In the blink of an eye, the conflagration is red, crowned by fuliginous smoke.
“Jim! Champagne!” cried Barnett, transported by delight.
The negro takes from his basket some of the enormous bottles knows as jeroboams, which only find grace with the clientele of Anglo-Saxon bars. Illuminated by the red glow of the conflagration, sometimes drowned by swirls of nauseating smoke, the three madmen and the negro gesticulate, sing, shout and drink in turn.
It is a demonic Sabbat, a vision of Hell!
Shivering with fear, I flee; I jump the wall, pursued by Roger’s hoarse cry, which rises up like a war cry and drowns out Barnett’s hurrahs:
“I am the Man of the Apocalypse!”
XVII. Alarm Call
The Marseille express has just passed through Villeneuve-Saint-Georges station with a thunderous din. Another twenty minutes and I shall be in Paris.
Oh, that return voyage lived in fever! It is always thus when one deplores lost time, time that one can never recover.
When I think of those two days, completely wasted, searching for Roger! When dawn broke, after the terrible night in Biskra, my poor friend had disappeared, in company with Barnett and Jobert. A rapid automobile had carried them away toward the coast.
I had an idea that the fugitive would head straight for his villa at Fontenay. That is why, as I approached Paris, my anguish bordered on sharp suffering.
As soon as I arrive, with Étienne, I leap into a taxi.
Finally, we’re outside Roger’s dwelling. Through the trees, I can see the closed shutters.
Trembling, I press the bell-push. A long wait, a minute, a century...
Obedient to my nerves, I ring again. Dragging footsteps are heard on the gravel; the little door opens cautiously, framing the head of old Philippe.
“Oh, it’s you, Monsieur Paul.”
“Roger has come back, hasn’t he?” On my part, it’s more of an affirmative cry than a question.
“Of course! Monsieur came back four days ago.”
“Is he alone?”
“Yes.”
“What is he doing?”
“That, I can’t tell you, as Monsieur arrived at night and sent me to sleep at a hotel. Well, he is the master. This morning, when I came back here, he’d gone again. I only know that a large automobile must have come into the garden—I saw the tracks of its wheels in the gravel.”
My anticipations were realized. I went pale.
“Philippe, go fetch a locksmith.”
For a start, I was determined to get into the laboratory.
It took a full hour for workmen to reckon with the powerful locks replaced after Jobert’s burglary. Guided by Étienne, I ran to the cupboards where Roger kept his provisions of Omega acid. The doors of the cupboards were wide open; the acid was no longer there.
One more confirmation of the impending danger!
One can, it appear now telephone cities in Germany. Incontinently, I go to the central office at the Bourse. After extreme difficulty and a wait of more than seven hours, I eventually obtain communication with the Kraft Company of Nordhausen.
It’s done! The Krafts have delivered the radium, a hundred grams—an enormous, extraordinary quantity that represents almost half of the stock existing in the world. And in the apparatus, the Teutonic accent of Kraft inflates with mocking joy and blissful pride to add that the settlement of forty million dollars has been made in cash, by Mr. Barnett, Monsieur Livry’s authorized agent. Since the armistice, no industrialist has completed such a colossal deal...”
I left the Boches to their imbecilic satisfaction.
Oh, yes, they had done a wonderful dead! Thanks to them, humankind would be called upon to defend itself against circumstances that were doubtless unique in the history of the world. It would be far more devastating that the world war and its consequences.
To engage in that extraordinary struggle, it would be necessary to appeal to the united resources of all governments, all social organizations and all individual and collective energies.
Would even that be a sufficient guarantee? Where should the effort be applied? Where should the battle be joined? How could the point of the globe be discovered at which the trinity of monsters, Livry, Jobert and Barnett, intended to install the secret factory of death?
All that, others would determine. My own role was limited to sounding the alarm call.
But would that call be heeded?
Where is the man capable of accepting, coolly, the monstrous idea that the end of the world might be imminent?
That man, I believe I have found: it is Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy. The cruel loss of his only child disposes his soul more fully to envisage the worst eventualities with serenity. Then too, the great scientific worth of the astronomer eliminates any suspicion of folly or trickery. Finally, he knows the essence of Livry’s discoveries, and has even determined their extreme consequences. Furthermore, his position as director of the Observatoire gives him the ear of the public powers. He will be heard where a teacher like myself would have every chance of being sent away, or even directed s
traight to the special infirmary of the remand prison.
My resolution is made; I shall place the fate of the world in the hands of Hélène’s Berjac’s father—and after that, to the grace of destiny.
The old scientist welcomed me with the affable mildness that is the foundation of his character. In addition, the bond of common dolor favored my bitter confidences.
I told him everything that he still did not know. I insisted particularly on the terrible results of Livry’s procedures: the experiment at Mourmelon, confirmed by the experiment at Biskra. Then I revealed the no less troubling aspects of the problem revealed by Jobert: the crimes against humanity affirmed by the days of fear and mourning at Bouffarik and Messina.
The old man listened to me without interrupting. When I had finished, he headed toward a filing cabinet, pulled out a dossier, and brought it to me.
“My dear friend,” he said, with a serene gravity, “on the basis of the data furnished by poor Livry, I calculated the effects of the Omega acid for myself; I did not know that these theoretical calculations had been anticipated by experiments.” He shook his head. “The Earth is going to traverse a frightful crisis. I can even glimpse the means that might be employed to bring about the catastrophe…oh, this leaves far behind cometary collisions and other imaginative prophecies.”
Then, tucking his dossier under his arm, he said: “It’s necessary, even so, to seek advice.”
We went together to see the President of the Council.
Monsieur Luissant, the head of the Government, was then the Minister of the Interior.
We met the Minister at the exit from a session in the Chambre that had been very stormy. There had, it seemed, been much verbal abuse with regard to a pending conflict between a gamekeeper and a mayor. How miserable those petty village squabbles were going to seem to Monsieur Luissant when he heard the extraordinary revelations that we were bringing him!
And what effect might those threats of total annihilation produce on the mind of that Statesman, still young, loving life for the satisfactions that it accorded him, and those greater still that the future seemed to reserve for the future of his powerful intelligence!
With an impressive coolness, he followed my explanations, corroborated by Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy’s; he examined the evidence. After that, he showed the most magnificent kind of courage: that of credence. How many others in his place would have recoiled before the fear of ridicule by refusing to take the terrible prospect seriously?
I can still hear him pronouncing, in is calm but determined voice: “Well, Messieurs, we’re going to act. But above all, I demand absolute secrecy from you. Think of the wind of terror, frenzy and dementia that would blow over the world if it knew...
“Against this trio of madmen we shall make use of the weapons given to us by the international entente regarding the anarchists. We shall track them everywhere without weakness, and without false sentimentality. It is no longer merely a matter of protecting a people, a race or a fatherland but humanity entire! This evening, my secret orders will be given, and the Sûreté Général will commence the search.”
With a pale smile he added: “The Sûreté Général will never have better merited its title, will it?”
In the days that followed, the measures taken by the Government became more precise.
To begin with, Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy and I made a rapid journey to the abandoned house in Mourmelon. It was possible that Roger had passed that way in order to reactivate the acid disposed in the vats, or perhaps to remove the receptacles.
We were mistaken. The vats were found as the chemist had left them after his last trip. He had not returned to Mourmelon.
Our first concern was to bring the dangerous apparatus back to Paris.
Thanks to the indications that Roger had given the astronomer in a moment of expansion, it was possible to dissolve the unknown product that neutralized the Omega acid. The terrible substance became active again. A series of experiments with it could proceed, with which were associated Monsieur d’Arsaumont, the celebrated chemistry professor at the Collège de France and Dr. Manrichoff, the great biologist of the Institut Pasteur.
The President of the Council had judged it possible to share the secret of universal death with such men.
I remember those experiments as if it were yesterday, carried out in great mystery in the garden of the Observatoire and Professor d’Arsaumont’s research laboratory behinds the Butte Montmartre.
Two events forgotten today relate to that exciting research: a powerful frost that descended unexpectedly in the middle of March 19 and a collapse of the ground that happened in the Rue Tourlaque in Montmartre and claimed a innocent victim, a poor woman surprised by the collapse of the roadway. To the terror of the three scientists, the vapor of an infinitesimal dose of the Omega acid had provoked the accident; no one apart from us ever knew the veritable cause.
After that, we had a clear comprehension of the role of Jobert, the evil genius of cataclysms, and we determined more exactly Livey’s fantastic power.
It was terribly simple. With the quantities of acid and radium at his disposal, in less than three months, the drop in temperature would reach a hundred degrees below zero; another three months, and water vapor would no longer exist on our globe; the cold would be that of space.
It was a fortnight after our first visit that the scientists brought the terrifying results of their experiments to the Minister. I was there. I listened to those men of courage and science examining and rejecting means of preservation, one by one, like useless weapons.
“So,” Professor d’Arsaumont summarized, “I can see nothing that can be done to prevent the diffusion of the cold. The action of the Omega acid spreads successively through the molecules of water vapor in the air. Very rapidly, the evaporation of the ocean will be nullified. Every day, the fissure through which the life of the earth is escaping will grow larger. First the oceans will freeze, and then the mountains of ice formed by the seas will flow over the continents. But well before that, all movement will be suspended; houses and stocks of combustibles will soon be impotent to defend humans against the bite of the freeze. The animals will perish first, then the plants. No more drinkable water, no more food. The soil, hardened by the frost, will even refuse to receive the bodies of those who succumb first. The others will follow soon after.”
And with the most admirable stoicism, the great scientist added: “After all, the life of the humans who exist today in very little in space and time; if we make a leap of hundred years they will all have disappeared. What we have to preserve is the work of humans, the creation rather than the creature.
“Now, this Livry, holed up in some unknown corner of the globe—a forest, a mountain or a desert island—will suffice for that task of destruction if no one succeeds in stopping him in time.”
At that point in the tragic conference, the President of the Council—I can still see him—shrugged his wrestler’s shoulders in a movement of desperate impotence.
“We’re searching, moving heaven and earth…we haven’t found anything yet.”
XVIII. Barnett’s Hummingbirds
It was true.
Two weeks after the beginning of the search, the problem remained as obscure as it had been on the first day.
Only a few clues had been picked up, and they related to the American Barnett. Thus, it was known that he had embarked at Philippeville on a Spanish steamer. Several people had accompanied him; doubtless Livry and Jobert had been among them, but it had been impossible to establish that with certainty. Then Barnett had been seen in Paris at the Hôtel Majestic at a date that coincided with Roger’s appearance at the villa in Fontenay, and the following day in Nordhausen, where the Krafts had placed the enormous consignment of radium in his hands.
Three weeks later the American had arrived in Biarritz in an immense automobile; there, all trace of him was definitively lost. What was certain was that neither Livry nor Jobert had accompanied him in those pe
regrinations.
Where were they hiding? A mystery!
At any rate, Monsieur Luissant estimated that the ten carboys of Omega acid—Étienne Tourte had given him that number, representing 250 liters, would have had difficulty escaping the investigations of the customs at terrestrial or maritime frontiers. Now, no chemical product of that kind had been identified in the frontier zones, where surveillance is particularly rigorous with respect to liquids. The Minister therefore found himself led to believe that the fatal carboys had not left French territory. That was, however, a theoretical deduction; did not Barnett’s enormous fortune give him the means of purchasing a great deal of silence and complicity?
In brief, in spite of the efforts of all the police forces in the world—efforts stimulated by the promise of considerable rewards—nothing had come to dissipate the darkness. And those who knew expected from one day to the next to feel the first wave of cold passing over the Earth, the precursory sign of the terrible cataclysm.
Is it the heroic calm of the scientists surrounding me, or habituation to the terrible? In any case, the idea of the event no longer brings me the same terror.
I wish I could go to sleep one night and not wake up again, since there’s nothing more to do.
In the mechanical life that was mine in those weeks of waiting, I could no longer even find the strength to devote myself to any kind of intellectual task. Every day I went either to the Tuileries or the Luxembourg, and mingled with the old rentiers, the retired, warming themselves in the early spring sunshine. Like them, I read the newspapers from the first line to the last—which is to say that my eyes scanned the printed symbols…but my mind was far away.
However!
It as the fourteenth of April in the Tuileries; my poor eyes abruptly pierced the fog through which, a absent reader floating in the unreal, I was scanning the text of my daily.
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