What news was capable of shaking my unhealthy apathy? Oh, nothing but, at first glance, an item of provincial gossip, one of the silly things that the occasional correspondents of small towns believe themselves to be obliged to send from time to time.
Tarbes, 12 April 19 . The fauna of our picturesque Pyrenean region has just been enriched by a rare species what has so far escaped the attention of naturalists. And when we say “fauna” it might be more appropriate to say “flora.” Shepherds grazing their sheep on the edge of the Bois d’Astruc perceived marvelous birds flying through the low branches: dwarf birds with plumage iridescent with all the colors of the rainbow. They succeeded in capturing a few. The small birds, sent to Tarbes by courtesy of Monsieur Loubestal, a schoolteacher, were recognized as hummingbirds of the most delightful and purest species. How did these charming guests of the tropical forest been acclimatized to our woods? Such is the palpitating problem offered to the sagacity of the ornithologists of our region...
I uttered a cry, and bounded from my bench, offending the quietude of my placid neighbors.
“Barnett’s birds! Barnett’s birds!”
Like a leitmotiv I murmur that phrase, nothing more: by itself, it encloses the tyrannical suggestion that has imposed itself on my mind. At the same time, I run like a madman in the direction of the Concorde. I cross the Champs-Élysées and arrive at the Place Beauvau. I go into the Ministry of the Interior. I must have a troubling and bizarre appearance, because the Cabinet usher hesitates to pass on the request for an audience that I scribble in haste. Eventually, without having to wait too long, I am introduced into Monsieur Luissant’s presence.
“Why, what is it?” the Minister says, benevolently. At the first glance, he has divined by emotion.
“Barnett’s birds…there can be no question that they’re Barnett’s birds...”
I pass him the newspaper, indicating with my finger the article lost in the miscellaneous news on page three.
“We’ll see!”
The Minister has pronounced those words with the serene tone of a man who effuses any hypothesis a priori; doubtless the frequentation of men and things has taught him that the negation of principle and he preconceived idea are the flaws of inferior minds.
In quick succession he demands telephonic communication with the Prefecture of Police in Tarbes, exchanges a few remarks with the director of the Sûreté and then with the Prefect of the Hautes-Pyrénées.
Turning back to me, he says: “No individual answering Barnett’s description has been seen in the vicinity of Tarbes. There is a foreigner recently installed in a former Franciscan convent on the Montagne d’Ossat, close to the wood where the hummingbirds were found, but it’s a matter of a South American by the name of Manuel Porfirias…so, no sign of the Yankee Barnett.”
“Oh, if only I could see for myself!”
“Do that. Go down there, conduct an investigation yourself. To facilitate your actions, I’ll attach an inspector from the Sûreté to you.” And in a voice of infinite sadness, the Minister concludes: “In the present circumstances, we have a duty not to neglect anything, even mirages.
I depart the same evening, in the company of Étienne Tourte and the agent adjoined to me, a tall, modest and sympathetic fellow answering to the name of Martin.
As soon as we arrived in Tarbes we collected some initial information. The Franciscan convent of Ossat, the property of the Peruvian who excited my curiosity, has recently been put up for sale. It was a very old monastery dating from the fourteenth century, with the appearance of a fortified château. It was perched on the summit of the Montagne d’Ossat, an isolated hill four hundred meters high, which stands in the plain of Tarbes five kilometers from the first foothills of the Pyrenees. As for the new owner, according to rumor, he proposes to establish a sanitarium in the large buildings disposed for fresh air cures. Arrived three weeks before with his domestics and his luggage, he had proceeded with an initial summary installation. He had just departed on a journey to bring back the large furniture and other objects destined to complete the accommodation; he was expected that same evening at the Hôtel des Espagnes.
Those details were contrary to the entirely instinctive arguments that had brought me from the other end of France. Before returning to Paris, I wanted at least to follow the vain trail traced by my imagination to its end. Installed at the Hôtel des Espagnes I awaited the arrival of the Peruvian doctor.
He arrived at nightfall in an automobile truck laden with luggage. First, two negroes got down from the vehicle, in the midst of the wide-eyed admiration of the idlers of the sidewalk. My heart beat faster; in one of those negroes I seemed to recognize Jim!
But now the doctor gets down in his turn: a small thin man with stooped shoulders. He advances into the light of the electric bulb suspended above the portal. Then I utter a hoarse exclamation, repeated by Étienne beside me.
In the so-called Peruvian Manuelo Profirias, I have just recognized Barnett’s mulatto veterinarian.
A pressure exerted on my arm by the agent Martin recalls me to prudence.
“Let’s go,” he whispers. “It’s necessary that they don’t see us.”
Half an hour later, we held a meeting at the Prefecture, in which the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor, the Commissaire of Police and the Capitaine of the Gendarmerie take part.
The immediate arrest of the doctor and the negroes was decided.
At nine o’clock in the evening, as they were about to board a train for Bayonne, the mulatto and his two acolytes were apprehended.
At the first interrogation the individuals continued to lie; the mulatto claimed to be named Porfirias, was astonished when mention was made to him of Barnett and birds; he was visibly reciting a lesson learned. But the scene changed when I came into the Prosecutor’s office.
At the sight of me, the frightened mulatto told everything he knew. Obedient to Barnett’s orders, he had bought the convent of Ossat. He had arrived there three weeks before, coming from Spain in the company of his master and the two Frenchmen from Biskra. Rendered unrecognizable by make-up and wigs, they had passed for domestics. Since their arrival the three had been working night and day on chemical manipulations about which the mulatto knew absolutely nothing. Then, four days before, Barnett had given the order to set the birds free. Finally, the day before, the master had told him that he no longer had any need of his services. Well ballasted with money, he had intended to leave for America in the company of the two negro servants. Only the three, therefore, still occupied the monastery of Ossat.
That coup-de-théâtre left me stupefied. I glimpsed the incalculable consequences attached to the discovery of the three madmen. The others were bound to the supposition of an anarchist plot, but I knew the truth!
By virtue of the confidences extracted from Manuelo, it was learned that they possessed weapons, ammunition and food supplies for six months. Those precautions implied the idea of resistance, further encouraged by the very particular disposition of the location.
In that regard, the Prefect provided very curious details regarding the topography of the Mont d’Ossat, a kernel of granite embedded in a mass of marble. In eruptive eras, that granitic jet had traversed the calcareous sediments already formed and broken through the exterior to constitute the summit of a hill. It was on that needle of hard rock that the Franciscans had constructed the buildings of their monastery, extracting the materials from the granite itself, as people for whom time and trouble were of no account. The convent had thus been conceived as a fortress; it was, in fact, designed to withstand the assaults of the Saracens. It formed an ensemble of massive constructions, surrounded by a wall fifteen feet thick. Oak doors edged with iron and enormous grilles commanded the entrance to the various quarters established between the interior courtyards. In order to become masters of the ensemble, besiegers would therefore have to take those veritable redoubts successively.
But before thinking of taking it, it was necessary to reach it. Now,
with the exception of a poor goat track traced by the monks, which the people of the region called “the marble staircase,” the mountain rose up in a series of sheer escarpments.
The Prefect did not hide his perplexity. If the three men really had ideas of resistance, it would be necessary to expect a murderous combat, all the more terrible because the President of the Council, kept up to date from minute to minute, telephoned instructions to take possession of the Three no matter what the cost, and to employ extreme means if necessary: cannons and bombs.
Poor Roger! Now that the other danger seemed to be on the eve of being thwarted, my heart bled with fraternal pity. But how could I reach out a helping hand to that furious maniac?
So long as the diabolical trio had not been reduced to impotence, all compassion had to be effaced before the superior interest of humankind.
Finally, I extracted a little hope from the resolutions that were made. Before launching a frontal assault, a surprise attack would be attempted.
Two battalions from the garrison at Tarbes would leave in the dark of night in automobile trucks; a detachment of artillerymen would accompany them with a wagon of explosives. Those troops would surround the Mont d’Ossat; in all probability, they would be in place by three o’clock in the morning. Before daybreak, a group of volunteers, reinforced by artillerymen equipped with melinite petards would climb the marble staircase silently all the way to the door of the former convent. Without any preliminary warning, they would blow it up, and try to capture the three inhabitants as quickly as possible, taking advantage of the disturbance that the surprise attack was bound to cause.
The plan was wisely contrived to avoid bloodshed.
But alas, this time, once again, wisdom was obliged to recoil before folly, and the surprise would be ours.
XIX. The War of Oblivion
Today, with the passage of years, the memory has almost been lost of the tragedy that unfolded around the Mont d’Ossat in the middle of April 19 . At any rate, even rereading the newspapers of the epoch, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of those obscure and variously reported events. The imprecision of the accounts, the unexplained events—because they were inexplicable—and the malaise into which unsatisfied public curiosity was thrown, all contributed to thicken the mystery and favor the formidable secret, the prerogative of a handful of people.
One could not, however, cry to the crowd that, in that corner of land, the life or death of the world was in the balance.
But I shall resume my story at the moment when an automobile was carrying me through the black night in company with the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor and General de Lozières, commanding the garrison of Tarbes. By virtue of a special favor, young Étienne had been admitted to huddle next to me in a corner of the vehicle. It would have cost me dear to separate from that child, who, after all, was able to give useful information about Livry.
Following in a second vehicle were gendarmes escorting the mulatto Manuelo and the negro Jim; they had been brought along at hazard, even though it was understood that little help that could be expected from those accomplices, the first human rag sweating fear to the point of losing his memory and the second a colossal brute incapable of furnishing the slightest explanation.
We were heading for the Mont d’Ossat, a journey of some twenty-five kilometers.
It was two-thirds of the way along the route that a singular phenomenon occurred, of which we were to have the explanation a few hours later. I say “phenomenon,” although the occurrence itself was perfect simple; in the very calm night, in which the absence of any wind contributed to the silence, a powerful gust passed by, agitating the trees that bordered the road: a whistling that seemed to be the result of a giant aspiration was audible in the higher layers of the atmosphere. Then, for the duration of a minute, the noise of a distant collapse was heard. And that was all; nature reentered into silence.
In the vehicle, the conversations stopped. All of us had shuddered, as if at the first clap of thunder presaging a storm.
“An avalanche in the high mountains!” murmured the Prefect.
No one replied. It might have been true, and yet, for my part, I had the intimate presentiment of something much more redoubtable.
The spectacle that was offered to us at first light justified that presentiment.
According to my companions, the panorama of the Mont d’Ossat had been completely modified, and in what a strange fashion!
Instead of the butte in the form of a pyramid with a wide base, a needle of granite with a vaguely triangular section stood up vertically above the plain. At the summit of that natural tower was the Franciscan convent, whose walls overhung the abyss at an altitude of four hundred meters. Only a granitic table bordered the enclosure toward the eastern apex of the triangle, forming a sort of esplanade, only a few meters across, literally suspended above the void, outside the entrance grille.
Around it, keeping a respectable distance from the base of the enormous monolith, the troops arrived during the night and peasants from the surrounding area were contemplating that fantastic décor with a stupor mingled with fear.
No more “marble stairway,” no more escarpments, however steep: a smooth wall, without a ledge. The mountain of marble that wrapped the primitive rock had vanished without leaving a trace. At ground level, there was the alluvial terrain constituting the plain of Tarbes, but a chaotic terrain, pitted by potholes, sown with moraines and the debris of uprooted trees.
For educated individuals that change of view remained incomprehensible. An earthquake? An abrupt collapse of the subsoil? Nothing in familiar notions could help to construct an acceptable explanation. As for the others, the villagers and the soldiers, they were not far from attributing that magic to divine or diabolical intervention. Quite naturally, those simple souls cried either miracle or sorcery.
I alone was in possession of the truth. The strange upheaval was due to Roger’s maneuvers. The Franciscan convent had not been chosen at random.
The curious geological particularity of the Montagne d’Ossat lent itself marvelously to the madman’s frightful projects. Already very difficult, access to the convent became impracticable after the disappearance of the calcareous mass that constituted the mountain’s slopes. Roger knew in advance that his acid gave him the means to upset nature by suppressing the marble at a stroke.
Then, a terrible deduction was imposed.
After Barnett’s action in releasing his birds by virtue of one last incoherent impulse of pity, and the dismissal of the servants, the collapse of the mountain clearly indicated that the scientist was ready.
In effect, the scientist had cut the last bridge linking him to the earth. The Man of the Apocalypse was about to commence his work.
“Good,” said General de Lozières, beside me. “At least this inexplicable phenomenon has the result of simplifying the phenomenon. If we can’t climb up to the rogues, at least it’s impossible for them to come down again. They’re in prison.” And, moved by a natural sentiment, he added: “At any rate, my brave soldiers won’t have to risk their lives in an imbecilic struggle!”
Poor General! I did not take charge of dissipating his generous illusions. I did not have the right to divulge the terrible secret.
He would find out soon enough, alas.
I judged that there were better things to do than contemplate open-mouthed the eagle’s nest from which death was about to spread over the world. As soon as possible, Monsieur Luissant needed to be brought up to date with the new situation, of which I alone possessed the key.
In haste, I had myself taken back to Tarbes. My head was so full of fearful thoughts that I was quite surprised when the auto deposited me outside the town’s telephone office.
Addressing myself to the postmaster, I was able to obtain immediate communication with Luissant.
By the tremor of his voice in the receiver I sensed how distressed the Minister was by my revelations, even though, fearing the indiscretions of the telep
hone, I sought to filter the truth.
“I’m coming,” Luissant said to me. “I’ll bring the most eminent scientists engineers and army chiefs; I’ll give immediate orders to have materiel of various sorts sent to Tarbes. We’ll try everything that’s humanly possible.”
The President of the Council arrived at midnight on a special train. With him were the Minister of War, the Commander-in-Chief of the Artillery, the Chief Engineer of Explosives, the Director of the Meteorological Bureau and also, naturally, Messieurs Thiérard-Leroy, d’Arsaumont and Manrichoff.
Circumstances brought me, an obscure petty schoolteacher, to take my place in that cenacle of the highest notabilities of France.
The Council of War—and what a Council!—was held at daybreak before the somber mass of the Ossat.
“Messieurs,” pronounced the Minister, with an anguishing gravity, “it’s absolutely necessary that we find a means of reaching the summit of the peak and the people occupying it. Give me credit for the immense reasons that motivate the necessity; tell yourselves that they surpass reasons of State, that they concern, if you wish, what I shall call humanitarian reasons.
“And if you judge that my emotion, my efforts and my extreme determination are excessive and ridiculous by comparison with the goal to be attained, I beg Messieurs Thiérard-Leroy, d’Arsaumont and Manrichoff to contradict me. I make you the same plea, Monsieur Paul Lefort, who is sacrificing to these superior exigencies a close, quasi-fraternal friendship.”
After the great scientists whose indisputable testimony the Minister had invoked, I nodded my head. Then, it seemed that a frisson stirred the epidermis of the others: those who did not yet know.
Then we debated. And in the course of the arguments exchanged, it was necessary to allow a few rays of extraordinary verity shine through. All the methods of scaling were examined in turn. None gave satisfaction. To climb up by means of ladders along the flanks of the rock was theoretically possible, but such work would require the establishment of successive landings. Even with the employment of the most advanced electric drilling equipment, the engineers judged that the enterprise would take more than a month, even supposing that the madmen at the summit would do nothing to oppose it.
On the Brink of the World's End Page 33