Monsieur Jonquelle

by Melville Davisson Post

  “That statement seems vague, but the impression upon which it is founded in the journal is in itself vague. It was, to put it plainly, a feeling that some strange creatures were ahead of him. Now, one could have understood this, if it had been the feeling that these creatures were following the expedition, for the hostile dwarfs had, in fact, followed it until they had destroyed, as I have said, every member of the expedition except the four white men. But it was not this peril that seemed to affect Chauvannes; this was a thing of which he was aware and which he could understand; but the vague fear of the creatures on in front of him was a new conception.

  “Chauvannes said that he could not dismiss this impression and that it increased as he advanced, attaining to a definite certainty of apprehension at about the time they came out into the grass land west of the Albert.

  “At first Chauvannes put this down as an illusion arising from the depression of insomnia. But he began to speak of it later as a sort of definite premonition to be reckoned with.

  “Of course, when the journal first came into our possession, we took this, and the incredible things that followed, to be merely the illusions of a man whose nervous system had broken down. This was a profound error. Every statement following in the journal was, as it proved, of the most definite importance. One got here at this point in the journal a pretty clear conception of the condition of Chauvannes at the time.

  “The three with him, whose care, devotion and untiring solicitude are, as I have said, the persistent note of this latter part of Chauvannes’ journal, were now very much concerned about him. They seemed to understand the danger, to himself, of one in such a mental state, for they secured and destroyed all the ammunition to the private weapons which Chauvannes carried; they even broke the blades of the knives. They appeared to realize that a homicidal seizure might develop from such a mental condition, and they seemed to fear that it might take the course of a suicidal mania. They were wholly without fear for themselves, as Chauvannes’ journal repeats over and over again.

  “It is here, now, at this point, that the whole journal of Chauvannes’ begins to be taken up with the extraordinary things that he observed. The impression of some strange creatures close on the camp, in the neighborhood, became an obsession. One can tell that from the speculations with which the pages of the journal are filled at this point, as though the man were endeavoring to lay down an argument in order to support an impression which he felt certain was sound, but which he was also certain would appear fantastic to all other persons. Were men justified in the belief that the exceedingly narrow limits of their crude senses could give them a knowledge of all the creatures that might inhabit the world? He continues to reflect upon the limitation of the senses; the eye was easily deceived; the ear was wholly undependable; the sense of scent in a human being was absurd beside that of the most inferior animal, and all feeling was confined to a sense of touch infinitely crude. Was it not then ridiculous to assume, depending on such limited agencies, that one could have any large conception of what even the limited area of the world close about him contained?

  “There are a dozen pages of this speculation closely written in the journal, following the insomnia and what we at first took to be the hallucination which possessed Chauvannes at the time. They bring us up to the strange events which he began now to set down in detail.

  “This was all mental. It was all what one would call ‘a state of the mind.’ The physical evidences began now to appear.

  “It was on the first night in the new camp after they had emerged from the forest that Chauvannes had a sensation, as he puts it, of something delicately feeling over his face. It seemed to be a very slight, moving touch, as of the tip of a feather, but it was clearly distinguishable. The man put up his hand and made a swift gesture in the darkness about him, but there was absolutely nothing that he could touch. He says that this thing happened more than once in the night, and each time, although he put out his hand instantly, it came in contact with no physical evidences of any creature about him.

  “This was before Dix and the Finn had set out to go over the route to the Albert. Chauvannes says that he spoke to the men ‘guardedly,’ as he puts it, about this experience on the day that followed it, but they had observed nothing. There had certainly been no sound in the tent; nor was there any track or evidence of the fact that any creature had been in it.

  “The thing occurred again the next night. On this occasion Chauvannes distinctly felt that swift, lingering touch pass over his face; and again, instantly, he clutched about him in the dark, beating the whole place with his arms in a desperate effort to come into some physical contact with the creature. But it was wholly to no purpose. He touched nothing. There was no sound anywhere, and the men sleeping about him in the tent were not disturbed. He says that on the following morning he mentioned this thing again, but the three men with him had no experience of it whatever.

  “If these creatures, of which Chauvannes had the strange premonitory sense, had finally appeared, they seemed to be directing their attentions exclusively to him. At any rate, the men denied having been disturbed by anything. They had seen nothing, felt nothing. But they were disturbed about Chauvannes.

  “And it was on this day, it seems, that they took the precaution about his weapons. They also decided that the Frenchman Leturc should remain with Chauvannes all the time to see that nothing happened to him. The journal makes it clear that this precaution was taken, with the idea that Chauvannes in his present mental condition might do some injury to himself, rather than in the notion that he was menaced by any mysterious creature.

  “And they followed that plan. Dix and the Finn set out to go to Albert Nyanza, and Leturc remained with Chauvannes.

  “It was on the third night, after the two men had departed and he was alone in the tent with the sleeping Leturc, that Chauvannes saw this creature. He says it was about three o’clock in the morning. He had been awake through the entire night, his eyes usually closed. He does not know how he happened to open them, but he did open them. It was precisely seventeen minutes to three, by the watch which he wore on his wrist. He knew this because it was a night of full moon, the brilliant rays of which entered the tent through the half-opened flap. There was absolutely no sound to have attracted Chauvannes’ attention, and no other physical evidence of the presence of the creature that he was at the time aware of. But at any rate, he opened his eyes practically at the moment when the creature entered the tent—a thing it did without disturbing the flap and without making any sound whatever.

  “Chauvannes says that he saw it distinctly. It paused for a moment after it had entered, remaining for some seconds quite motionless. He says that in proportion to the other parts of the creature’s body, the head was enormous. It was cubical in contour. The outline was perfectly clear, but what we would call features were hardly distinguishable. The thing seemed to lack features. That was one of the distinguishing horrors of it—a head big in proportion to its body, cubical in outline and lacking features! The chest and the abdomen were also big, estimating the creature by its own proportions. The limbs were long, narrow and jointed. The whole creature was of a repulsive, reddish color, and without any of the usual covering of animals with which the human race is familiar. The body seemed to be of some hard red substance, Chauvannes said—frozen and polished flesh, after the skin had been removed, was the idea he got.

  “The creature remained only a moment visible to him; then it disappeared. It seemed to Chauvannes that it disappeared merely by turning about. He was unable to see it again, although the doorway where it entered was clear in the moonlight, and there was only the grass floor of the tent.”

  Monsieur Jonquelle stopped here in his narrative, like one who would wish a hearer to grasp the whole conception of the story before he went on. But he did not seek a comment. The man beyond him waited for him to go on, and he presently continued:

  “I shall not follow the detail of all the experiences noted down by Chauva
nnes, and which, finally, brought him to the conclusions at which he at length arrived. He was able, after this night, to observe the creature and a number of its companions, although the man Leturc, who was always with him, seems never to have observed it. Chauvannes got a profound impression of the creatures. They constantly gave him the idea of intelligence separated from any human feeling. He got also the impression that they were blind—at least in the sense that we understand blindness. That they had some other sense which was equal, if not superior, to the sense we call sight, was, he thought, clearly evident.

  “He was also able to discover, although he does not give all the details of that discovery in the journal, that these creatures lived underground, and that one of their underground cities was very close to the camp. He had, in fact, by some sinister hazard, put down his camp almost at the doorway of the underground habitat of these extraordinary beings—if one could call a creature of this character a being in our sense.

  “I suppose it was these conceptions of the Thing that caused Chauvannes to note in his journal a parallel in our modern fiction—the story of the Englishman Wells, about an underground creature, a degenerate of the human race, living in the darkness of a subterranean world and supporting itself on the flesh of the surface remnant of that race grown lovely and effeminate!

  “Chauvannes in his journal did not draw a parallel. But he noted the details of this story, which he had read, as of something that occurred to him after he had actually discovered the creatures, of which he had come out of the forest of the Congo with that dominating premonition.

  “Now, these are among the distinguishing incidents of Chauvannes’ journal that led Your Excellency, and the Paris authorities, to believe that Chauvannes was mad. The culmination of events seemed to establish it.

  “You know how the journal goes on, giving the minute details that Chauvannes observed during the week that he was alone with Leturc, while the American beach comber, Dix, and the Finn made their journey to the Nyanza. And you know how Chauvannes finally came to the conclusion that the seven great emeralds, which he carried sewed up in the lining of his waistcoat, were the things that set these creatures on him.

  “The emeralds are in the Louvre. They are seven of the most extraordinary jewels in the world. They are larger and purer than any other known emerald. They are cut in a manner of which we have no knowledge, and the backs of them are covered with a hieroglyphic writing that antedates any language that we know, and which, so far, has baffled every effort to translate.

  “At any rate, although the Frenchman Leturc was with Chauvannes all the time—was, in fact, guarding him all the time—and although he was never at any time more than a dozen meters from the door of the tent, and although no sound was ever heard, no violence was ever offered to anything, no track was ever seen, no act was ever done of which Chauvannes had any knowledge, or the guard Leturc had any knowledge—in spite of all this, on the very day before the return of Dix and the Finn, the emeralds disappeared!

  “Chauvannes wrote it down in detail in the journal.

  “He was certain, accurate, without any trace of doubt; the emeralds—no longer in his possession—were in the underground habitat of these creatures! And the opening to this habitat was close beside the very place of the camp.

  “It was hardly any wonder that the men with him considered him mad, especially when one reads the closing pages of the journal. He takes, in writing, an elaborate and tender farewell of the three men. He thanks them in detail for their courage, their unfailing kindness to him and their devotion to the expedition. No man could have written a higher testimonial of the fidelity of his companions. He points out that his death is impending and certain. He begs that the journal may be carried to France, and he urges the French government to send out an expedition to recover the emeralds, which, he says, are concealed in the first underground dwelling of the creatures, which he has described, as though he were aware of the fact that there were other dwellings of these creatures about. The emeralds are in the one closest to the camp, and they can be recovered! He is insistent on this point, as he is insistent on the fact that his death is near and inevitable, and as he is insistent on the fidelity of the three men with him.

  “And when on the following day, as Leturc reported, he seized the Finn’s rifle and shot himself, the men were, of course, convinced that he was mad.”

  There came a sudden vigor into Monsieur Jonquelle’s voice.

  “But he was not mad! Don’t you see, Excellency, that the whole narrative of the journal was an immense cipher? Don’t you see what the man was doing?”

  The voice beyond Monsieur Jonquelle, in the darkness of the portico, boomed in a sudden big expletive. There was the sound of a doubled fist crashed into the palm of a hand.

  “Wonderful!” he cried. “It’s clever beyond words. Good God! Think of the man in that deadly position working out a clever thing like that. He knew what was going to happen to him. He knew it as soon as he picked up those jewels under the overturned stones on the Congo. He knew he would never come out alive, and he worked out the cipher in this journal to show where the emeralds were concealed, so the French authorities could recover them. And he worked out all the details to be sure that the journal would finally get into Paris. It’s wonderful! It’s amazing.”

  He beat his leg with his big hand, thumping it as one might thump grist in a bag.

  “I never dreamed that that was what the man was after. I thought he was mad!”

  “Surely,” replied Monsieur Jonquelle. “It was the first impression of everybody. But he was not mad. He was merely making a great cipher with all the details of this journal—a cipher that would deceive the three men who had already killed off all the natives in his expedition, and who had determined to murder him after they were certain that they could reach the Albert Nyanza! A cipher that would so completely deceive them, by bearing on its face the proof of their innocence and of his own madness, that they would be careful to get it to the French authorities as a justification of themselves!

  “He knew there was no chance that he would ever come out alive! But he wished to rob these assassins of the treasure which they coveted, and he wished the record of his expedition and these incomparable emeralds to reach France. He therefore prepared a journal in which was concealed, as in a code, all the actual facts connected with his expedition and his assassination, and at the same time would disclose the place in which the emeralds were concealed. It would also bring the assassins to that justice which they deserved. He foresaw that Dix and the Finn would assume that Leturc had stolen the emeralds. He knew that the Apache Frenchman was shrewder than these two, that he would realize their suspicion and that he would forestall it by their murder—a thing we know immediately happened after the assassination of Chauvannes on the morning of their return. This was established by the fragmentary confession of the Apache Leturc, shortly before he was executed.”

  Monsieur Jonquelle stopped.

  “I maintain, Excellency, that this whole journal is the finest example of code writing that was ever undertaken in the world.”

  He paused. And his voice took on a note of profound courtesy.

  “You know, Excellency, what the creature was that Chauvannes described, and where the emeralds were hidden?”

  Again the big voice boomed.

  “Surely,” it cried. “Our conception of a thing depends on the manner in which it is described and the mental state which has been prepared to receive that description. It was the ant! The red ant! And the emeralds were concealed in the ant-heap nearest to the point where the camp was located!”

  II.—Found in the Fog

  London had been in fog for a week—that thick, yellow, sulphurous fog that seems to seep out of the earth, that turns the city into a cavern, packed with the smoke of an inferno and filled with weird sounds. It had lifted a little on Friday evening when Monsieur Jonquelle came out of the Empire Service Club.

  “Diable!” he commented as
he waited for his motor to draw up; “these Britons have lungs of brass.”

  He had come this day from Paris and dined with Sir James Macbain, the head of the English department of police. London had been startled by a mystery, a mystery that had emerged from this fog.

  On Wednesday night a four-wheeler had taken a fare at Charing Cross upon the arrival of the train from Dover. The fog was thick and the driver did not notice that a second man entered his cab. The only one he remembered was a short, stout man of middle age who named a hotel in Gloucester Road. When the four-wheeler arrived before the door of the hotel two men were found in it. The short, stout one was dead and the other unconscious. The dead man proved to be Lord Landeau and the other the Count de Choiseul. Both had been shot in precisely the same direction from right to left. But while the bullet that killed Lord Landeau had passed entirely through his body, that which entered the Count de Choiseul had been deflected by striking a rib and had caused only a flesh wound that bled profusely. A revolver with two chambers empty was lying on the floor of the cab. The driver explained that as he passed Hyde Park he heard two reports in quick succession, but he took them to be the explosive sounds of a motor vehicle close behind him. Upon regaining consciousness the Count de Choiseul had declined to make any statement whatever.

  The motor crossed Piccadilly and entered Bond Street. Monsieur Jonquelle, traveling whither he could not see, thought of the tragedy and of what Sir James had said:

  “The man’s guilty, guilty as the devil, but we have failed to trace the weapon, and if he continues to keep his mouth closed we cannot convict him. When we have put our case in, some nimble little barrister will pop up, hint that the prisoner is silent to shield a woman, offer some cock-and-bull story to fit the facts, and out he goes free as any of us. Damn the law! That’s what I say. In your country a prisoner can be taken before a magistrate and interrogated, but here he can sit tight and the crown cannot even comment on the fact of his silence.”