The Return of the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  “You pronounced, my dear Maxime, the word ironically; I’ll add: tragically...”

  He broke off. There was a pause.

  “Tragically?” stammered Monsieur d’Olbans. “What does that mean?”

  “The Z-4 grapeshot, my dear friend, shot out of the window on an almost-horizontal plane—and over there, almost grazing the summit of the hill, the several dozen minuscule projectiles passed through an obstacle like a charge of lead-shot going through a leaf. The tragedy was that the obstacle in question was a man who was walking along the road.”

  Taking the astounded Monsieur d’Olbans by the arm, Saint-Clair led him on to the balcony. In front of them, beyond the driveway through the park and the gate, the road sloped downwards to the river and rose up again to the saddle-back, which was indeed on an imaginary horizontal line extrapolated directly south-eastwards from the laboratory window.

  The “reckoning of science” is often as powerful in its effects as the “reckoning of the State.”

  The public remained entirely ignorant of the real circumstances of the sudden death of a certain Lucien Demonpel on the territory of the commune of Longpré (Sarthe), more precisely on a private road in the forested domain belonging to Monsieur Maxime d’Olbans, physicist, chemist and astronomer, member of the Institute and Commander of the Légion d’honneur.

  On the night of June 19-20, Vitto and Soca, the Nyctalope’s servant companions, who were on holiday with their “boss” at the Château des Pins, went to recover the corpse from the ditch were Saint-Clair and Mademoiselle d’Olbans had hidden it. They brought it to the château. An interior pocket of the jacket contained a wallet containing identity papers. On the morning of June 20, the domestics were told that Vitto and Soca, in the course of a morning stroll, had found a dead man at the foot of a tree near the entrance gate. In the meantime, Saint-Clair had communicated by telephone with Monsieur Lamurat, Prefect of the Sarthe, who arrived by car at the château at 10 a.m.

  There was nothing astonishing about the visit; it was not official. Monsieur Lamurat and Monsieur d’Olbans had known one another for years, and the prefect often visited the chatelain. In his honor, the Maire and the local physician were invited to lunch; that, too, was not happening for the first time.

  With the aid of the telephone, it did not take long to ascertain that the deceased, Lucien Demonpel, lived in Le Mans, where he was employed as chief accountant to a manufacturer, that he was a bachelor, whose only living relative was a married sister, the mother of a family. He was on paid leave at Longpré, where there is a very good inn. In the course of a walk in the woods on the d’Olbans estate, he had died of an embolism—that is what Dr. Serres, the official physician of the commune of Longpré, declared. The sister came to collect her dead brother, who had been put in a coffin at the château. He had left a few savings, which she inherited. She seemed only moderately affected by the death her brother, who had been something of a misanthrope and of whom she had seen very little since her marriage, fifteen years before.

  The secret of the disappearance of the Z-4 was therefore only known to Maxime d’Olbans, his niece Véronique, the Nyctalope, Vitto and Soca and the Prefect Lamurat.

  On June 21, the dead man was taken away by his sister, and everything at the Château des Pins resumed its normal course. The incident of the sudden death of Lucien Demonpel was closed—but a prodigious adventure had just begun.

  On the afternoon of June 21, the Prefect, Monsieur Lamurat, came back from Le Mans; he was to dine and stay overnight at the château. Dr. Serres had been invited; he reached Les Pins at 6 p.m.

  At 7 p.m. Maxime d’Olbans was to carry out an experiment not only to be witnessed by Véronique and Saint-Clair, but by the Prefect, the physician and the two Corsicans, Vitto and Soca.

  Since the production of the phenomenon, the scientist and the Nyctalope had reflected and conversed, formulating certain hypotheses based not only on Monsieur d’Olbans’ work but also on a recent astronomical discovery, with which the observatory of the Château des Pins was not unconnected.

  Thus, at 6:45 p.m., the young woman and the six men met in the laboratory. Only Monsieur Lamurat and Dr. Serres were unaware of the reason for the gathering. Perhaps they had some prior inkling of it, but no one had told them.

  When the seven witnesses had taken their places on seats arranged in a semicircle about two meters from the central table of the laboratory, directly opposite the French windows on the other side of the room, Maxime d’Olbans, the only one still standing, started to speak.

  His voice was naturally deep, but clear, and his straightforward elocution was easy on the ear.

  “You, Véronique, and you, Messieurs, know what happened here the other day; as soon as it was disengaged from its lead envelope, a mass of grains of my Z-4 flew through the air through the open window. Why?

  “For 48 hours, my friend Saint-Clair and I have been studying the problem minutely, analyzing every detail of the various aspects of the phenomenon.

  “The circle of hypotheses, vast at first, has gradually narrowed, to the point of only retaining within its circumference a single hypothesis, and we shall be surprised if, in a few minutes, that one has not become a certainty.”

  On that word, pronounced with calm force, Maxime d’Olbans looked at the large laboratory chronometer.

  “6:55 p.m.,” he said. “Six minutes to go. For it’s at 7:01, at our present altitude and location on the Earth, that the reproduction of the phenomenon will become possible.”

  At a slow and slightly gliding pace, he went straight to a closed cupboard, opened it, and took a packet off one of its shelves, which he came to set in the exact center of the table, whose thick glass plate was entirely bare.

  That flat, rectangular and relatively thin packet, wrapped in a sheet of lead, measured about 25 centimeters by ten.

  Having set down the object, he did not resume the place where he had stood, facing one of the short sides of the table. Instead, he went to the French windows opening on to the balcony, which were wide open to the beautifully pure sky, bright blue tinted with pink, of that splendid late-spring day, and resumed speaking:

  “For all useful purposes, I have here at the château a small stock of plates and sheets of glass of various dimensions and thickness. Yesterday, the cabinet-maker from Longpré, used to working for me, mounted in a frame set on castors a plate of glass five millimeters thick, of such a size that I can fit it exactly, with its frame, within the frame of this open window. Open, Messieurs, because I did not wish to expose the wooden frames of its small panes to a damaging perforation.”

  While speaking he had, in fact, carefully pushed the large single pane, which fitted perfectly, into the empty space of the window between the laboratory and the balcony.

  “6:59!” he pronounced. “Two more minutes. You’ll all be able to see clearly, on the unfolded sheet of lead, the heaped-up mass of half a pound of Z-4 granules.”

  Returning to the table, he rapidly and adroitly unfolded the packet, flattening the four corners of the lead sheet, thus laying bare, displayed on the flat rectangle, the granules of the mysterious metal of which he was the secret inventor and the sole manufacturer.

  The emotion of the spectators was, at that moment, composed of the keenest curiosity. They all looked at those granules, consisting of minuscule cubes, visible equilateral; rifle-pellets that, instead of being gray-black, was silvery white, and, instead of being round, were cubic.

  All of a sudden, Maxime d’Olbans, standing to the right about two meters from the table, raised his right hand and said, excitedly:

  “Pay attention! Two more seconds...”

  An instant afterwards, 100 tiny lightning bolts shot through the relatively dim light of the laboratory, at the same time as the glass screen in the window-frame was pierced almost at its center with a crystalline tinkle.

  On the table, the lead sheet no longer supported anything; the Z-4 particles were no longer there.

  There
was a brief silence; then the scientist’s grave and tranquil voice resumed:

  “Don’t worry. This time, there’s no one out there on the ridge of the road. Without knowing why—without knowing anything—my gamekeepers, positioned outside the trajectory of the Z-4, are on sentry duty there, in accordance with the unexplained orders I gave them a little while ago.

  The most excited of them were Monsieur Lamurat and Dr. Serres, for Véronique, Saint-Clair, Soca and Vitto, forewarned, had expected the phenomenon that had just occurred. The Prefect and the doctor had only had, the day before, vaguely hypothetical explanations regarding the death of Monsieur Demonpel. What they had now just seen told them more, enlightening their minds—but not completely. The perplexed face that each of them turned to Monsieur d’Olbans was not merely interrogative but passionately interrogative and profoundly emotional.

  Fortunately for the satisfaction of that legitimate curiosity, Maxime d’Olbans was not one of those loquacious scientists who envelop demonstrative explanations in needless prefatory remarks and commentaries. He spoke clearly and briefly.

  “Messieurs, you could have read in any newspaper that, exactly three months and six days ago, astronomers discovered a new planetoid. Do you recall?”

  The six listeners answered in the affirmative by saying “yes” or nodding their heads.

  “Since that discovery,” Monsieur d’Olbans continued, “I have maintained that celestial body, which I christened Rhea, in the field of my telescope—which, moved by a system of clockwork and equipped with an automatic camera, is continuously observing and recording what it can recover from the planet Rhea. Now, for ten days, and for a further 295 days, that planet has been and will be visible from our hemisphere, twice a day, at varying times but for an equal lapse of time measuring about three hours and 48 minutes. But not entirely visible—only partly, and fractionally, 80% of its mass being hidden from us by the Moon.”

  Monsieur d’Olbans smiled during a short pause, and then went on:

  “I’ll spare you the studies, observations and calculations by virtue of which I arrived, yesterday, at the conviction that the phenomenon—which is to say, the departure of the Z-4 granules—is simply a phenomenon of attraction. Yes, the attraction of the planet Rhea with regard to the entirely new metal—new to the Earth, at least—constituted by my Z-4. The experiment you have just witnessed has made that conviction a certainty. Moreover, we ought to consider as demonstrated, firstly, that lead is, for Z-4, an insulator that annuls the power of attraction; secondly, that glass is not an insulator, any more than the various materials making up the human body, since the Z-4 went through a man the other day and that pane of glass today... and that’s all! I mean, that’s all we know.”

  Silence—but soon, within that silence, the wonderstruck voice of Monsieur Lamurat said:

  “But that’s prodigious!”

  Maxime d’Olbans was quick to reply, slightly ironically, as he often did when his mind had good reason for self-satisfaction:

  “Nothing is prodigious about a fact of nature. It’s simply natural. But what humans do with it… oh yes, that’s sometimes prodigious. With your permission, though, I’ll hand the floor to the Nyctalope, for, even before the demonstration that has just been made and the certainty we’re just acquired, my friend Saint-Clair had an idea. He’ll explain it to you. And then, if we can succeed in making that idea a reality, we shall see something truly prodigious!”

  The Prefect, Monsieur Lamurat, and Dr. Serres did not only know LeoSaint-Clair, a.k.a. the Nyctalope, by virtue of having met him two days earlier and today at the Château des Pins. They knew what every educated man in the civilized world knew about him. By virtue of multiple exploits of the most various character, LeoSaint-Clair had become famous. Explorer, diplomat, strategist, detective, physiopsychologist, knowledgeable in natural sciences and occult sciences, politician, economist, memoir-writer and author of numerous works published first in French and then translated into many other languages, LeoSaint-Clair was also the Nyctalope—which is to say that, by one of the rare caprices of nature, he possessed the physical faculty, like certain animals, of being able to see as clearly in darkness as in broad daylight. And that, as one can imagine, had been an enormous advantage in his astonishing career as an encyclopedic mind and a man of adventure.

  Thus, an idea of Saint-Clair’s inspired by the phenomenon of Z-4, was even more likely to excite the body and the soul than the phenomenon itself!

  Maxime d’Olbans was, at present, the only one who knew what he idea was; so, the faces of Véronique, Monsieur Lamurat, Dr. Serres, Vitto and Soca all turned avidly toward Saint-Clair.

  Even less than Monsieur d’Olbans, when the Nyctalope had something to say, he did not bother with superfluous words. To his friend’s gestured invitation, Saint-Clair acquiesced with a smile, and said quite simply, in his clear and ever-incisive voice:

  “If we use metal Z-4 to construct a kind of new craft, and use the attraction of the planet Rhea, subjecting it to a measure of discipline, it’s not out of the question that humans might get close—very close—and even set foot on the planet newly appeared in our region of the Solar System.”

  “There! That’s perfectly simple!” interjected Véronique d’Olbans, spasmodically.

  The young woman had stood up abruptly; everyone looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears. Distressed by the sudden awareness of her emotion, she took two steps backwards and put her hands over her face, stammering:

  “Excuse me—I’m being silly...”

  Dr. Serres, however, who had seen her born 20 years earlier, and who had almost as much quasi-paternal affection for her as her uncle, Maxime d’Olbans, got up and went to her, took her hands and gripped them, saying gently:

  “Calm down, Véronique, my dear. We’re containing ourselves better, but we’re all as emotional as you are. What we’ve just seen… what Saint-Clair has just thrown into out minds… you aren’t being silly… or we’re all as silly as you.”

  He turned to the Nyctalope, without letting go of Véronique’s hands. “Really, my dear chap, is that possible?”

  Saint-Clair did not reply immediately. He looked hard at the young woman, who was also looking at him. What could he see in her that he had not yet noticed? He went pale. For a brief moment, a quiver ran through is features. His eyes closed—but he opened them again immediately, and he stood up. He walked rapidly to the far end of the large room, came back, and without any apparent emotion, he spoke, only looking at Dr. Serres, who let go of Véronique’s hands then and took a step away from her.

  “Yes, I firmly believe that it’s possible. It even seems easy to me. But listen: to depart aboard an aircraft made of Z-4, to leap like lightning outside the terrestrial atmosphere… Yes, really, quite straightforward and practically imaginable in many details. But what will happen afterwards? It’s necessary to do it in order to find out, as the popular saying has it—but I’m convinced, I repeat, that if we want too, it will be possible, even easy, to do it. Won’t it, Maxime?”

  “Of course,” said Monsieur d’Olbans.

  Chapter II

  The Question of Gno Mitang

  So, on that June 21, the Prefect, Monsieur Lamurat, and Dr. Serres dined at the château. After the meal, the five guests gathered once again in the laboratory in the tower. There they found Vitto and Soca.

  Companions-in-arms and often collaborators in the adventures of their boss, the Nyctalope, the two Corsicans were also perfect servants. Certainly, they would take part in the conversations, scientifically experimental or hypothetical, that would animate the evening—but first, they would serve coffee, liqueurs and vintage port, and open boxes of cigars and cigarettes, for neither Maxime d’Olbans not LeoSaint-Clair were opposed to coffee, tobacco and alcohol—“poisons” that, if they are of good quality and taken in reasonable doses, have never prevented a human being from living to be 100 while remaining healthy.

  Comfortably installed in leather armchairs,
with which a part of the laboratory was as judiciously furnished as it was intelligently garnished with bookshelves, the young woman and the six men relaxed, with the greatest of individual liberty, into a conversation that soon became very animated, concerning the metal Z-4, the planet Rhea, the craft that would be constructed with that metal, the voyage which, thanks to that metal, might practically be made to the planet, and, finally, the hypotheses whose construction the present state of astronomical science permitted regarding the consequences of such a voyage—the first of its kind that earthly human beings might actually attempt to accomplish.

  They did not part until midnight, after they had all sworn to maintain absolute secrecy regarding everything that had been done, said and decided that day.

  Dr. Serres went home on foot; the night was serene and the village of Longpré, where he lived, was no more than three kilometers from the Château des Pins.

  The next morning, after breakfast, Monsieur Lamurat left in his car for the prefecture, and Monsieur d’Olbans telephoned Monsieur Fageat, his steward, asking him to come to his study immediately. The detached house in the forest where Monsieur Fageat lived was 500 meters from the château, linked to it by a private telephone line.

  Nine o’clock was chiming on that June 22 when Monsieur Fageat arrived at Monsieur d’Olbans’ study. The room, furnished with a large stable and several chairs, fitted out with filing-cabinets, ornamented with plans and a map of the vast estate of Les Pins, was situated on the ground floor of the château. On one side it opened on the large entrance-hall, on the other to the flower-garden, which two gardeners maintained under the benevolent dictatorship of Mademoiselle Véronique.

  The weather had changed at daybreak. A storm was rising in the south-west. Before being introduced, the steward put his iron-tipped cane, his large leather gloves and his waterproof hooded cape into the hands of the valet who welcomed him.