The Return of the Nyctalope

by Jean de La Hire

  “So be it!” said Véronique, resolutely bent on combat. “it remains no less true that the Terrans who have reached Rhea, as you put it, would probably not be able to get back—and, therefore, that those of us who remain here will never see them again.”

  “Perhaps! For every problem is soluble. If they...”

  Then Saint-Clair, cutting short the manifestation of any emotion, turned his gaze to Véronique’s face, and in his incisive voice, said:

  “Let us admit as simply possible that neither the voyagers on Rhea nor the scientists on Earth will find the means of making the interplanetary voice two-way, although I estimate myself that anything is now realizable in that order of scientific and practical activity. Yes, in spite of my contrary hopes, let’s admit that the voyagers of the Olb.-I will never come back. That only makes the choice of voyagers easier.”

  “Easier!” exclaimed Véronique, simultaneously indignant and amazed.

  But yes, my dear friend!” said Saint-Clair, earnestly. “As you shall see. Let’s proceed by elimination.”

  He closed his eyes in order to focus his thoughts and only pronounce the essential words. Breathless now, everyone was looking at him—everyone except Ariste Fageat, who was observing Véronique with a somber expression, which no one noticed, except perhaps Gno Mitang, who was discreetly observing everyone. There was a brief moment of expectation, in which there was still more curiosity than anxiety. Raising his eyelids, looking at his friend Maxime d’Olbans first, and then the other men, whose names he pronounced, the Nyctalope spoke:

  “It’s quite evident that Monsieur d’Olbans must remain here. The new inventions and discoveries that he is in the process of making might well answer all the questions that have been or will be posed. Prefect Lamurat is needed in his Prefecture, Dr. Serres by the invalids of the canton; besides which, they each have a wife and children. Maître Blanquer is a bachelor, and, strictly speaking, his nephew and chief clerk could replace him, but our dear notary is 70 years-old, although young at heart. Monsieur Ariste Fageat in the excellent steward of the estate and the competent director of Monsieur d’Olbans works; he must therefore stay here. No reasonable protest can be raised against these eliminations, isn’t that so?”

  Not one mouth opened, but it was evident that all the expressions expressed acquiescence.

  “Good!” said Saint-Clair—and went on, in an almost-cheerful tone: “My dear Gno, I believe that if I were to offer to let you leave with me in the Olb.-I, you’d accept immediately?”

  “Without a doubt!” pronounced the Japanese, with a smile that lit up and rejuvenated his entire face—the taut and angular face of a quinquagenarian Asian.

  “In that case, I offer it to you, my friend—for I shall be leaving in four days for Rhea. Naturally, I shall take Soca and Vitto, with whom I can’t do without, and who would die of boredom on Earth without me. Eh, Vitto, Soca?”

  “Yes, Monsieur!” said the two Corsicans, in unison, quite simply.

  “Well, then,” said Saint-Clair, “it seems to me...”

  But Véronique’s voice cut in, sharply and firmly.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “You?” exclaimed Monsieur d’Olbans.

  All eyes were suddenly fixed on the young woman—but she was only looking at the Nyctalope, and she continued in the same resolute tone:

  “Yes, me. Here, I’m useless; I don’t participate in any of my uncle’s endeavors. On the estate, I’ve only ever occupied myself with the garden, and only to grow flowers and fruits. Now, the head gardener can do that better than me. On the other hand, on the Olb.-I and on Rhea, a woman might be necessary. I’m a qualified Red Cross nurse; I can sew; I...”

  Blushing suddenly, she interrupted herself. She felt that the Nyctalope’s eyes and mind were penetrating her, all the way to the utmost depths of her soul. For a brief instant, she was infinitely troubled, but with the consciousness of a happiness so great that she immediately regained her usual self-control and, sweeping away the possible explanations with a gesture, she concluded:

  “The Olb.-I can carry eight people. Including me, there are presently only five of us. Three places are still available. Who will you chose, Monsieur Saint-Clair, among the people you know and are not here?”

  “Pardon me,” said the Nyctalope, with the utmost calm. “Even supposing that I were to agree to your participation in a voyage that you described just now as perhaps no more than a new kind of suicide, the authorization of your uncle and guardian is indispensable in any matter concerning you, for not only are you a minor, being only 20. In any case, Maxime d’Olbans is the sole master of everything here; nothing can be done without his approval.”

  “Well, Uncle?” said the young woman, immediately.

  All the evidence suggested that the scientist had not expected the question of the choice of the interplanetary voyagers to be posed in such a way that his daughter would be involved in it. Focused on the planning of his endeavors, he had not taken much notice—or any notice at all—of the lives of those around him. For him, Véronique was still the little girl that he had taken in after the death of her parents. And now she was demanding to depart for the planet Rhea! He was dumbfounded. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, he stared at his niece without being able to reply.

  To a certain extent, Dr. Serres, Monsieur Lamurat and the notary shared his astonishment, and their facial expressions did not hide the fact. Outside the debate, since he had only been acquainted with Mademoiselle d’Olbans for a few hours, Gno Mitang remained impassive and observed the scene attentively. Quite calm and with a slight smile, Saint-Clair waited. And, as all eyes were on the young woman and her uncle, no one noticed the rapid, brutal and singularly expressive play of the features of the steward Fageat.

  No one? Perhaps Gno Mitang...

  From the moment when Véronique had manifested her desire and determination to take part in the voyage until she had pronounced in a firmly interrogative tone: “Well, Uncle?” Fageat’s somber and coarse had become coarser and darker, but without any expression of surprise; then a violent anger, poorly restrained, rendered the steward’s eyes, fixed on Saint-Clair but immediately turned away from him, full of hatred. On his knees, his large, strong hands clenched into solid fists. Long habituated to dissimulation and deception, however, the steward mastered his sentiments, and finally appeared, like all the others, to be possessed by nothing more than curious expectation as to what reply Monsieur d’Olbans would make.

  In a silence untroubled by the slightest noise, that response was delayed for a full minute. It was as Saint-Clair, at least—who knew his old friend well—had anticipated.

  “But you’re insane, little girl!”

  Véronique must also have anticipated that response, for she was not upset by it; she even uttered a brief laugh of affectionate indulgence, and immediately, replied, addressing Monsieur d’Olbans as “tu,” as she sometimes did:

  “But why, Uncle? Realize that I’m no longer a little girl, and you’ll understand that my mind has learned from yours to be audacious. Given that you’ve conceived an interplanetary voyage and done everything possible to realize it, what’s exorbitant about me, your brother’s daughter, and thus of your own blood, finding it entirely natural to represent our family and our name in the voyage?

  “Would you like an argument of a sentimental kind? Well, here it is: I know with total certainty that you love Monsieur Saint-Clair as much as me...”

  “Oh!” exclaimed the scientist and the Nyctalope, simultaneously.

  “Yes!” insisted the young woman, smiling. “You love each of us in a different manner, to be sure, but him as much as me. How, then, can you find it normal that Monsieur Saint-Clair should go, but abnormal that I should accompany him? You’re being illogical. And to conclude on another plane, by means of a final argument whose verity, force and irrefutability you can’t deny: I’m less useful here than your housekeeper, Madame Gervais, or your steward, Monsieur Fageat, or your laboratory a
ssistant, Monsieur Louze.”

  “Oh!” said Monsieur d’Olbans again, raising his open hands.

  “Yes, Uncle, yes! And that’s natural. You’ve always lived with your brain more than your heart. The excellent maintenance of your house, the perfect regulation of your estate, your physics and chemistry laboratories and your astronomical observatory: all of that is more important in your life than my existence and my boudoir-cum-library. I find that perfectly natural, and love you no less for it. But if you love me, you must understand me when I speak in accordance with my most ardent and most profound thoughts. And you must give my departure the approval that the scrupulous Nyctalope deems, rightly, to be absolutely indispensable.”

  Having said that, with emotional inflections in her voice, Véronique stood up, marched rapidly up to her uncle, put her hands on his shoulders, kissed him on both cheeks and, simultaneously calm and fervent, in a tone scarcely above a whisper, this time only speaking for him alone, said:

  “Uncle, my dear Uncle, I beg you!”

  The young woman’s eyes, which only he could see, very close to his own spoke more eloquently than her lips. Maxime d’Olbans had been young; he had been loved; he had loved; he understood. Immediately disengaging Véronique’s hands by grasping them in his own, and drawing her whole body toward him, he kissed her cheeks in his turn, and said, simply:

  “All right, child; you can go.”

  Only then were the prefect Lamuarat, the physician Serres and the notary Blanquer able to express their tumultuous thoughts to one another and to Monsieur and Mademoiselle d’Olbans.

  Vitto and Soca formed a group with the steward Fageat, who had not become their friend but whose vast technical knowledge gave rise to conversations as interesting as they were useful. Besides, in the course of the works that Fageat had directed, the two Corsicans had been very precious aides, by virtue of their qualities and because a certain authority devolved naturally upon them by virtue of their continual frequentation with their master, the Nyctalope.

  It was soon evident to Soca and Vitto, however, that the engineer-steward did not pay a great deal of attention to the conversation that they struck up with him. His gaze went far less to his interlocutors than to Saint-Clair, who, with Gno Mitang, was leaning over a celestial map of large dimensions, spread out in the middle of a table.

  Suddenly, his patience having evidently run out, Fageat said to the two Corsicans:

  “Excuse me—it’s absolutely necessary that I speak to Monsieur Saint-Clair, about a detail of the equipment of the Olb.-I… A very important detail...”

  With no further politeness, he left them, went straight to Saint-Clair with his supple tread—which, whether fast or slow, had something feline about it. Artfully taking advantage of the fact that the Nyctalope and the Japanese were not talking at that moment, the steward immediately ventured, in a low voice:

  “Monsieur...”

  He was close beside Saint-Clair—who, having heard him, straightened up and turned his head. Immediately, Fageat, in a respectful attitude and with a matching expression, containing his voice but speaking but in a firm and deliberate tone, said:

  “Monsieur, I’d like to talk to you in private.”

  Saint-Clair showed no surprise, although he was astonished by the unexpected request.

  “Now?” he said, with a courteous half-smile.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Shall we go into the smoking-room?”

  “Yes, Monsieur—thank you.”

  From the beginning of that rapid and brief exchange, Gno Mitang had appeared still to be more interested in the map spread out before his eyes. With a rapid glance, however, he had first studied the steward’s face and had then listened to the sound of his voice and the highly characteristic inflection of his elocution. And he said to himself: A strange individual! Doubtless prey to a violent and profound passion, he forces himself to be calm and impassive; he won’t always succeed—but his rude appearance and his voice, guttural and muffled at the same time, easily deceive. A valuable man, moreover, who would be, if he wished, a first-rate adviser and lieutenant, a perfect second in command...

  At that moment, Gno Mitang heard Saint-Clair say:

  “Excuse me for a few moments, my friend...”

  The Japanese merely made an acquiescent gesture with his right hand.

  Between the large book-lined drawing-room where the meeting was taking place and the dining room of the Château des Pins, there was a relatively small smoking-room, fitted with low-set bookshelves freely offering their volumes to the hands of people sitting in the leather-upholstered armchairs with velvet cushions that were spread around the room. In the middle part of the room four low tables were aligned, but their feet were fitted with castors so that they could be moved around; they were laden with boxes of cigars and cigarettes, pots of tobacco, electric lighters and even, in amusing little racks, new pipes of every caliber and form, from which a guest might choose—for Monsieur d’Olbans gladly expended the laws and customs of hospitality.

  Having entered the room, followed by Ariste Fageat, Saint-Clair headed for one of the two corners most distant from the doors of the drawing-room-cum-library and the dining room, which were facing one another. With a mechanical gesture he was already indicating an armchair prior to proffering the banal phrase: “Would you care to sit down?” but his gesture was interrupted and the ritual words were never pronounced. Remaining standing, facing the steward, Saint-Clair said, courteously but without any particular amiability:

  “I’m listening, my dear Monsieur.”

  Fageat did not hesitate for a second. His hard eyes met Saint-Clair’s incisive stare while he spoke—without interruption, for Saint-Clair, as a matter of rule and habit, always let his interlocutors spell out the whole of their thought.

  “Monsieur, I did not permit myself to protest when you declared that I was not to take part in the interplanetary voyage for the reason that I am indispensable to Monsieur d’Olbans with regard to the estate of Les Pins. I though that it would be lacking in respect for you, and doubtless also for Monsieur d’Olbans, to begin a discussion that was, apparently at least, solely concerned with my person and my functions as a steward. First, I thank you for granting me this private interview—and I ask you to listen to the reasons why I believe I can solicit the honor of going with you in the Olb.-I to Rhea.”

  He paused, inclined his head slightly, straightened up again, and waited, his features very calm.

  Again, Saint-Clair did not manifest any surprise—and again he simply said:

  “I’m listening.”

  A trifle stiffly, with his head held high, his expressive eyes calm and coldly resolute, Fageat went on:

  “Monsieur, it is not true—or, rather, it is no longer true—that I am indispensable to Monsieur d’Olbans to run the estate. The tenant of one of the largest farms, La Charmette, is an old farmer, still robust, named Père Martet; he has a son of thirty-two named Ludovic, married, intelligent and serious, who has studied at the École d’Agronomie. I have often recruited him as a deputy in the last two years, particularly in the last three months: I have educated him fully in my duties as steward of the Les Pins estate. Ludovic Martet is capable of replacing me. I can assure you that Monsieur d’Olbans would not lose by the substitution.”

  As Fageat paused, Saint-Clair made a gesture of acceptance and said:

  “Fair enough; I have no reason to doubt your affirmation. So?”

  “Well, Monsieur, although I am no longer indispensable to Monsieur d’Olbans, I believe I could be useful to you during the entire duration of the interplanetary voyage. I dare say, and I don’t think that anyone would tell you otherwise, that my technical knowledge is various and profound; that I have courage, energy and character; that my health and physical vigor are intact; and finally, that I lack neither imagination nor ingenuity. On the other hand, by virtue of having collaborated on a daily basis, in a thousand ways, with the construction, equipment and provisioni
ng of the Olb.-I, I know our interplanetary vehicle better than anyone, and the manipulation of all its mechanisms has no more secrets from me than from you. Excuse me, Monsieur, for seeming to be composing my eulogy in this manner: I have no misplaced pride, I assure you, much less imbecilic vanity—but I know myself. I know what I am worth, in spite of certain faults of my nature, which are not injurious in any way to the notion of my duty and the accomplishment of my work. Such as I am, I am therefore certain that I do not deserve to be excluded from the most extraordinary scientific and biological adventurer that humans have ever undertaken. Take me with you, Monsieur. I will be an associate whose services you will appreciate…and, I dare add, a man with whom Vitto and Soca will be happy to work.”

  Fageat fell silent, this time because he had nothing more to say. At that moment the Nyctalope was thinking: The fellow certainly isn’t stupid, to have concluded with that allusion to his good working relationship with my two faithful followers! And he smiled.

  At the sight of that smile, Ariste Fageat thought that his cause was won. His face relaxed, and his entire body appeared to lose its tension.

  Saint-Clair’s smile was brief however. To be sure, he had no precise prejudice against the man. He subscribed without hesitation to all the eulogies that Fageat had made of himself technically, so to speak; he held him in great esteem and judged him very valuable—but still he felt within himself, in Fageat’s regard, a kind of indefinable repulsion, which was more than mere antipathy. What was it, then? Saint-Clair had never analyzed the sentiment—or only, perhaps, the impression—that had always, in confrontation with Monsieur d’Olbans’ steward, put him in a state of mind that was translated as a slightly cold and distant attitude.

  At that moment, head bowed, Saint-Clair analyzed himself—but saw nothing therein that really argued, in a serious manner, against Monsieur Fageat’s unexpected request. On the other hand, it was evident to him that, in the course of the interplanetary voyage, the man might have a multiple and precious utility. The Olb.-I could carry eight passengers. Thus far only five had been designated, including Véronique. For such an adventure, four men was very few—not that it was necessary to have eight. Fageat would make a fifth of rare quality; why not recruit him? Why not?