Saint-Clair went silent, obviously delighted. But he still had not asked a question, so the Corsican did not say a word.
The last drawer was pulled out and set on the carpet, and the cabinet revealed its empty belly.
Then Saint-Clair said:
“Soca! You may speak now.”
“What should I do, Monsieur?”
“Measure the length of the drawers and the cabinet table by eye. And at last you will see!”
Two glances were enough for the Corsican.
“Ah! Monsieur! I see now! The drawers, pushed in, do not reach to the back... they are too short! Or rather, they go to the back, but there is a double back! Top to bottom, the wall of the cabinet is double. And between the two walls there is a space...”
“Yes! Soca, yes! A space that constitutes a very clever hiding place, and therefore must not be empty. Find the mechanism to open it.”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
The Corsican pressed his knees against the inside of the cabinet. Then he stuck his head, arms and torso inside.
“Can you see?” asked Saint-Clair.
“Yes, Monsieur, I see very well.”
The Nyctalope was calm. Secret as the system of opening and closing the double back was, clever as the cabinet-maker might have made it, Soca would find it. And quickly. So quickly that Saint-Clair was going to point out that two minutes had already passed, when Soca said with joy:
“Monsieur, I’ve figured out the trick. But do I have to open it myself?”
“Yes! The honor is yours!”
“Well then! Here it is, Monsieur. It is open. I see packages tied with string.”
At the bottom of the cabinet there was a light creaking, and the slap of a wood tablet, which fell and touched another dry piece of wood. Soca began to leave the cabinet. But Saint-Clair said:
“No! No! Don’t come out. Empty the cache. Give me everything. And take the things methodically, top to bottom and left to right. For, I insist, everything must be replaced exactly.”
“Understood, Monsieur!”
One after the other, in under a minute, Saint-Clair received nine packages that he set in order on top of the cabinet.
These packages were different from one another in their wrapping, dimensions and weight. But they all had a cubic, rectangular form, one that rendered their wrapping more or less well-adjusted and uniform. These packages were small, for even the most voluminous was no more than thirty centimeters in width, twenty in breadth and fifteen in height. The envelopes were made of fine linen or solid gray paper, and they were tied with red string, without superfluous knots.
Saint-Clair said cheerfully:
“The Gasses are not at all miserly in this room. Instead of wrapping and tying these packages with just anything, they have used cloth of excellent quality, brand new paper and string from a fancy ball of thread, all bought for this purpose, for we saw nothing else like it in the house.”
“The ball of thread, paper and fine linen are in a corner of the hiding place, Monsieur,” said Soca, even more cheerful than his master. “Do you want them?”
“Hand them over, hand them over, Soca! Empty it completely!”
“There is nothing else, Monsieur.”
And Soca, backing out, finally left the cabinet.
“To the packets then,” said Saint-Clair. “I will undo them, and you will wrap them up again.”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
The most voluminous packet was opened first.
“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed the Nyctalope. “This is unexpected.”
He held it in his hands and leafed through a bundle of shares of the Indian Oil Company. To find these Anglo-Indian assets in the possession of a very ordinary peasant born, living and likely to die in the countryside of the French department of the Indre-et-Loire was indeed very unexpected!
“It is unbelievable,” added Saint-Clair.
He gave a small dry laugh. Then he went on:
“The most recent coupons have been detached recently.”
For a minute at most, he remained unmoving and meditative. Pushing the bundle toward Soca, he at last said:
“Tie up this packet. To the next one.”
The second contained ten pinned notes of a hundred francs. Ten thousand francs! The Gasses were not poor!
The third contained only letters and family portraits.
The fourth contained five pinned notes of a thousand francs.
“Fifty thousand francs!” whistled Saint-Clair. “The Gasses are decidedly rich. And this does not come from the profits of the exploitation of this farm, intensive as it may be. In ten years, the Gasses have accumulated a fortune, monetary or immediately negotiable, of more than a million, at the value of the Indian Oil shares this week. What do you make of it, Soca?”
Tying up the third packet with care, the Corsican replied gravely:
“I think that so much money here reeks of crime...”
“Or complicity with crime!” corrected Saint-Clair. “Only complicity, Soca. For the crime itself is of a type that neither Hector Gasse nor his wife have the means to commit. They have only a very vague, superstitious and vulgar idea, based on the practices of peasant witchcraft and a use more or less skilful of poisonous plants. But I am hoping that, through the accomplices, we will arrive at the master-criminal. The essential thing for us, you see, Soca, is that he should not suspect that we are on his trail. For if he should come to do so, we may be dead long before we reach him!”
Such words, spoken by the Nyctalope! And in such a simple and grave tone, from which the slightest bit of irony and bravado was excluded! Courageous as he was, Soca could not help but go a bit pale.
Saint-Clair opened the fifth package, harder under its wrapping than the preceding ones. It was a cardboard box that had previously contained fifty cards and envelopes for correspondence, but was now filled with one dozen rolls of coins, like those produced by banks. Each roll had fifty gold louis, worth twenty francs, stamped with different effigies.
“No need to undo the other rolls. There are ten thousand gold francs in this box. My guess is that this is the genuine old peasant fortune of the Gasses, accumulated little by little over two or three generations of patient, laborious and secretive avarice. The Gasses were patriotic enough to get themselves wounded or killed during the war, but too cautious, suspicious and calculating to let go of their gold unless it was absolutely obligatory or prodigiously fruitful. There are many peasants like these in our beloved France, Soca. And in a sense, it’s not a bad thing, for sooner or later, the country benefits from these clandestine savings.”
There were only three packages left: they contained paid invoices, receipts of money orders, notes on craftsmen and suppliers, all the accounting of La Migeonne for ten years, except that of the year immediately preceding, the papers of which had no doubt been classified and packed away to take their place in the “safe” of the old solid trunk.
That was all.
With a quick glance, Saint-Clair had read the essential of these papers: not a line, not a word, not a name that gave any clue as to the mystery of Beech Grove.
“Good!” he concluded. “Let us pass over the bundles of banknotes as we have passed over the rolls of gold. These were won from other peasants, from the honest sweat of their foreheads and the work of their laborious hands. But the shares of Indian Oil still need an explanation... Soca, quick, put everything back in its hiding place. I am going to pass you the packets one by one, in the reverse order that you gave them to me.”
Ten minutes later, everything in the room was back in its normal state, and Saint-Clair and Soca left the room to continue their investigations.
Examined thoroughly, the house offered no other clues.
As Vitto continued to keep watch, Saint-Clair and Soca inspected all the farm buildings, even the most squalid. Above the stable for the cows, a vast loft contained two beds, dirtily kept. A wardrobe without doors showed a mixture of linen with male and female clothes
.
“The farm girl and farm boy both sleep here,” remarked Soca ironically. “This promiscuity is good business for the Gasses: as neither nor the boy nor the girl go to seek their pleasure outside, they do not lose time hanging about with gentlemen and ladies, and there is no risk of debauchery for the profit of another farm.”
“Exactly!” said Saint-Clair.
They came to the last dwelling. It was in the courtyard adjoining the pigsty, a kind of bricked-up hole where Vitto had locked up the dogs. Immediately friendly when they were let out, the dogs did not bark. Soca stayed inside while outside, Saint-Clair stroked the two four-legged guards, so easily neutralized.
Then suddenly the Corsican reappeared, holding in each outstretched hand a large muddy shoe. He laughed:
“Monsieur! Here is the cracked sole!”
And he presented the left shoe, showing the sole. The crack was partly filled with dried mud, but it was perfectly clear.
Saint-Clear looked at it with a serious eye.
“There’s no doubt. This is the shoe that was on the left foot of the mysterious man, on the fateful night. The evidence is obvious. Whether he left La Migeonne or came from elsewhere, before his walk to Beech Grove, the man came here and took the shoes from this nook. On the way back, he put them back. Well done! Soca, show me the exact place that you found them.”
And following the Corsican, he went in.
A kind of shed leaned against the wall of the pigpen. Built of well-fitted stones, barely bricked in here and there, it was a little over two meters in height, from the floor covered in rubbish to the roof made of corrugated iron. Its width and its length were no greater. In the back, on the ground, there was a trough full of stagnant water. There was no other opening but a narrow, low door made of poorly fitted and unpolished wood, closed with a rusty iron latch. In one corner, near the door, was an old tin-plated basin with holes. Objects could be seen in it: a thick piece of rope, wood pegs, a small iron rake, a big ladle with a twisted handle.
“There, Monsieur,” said Soca. “The shoes were in this basin. They must have been thrown this way from the entrance, sent flying.”
“Very good. This shed must be used to lock up a pig when it has to be separated from the others. That’s all. I’ve seen all I need. Give me the cracked shoe.”
Saint-Clair took the object, and looking closely at the sole, convinced himself definitively that the shape and depth of the crack corresponded exactly to the traces so carefully examined during the first investigations between Beech Grove and La Migeonne.
Then he said:
“Leaving here after he was chased, the man must have walked not on the muddy space that separates the porch from the edge of the body of water, but on the stony ridge that runs along the wall of the farm in the direction of the park. When he set out, the crack was empty, or it lost its old dry mud during the walk on the stony ridge. That is why it left its trace in relief on the sandy soil, where you and Vitto identified it in several places. The wet sand took the form of the crack, but the rest stuck to the ground; this is why the print and protrusion are reproduced so clearly. But, on his return, the man crossed the muddy esplanade, and the crack was filled with the mud that we now see. Very good. We now know what I wanted to know, and more, for even if I hoped to find the shoe, I never suspected I would have more than half-million shares of Indian Oil before my eyes.”
He laughed, and threw the shoe into the basin.
“Should I throw the other one too?” asked Soca.
“Yes, naturally!”
“There we are, Monsieur.”
“Let’s go out, shut the door again,” called Vitto.
And the three men returned to the Romani camp, Saint-Clair meditating while Soca, happy to speak freely, told an attentive Vitto the details of the search.
Meanwhile Nieve-the-Sibyl had gone, at the appointed hour to the Cross of Blood, wearing a hooded mantle that draped over her shoulders and reached to her knees.
She was once again received at the top of the steps, on the threshold of the patio, by the old and smiling Hambad Sin.
“The Master is here,” he said at once.
The young girl replied with a friendly glance and a brief nod.
“I spoke to him about you,” the Tibetan went on. “I showed him your picture and told him you would return today.”
The man gestured toward the inside staircase and added:
“He is waiting for you.”
Then, with a smile of accentuated benevolence:
“Follow me, Nieve. Give me your mantle. But keep your basket. The Master likes works that are made by skillful hands, according to the meanderings of thought as it progresses in a subtle mind. Such are your works, Nieve. The Master will look at them with pleasure, and no doubt buy from you those that please him most.”
Once again, Nieve answered with only a look and a tiny bow. When Hambad Sin began to walk, she followed him.
The staircase led up to a vast landing from which stretched a long corridor, at the end of which were two tall windows with small tiles tinted in translucent red. The sunlight, entering the window on the right, gave the corridor from one end to the other a clear color of blood.
Just opposite the entrance of the staircase was a huge double-door with a prominent stone frame and Arabic engravings. It cast dark-red shadows in the form of writing on the white walls, turned pink by light.
Hambad Sin knocked three times with his fist on the left door. Head leaning forward, he listened. Nieve did not hear anything. But the Tibetan must have received the expected answer, for he quickly put his hand on the door handle and took a step back. At the same time, through the play of an automatic mechanism, a second padded door opened into a room that seemed at once vast and full of sunshine, in Nieve’s attentive eyes.
At the gesture of her guide, the young girl moved forward, crossed the threshold and took a few steps into the room.
Before her, in the bright light that entered through a single large bay window, was a man wearing polished shoes (this is what she saw first, for she walked with her eyes lowered) and dressed in black silk pajamas over a white silk shirt with collar. From this collar emerged a magnificent neck that held up the most original head ever to meet the eyes of the young Romani.
A straight forehead, broad and high, crowned by naturally glistening waves of thick black hair; an aquiline nose of noble line; cheeks of matte whiteness, somewhat emaciated, with prominent cheekbones; a powerful jaw, closely shaven, around beautifully drawn lips at once ironic and sensual, disturbing and seductive, eloquent and silent, showing love and cruelty, experienced wisdom, discernment, prudence. But above all, it was the eyes that were extraordinary: between the long eyelids with their tight, slightly clamped lashes, they were wide open, with a color that was indefinable and seemed infinitely changeable, a dark blue with gold spikes that made one think of an eastern night and its stars.
Nieve, who kept her cool, was moved to an admiring surprise. She saw that at this moment the man’s eyes expressed nothing but curiosity, but the sort of curiosity that deliberately envelops, caresses, penetrates.
She thought, lucid: If the Nyctalope hadn’t warned me, I would have been caught off my guard! I must appear to be subdued.
The matrons of her tribe and life had already taught her to be a good actress. She turned pale, she blushed, she pretended to be disconcerted. She fixed her eyes on the man, as if fascinated by him, and stammered, trembling:
“Monsieur, I came to this castle because I saw on your roof, disguised as a weathervane, the image of Solomon’s pentacle...”
She hesitated. The man completed the expression of the crystal-clear thought of his visitor. In a voice at once masculine and velvety, he said:
“For you are a daughter of Egypt, initiated by the Romani, isn’t that true?”
She sighed:
“Yes. I am Nieve-the-Sybil, your humble servant.”
And gently, she bent her knees in reverence and prostratio
n before the acknowledged Master. But he put out his hands—his long and fine hands, which though delicate looked to be of great strength—and grasping the young girl by the shoulders, he drew her to him, saying with grave simplicity:
“I am Armand Logreux d’Albury—in this country. But in another land, where history is shrouded in the night of thousands of centuries, and which some day will rule all others, as befits its status as the center and light of the entire terrestrial world, I am known as the Master of the Seven Lights.”
For an indeterminate length of time, all was immobility, silence, the sparkling dark eyes of the man fixed on the light green eyes of the girl, that, at that moment, were dilated in the apparent fascination endured, but endured without revolt, almost religiously.
Then, the hands having let go of their grip, Armand Logreux said in a courteous and cheerful tone:
“Nieve, set down your beautiful basket here. Sit down. Show me your work. I will choose some of them to keep as a souvenir of your passage in my solitude. Then you will take off your clothes and I will gaze upon your form, so that your beauty remains alive in my thoughts. Maybe then I will speak to you about the Seven Lights...”
Without reacting, except with immediate obedience, as if judging all the words spoken by the Master normal, Nieve placed the basket on a low table and sat on a large leather ottoman beside it, while Armand Logreux took his place on another ottoman, bending his legs in Turkish style while facing the young Roma girl.
Nieve would not have seemed natural if she hadn’t shown the most ordinary curiosity. Seated, she looked around her with a sort of bold timidity.
Permeated and enlivened by the light of the sun, the high, long, broad room was at once library, study, smoking room and oriental bedroom. Books, paintings, statues, couches, cushions, drapes, carpets, antique furniture, coffee tables, armchairs and leather ottomans: everything was luxurious, comfortable and in good taste. Nothing barbarian, nothing ultra-modern, nothing mysterious or even bizarre. A room dedicated to the existence of a rich intellectual with a taste for the things of the East, who liked to surround himself with them, without excess.
The Nyctalope and The Tower of Babel Page 17