The Nyctalope and The Tower of Babel

by Jean de La Hire

  Inside the cube Professor Noque had worked hard on the monumental door. Pierre was surprised by the strength of his partner who, being a scholar, must have lived a relatively sedentary life. Noque had torn out a block of stone and was trying to make a crack in the door.

  This was when Hubert should be replacing Pierre in the excavation and the young man was already getting into his diving suit. Hubert was a few minutes late but he was probably absorbed in the bas-reliefs and had lost track of time.

  Pierre was stepping into the airlock when a violent shock shook the cube. The professor, who could not understand what caused the phenomenon, looked up suspiciously. The cube was shaken again. The sound of metal echoed through the walls, which were under great pressure. But the cube was designed to be used up to three hundred feet down and so this could not be an effect of water pressure. The thought of an attack from the outside crossed their minds and they wondered what had happened to Pir and Hubert.

  Pierre tried to open the airlock to go and see what was going on but it was stuck. He looked at the gauge to the right of the door and saw that the airlock was filling up with water. It had been designed so that the opening mechanism would be blocked in such an emergency in order to prevent total immersion.

  “The airlock’s flooding!” he turned to the professor. “It’s not normal. You’d better put on your suit.”

  Before the professor had time to answer, a heavy blow struck the inner door of the airlock. Another followed and dented the sheet. Given the thickness of the material, the strength needed to do this must have been extraordinary.

  Pierre stepped back and looked around the room. He saw only a big mallet to use as a weapon. He was leaning over to grab it when another blow shook the door. Now it was starting to bend and a crack near the frame was leaking water, spitting it inside the small space.

  Professor Noque did not yet have time to put on his suit while Pierre stood at the ready with the mallet, waiting for the door to give way. Another blow literally ripped through the steel door.

  Water came pouring into the space and Pierre was thrown backward. The whole cube was flooded within seconds. Pierre saw a weird metallic machine burst in behind two jointed arms with pincers that were aimed at his helmet. With the water now an obstacle, Pierre could not use his mallet and felt totally helpless. The professor next to him had already passed out. Pierre grabbed a small pickaxe that was in reach and swung it at the enemy’s helmet in which he could see the strange man wearing a turban. As hard as he could he struck at the window but the pick slipped off the glass without even scratching it. Then the young man felt one of the metal claws hit him on his helmet. The copper bent and the glass shattered under the blow. Water rushed into the suit and Pierre lost consciousness. His last thought was for his father who was also being threatened by a relentless enemy.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Revenge!

  In the back of the car Duke Petro d’Arendar was reading the morning mail. The business at the airport had made him late and at the end of the afternoon the chauffeur was driving him back home, a few miles outside of Madrid.

  He had been glad to be of service to his old friend Léo Saint-Clair, but the more he concentrated on the mail and the political situation in Spain, which was a mess, the more his mind turned away from the Korridès affair. He had been one of the strongest supporters of King Alfonso XIII who was living in exile in France today. The future of the Spanish Republic was in jeopardy because the forces that had taken over the country were divided and a good number of extremists were seizing power. The duke could not do much about this. On the other hand, he could work with the different monarchist factions to defuse the situation and to keep the whole country from blowing up in a civil war.

  He had just received a letter from a general who was writing to offer him nothing less than the restoration of the monarchy by force. This Francisco Franco, whom the head of the government said in private was the most dangerous Spanish officer, was asking him to appeal to the King so that he could enlist the help of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Benito Mussolini to bring back the House of Bourbon to Spain. An intervention of the Italian army in Spain—now that was a really hare-brained idea!

  The duke took a sheet of paper from his briefcase to write a kind but firm response. Spain would have to deal with its own problems and do so through negotiation and dialogue, not with arms. He wondered sometimes is this were really possible, but it was too soon to say for sure.

  While the duke was thinking of this letter, his car had left the suburbs of Madrid and was on the country highway. A sidecar that had been following for a few minutes sped up. It was starting to pass. When it pulled alongside the back door, the passenger in the sidecar threw a tarp off his knees and raised a machine gun. Before Pedro d’Arendar was even aware of what was happening the man emptied his clip into him. He was killed on the spot. The chauffeur lost control of the car, bounced off the highway and went rolling into the fields.

  The sidecar sped off and was lost to sight.

  The old enemies of Engineer Korridès could be hit anywhere and at any time.

  CHAPTER XV

  The Return of the Master

  Night fell over the house on Rue Montbrun in Paris.

  The soldiers had set up roadblocks on either end of the street. In front of the door of Léo Saint-Clair’s residence two guards kept watch, with bayonets fixed. Inside, twenty CID agents were ready to act at any moment. They had organized shifts to keep watch during the night to face any possible attack. On the roof an anti-aircraft gun had been set up. In the sky there were squadrons of fighter jets making rounds every five minutes around the house. The defense organized by the Nyctalope with the help of the government seemed flawless.

  In the salon on the second floor Michel Dorlange, his wife Erin and Sylvie Saint-Clair, were coordinating the defense of the house and the actions of the CID agents. In the four corners of Europe, the members of the organization run by Saint-Clair had suffered numerous surprise attacks by Korridès without being able to react effectively.

  In the afternoon the Nyctalope himself had launched an operation that he called “Joan of Arc.” He was hoping that maybe the next morning it could offer serious opposition to the Engineer’s attacks. Meanwhile, Dorlange, Erin and Sylvie were preparing for a night of siege in the house transformed into a trench camp.

  In the street, there were fewer cars driving up to the barricade. In fact, more often than not they were not let through and this discouraged journalists and rubberneckers. Delivery drivers and cabbies called to Rue Montbrun for professional reasons had to park at a distance and go on foot to get authorization to enter the street in their car and park briefly.

  A coalman was doing just that, chatting with the soldiers to get his truck up to his clients so he would not have to haul the heavy sacks by hand in separate loads. Behind him was a potato deliveryman ready to ask the same thing and looking worriedly at the huge canvas bags that he had to take all way up to the fifth floor sometimes.

  A little farther away, behind these horse carts, a covered truck was parked. A fat man in a big coat and a wide-brimmed hat that hid part of his face scrambled out and went around the back of the truck. Despite his weight he jumped into the back rather agilely.

  The soldiers who were busy talking to the coal man paid no attention to him.

  The man turned on a flashlight and carefully closed the cover behind him. Inside what looked like a delivery truck was a weird, bulky, mechanical assembly whose use would no doubt baffle the cleverest engineers at the Ecole Polytechnique. To the right of this machine was a kind of control panel covered with lights, different colored buttons and a series of sliding controls and rheostats that must have regulated the energy or whatever unknown force powered the device.

  The control panel ran the machine whose function, it must be said, was hard to determine at first sight. It looked like a huge “storage battery” with all kinds of different movable parts. Over it, fit into the right s
ide of the machine was a tube whose end flared out like a huge phonograph horn. On the side of the control panel, connected to it by a thick cable, was a helmet riddled with electrical wires ending in rubber caps. The thing was obviously meant to be worn so it could connect to different parts of the brain.

  The man sat in front of the control panel and pulled off his gloves. He started playing with the controls and quickly had it adjusted. The machine started to purr.

  He took off his hat and his face appeared pale and sinister in the light. His eyes were a strange blue with gold sparkles. His hair was cut very short, making his skull look almost bald. His face was deeply lined, like someone who had lived a hard life.

  What was most surprising about this giant was his head, held up by a collar of metal cables and by a kind of steel neck brace that kept it vertical with the rest of his body. Above his neck was an electric cable that entered directly into his skull.

  His hands, now bare, were also reinforced with a strong steel frame all the way to the tips of his fingers. Moving them seemed to be controlled by the metal joints hidden under his coat.

  The man looked like a quadriplegic who could only move thanks to a steel exoskeleton that he managed to control with his mind. His overdeveloped brain had realized the impossible.

  He put the helmet of the weird machine on his head and adjusted the rubber tips very carefully so they would line up with the correct areas of his brain. His haircut was obviously to make the operation easier. While he was fitting the various tips to his head, the lights of the control panel lit up one by one. When the last one was on, the man turned a small crank that worked the flared tube to point it at the Nyctalope’s house, along with all the security around it.

  His hands being controlled by the metal cables ran over the control panel like a concert pianist grazing his keyboard. The purring became shriller. One of the barricades heard this weird sound coming from the truck and started looking more closely at it. His gaze was attracted by the tube sticking out of the back. Intrigued, the soldier walked around the checkpoint and the sandbags and approached the vehicle. Armed with his bayonet he strolled up casually, not really worried about anything.

  The sound coming out of the truck suddenly turned into a screech. The soldier stopped, seemed to hesitate. His face was frozen and he started sweating bullets. He was clearly trying to fight against some outside force but all he could do was turn around slowly and head back to the barricade where his colleague was still talking with the coalman wanting authorization to do his deliveries on Rue Montbrun.

  The coalman finally went back to his cart and the guard stepped aside to let them pass. When the soldier came back holding his rifle, he stood in front of his colleague and stuck the bayonet into his belly. With a violent thrust he ripped open his belly all the way up to his chest. The guard’s face twisted in pain and surprise, watching his attacker with unbelieving eyes. Then he dropped to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

  The soldiers posted a little farther down the street watched the scene in horror, not understanding what was going on. Frozen in terror, they all went silent. Soon they heard the buzzing of the fighter jets making their pass over the street.

  Two things happened at the same time. The soldier who had just killed his comrade started running across the street, his bayonet dripping with blood and guts held out like a spear. He stabbed two pedestrians who went down screaming in pain. Simultaneously the jet over the house made a wide turn and got in line with the anti-aircraft gun, which was set up to protect the house. The fighter was also equipped with machine guns in front. He started firing, aiming deliberately at the roof. The first bullets ricocheted off the gutter but the next round hit the gunner in the head. He collapsed as his partner was hit in the legs, barely having time to jump to the side and hit the deck, groaning in pain. It took only a few seconds to put out of commission the gun meant to protect Saint-Clair’s house.

  In the street and around the house the soldiers did not know which way to turn. Four of them tried to bring down the murderous guard while others pointed their rifles at the sky in some mad hope of taking the fighter jet out of play.

  Inside the house the CID agents heard the shouting and shooting. They pulled out their Brownings and took position at the windows to defend the house. Although they did not understand what was happening, they were ready for anything.

  The raving mad soldier was stabbed twice in the belly with a bayonet and dropped to the ground.

  The fighter jet disappeared from sight; soon it was back and coming down the street. It started gunning for the soldiers trying to shoot it down and it targeted the trucks parked along the sidewalk as well. Several men were mowed down; others were hit by bullets ricocheting off the pavement. A truck whose gas tank had been hit exploded and the fire spread to two other vehicles.

  This brutal attack left nothing untouched except for one truck whose driver was trying to back up to avoid the flames that were jumping off the other vehicles. In the meantime, the unharmed soldiers sought shelter under porches and fired wildly with their rifles. In fact, it was possible that one of them might hit the maniacal plane as it was flying low, apparently beyond danger.

  The jet was getting ready for a third run. Its machine guns started firing on the few soldiers still alive. A few shots answered from the windows of the house. Most of the agents had Brownings but two of them had brought machine guns and were aiming at the plane. Finally hit in the arm by someone, the pilot lost control of the plane, which swerved to the left and crashed into the house directly across the street from the Nyctalope’s residence. The tide seemed to have turned, until shots were heard coming from inside the house itself.

  In a few seconds, as they were still stationed at the windows for defense, some of the agents were shot in the back by their own colleagues who stared blankly ahead and acted like sleepwalkers trying to kill everything in their path.

  On the second floor, in the salon where all the doors had been locked, Dorlange and his wife were shielding Sylvie Saint-Clair and trying to understand what was happening. All three of them were armed with Brownings and ready to fire. They watched the doors of the room anxiously.

  “It’s coming from everywhere,” Dorlange said. “The enemy’s apparently got into the house. I wonder how they did it.”

  “A fighter jet was shot down just before we locked ourselves in here. But I have the feeling that it was being flown by an enemy,” his wife answered. “I don’t get it.”

  Sylvie spoke up, “In fact, it’s like the men who are supposed to be protecting us have gone mad and are trying to kill one another… That doesn’t seem possible! Unless we’re the victims of a very powerful psychic attack. Léo told me about one of his enemies who was capable of such madness. It was not Engineer Korridès but…”

  She was cut off because the door leading to the stairs just flew open. A dazed and haunted looking agent stepped into the room, waving his Browning at all of them until it finally settled on Dorlange. But before he had time to pull the trigger, Sylvie, much to her chagrin, stuck a bullet between his eyes. She saw her hypothesis confirmed: just as she had said their enemy was using some extraordinary psychic power to turn the agents against one another until everyone was killed.

  “Michel, lock the door! We have to cut off all contact with the others if we don’t want to shoot them all!”

  Dorlange locked the door while shots continued ringing out throughout the house, often broken up by machine gun fire. The three of them looked at each other in bewilderment.

  “It could be an old enemy of my husband, Lucifer,” said Sylvie, “but I think Léo killed him with his own hands. That’s why I was leaning more toward Armand Logreux d’Albury, who was called ‘The Master of the Seven Lights.’ He, too, had psychic powers and could kill his enemies at a distance.”

  Then she saw that Dorlange was starting to sweat and seemed to be fighting against forces rising up inside of him. His eyes turned glassy. He slowly raised his weapon and
pointed it at his wife Erin. He fired and killed her with one bullet in the heart. She was so astonished that she did not make a move to protect herself. The enemy’s power was really limitless if it could push a loving, caring husband like Dorlange to murder his young wife in cold blood.

  Then he aimed his Browning at Sylvie. But she had understood the danger and had ducked behind a table to defend herself. He shot but the bullet lodged in the wood. He started walking around the table to get to his target. Sylvie snuck around the other side, keeping the table between them, but crouching down as she was, she moved more slowly than Michel and in no time he would be in position to shoot her.

  As a last resort and since no other solution seemed possible, she raised her weapon and shot. He was hit in the arm and dropped his gun, wobbling on his feet. The wound, however, was not serious enough to neutralize him completely. He looked around like a robot. He saw another gun lying on the table and with his good hand reached out for it. He kept staring, glassy-eyed, at Sylvie and brought the gun up slowly. The young lady saw no other solution: she put a bullet in his head to stop him for good.

  Erin and Dorlange, one of her best friends and the partner of her husband, were now lying at her feet, swimming in their own blood, which was pooling over the carpet.

  She stood there panting in the middle of the room, drained of all energy. Gradually the gunshots died down in the house. After a few minutes there was nothing but a mysterious, agonizing silence.

  Sylvie listened hard. She heard nothing. She went to the door, gripping her gun. She put her ear up to the wood and listened. Not a sound. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. In the next room a few corpses of CID agents were lying on the floor. Bullet holes pocked the walls. The furniture was riddled with lead and almost all the decorations were broken. She crossed the room and looked out the window.