“You told me, I think, that you had never been this way before?”
“Never, sir. No one ever comes.”
I had given him to understand that I was a geologist; but now:
“It must lead somewhere,” I said, “beyond the point to which we are going?”
“It leads to an old ruined monastery,” he replied—“but not interesting, and then a mile further on it joins the Alt-Eberstein road.”
He persistently avoided meeting my glance, but, nevertheless, I resigned myself to the next stage of the journey. As I dropped back on the cushions and the man returned to the wheel, I wondered why he was lying.
Because, on the finely powdered pine cone which coated the surface, clearly defined tire-tracks showed as far ahead as I could see.
And they had been made by the same brand of tire as that which shod the car I sat in!
Pursuing a typical Black Forest road, we mounted higher and higher. Sharp bends there were and dangerous corners overhanging tree-clad declivities. I had the map open on my knees; but every once in a while, where the surface was favourable, I peered ahead… and always those car tracks showed, speaking of a former but a recent journey!
I studied the chauffeur’s back. He was not tall, but he had a formidable shoulder span and the thick, fleshless neck of a fighter.
Had I walked into a trap?
The man’s behaviour when we arrived at the selected point—a mound marking the site of a Roman watch tower—must determine the problem, I argued.
A theory that he would pass the tower and endeavour to carry me on to some unknown destination was shortly disproved. Having passed not one pedestrian on the route, we presently negotiated a hairpin bend overhanging dizzy pine tops, and a sort of clearing in the woodland came into view not more than twenty yards ahead. There was a bay on the left of the road, occupied by a flat mound. Out of this mound, three tall, very slender trees started, their distant crests overtopping the forest below.
Here the Roman tower had stood.
We stopped.
I was out before the man had time to get to the door.
“This is the place,” said he, coming round and facing me on the roadside.
Here the surface was hard. I had lost sight of the car tracks below the hairpin bend; but:
“Quite right,” I replied. “Turn the car and wait for me.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I may be gone an hour or more.”
“Very good, sir.”
His behaviour was unexceptionable, if his glance remained evasive. I began to wonder. Perhaps the poor fellow, considering his odd commission at leisure, had come to the conclusion that I was mad!
I set out along the road. My map I had returned to my pocket, but certain essential notes relating to my route from this point to that which I had in mind were pencilled on a slip of paper which I carried in my cigarette case. And just before I reached the spot where my notes told me that there was a footpath, forest swept down and overhung the road; the surface was dusted with pine débris.
A bend concealed my movements from the chauffeur. Where a mountain path—indicated in the map—turned due west, there was a recess.
Sharply marked in this recess were impressions showing that a car had been turned here not very long before.
I pressed on and upward. Presently, where a fallen tree offered a seat, I paused for a rest. Glancing at my notes, I filled and lighted a pipe.
Thus far no sound had reached me from the road below. No sound reached me now. Was the chauffeur stealthily following me? Above and below were the curious blue shadows of the forest. But nothing stirred—bird, beast, or man. When presently I started to climb again, my scrambling footsteps broke a perfect silence.
Now the route followed a tiny stream, or rather, miniature cataract. It became a natural staircase. I could not be certain if the rocky footholds had been improved by man’s handiwork in primitive times, but the ascent was very easy although the gradient was steep.
A grotto which might have sheltered gnomes gave birth to this mountain torrent. My path lay across its brow. Here, going was not so good, for the ground was cumbered with undergrowth.
But I was near to my goal.
Thirty yards saw me on the brink of a sheer precipice—a gaunt crag jutting up out of the forest like a mummy’s bone from torn wrappings.
This was the Devil’s Elbow—so called in my map; and the only point, I believed, from which one might overlook the heights of Felsenweir. I halted, a little breathless. My pipe had gone out, and I relighted it before consulting a pocket compass which I had brought with me.
“A quarter north of northeast by east,” was my note.
The naked rock offered no facilities for comfortable observation. But since my purpose was to study the distant ruins at some length, I could not possibly stand upright.
Being now unpleasantly warm, I removed my coat, folded it to form a cushion, and, having the compass before me, lay prone, my elbows resting on the folded coat. I focussed the Zeiss glasses on a hazy blue crest lying northeast by east and a quarter north of the Devil’s Elbow.
Forest climbed its slopes densely ranked. Gaps there were, here and there, and naked rock jutting out. But the height was warmly clothed almost to its summit.
At one point—as I had calculated—no verdure protected the ruins from observation. I could see the upper walls, and they appeared to be in a fair state of preservation; I could see parts of the main building; and I could see very clearly the high keep, and a tower, like a minaret, which rose above it.
Felsenweir had been a mighty hold in days when marauding barons had ruled the Rhineland.
Carefully, I adjusted focusses. That curious blue haze which overhangs the Black Forest dispersed magically through ever lighter shades as I turned the threads. At last, I secured a sharp, clear view. Intervening miles were spanned by the lenses. I could count the embrasures on the upper battlements and pick out iron bars of a window high in the frowning keep.
Except that the place seemed to be in wonderfully good preservation, I was unable at first to detect anything confirming my theory—viz.: that Felsenweir was inhabited.
But, with intervals of rest, since the eye strain of close watching was considerable, I continued to study the distant ruin.
I had hoped for no more than a glimpse of a moving figure. And this was what I presently saw—a moving figure. But never can I forget the figure which came into view.…
The winged horror of the graveyard had turned me cold: I had had a desperate fight with myself to conquer panic on that occasion. The Voice in the night would disturb my dreams while memory remained. But the thing I saw now on the battlements of Felsenweir produced an almost sharper dread.
I saw it passing the embrasures of the upper battlements, and I counted, mentally, “One—Two—Three,” and so on. It reached and passed the last one visible to me, and I lowered the glasses.
So clear are recollections of this extraordinary spectacle I can even remember that I closed my eyes for a moment, in an endeavour to concentrate on facts—to arrange my ideas in some sort of harmony with what I had seen. I told myself that I lived in the Twentieth Century, not in the Tenth.
A tall man, encased from head to foot in black armour, and carrying a heavy mace, had slowly patrolled the walls of Felsenweir!…
My pipe lay near my hand. I stared down at it dazedly. It seemed to have lost significance—to belong to another age. I raised the glasses again. I became an impersonal intelligence, belonging to no generation, but merely a time-detached spectator, watching—watching.…
Heedless, now, of eye strain, I waited, for five, seven, ten minutes; and then:
A second man at arms crossed the battlements!
I think, as I watched him disappear, I was nearer to doubting my own sanity than I had ever been in my life. The giant bat. Had I really seen it? The Voice in the night. Had I really heard it? … “You have two days…”
Again I dropped the glasses, and:
“Am I mad?” I said aloud.
“Not a bit of it!” a strident voice replied.
Stiff as I was from crouching so long upon the rock, that voice had me on my feet in three seconds. I twisted around.
Not six feet away, an unlighted cigar hanging from his mouth, Aldous P. Kluster stood regarding me!
“Don’t get fussed,” he went on quietly. “I’ve got you placed at last. We’re together on this.”
For several moments I was dumbfounded. Suspect B had shown his hand! In spite of all my precautions, I had been tracked. We confronted one another in silence, then:
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, “and I can’t imagine where you have sprung from.”
“Easy answered.” Kluster rolled the unlighted cigar from one end of his flexible mouth to the other. “I mean we both belong in the same camp. And I didn’t spring from any place; I just walked up.”
“Walked up?”
“You said it. I came along beside the baby canyon. That was your route.”
“But I heard no sound.”
“I don’t make any sound when I don’t want to. Besides, you were busy.”
“Do you mean,” I demanded angrily, “that you have been following me?”
“No, sir. I got here first.”
“What!”
“You passed me by the little old cave back there. As soon as you were all set I crept up on you.”
Anger left me. The man’s imperturbable ill-humour was defeating. If, in spite of his surly friendliness, he “belonged” in the enemy camp, at least he was a comprehensible flesh-and-blood American citizen. Really, I hadn’t a scrap of evidence connecting him with the purpose of my journey, except his friendship with Mme. Yburg. After all, the Devil’s Elbow was open to the public; and amid all this phantasmagoria it was good to get to grips with sanity; therefore:
“At the moment, Mr. Kluster,” I said, “you definitely have the advantage. I don’t know how you got here, and I don’t know why you came here. I don’t even know who you are, except that your name is Kluster——”
As I spoke, he had been regarding me under drooping lids—lids which concealed a pair of lancet-keen gray eyes. Now, he interrupted, and:
“Wrong!” said he: “it isn’t! That’s the name in my passport, but Washington knows different.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“It’s easy. Your job’s covering the Felsenweir circus-newspaper commission, I guess. Mine’s the same—United States Secret Service. Name of Lonergan—John Lonergan. We might as well work together. I don’t want publicity at the wrong time.”
“But”—I was temporarily at a loss for words—“might I ask what Felsenweir has to do with the United States?”
“You might,” he returned sourly. “A newspaper man might ask any damn thing. Are you the Brian Woodville who went up the Rio Negro for the New York Bulletin?”
“I am.”
“Glad to know you better,” said this extraordinary individual. “How are you fixed from now on? We ought to pool notes.”
Perhaps, as coldly recorded, there would seem to be nothing in this interview on the Devil’s Elbow to have convinced any but a credulous fool that Mr. Aldous P. Kluster was what he now claimed to be. Yet, for my part, I never doubted him. I saw the man in a new light. Much that had been obscure became obvious. I experienced an intense curiosity; and:
“I am meeting Mme. Yburg for tea,” I replied truthfully, “and I am dining with M. Paul. Shall we meet somewhere later?”
“You bet we shall,” he replied. He glanced down at the Zeiss glasses. “Seen anything fresh?” he asked.
And, at the question, realizing that I stood on the brink of a precipice with a stranger—probably armed; how only one other knew of my presence there—the chauffeur, a suspicious character—I suffered a revulsion of sentiment.
“I’ve watched for hours,” Kluster (or Lonergan) went on. “Not from here. This look-out is a hundred per cent right. From three parts up the Mercuriusberg. I’ve seen the figures patrolling, but not a damn thing else.”
I laughed to hide embarrassment—silently cursing my cowardly qualms.
“I saw them to-day for the first time.”
He nodded, rolling the cigar between his lips.
“Didn’t know why you were coming here,” he murmured. “Plain enough now. I covered you early this morning. The gink driving the car fell for ten dollars and brought me here first! Listen. Mme. Yburg is clever. Play for safety. Paul beats me. But tell him nothing. Got it clear?”
“Perfectly.”
“I’ll go first, if it’s all the same to you, and send the car back. Don’t let the driver know you’re wise to him. And do your look-out from farther beyond where the sun doesn’t get your lenses. I don’t know what kind of things live in Felsenweir, but I guess they can see. Ten o’clock outside the Kurhaus. Some table left of the steps. I’ll look for you.”
When I joined Mme. Yburg at the Casino, her manner struck me as odd. She was charming as ever, conveying that sense of coolness, physical as well as mental, which was part and parcel of her personality. She wore green, with a little tight-fitting hat which for some reason set me thinking of gnomes and fairies—and so brought back a memory of the grotto under the Devil’s Elbow.
Her beautiful, calm eyes studied me with disturbing frankness, as the waiter brought tea.
“Has your busy day been successful?” she asked.
“Not entirely,” I replied. “And yours?”
“I had lunch on the Mercuriusberg,” she said, removing a handbag to make room for the tea tray. “Very much like a tripper, as you call it; but I adore the view.”
“It must be a familiar view?”
She smiled, and glanced aside as the band began to play again. Her long, psychic hands fascinated.
“My husband had a villa here. But we were rarely in Baden.”
“I’m sorry. Have I stirred up unhappy memories?”
“Not at all.” Her regard became fixed upon me once more. “My marriage was not entirely happy—what marriage is? And if I had any regrets, time has softened them. My husband has been dead for eleven years.”
“The war?” I suggested gently.
She nodded.
Upon my sympathy, my natural sympathy with any victim of that ghastly international tragedy, came hot-foot the most poisonous suspicions. She played cleverly. A beautiful widow bereaved by one’s own countrymen or allies—it might be, by one’s own hand—is a distractingly appealing figure. “Mme. Yburg is clever”—the strident voice seemed to ring in my ears. “Play for safety.…” Had she been to the Mercuriusberg?
A number of dancers took the floor, and:
“Shall we dance?” I asked.
Mme. Yburg, watching me with those calm eyes in which lay so old and so dearly bought a wisdom as well as a smile which irritated whilst it caressed, shook her head slightly.
“You don’t really want to, do you?”
“Frankly, I don’t. I should rather talk here.”
“So should I.”
As a result, we talked—about a hundred and one things. But never about the Black Forest and its secrets. Mme. Yburg knew the world almost as well as I knew it. My only advantage was in respect of inaccessible spots right off the map. Europe, Asia, Africa, America—she had travelled them all. Her knowledge of human character left me miles behind. She made me feel like an infant. Only when—out of pity, I think, for my masculine inferiority—she led me on to talk of the Sahara and of the unexplored country up the Rio Negro, did I recover my poise. At last:
“There are still a lot of jobs,” she said—she spoke vernacular English in a fascinating unfamiliar way—“which only a man can do.”
Her words awakened me to the passage of time. I had been absorbed in that most delightful task—talking about myself to an attractive and sympathetic woman. The band had ceased, and departed. I glanced at my wrist watch, and:
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Please forgive me! We have barely time to dress!”
“You are forgiven,” said Mme. Yburg. “You have made me forget.…”
It was all of a quarter to seven when I joined M. Paul in the bar. His resplendence was difficult to define: but he made me feel dowdy. He wore dinner kit which would have caused the editor of the Tailor and Cutter to scream with joy; but I was well turned out, too, for that matter. It was the personality of the man, plus his faultless clothes, which created the impression.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, and leaped from his stool, regardless of the criticism of other occupants of the bar. “It is you—on the very tick of time!”
“A couple of ticks behind, to be exact,” I murmured.
I had previously grappled with the problem of what it was about the Frenchman’s mode of speech which intrigued me. At this moment I grasped it. He used the latest slang with facility—but gave the terms a new quality. In other words, reported, much of his conversation would have read like that of an Englishman; heard, it was peculiarly different.
He swept aside my natural suggestion with dramatic scorn.
“No, no!” he cried. “To-night I am host!”
Host he was—and a number-one host he proved himself to be. He had ordered dinner at the Kurhaus—not, he explained, because he regarded the cuisine there as superior to that of the Regal, but “because it is always a change.”
I perceived, when we had taken our places at a reserved window table where we could both see and hear the excellent orchestra, that M. Paul was a gourmet of discrimination. He had ordered a dinner—upon which he invited my amateur comments—that displayed Teutonic cookery to its greatest advantage. This evidenced genius. So many people order a French meal in a German restaurant.
Any doubts I had had respecting my later appointment at the Kurhaus were speedily removed by M. Paul.
“I hope it does not mean loneliness for you,” he said. “But at half-past nine I must run away.”
It suited me very well and I said so.
“Good,” said M. Paul. “Then we can enjoy our dinner.”
He talked of many things, and entertainingly, but ere long, as I had anticipated, touched upon Mme. Yburg, to whom he referred as “your charming little friend.”
I took him up on that, knowing the expression, translated into the speaker’s tongue, to possess a subtly different meaning.
“Mme. Yburg is certainly charming,” I agreed; “and we are friends. But only friends. We met a week ago.”
His keen, handsome, actor’s face registered a momentary surprise which I could have sworn was real. But believing, as I did, that M. Paul and Mme. Yburg were allies in a thus far incomprehensible conspiracy, I challenged my own judgment. In the woman’s society, that afternoon, I had certainly forgotten, or had dismissed, those mediæval ideas which I had built up around her. Now, I asked myself if I was in the company of a dupe or of an accomplice.
Mme. Yburg was fascinating; I had experienced the thrall of her peculiar personality. Was this brilliant Frenchman, with his feverishly bright eyes and pale skin, a discarded fly? Had the spider bled him white and cast him away? And was the poor infatuated victim jealously searching the horizon for who should be his successor? Or… ?
“You surprise me, Mr. Woodville,” he said—and his sincerity one would have set beyond dispute. “I quite thought you were old friends.”
He looked at me in a new way, and began to talk about Paris.
I was nonplussed, and I fenced so badly in my subsequent attempts to draw the conversation into desired channels that I began to wonder if all my theories about M. Paul were wrong! A welcome turn was given to a very aimless conversation by my companion.
Gazing rapturously over my left shoulder:
“Ah, name of a good little man,” he murmured—“how exquisite! No! it cannot be that she is German.”
His racial prejudice made me laugh, but:
“Laugh, my friend, if you wish,” he said. “But the goddess Diana is reborn a mortal. See, here is our coffee. You may move your chair. Please select a cigar”—the head waiter had brought a case—“and share with me the joy of looking at a beautiful girl.”
I declined the cigar—I never smoke them—but lighted a cigarette and turned as M. Paul suggested. The object of his interest was unmistakable. She sat at a table not far removed, in the company of a plain, elderly lady than whom a more formidable duenna could not well be imagined.
Perhaps it was “written,” as the Moslems have it; but, at the moment of my turning, the girl was looking in our direction. I found myself meeting a grave regard from the most liquid, frank, yet searching blue eyes I had ever seen.
Their glance held me. I stared too long for courtesy. “Diana reborn” was not so extravagant as I had supposed. The subject of M. Paul’s poetry was deliciously tanned as one would imagine that divinity to have been. Her perfect arms and shoulders seemed to have absorbed the glow of sunlight. She was joyously, naïvely youthful, and her hair was a golden bronze such as surely must have crowned the Greek goddess.
No doubt my honest admiration was all too apparent. The girl flushed and glanced aside. I found myself focussed by a pair of black-rimmed spectacles worn by the duenna, which resembled dragon’s eyes.
Embarrassed by my own bad form, I turned to M. Paul. But he was dreamily gazing over my left shoulder. The orchestra outside in the gardens began to play, and:
“Was I not right?” he murmured. “They are playing the Fire Music. See! it calls to her—the grandeur of Germany’s only genius! She has a beautiful soul in a beautiful body!”
The orchestra in the gardens had ceased. Only distant strains from a band inside the Kurhaus and a mingling hum of conversation played like a sustained motif over rhythmic crunching of many leisurely feet when Mr. Lonergan joined me at a sheltered table. A waiter hovered in the background, and:
“Beer,” said Mr. Lonergan. “It’s surely a treat to be able to order beer and to get beer when you order it. Do you keep your private papers under lock and key in your apartment at the Regal?”
I stared at the speaker in the semi-darkness. To my shame, be it confessed, I had been somewhat distracted up to the time that he had so abruptly fired this question at me. I had been listening in memory to a laughing voice with a queer, deep note in it, and watching a tall, slender figure moving through the throng with easy, graceful, yet boyish steps. The waiter had been unable to tell me who she was—and I had not dared to follow, being already suspect by the guardian dragon. But of whom did she remind me—and why?
But now, I came sharply to my senses, and:
“I do,” said I. “Why do you ask?”
“Because somebody was exploring in there a while back.”
“What! in my room?”
“Surely.”
He rolled a very abbreviated cigar into a more comfortable position and paid for the beer which was now set before us. As the waiter moved away:
“It must have been the manservant,” I said quickly. “He has the key.”
“I’m talking sense,” Lonergan rejoined ill-humouredly. “The kite I mean had no key. He arrived and he quitted per balcony window.”
“You saw this! And you let him escape!”
“Suffering Moses!” Lonergan groaned. “How ever did you pull off the Brazil contract without brains!”
He drank deep whilst I watched him in growing anger. After all, the man was no more than a hotel acquaintance; and I should have resented such rudeness even from an old friend. As he set down his glass:
“Possibly, Mr. Lonergan,” I said smoothly, “you confuse bad manners with wit. I assure you that I find nothing funny in being called a fool by a comparative stranger.”
“Is that right?” he replied gloomily, and banged the table to attract the waiter’s attention. “Well, I’m not laughing. Here am I playing a lone hand in a murderous game, and I find out that one of the suspects is on my side of the border. He’s a man that’s done good work, and I look for intelligent coöperation——”
The waiter attended.
“Beer,” said Lonergan. “What do I find?” He shook his head gloomily. “Stupidity. But maybe I’m too hard on you. It’s a game that needs experience. Listen! You’re fussed. Forget it. If you and I are to get out of this pleasant spot alive, we have to be clever!”
As he spoke, somehow my anger changed to another emotion—in which wrath was present, certainly, but from which apprehension was not missing. Lonergan bent forward across the table, so that his face was lost in shadow.
“We’re covered at this very minute!” he said tensely. “You and I are up against the toughest proposition that either of us ever faced. Don’t look around. I have a plan. We’ll go back to the hotel.”
I reserved further comment, and some ten minutes later together we walked down the tree-lined arcade with its expensive little shops and on along Lichtenthaler Allee.
When in a comparative solitude my surly companion broke long silence:
“You put one wise move across,” he conceded grudgingly. “You figured out that the best spot to study Felsenweir was the Devil’s Elbow—and you covered your tracks from everybody but me. That’s exploring, I guess. I’m not so good on maps.”
My humour was nearly restored, and:
“For a man of your experience,” I said, “wasn’t it rather foolish to confuse me with the other party? My credentials are easily checked.”
“Maybe they are,” he returned. “But bigger men than you are in the enemy’s camp.”
His aggressive ill-humour was unique.
“If, as you say, we are covered,” I remarked, “isn’t it unwise of us to be seen together?”
“No, sir,” he replied. “I’ve baited a trap, and you’re part of the bait. We’ll go straight to your apartment, and when I’ve done talking maybe you’ll grasp the size of the proposition.”
But when, at the far end of the alcove, a spot distant from my shuttered windows, John Lonergan had talked solidly for half an hour, I was merely more bewildered than before.
“May I suggest beer?” said I.
“You can keep right on suggesting beer,” he replied, “while I stay in Europe. And you’ll never hear me say No.”
His place in the drama was clear enough. He had been detailed by the United States authorities to follow Mme. Yburg! (I now learned that she had recently returned from America.) Of his methods of “following” I had had personal experience; and he had adopted a similar system in the case of the mysterious German lady.
She had left the port of New York in a slow boat. Lonergan had “followed” in the Mauretania—sailing twenty-four hours later—and had been waiting at Cherbourg for her arrival!
During the overland journey he had succeeded in making her acquaintance.
“Get it clear,” said he, in his unmusical voice, “that we’d never have let her go if we’d had all the facts on the day she sailed.…”
The facts to which he referred were astounding. But in what way they were related to those other facts—known to me—and to the rumoured outbreak of vampirism in the Black Forest, was a complete mystery.
Briefly, it appeared that some two months earlier there had been a disastrous disturbance of radio in the American Continent. It had affected seven states; namely: New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Furthermore, it had operated in the North Atlantic over an area roughly contained within lat. 40-45, long. 65-70.
The newspapers had been “gagged,” I was given to understand. But during a period of three weeks or more the phenomenon had occurred at irregular intervals. It had consisted of a complete silencing of all radio communications.
Experts employed upon the job had finally traced the mysterious influence, narrowing down their inquiries to a point where it seemed certain that a wave of unknown character, which “dumbed” or diverted all others, was being sent out from the neighbourhood of Hartford. A process of combing followed; and the result was noteworthy.
Interference had ceased for a week or more. But on private, enclosed property belonging to an absent landlord, the searchers came upon a dismantled plant which taxed the experience of many specialists. In some respects it suggested that here had been a secret transmitting station. In other respects it was unlike—or had been unlike—any such station known to the investigators.
“Some of the stuff brought away is still under examination,” said Lonergan. “Latest reports don’t help. But how I came in was this: the kite the lay-out belonged to—his name don’t matter—had beat it to some destination unspecified. A local hotel register showed that a certain Mme. Yburg had been staying in that locality all over the time the funny business was going on. Inquiry proved that they had been acquainted.
“One agent was detailed to trace the missing man and his associates. I was given the job of covering the woman. She’d quitted. But I cut in on her at Cherbourg.”
“But have none of the American inquiries led to anything? She must have been in touch with others there as well as with the missing proprietor of the Hartford property.”
“She was,” Lonergan replied. “And they’ve been closely covered. It’s a mighty big thing of some sort. There are people high up socially in it. She butted into another bunch of ’em in Paris. When she alighted here I thought you were one of the circus.”
“And I thought you were! But who is Mme. Yburg? Have you any data bearing on her history?”
“No, sir.” He regarded me under drooping lids. “Have you?”
“Nothing—beyond a few hints she has dropped about herself.”
“I should quote that stock pretty low. And now—I’ve put my cards on the table. Where do you come in?”
Let me say at once that doubts of Lonergan’s bona fides still remained. There is Scots in my make-up somewhere, and I am capable of a sort of belated cautiousness. But, I argued, in any event I had nothing to gain by hiding what little I knew.
Without undue waste of words, therefore, I told him. The rumours current in London had not reached New York apparently. Lonergan listened with a Sioux-like immobility; but I could see that he was keenly interested all the same.
When I spoke of the great bat alighting in the cemetery, he flicked his eyes, but otherwise gave no sign of incredulity. My later meeting with Mme. Yburg he seemed to regard as important, for:
“How was she dressed?” he snapped suddenly.
The inquiry, breaking his long silence, came with something of the effect of a pistol shot. I told him—for I remembered every detail very clearly. My conversation with Mme. Yburg I also reported, and:
“I could have sworn you had a date with her that time,” he said. “I followed you for half a mile and then gave it up!”
“Good Lord! I thought someone was following me!”
“That so?” said Lonergan gloomily. “Bad work. Have you kept the caporal you picked up?”
“Yes.”
“Mme. Yburg smokes——”
“Egyptians. Always.”
“Ah! Did you see anything of Paul?”
“He passed me on my way up! He was in a car.”
“Ah! I lost him for two hours. But I got the pair of ’em along to a party and listened in. They gave nothing away.” He was silent for a while, then:
“Felsenweir is some kind of headquarters. I made my mind up on that point a week ago.”
“But a headquarters of what?” I asked helplessly. “Of vampires?”
He shot one of his keen glances along the room in the direction of the shuttered window.
“It wouldn’t be surprising—with men in armour on the walls!”
I could not fail to note a subtle change in the speaker’s voice—a note of humility wholly unfamiliar. And now he fixed his eyes upon me, lids fully raised, with an expression almost of pleading.
“Is that your story, complete?” he asked. “Because if it is, you’re lucky!”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean, sir, that even a giant bat maybe can be accounted for; men in armour the same. But if you had heard a Voice in the night, calling you by name, when not a living soul was near——”
“Stop!” I jumped up. “I have heard it!”
“What!”
Lonergan was on his feet, facing me.
“I have been given two days!” I cried excitedly.
The knowledge that I was not alone in my nightly terrors, that another had experienced what I had experienced, that, in short, I was sane, brought a mental relief and a flood of gratitude which I found no word to express.
“Suffering Moses!” Lonergan dropped back in his chair, still staring at me. “My father, sir, was a pious man and a minister. If he never approved of anything I did before, I’ll say he’ll approve of what I do now.”
He clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and:
“Thank God!” he whispered fervently.
That strange, short prayer completed, John Lonergan became himself again.
“Never mind the details,” he said. “The plain fact’s enough, and it’s Balm of Gilead. There’s work for both of us. Just step right across to the table and I’ll show you something.”
We moved out of the alcove and went to the big writing table. From a pocket of his dinner jacket, Lonergan drew out a fat wallet. And from the wallet he selected three photographic prints which he laid side by side on the blotting pad.
“I wasn’t working from so good a look-out as you,” he said. “There’s a tree branch in the way. But if these aren’t pictures of a man in armour, tell me what they are. I travel a telescopic camera—and it can’t lie!”
With interest and ever-growing amazement I examined the prints. They represented the figure of just such a grotesque man at arms as I had seen on the walls of Felsenweir. The legs of the figure were concealed in each case. But the head and trunk showed in sharp detail. The quality of the armour intrigued me. It was unlike that of any period which I knew. And the odd, square helm worn by this weird patrol was equally unusual. One gleaming arm, upraised, held a heavy mace.
But, even whilst I studied these extraordinary pictures, I was listening. I thought I had detected a faint sound on the balcony.
I heard some few distant footsteps, voices, and the ripple of the Oos; but nothing else.
“Well?”
“I have never seen armour like it.”
“Did you ever see any kind of armour walking?”
“Only at a pageant, perhaps, with an actor inside it.”
“And who do you suppose was inside that?”
I looked up at him, over my shoulder.
Lonergan bent forward and rested a finger on one of the prints.
“That wall,” said he, “is ten feet from there to there. I’ve figured it out—never mind how. Now, just see where the helmet comes.” He doubled his long thumb to form a ruler. “I’m going to tell you, Mr. Woodville, that the man inside this suit must have been seven feet high!”
“Good God! You’re right!”
Convinced against my will, I stared harder than ever. Seven-foot men at arms! Giant bats! Was it all some extravagant illusion? An insane practical joke? Small wonder that Felsenweir had a bad reputation!
“I’ve been moving heaven and earth,” Lonergan went on, “to get a permit to view those ruins. But there’s some big influence working against me.”
“Nobody in these parts,” said I, “will go near the place—not within a mile—after dusk.”
“Most of ’em won’t even talk about it,” he growled.
“Oh, have you found that? My experience has been similar.”
Lonergan moved left of the table, standing with his back to the shuttered window and facing in my direction.
“And now,” said he, “I’m going to show you something still more surprising. I’ll have to go to my apartment. But I sha’n’t be gone many minutes. Are your notes up to date?”
“Fairly. I have some to add.”
“What I’ve told you is private, yet. Wait right here.”
Whereupon he crossed the room and went out.
I listened intently in the silence which followed the closing of the door. The hour was growing late—for Baden. Outside, everything was very still. Only the silvery music of the little stream was audible.
Nothing reached my ears to confirm an uneasy suspicion that I was spied upon.
Nevertheless, I was aware of a sense of tension. Something seemed to be closing in around me: I began, in the stillness of the night, to regard my mission from a new and even more unpleasant angle.…
I started.
Surely a faint sound!
Was there someone—something—outside?
Unable to put up with this nervous doubt any longer, I pushed my chair back, and was on the point of standing up to investigate, when a sharp, low cry—a cry of pain—came from immediately outside the shutters.
I sprang up, as:
“Go easy!” said a strident voice—Lonergan’s! “The time to break that hold was a second before you started! Mr. Woodville! Raise your shutters!”
But I was already hauling on the cords with all my might. And, as the centre shutter shot up, in from the balcony marched Lonergan, shoeless, his feet clad in silk socks—pushing before him a captive whose arms were oddly twisted behind him.
Light fell on the stranger’s face, as he turned to glare at his captor, and:
“Suffering Moses!” said Lonergan, and released the prisoner’s arms.
It was M. Paul!
“Thanks for your hospitality, my friends!” said M. Paul.
He threw his head back and confronted us with a scornful smile.
I exchanged glances with Lonergan. That remarkable man, although he had discarded his footwear, had retained his cigar, and:
“You’ve got a gun packed,” he growled. “I can see the bulge from here. Entertain M. Paul while I go get my shoes. I parked ’em under a rosebush.”
He turned, walked out on to the balcony, and silently disappeared. I met the prisoner’s unflinching stare, and:
“Won’t you sit down, M. Paul?” I said, speaking in French—for no reason that I can assign other than that the defiant figure, with folded arms, was so gallant and so Gallic.
“I must refuse. I accept no favours from such enemies.”
“I have never been your enemy,” I replied, without any echo of his high challenge. “I was your guest to-night. If you can explain why you were eavesdropping outside my apartment, we shall continue to be friends.”
There are nuances in French beyond the compass of our grand but downright language. I have indicated what I said; but in the tongue of M. Paul I said it with infinite delicacy.
He was puzzled. So much was evident.
“You have a perfect Paris accent,” he replied—by which equivocal compliment I knew he was playing for time.
“The tone of the interview,” said I, “rather rests upon yourself.”
“I cannot agree. I am but one. You are many.”
My stare of bewilderment was so honest that its naïveté broke through the armour of M. Paul’s distrust. A familiar expression fled across his pale, handsome face. So he had looked at the Kurhaus when I had assured him that my acquaintance with Mme. Yburg was only a week old.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Mr. Lonergan and myself make two to one, certainly. But I cannot admit two to be many.”
“What is this?”
M. Paul dropped his hands and bent forward, watching me.
“We stand alone. You represent the many.”
Whereupon, throwing up his palms and his eyes in a simultaneous gesture:
“Mon Dieu!” M. Paul exclaimed; adding, in English: “How damn silly I am!”
At which moment Lonergan reëntered, wearing his shoes; and:
“I guess I’m damn silly, too,” he said. “Listen, Woodville—I’ve been checking up on you, out there. Don’t get upstage. You weren’t dead sure of me! My French is practicable but not in the same class as yours. I followed what you said. Have you got a line on the facts?”
“No,” I replied angrily.
“Suffering Moses! Isn’t it plain that what you thought of me, and I thought of you, M. Paul here was thinking about both of us!”
“I have been a damn fool!” the Frenchman exclaimed.
“So have I,” said Lonergan sadly. “But Woodville is the damnedest fool of the bunch. He hasn’t got it now!”
“Oh, but yes—certainly!” cried M. Paul, and turned to me eagerly. “It is plain, my dear Mr. Woodville, is it not? You two gentlemen are engaged upon the same matter as myself! You are watching Mme. Yburg and Felsenweir? So am I! … And like a fool I think you two are her lovers or her accomplices! Perhaps both.”
“Got it, now?” Lonergan growled. “When I figure out the time I’ve wasted covering you, Woodville, and you, M. Paul, I guess I haven’t the pluck to log.”
“But——” I broke in.
“One fool at a time,” he said surlily. “I was saying something.” He turned again to Paul, and: “My name’s known to you?” he went on. “Mr. Woodville, here, was good enough to mention it. I’m Lonergan. United States special commissioner.”
“But, name of a little dog!” cried Paul. “I know! I know! You are John Lonergan? When I heard the name spoken, I knew! It was hearing ‘Mr. Lonergan’ that told me what a fool I am. We have corresponded! And about this very matter!”
“What!” said Lonergan.
“You exchanged letters with me, in Paris, respecting Mme. Yburg—two weeks ago! We had been advised, at the Service, and it was I who replied to you! We should have met, but you left suddenly——”
Lonergan removed his stumpy cigar. It was an unusual gesture. His drooping lids were fully raised. He stared at the speaker, and:
“Name of Gaston Max?” he asked.
Our uninvited guest bowed, showing a row of perfect teeth. Lonergan turned to me.
“Woodville,” said he, “meet Gaston Max of the Paris Service de Sûreté! Then, if you’d step outside and kick me, I should take it kindly.”
Conversation between Lonergan and Gaston Max became technical. I gathered that the Frenchman enjoyed an international reputation; but since criminology, hitherto, had been out of my line, the name of Gaston Max had not reached me. His pre-eminence in his own trade was evident, however.
Lonergan treated him with definite respect.
So much did I feel out of the running, that presently:
“Gentlemen,” I interrupted, “as a mere amateur I should like to intrude a remark. So far, we have none of us been very wise. I have two suggestions to make.”
“Cough ’em up,” said Lonergan.
“Beer.”
“That motion’s carried,” he declared.
I rang for a waiter, and:
“As an interested party,” I went on, “my second suggestion is this: Will M. Max be good enough to inform us in what way happenings in the Black Forest concern the Service de Sûreté?”
“But my dear Mr. Woodville,” Max cried, “I am most remiss! My apologies! I am your guest—although the invitation nearly strangled me!” He turned again to Lonergan. “I will speak to you later about that trick.”
Lonergan discarded half an inch of cigar, and from his waistcoat pocket took a new one—the first I had ever seen him use.
“Matter of timing,” he growled.
Came a rap on the door and a waiter appeared—the same who had advised me to drop my inquiries respecting a giant bat seen in the neighbourhood.
I gave the necessary order; and, as the waiter withdrew and we heard the outer door close:
“No!” Max exclaimed. “I don’t like that man! I think, from the way he looked at us, he knows something!”
“I’m sure he does,” I replied. “Presently, I will tell you why I am sure.”
It struck me forcibly what an odd trio we were as we awaited that suspected man’s return: Lonergan, gaunt, gray-haired and imperturbable; Gaston Max, darkly handsome, and radiating a passionate energy and high spirits; and I, very brown-faced, I suppose, in contrast to my sallow companions, and no doubt very ordinary looking by comparison with either.
Both the American and the Frenchman would have claimed second glances; whereas one can meet a dozen Brian Woodvilles any fine morning in a walk from the Mall through St. James’s to Bond Street.
When, presently, the ordered refreshments arrived, it was another waiter who brought them! Exchanging nods with Lonergan I made an inquiry, and:
“Your waiter has just gone off duty, sir,” I was told. “Thank you. Good-night, sir.”
As the door closed, Lonergan lighted his new cigar, and:
“That first kite with the squint in his eye has gone to make a report,” he declared. “At noon to-day, where I lunched, he was three tables away, covering me!”
In an atmosphere of growing tension almost physically to be felt, Gaston Max told his story. It served, amongst other things, to illustrate how big a part chance—or call it Fate if you prefer—plays in all our lives.
It was, then, the presence of the American agent in Paris, and the nature of his correspondence with the French police authorities, which had given the Service de Sûreté their first clue to a mystery six months old! Expressing himself unwilling to call at headquarters or to receive a representative, Lonergan had asked for any information held by the Service relative to Mme. Yburg.
“Name of a good little man,” Max exclaimed, “how puzzled we were by your invisibility!”
“Had my reasons,” Lonergan growled.
But when, in a telephone conversation, the facts about the radio disturbance in New England came into Max’s possession, the link was established.
They held no dossier Yburg in Paris; they had never heard of Madame. But, following the conversation with Lonergan, Gaston Max immediately communicated with the police at Argelès in the Pyrenees and asked a certain question.
“While I am awaiting the result,” said Max, “you disappear! So also does Mme. Yburg!”
“I was covering her.”
“So were we!” cried Max—“acting on your information. We knew she had gone to Germany. But none of my fools knew what had become of you! And the one in whom I had most faith described you as a dark man, fresh-colored, with a pointed beard!”
“That’s right,” Lonergan agreed, rolling his cigar reflectively. “I introduced myself to Mme. Yburg! That’s why I thought I was safe.”
But, at this, silently as I had listened hitherto, I burst in.
“You introduced yourself!” I exclaimed. “Please make this clear. Because, frankly, I’m quite out of my depth.”
“So, also, am I,” Max declared.
“Suffering Moses!” said Lonergan. “I made the acquaintance of Mme. Yburg on the journey from Cherbourg to Paris as a dark man with a pointed beard and a moustache; member of an old Southern family. Got that clear? Seeing she wasn’t staying in Paris for long, I got to know where she was heading for. Then I told her that my maternal uncle, name of Aldous P. Kluster, was going the same way. Said I was leaving but that he’d call up and pay his compliments. He did. He travelled along with her to Baden-Baden. Here he is!”
The eloquent face of Gaston Max was a study. But, when he spoke, his question surprised me.
“How many passports do you use?” he asked.
“Five. Open that other bottle.”
But, whilst I did as he suggested, I was watching Gaston Max. And that master sleuth was watching John Lonergan. Finally:
“You got me beat!” he declared.
And the accent with which he pronounced the words, spoken by a Frenchman, astounded me. Even Lonergan’s calm was disturbed.
“No wonder,” Max went on in his usual manner, “that you slip through our fingers in Paris! No wonder I make a damn fool of myself in Baden! My congratulations, monsieur! America employs clever men!”
“Sir,” Lonergan replied, “I have to hand back the compliment to France. That Lower East Side stuff would pass on Mott Street!”
Gaston Max, who was, as now began to dawn upon me, France’s star detective, told his singular story whilst I taxed my ingenuity in vain. I tried to discover a discrepancy in the appearance of Lonergan which might help me to decide if the man I knew were the real man or if the pictures of John Lonergan in propria persona (attached, presumably, to one of his five passports) would prove to be totally unfamiliar.
Rather more than six months earlier, I learned, the little mountain township of Bagnères-dès-Barèges in the Hautes Pyrénées had suffered a visitation unparalleled in French history. Of the total population only thirty-five remained.
“These owe their lives,” Max explained, “to the fact that on this fatal night they were not at home. Some were in the higher mountains above Bagnères, some were tending cattle, some calling upon friends who lived in remote places. But of living creatures actually within the town, from the High Bridge to the Valley Gate, only seven survived!”
“Stop a minute,” Lonergan interrupted. “You said ‘living creatures’?”
“I did.”
“Meaning cats, rats, canaries, and such?”
“But certainly! Even some of the insects!”
“Suffering Moses! We had the story back home. I remember the headlines: ‘Whole town struck dead by lightning!’ Go right ahead.”
“One moment!” said I, interrupting Max in the act of raising a clenched fist in characteristic forensic gesture. “We also had the story in London, I believe, although I was abroad at the time. But surely it was determined by meteorological experts that, owing to the peculiar setting of Bagnères-dès-Barèges, a tremendous electrical discharge had brought about the tragedy?”
“But certainly!” Max agreed again. “What else could one say? Of those witnesses who remained, no two were in accord as to the circumstances. True, there was thunder in the air. It seemed, at sunset, that a storm brewed. Black clouds hung over the mountains. Radio and telegraphic communication were disturbed. This we learned later. Then, at nine o’clock, when most of those simple folk were in bed, it came——”
“What came?” Lonergan asked.
“Death came!”
“That’s agreed,” the ill-humoured voice went on. “But you spoke of witnesses. What did they see? What did they hear?”
Gaston Max turned to me smilingly. He shrugged his shoulders.
“He is difficult, this one,” he said—“my American confrère! I should prefer, Mr. Lonergan, to tell the story in my own way. But I will step aside and answer your questions. My portfolio—I have nine hundred pages of notes on the Bagnères mystery—is in my room. From memory, there was a vague booming sound—according to two witnesses. According to others, there was no sound at all. According to five or six, there was a flickering light, resembling a distant storm, and it played over the little valley in which the town lies. Three or four, equally well placed, failed to see such a light. But when those wanderers returned to their homes, gentlemen, they found tombs! … Nothing lived in Bagnères-dès-Barèges!”
“You said there were seven survivors,” Lonergan complained.
The artist in Gaston Max—and I began to realize that the man was essentially an artist—rose in revolt. Leaping from his chair, he strode to the far end of the apartment. For a while he stood there, whilst Lonergan rolled his cigar reflectively between thin lips. But when Max turned he was smiling again.
“I said so, yes!” he admitted. “Notes are unnecessary. I will describe these seven.”
He faced us, nine paces away.
“First—because she was so curious, I mention her first—there was a very old cow in an ancient stone byre! Second, third, and fourth: three deaf-mutes. Fifth, an aged man who lived in a cellar the walls of which dated back to Roman times. Sixth, a woman about to give birth to a child. Seventh, the child!”
“Quick!” Lonergan was on his feet. “Were there other cattle in that byre?”
“No.”
“Were the deaf-mutes together, separated, or in the company of other people?”
“One was alone. Two were together with a woman. The woman died.”
“The old man in the cellar?”
“He was alone.”
“The mother?”
“A midwife was with her in the room. Her husband and her sister were in the house. Midwife, husband, and sister died.” …
There was a moment of silence.
“It seems like nothing could cover those facts,” Lonergan declared.
“So all the science of France proclaimed,” Max answered. “The Service had not been called in. It did not appear to be their province. Until, one day, you wrote to us! It was my department, and I dealt with you. When I heard of the silencing of radio in America, I said to myself: ‘Of what does this remind me?’ When you asked for the history of Mme. Yburg, I said, ‘This name is new to me.’ But, Mr. Lonergan, you had sown the seed! Presently, so slowly, a possible link suggested itself. I wired to the prefect of the arrondissement of Argelès in the Hautes Pyrénées!”
“Well!” said I—since Lonergan remained silent.
“He presently replied to my question.… My question was: ‘Did one, Mme. Yburg, visit Bagnères-dès-Barèges at or about the time of the catastrophe?’ He replied: ‘A Mme. Yburg was staying at the sign of the Coq d’Or during that week. She disappeared on the night of the catastrophe’!”
Following a silence of stupefaction—I can only describe it so:
“How did you join up with Madame?” Lonergan asked.
“I made her acquaintance here, in the hotel,” Max replied. “Her associates seemed to be—first, yourself; second, Mr. Woodville! I was naturally suspicious of Aldous P. Kluster—knowing that Mme. Yburg had American interests. Also, Mr. Woodville”—he turned to me—“I looked upon you as a victim of this very fascinating woman.”
“It’s understandable,” I admitted. “I returned the compliment!”
Gaston Max shrugged, thrust a hand into his pocket, and:
“Furies!” he exclaimed. “I forgot my cigarette case!”
One of those sudden ideas which, regrettably, come to me so rarely came now. I crossed to the writing table, opened a drawer, and took out the caporal which I had placed there. I offered it to Max.
“Is this what you’re looking for?”
He accepted it, watching me wonderingly. He examined it, and:
“Suffering Moses!” Lonergan growled. “I begin to have hopes for you, Woodville!”
“I rather think,” I went on, “that you may have dropped this cigarette——”
“Mon Dieu!” He stared hard into my eyes. “I too am thinking! And, yes! I know! At the cemetery gate?”
“Correct.”
And, as he spoke, his expression changed. It was as though a mask had been slipped aside. I found myself looking into hunted eyes… those same eyes which had stared out in my direction from a passing car on the previous night.
Gaston Max laid his hand upon my shoulder.
“My friend,” he said, “it is necessary that I should bring my story up to date.”
He crossed to an armchair and dropped into it, looking from Lonergan to me; then:
“Last night,” he continued, “I followed Mme. Yburg. She left the hotel after dinner, and I was curious about her movements. Bear in mind, gentlemen, that I believed my incognito to be unsuspected. I traced her… and she went to the cemetery on the hill!”
“We know she did,” Lonergan interrupted. “Woodville met her coming away. I was covering you earlier on, but you handed me a rubber pass-out. What happened?”
Max frowned. The artist beneath that cloak of savoir-vivre which the investigator wore resented these intrusions; but:
“You have interrupted me so often, my friend,” he went on smilingly, “that I am going to take the liberty of interrupting myself! I came to Baden-Baden expecting to find Mme. Yburg in touch with other members of a dangerous organization which undoubtedly exists. I found her to be in touch with nobody but yourself and Mr. Woodville! You”—he bowed to Lonergan—“occupied rooms which were not accessible; but you”—turning to me—“were vulnerable.”
He paused, considered the cigarette which I had given him, placed it in an ash tray, and accepted one from my case. As he struck a match:
“I came to this apartment yesterday,” he continued, “while you were away. I was disturbed by the manservant. I hid in a wardrobe. I was trapped! When the man had gone (he came to close the sun shutters) I considered these. I made it possible for them to be raised from outside. Then I departed.”
“But you returned later last night?” I suggested.
“I did. And, clumsily, I awakened you. I hid under a bush, and pretended to be the watchman! The real watchman nearly caught me! Again, to-night, I observed your meeting, gentlemen, at the Kurhaus.”
“Saw you,” Lonergan drawled. “I tipped Woodville we were covered. That’s how I roped you in later. But, listen—it’s urgent—were you here earlier in the evening?”
“I was not.”
Lonergan stared across at me.
“Somebody was,” said he simply. “We’re getting down to hard facts. And now, Mr. Max, maybe I’ve broken up your story quite a bit; but we come back to the point where you tracked Mme. Yburg to the lay-out and dropped a cigarette. Excuse my interruptions, and go on from there.”
“I will.”
Max stood up.
“She had entered the cemetery. She held a key of the gate. I heard the gate close behind her. Then I crept forward. Three or four minutes had elapsed. Inside the cemetery all was silent. No sound of footsteps. In the bright moonlight I could see right along a broad path which stretched from the point where I stood to the farther wall. I tried the gate. It was locked.
“Mme. Yburg—you follow?—had locked herself in among the graves!
“The strangeness of this brought me to pause. Why had she locked that gate behind her? There are horrible stories abroad, you understand, concerning the Black Forest, and Mme. Yburg is a woman of mystery—perhaps the high priestess of some new religion of destruction.
“I think best when I smoke. You say it would have been unwise to strike a match; but this point I had not considered when, almost without knowing, I took out my cigarette case. I withdrew a caporal.…”
He paused dramatically, then:
“As I did so,” he went on, lowering his tone, “a Voice called on me by name! This Voice, coming from nowhere, from no one, chilled my blood. I do not remember dropping the cigarette, but I know, now, that I must have done so.
“ ‘Gaston Max,’ the Voice said—right at my elbow in the empty road!—‘return to Paris! You have two days!’ ”
He stared from face to face, expecting incredulity—a clever man taxed beyond the limits of his experience—when:
“We’ve made the grade together,” Lonergan growled. “We’ve all got the same time!”
I can never forget those changing expressions which passed across the expressive features of Gaston Max whilst, as briefly as possible, I told him the story of the Voice… that Voice which had also spoken to me and to Lonergan. The fact that he was not alone with this bodiless terror seemed to remove a weight of years from him. As I concluded:
“It’s eased your mind some to know,” Lonergan said, “Woodville and I both sympathize. But except that we’re all together, I can’t see that it helps on the case a lot.”
“I disagree!” Max cried. “It proves that the supernatural—for so we must call it—works to plan, as does the normal. If this is so, we may upset those plans!”
“Don’t follow,” Lonergan declared.
“But it is plain!” the Frenchman exclaimed impatiently. “There is reason behind this! And reason can work against reason. If it is not so—why have we all two days?”
“Suffering Moses!” Lonergan’s tones were even less musical than usual. “I’ve been thinking cross-eyed! Let’s sort out the facts. The Voice first spoke to me at 2 A.M., precisely, last Sunday morning. It gave me four days to quit. Two A.M. on Monday it gave me three.”