The Day the World Ended Read online

  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!

  CHAPTER VII - GASTON MAX’S STORY

  1

  ‘‘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 tonight. 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 naivete 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 reentered, 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, “/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 Surete! Then, if you’d step outside and kick me, I should take it kindly.”

  2

  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 preeminence 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 inter
rupted, “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 Surete?”

  “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 today, where I lunched, he was three tables away, covering me!”

  3

  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 Surete 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 Argeles 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!”

  4

  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 Bagneres-des-Bareges in the Hautes Pyrenees 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 Bagneres, 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 Bagneres-des-Bareges, 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 confrere! 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 Bagneres 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 Bagneres-des-Bareges!”

  “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 Argeles in the Hautes Pyrenees!” “Well!” said I—since Lonergan remained silent. “He presently replied to my question. . . . My question was: ‘Did one, Mme. Yburg, visit Bagneres-des-Bareges 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’!”