“You’re hoping to persuade him to travel to the Ardèche, then?” I queried.
“The word I used,” she pointed out, with a little smile, “was convinced.”
“I’m delighted by your conviction, Madame,” I said, permitting myself a hint of over irony. “I’ve never been to the Ardèche.”
Her blue eyes bored into mine like gimlets. “Do you go everywhere with Monsieur Dupin nowadays?” she asked.
“Everywhere,” I assured her.
This time, she nodded more conspicuously—and much more dubiously. “I suppose we shall get to know one another better, then,” she said.
“I hope so,” I said, mildly. “If I am to be allowed to accept your invitation too, might I enquire as to the nature of the urgent problem with which you intend to confront him? You mentioned strange legends—which have become a particular fascination of Dupin’s of late, and mine too.”
“That’s a peripheral mater,” she said, “and rather conventional, I fear. The house that my husband inherited from his father shortly after our marriage—in which we took up residence almost immediately—is situated at the bottom of a mountain. The mountain is meager by comparison with the larger peaks of the Central Massif, which lie to the west on the other side of it, and it has a rounded top that soothes its outline, but it seems impressive enough when viewed from the valley floor. It is known in the valley as Mont Dragon, because local folklore says that there is a dragon sleeping underneath it, whose breathing can be heard and felt every spring, when it always comes close to waking—but fortunately never quite does. The mountain is part of a range of long-extinct volcanoes, however, and the prolonged geological effects of fire and water have left it honeycombed with caves. When the winter ice that forms in the outer layers of the mountain soil and the superficial fissures of the rock breaks down, and the melt-water begins to drain away, it generates sounds that reach the surface as muted hisses and groans. Occasionally, there are slight earth-tremors. There’s nothing supernatural about it, although I must confess that the phenomena began early this year, and seem more striking than usual—circumstances that seem to have added to an anxiety that seems to have gripped the whole valley, and prompted me to an action that I have contemplated several times before but never undertaken.”
“It must be an interesting location for a geologist,” I remarked, “Your husband spends a good deal of time in the caves, I imagine.”
She hesitated, but then decided that she might as well continue, given that Dupin would presumably tell me anyway, once she had confided in him.
“Far too much, in my opinion,” she confessed, “and he spends all winter fretting, waiting for the thaw in order to gain access again. It’s become something of an obsession, reaching an unprecedented fever pitch in the last two weeks. He has made discoveries there—indeed, he told me long before we married, swearing me to secrecy from the other members of my father’s coterie, that he had first gone into the caves as a child, while his father was away at war, and found something wonderful there, about which he was anxious to send a mémoire one day to the Académie—but nearly thirty years have gone by since he told me that, and no mémoire has been forthcoming. He keeps on saying that there must be far more to find, which he would find, if he only had a little more time—but I know little more now about what it was he found as a boy than I did when he first confided that news to me, even though I have seen the specimens he has brought out. Whenever I ask him about what still remains inside the mountain, he merely mumbles that it is immovable, and that he has not yet discovered the whole of it. I have often had to fight a powerful temptation to go into the caves to see for myself, in spite of the danger.”
I did not imagine that she meant danger from the dragon, or any other phantom of folklore. She seemed an eminently commonsensical person, sufficiently well-controlled to suppress the agitation that she must be feeling. She seemed glad of an opportunity to talk—and perhaps glad, too, that she had an opportunity to talk to someone else before renewing an old acquaintance with Dupin that would inevitably stir up echoes. I wondered how much she had confided to Madame Lacuzon—and how much Madame Lacuzon had confided to her.
I filled the lady’s wine-glass again. She took a long sip, and relaxed slightly.
“I can understand why your patience has worn thin,” I observed.
Her lips formed a wry curve that I could not honestly describe as a smile.
“I have often suggested to my husband that we should invite people that we had known in Paris to visit us—especially Auguste,” she remarked, distantly. “He always agrees in principle, but always puts it off.”
“But this time,” I said, probing gently, “he finally agreed?”
“Yes,” she said. “He agreed.”
I had the strong impression that her husband had been given little choice—that the agreement had been forced. I also took the inference that the lady had not paused after obtaining that agreement, lest it be rescinded. Otherwise, she would surely have written to notify us of her arrival...unless, of course, she was also anxious that Dupin, too, might be inclined to procrastination, if given an opportunity to object.
“Perhaps I have said too much,” the lady suddenly remarked. “I beg you to let me put this matter to Auguste in my own way, in my own time.”
“Of course,” I said.
I heard the front door open then, as if one cue. I knew that it was Dupin; he was the only person in the world who was entitled to do so without ringing. The Bihans always used the back door, as befitted the dutiful servants they took an altogether un-post-Revolutionary pride in being.
I gathered myself together in anticipation of Dupin’s surprise, and my enjoyment thereof...and, of course, of the further revelations that were still to come.
CHAPTER TWO
DUPIN SURPRISED
By 1847 I had already seen Auguste Dupin confronted with some exceedingly strange things—things far stranger than I had once been able to imagine—without flinching, or even condescending to seem surprised. I had never, in all the years of our acquaintance, seen him look “thunderstruck” or “flabbergasted”—but those were the two words than came into my mind when I saw his eyes settle upon Julie Guérande as he opened the door of my sitting room that evening.
Perhaps I am exaggerating, and my own anticipation had added more than its fair measure to what I saw—briefly, it had to be admitted—but I remain convinced of the impression. Dupin was more disconcerted by seeing that old acquaintance of his student days than he had been when he had looked through a window between the dimensions and had seen the Crawling Chaos on the threshold of invading our sector of the Universe.
As I said, the effect was brief. It only took a few seconds for his gaze to register the sight, take account of the shock and repress the overt reaction of astonishment. Then he glanced in another direction—toward the sleeping girl—for a slightly longer interval, collecting himself all the while.
Finally, he bowed politely, and said: “I see that we have visitors. Forgive my startlement, Madame Guérande—I’m a little tired, having spent the last three hours racking my brains over a strange puzzle.”
“How is Lucien?” the lady inquired. “I haven’t seen him since the day when I last saw you, at the Messageries—although news of his good fortune has reached
