The Affair of the Bassin Les Hivers

V

Una Persson’s car had been seen heading up the Boulevard Voltaire towards the Boulevard du Temple, carrying at least two passengers, so it was for the Marais that the Policemen headed in their own Citroen ECXVI, perhaps the fastest car in France, powered by three enormous super-charged batteries. The sleek, black machine had them outside the Cirque d’Hiver within minutes, but from there they had to run towards the canal and down the steps to the great basin by now, at twilight, alive with dancing neon and neurotic music. There at last Lapointe caught a glimpse of his quarry and pointed.

Zenith, as was appropriate, wore white tie and tails, carrying a slender silver-tipped ebony cane, an astonishing sight to LeBec who had never seen him thus. “My God, we are pursuing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers!” joked Lapointe’s assistant.

The Commissaire found no humour in this. “This could be a dangerous business, lad. There was never any profit in making that man one’s enemy. He was once the most dangerous thief in Europe and Europe is lucky that he gave his word to an old friend to forsake his life of crime or he would still be causing us considerable grief!”

Suitably chastened LeBec panted. “What is he? Some kind of vampire?”

“Only in legends. And not in any way associated with Vera Pym and her gang.” Lapointe continued to push his way through the crowd as the evening grew darker. “At least, I have some idea now where he is heading.

There must have been a gateway created by the murderers…”

Crossing the old wooden bridge over the basin, they saw what had brought the crowd here. It was a huge black barge of the kind once used in the canal folk’s funerals, two decks high. “It came up out of there-not ten minutes ago!” said an underdressed young woman wearing garish face-paint. “It just-just appeared!”

Lapointe stared into the still-mysterious maw of the underground canal. “So that’s where they’ve been hiding. A veritable water-maze,” he muttered. “Hurry, LeBec, for the love of God!”

At last, they had forced a passage through the crowds, back to the tall looming house in rue Mendoza where the corpse of Sarah Gobseck had been discovered. As Lapointe had guessed, the two ahead of them had abandoned their own car and were hurrying towards the entrance of No.15 into which they swiftly disappeared.

By the time Lapointe and his assistant had reached the door, it was locked and bolted. Much time was wasted as they attempted to rouse the residents and gain access.

Now, at the very top of the building, they could hear a strange, single note, as of an organ, which began to drown almost all other sound and made communication difficult. As they neared the fifth floor, they became aware of a violent, pulsing light filling the stairwell below. It seemed to pour through the skylight and have its origins on the roof. The air itself had an unnatural quality, a strong smell of vanilla and ozone which reminded Lapointe irrationally of the corniche at Bourdeaux where as a boy he had holidayed with his family.

Next, an unnatural pressure began to exert itself on the men, as if gravity had somehow tripled in intensity and they moved sluggishly with enormous effort up to the final landing where Monsieur Gris, an expression of terror on his features, was attempting to descend the stairs. Behind him, a ladder had been pulled down from the ceiling and now gave access to an open door in the roof.

They were at last straggling the ladder to the roof. There, amongst the old chimneys and sloping leads, stood four people-a vicious-looking woman whose beauty was marred by a rodent snarl and a tonsured priest whom Lapointe immediately identified as Vautrin-otherwise known as Jacques Collin, but here disguised as the Abbe Carlos Herrera!

Confronting Vautrin and his co-conspiratator Vera Pym were Zenith the albino and the Countess Una von Beck. All were armed-Vautrin with a rapier and Pym with a modern automatic pistol. Zenith carried his ebony sword-stick while Countess von Beck had raised a Smith and Wesson.45 revolver which she pointed at the snarling leader of the Vampyres.

And, if this scene were not dramatic enough, there yawned behind Pym and Vautrin a strange, swirling gap in the very fabric of time and space which mumbled and cried and moved with a nervous bubbling intensity.

“Sacred Heaven!” murmured Lapointe. “That is how they got here and that is how they intend to leave. They have ripped a rent through the multiverse. This is not a gateway in the usual sense. It is as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the supporting walls of Saint Peter’s! Who knows what appalling damage they have created!”

Then, suddenly, Vautrin had moved, his long, slender blade driving for Zenith’s heart. But the albino’s instincts were as sharp as always.

Dodging the thrust, he drew his own rapier of black, vibrating steel which seemed to sing a song of its own. Mysterious scarlet runes ran up and down its length as if alive. He replied to Vautrin’s thrust with one of his own.

Parrying, Vautrin began to laugh-a hideous obscenity of sound which somehow seemed to blend with that awful light pouring through the rift in multiversal space their crude methods had created. “Your powers of deduction remain superb, Zenith, even if your taste in friends is not. She was indeed ‘La Torpille’. I thought I had driven her to self-destruction, but she failed me in the end. I struck her down, as you and the others have guessed, and then, to make sure the body was never discovered, and seen to be murdered, I employed the services of Madame Vera Pym here. She is an old colleague.”

Now Lapointe had drawn his revolver and was levelling it. “Stop, Monsieur Vautrin. In the name of France! In the name of the Law! Stop and put down your weapon. On your own admission, I arrest you for the murder of Mademoiselle Sarah Gobseck!”

Again, Vautrin voiced that terrible laugh. “Prince Zoran, Commissaire Lapointe, your powers of deduction are impressive and I know I face two wonderful opponents, but you will not, I assure you, stop my escape. The multiverse herself will not permit it. And put up your weapons. You cannot kill me any more than I can kill you!” He used Zenith’s given name, Zoran, which went with the title he had long-since renounced, almost challenging the albino to prove his humanity.

Then, perhaps goaded by this, Zenith struck again, not once but twice, that black streak of ruby-coloured runes licking first at Vautrin’s heart and then, as she raised her pistol to fire, at Vera Pym’s.

The woman also began to laugh now. Together, their hideous voices created a kind of resonance with the pulsing light and almost certainly kept the gateway open for them. Vera Pym was triumphant. “You see,” she shouted, “we are indestructible. You cannot take our lives in this universe, nor shall you be able to pursue us where we are going now!”

And then, she stepped backwards into that howling vortex and vanished. In a moment, Vautrin, also smiling, followed her.

For a sudden moment there was silence. Then came a noise, like a huge beast breathing. The roof was lit only by the full Moon and the stars.

Lapointe felt the weight disappear from him and knew vast relief that circumstances had refused to make Zenith a murderer and Countess Una his accomplice, for then he would have been obliged to arrest them both.

“We will find them,” he promised as the snoring vortex dwindled and disappeared. “And if we do not, I expect they will find us. Have no doubt, we shall be waiting for them.” He raised exhausted eyes to look upon a bleak, emotionless albino. “And you, Monsieur, are you satisfied you cannot be revenged on the likes of Vautrin?”

“Oh, I fancy I have taken from him something he valued more than life,” said the albino, sheathing his black rapier with an air of finality. He shared a thin, secret smile with the Countess von Beck. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, Monsieur le Commissaire, I will continue about my business while the night is young. We were planning to go dancing.” And, offering his arm to Countess Una, he walked insouciantly down the stairs and out of sight.

“What on Earth did he mean?” LeBec wondered.

Commissaire Lapointe was shaking his head like a man waking from a doze. He had heard about that black and crimson sword cane and believed he might have witnessed an action far more terrible, far more threatening to the civilisation he valued than any he had previously imagined.

“God help him,” he whispered, half to himself, “and God help those from whom he steals…”