The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 3) Page 22

  “Two pages further on, there are fish—carp—in which you can observe than they regret the time when they were frolicking in open water, while I constrain them to circle in the pond at my clinic. I also intend, let me say in passing, similarly to consult the soul of plants. Why should they not also have souls, probably so beautiful that we cannot comprehend them? But all of this is merely accessory. Will you please, Monsieur President, turn to page six, and state publicly what you can see there.”

  The President complied. He was no longer in command.

  “I see a newly married couple emerging from a village church,” he said, “preceded by a beadle, followed by a cortege and acclaimed by a crowd of peasants.”

  “Who does those newlyweds resemble?”

  “I can’t say, being unacquainted with them.”

  “I will tell you. One is the murdered Baron. His bride is the star Betty Toxfellow. The following photographs are merely the guests guzzling. Let’s pass on to page ten and those subsequent. What is represented there?”

  “A man in Japanese costume, leaving a brightly lit and empty room, traversing a hallway, going into a vestibule set up as a cloakroom, where no one is present. He takes possession of his own coat, puts it on and goes out into the street. There, he speaks to a chauffeur, who drives off immediately, while he proceeds on foot. But he has only taken a few steps when he realizes that he has forgotten something. He returns to the house to hand on object to the cloakroom attendant, now present.”

  “Is that object a dagger in a sheath?”

  “It is. Then he leaves again.”

  “That is what was acquired from the accused,” said Tornada. “The psychovisor recorded that he did not go into the library to say adieu to his associate Sasoitsu.” He addressed himself to Vion: “I never doubted you, old Félix; if I consulted your brain, it was simply to inform these Messieurs.” He turned back to the President of the Court. “Let us pass on to page sixteen and those subsequent. What do you see there?”

  “I see a man in a suit climbing a staircase, going into a room, and putting on a disguise over his frock-coat...”

  “Would you care to observe, Monsieur President, that that disguise, including the mask, is similar to the one represented on page ten?”

  “Exactly the same. The mask is equally hideous.”

  “And so clad, what is that man doing on page twenty?”

  “He’s in a luxurious room, in front of a panoply, from which he has taken a dagger, which he is studying.”

  “Is the blade double-edged?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And then, equipped with that weapon, on pages twenty-three and twenty-four?”

  “He goes back downstairs, goes into a room that must be a library, to judge by the walls covered with bookshelves.”

  “Is there someone in the room?”

  “Yes, a Japanese man sitting in an armchair.”

  “Good. What does the man who has entered do on pages twenty-six, twenty-seven and twenty-eight?”

  “He approaches the seated individual. He locks a door with two battens. He returns to the Japanese man…and then…it’s frightful!”

  The President was unable to continue. A member of the audience, whom Tornada had kept his eyes on while asking his questions, had just quit his place in the sixth row and plunged into the mass of standing spectators in order to reach the door and escape. It was Abrovici. Finding himself confronted by two guards faithful to the order not to let anyone pass, however, he engaged them in a frantic battle, knocking one down with a blow of his fist and rolling on the ground with the other.

  “Arrest him! He’s the murderer!” shouted Tornada, in the midst of the tumult.

  Audience members and advocates joined in the struggle. The brute, foaming at the mouth, was finally subdued. He was taken away in handcuffs.

  Once the excitement of the incident had died down, Tornada was able to continue.

  “The attempt to flee made by that bandit is the confirmation of what I have just declared. Let it be known, however, that the photographic documents described by Monsieur the President do not come from his brain, but the brain of a woman who was his confidante, after having driven him to the crime, of which she received details sufficiently detailed to communicate them to my psychovisor. I will tell you who that woman is momentarily. Let us content ourselves, for the present, with continuing the examination of my album. It will suffice for the Monsieur le Président tacitly to confirm my declarations as he checks them against the photographs.

  “So, we see the murderer, once his crime is accomplished, return to the room in which he put on the same disguise that Félix Vion wore, and take it off in order to reappear in his service costume. He carefully wipes the weapon clean, and then replaces it in the panoply from which he took it. After which, he goes back down to the cloakroom, of which he is in charge. And who do we recognize in that rapid murderer? Abrovici, the personal chauffeur of Madame la Baronne Sasoitsu; the man who has just been arrested. Is that correct, Monsieur le Président?”

  “Entirely.”

  “Let us pass on to the following photographs. They report exactly, with a few slight differences related to attitudes and movements, the scenes of the murder—but this time, it was no longer the confidante that I had under my ultra-green projector, it was the executor himself. And since I had him, that executor, I took advantage of it to return to his past. He revealed it, as displayed between pages fifty and sixty.

  “We recognize Abrovici there, in a steep environment, at moment when a cinematic scene is being shot, of which he is the cameraman. He has before him the heroine of the film, under the features of Lise Bellegard. She is supposed to pretend to fall into a precipice. She leans over the edge, but so imprudently that Abrovici is frightened and tries to maintain her on the solid rock. Well, behold her misfortune! Abrovici’s action is so poorly calculated that instead of bringing the unfortunate woman back, he pushes her into the void!

  “The result of that, Mesdames et Messieurs, is that the actress in question, whose body is recovered by Abrovici and his comrades on page sixty-three, had to be replaced in the film by another star. Is it necessary to be astonished, now, that—still according to the photographs—Abrovici receives from the beneficiary of his actions a well-merited financial reward, firstly on page sixty-five in a Hollywood bar, and then on page seventy-one in a Parisian automobile—and each time the sum is tidy. Is that correct, Monsieur le Président?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “The wages of sin of the executor of the dirty work of the star Betty Toxfellow in Hollywood, subsequently Baronne Sasoitsu in Paris! The wages of a cameraman who takes on many other roles as well! And those crimes were committed exclusively for money! What does the advocate of the Republic think of that? Will he have the presence of mind to have the other culprit arrested before, having learned about the result of my ultra-green, she takes to her tiny heels?

  A tempest blew over the public prosecutor. Insults were hurled at him. Journalists quit their bench, intent on seizing the document; an usher had to interpose himself.

  While the prosecutor consulted the album in his turn, Tornada was able, in the midst of the disorder, to go to Vion.

  “Well, old man, what did I promise you? Are you breathing?”

  “Like a drowning man pulled out of the water!”

  “Wait until I give you artificial respiration. The prosecutor doesn’t seem to get it. Look at his face.

  In fact, the chief accuser had not yet given up. As the succession of images belied his thesis, resentment and wrath were inscribed on his features. He ended up standing up, his fist on his hip. In a relative calm, he said: “Messieurs of the Court, we do not doubt the ingenuity of Professor Tornada, but the law cannot bow down before it as spontaneously as this assembly. How do we know that, in his desire to have his friend acquitted, Monsieur Tornada has not succeeded, but a means yet to be clarified, in producing this text by photographing the characters and scenes of
a film of his invention, adapted to fictitious murders? For my part, all these stories of thoughts collected by his psychovisor and collated in an album seem to me to be pure fantasy, so I consider that this tribunal would lack conscientiousness in acquitting on that basis.”

  “I expected your resistance, Monsieur Prosecutor,” Tornada replied calmly. “It is an ingrate task to destuff the head of a stuffer of heads. I can therefore only see one means of checking the sincerity of what I bring forth. That would be to offer yourself, personally, to my psychovisual rays. A film of what is going on in your encephalum would certainly reveal your perfect integrity, and that you have never had recourse to political influences to succeed to your elevated situation. Perhaps even, in acceding to your private life...”

  “That’s enough, Monsieur! One more word and I’ll have you charged with insulting a magistrate in the exercise of his functions!”

  “You refuse? I expected as much.”

  The prosecutor remained silent. He passed on the album, which made a tour of the counselors and then reached the butcher, the chairman of the jury. He refused it, passing it on to his colleagues.

  “Not permissible make a mockery of people like that!”

  “Since that is the opinion of the prince of the cleaver,” Tornada continued, “why should we not choose him to verify the sincerity of my cerebral prospecting? I’m convinced that by suggesting to him the sale of a head of veal from his stall, we would observe that he has never applied his thumb to the balance. Is that agreed, citizen?”

  “If we weren’t here, you’d see that I know how to apply my thumb to your gob!” fulminated the profiteer of carnivores.

  What a surprise! Everyone was refusing to participate in the experiment! Perplexed, the President decided to put an end to it.

  “In consideration of the fact that, after the intervention of Professor Tornada, there is supplementary information to consider, we shall postpone the affair to an ulterior session.” He put on his cap. “The session is concluded. Guards, take the accused away.”

  The case of Baronne Sasoitsu was a worldwide sensation. The French and foreign press publicized it far and wide, as might be expected. Governments, jurists, philosophers and scientific societies took it under consideration. Film directors obtained a fine seed for new ventures. Magnetizers, occultists, thought-readers, pendulum-manipulators and diviners of every sort made use of it to legitimate their practices. People approved, people denied, people made jokes.

  More generally, the scientist harvested nothing but hatred. Why had he got mixed up with what did not concern him? People could no longer devote themselves tranquilly to petty abominations of thought, then? Every sin, every perversity would henceforth be discovered, identified and recorded on film? But civilization was entirely founded on lies! Society would no longer be possible! It would no longer be possible to live! The redresser of wrongs, the violator of consciousness, the muzzler of instincts must be stopped! Before his invention could spread, let someone make use of a good double-edged blade, like the one that had sent the Baron ad patres, on him! Was there not somewhere in France a vengeful hand as red as his rays were green?

  The affair being postponed until the verification of the prodigious apparatus, Félix Vion remained in prison. Abrovici was detained for assaulting the policemen and Baronne Sasoitsu was asked to remain at the disposal of the Law. Claustrated in her house, which all the staff had abandoned, only going out in order to be taken to another examining magistrate and repeat her lies to him, she lived in piercing suspense. She did her own cooking, with provisions ordered by telephone, on a stove fueled by Abrovici’s costume and mask. Although she knew that she was surrounded by a police net, she attempted to escape in an automobile one night, but, having had too little practice handling a steering-wheel, she was quickly overtaken and brought home.

  More than anyone else, she execrated her former friend Tornada.

  The greatest difficulty for the new investigation was finding a subject willing to subject themselves to the psychovisor. Everyone refused a proof revelatory of the self. As it was not legally possible to compel some random individual to submit to the isolator, some idealistic individual was sought, some saint whose meditation was entirely avowable. Alas, there was no such person in the world!

  Then, they went to unearthed from an asylum for the retarded a very young individual whom civilization had not yet had time to corrupt. He was a poor little idiot, four years old, who was blind in one eye and drooled. Surrounded by an audience that was crammed into his laboratory, Tornada installed him and offered him a treat, as he had to the marmoset.

  The film proved that the innocent saw himself back in the refectory of his asylum, surrounded by his fellows, receiving a slice of cake from the President of the Republic making an official compassionate visit. The photograph also proved that the degenerate had stolen his neighbors’ slices.

  The proof was therefore conclusive. The Baronne was arrested, Abrovici maintained under a new charge, and Félix Vion definitively exonerated.

  Treated harshly and persuaded that she would get a lesser sentence if she confessed, Betty ended up admitting the two crimes, putting the blame on her accomplice. She got away with twenty years of forced labor. Abrovici’s head fell under Dr. Guillotin’s blade.

  The execution was another exceedingly popular ceremony.

  In order to escape curiosity, Tornada had gone into hiding in his property at Bellème in Normandy. It was a delightful little mansion house in the country, coiffed with bell-turrets, buried among trees in a valley, of which he was not known to be the owner. In a neighboring estate administered by the Conservation Nationale there was a mound surmounted by a cross, which perpetuated the memory of Blanche de Castille, the mother of St. Louis, glorified by the legend of having been blessed at that location during the siege to which she subjected the town, and having been buried there after dying of the consequences of her wounds.27 How sorry Tornada was that the warrior queen was not of his epoch, so that he could subject her to his ultra-greens! What might he not have discovered in that heart invaded by masculine appetites?

  In order not to think about it any longer, Tornada went trout-fishing.

  It was there that Félix came to join him after being set free. There is no need to describe their joy on meeting up again, or the feast that celebrated it, in which they gorged themselves on nomadic fish, and swilled vintages as choice as those served at the Japanese fête.

  At dessert, raising his glass for one last draught, Félix asked: “What are you going to do with your psychovisor, old Nada?”

  “Bury it…next to my neighbor, Blanche de Castille.”

  “Shouldn’t you, on the contrary, distribute it for the widest possible usage? Think about what you obtained with it for me! I’ve retained the esteem of my fellow citizens instead of going to rot in a convict prison! I’m regaling myself on your trout and basking in your affection! My business affairs are going better than ever! Thanks to you, criminals would be subjected to their just punishments. And from the general point of view, what further moralizing effects there would be: humanity living in fear of the revelation of guilty thoughts and the actions consequential upon them! Sure of no longer being able to keep those thoughts secrets from one another, would not our fellows constrain themselves not give in to them any longer? Finally, the realization of the ideological dream!”

  “That’s the word: ideology, always, still...”

  “There would be no more ideology, from the moment that it ended in positivism, in the installation of happiness!”

  Tornada stroked his beard. “Happiness is impossible, because instinct is the great master, the sole master, of everything that exists. Yes I admit that the fear of being discovered by my system would impede crime to some extent, but don’t think that it could impede its meditation. The seven egotistical sins would subsist even so, and that would be enough to sink humanity. Then again, think of the monotony of a society in which there would be no more vilific
ation of one’s neighbor! An atmosphere of perpetual virtue would be unbreathable! And mind-numbing! ‘Tedium is born of a day of uniformity,’ said some poet or other before me,28 forgetting that poetry too is a generator of subversion! No, no—no paradise on earth! Let us at least leave our fellow the merit of earning the other paradise, if there is one…which I shall perhaps discover one day...”

  He got to his feet and went to open a vast crockery-cupboard in which, amid the porcelain, all the material of his psychovisor, which he had brought with him, was lying neglected. He considered it at length, and pressed it, piece by piece, to his heart, by way of farewell.

  Then he threw it on the floor and started stamping on it, furiously.

  IN THE AFTERLIFE

  Chapter I

  I had just died.

  My miserable mortal remains were there, collapsed on the parquet of my study, under the indifferent gaze of my books, my manuscripts, my engravings and my trinkets—all the precious décor of my mind whenever I abandoned the pen. My right hand was still clutching my revolver, held as an officer in the reserves, a weapon that I had certainly not thought destined to kill me on the day when it was confided to me. A red trickle was escaping from my perforated temple and, as if by virtue of irony, fragments of my brain, traversed all the way through, had gone to splash the wall, describing a little geographical design there similar in its contours to the homeland I was quitting for some as yet unknown region.