Six days had passed since Darbon’s murder, and the halls of Madame Nécart’s hotel were no longer filled with leisurely waiting assistants. The armchairs were empty, and even the Sioux Indian had set off on some mission.
“Where are they? How would I know where they are?!” replied the owner. “Finally those savages are out of the drawing room. If my husband were alive, he never would have stood for having a redskin Indian in our hotel.”
The flight en masse had me worried. While they were there, I felt privileged to have a case. But with them out in the city, I couldn’t help thinking that they were the ones with the real clues, and that I was left walking in the shadows.
Arzaky didn’t seem to trust the information we had either, because he sent me to look for Grialet and Bradelli on my own.
“Grimas, the editor of Traces, knows them well. He published several magazines for them. Ask him where they are.”
“But,” I protested, “you can get the truth out of suspects with just a look. I’m a foreigner, I’m inexperienced, I’m only an assistant…”
He dismissed my arguments with a contemptuous wave of his hand.
“Detective’s apprentice, son of a shoemaker: don’t be so sheepish, just go and distract Grialet.”
“I’m better at distracting myself than anyone else. And even if I manage to, what do I do then?”
“What do you think? Look for oil-stained clothes or gloves or shoes, of course.”
“If Grialet is the killer, he’s had time to get rid of those things.”
“You are an Argentine spendthrift. No good Frenchman would ever throw away a pair of shoes, not even if holding on to them could send him to the gallows.”
Adrien Grimas’s publishing house was located on the first floor of a building in the Jewish quarter. There was a fabric store below. Grimas was eating a bowl of soup when I came in, and as soon as he saw me he hurriedly tried to hide the large blue notebook where he kept his accounts. The editor was supposed to give a percentage of his profits to The Twelve Detectives, but he claimed to have recorded a loss. Later I mentioned to Arzaky that it seemed very strange to me that the wisest men on the planet, capable of finding a killer from one hair or a cigarette butt, could be taken in by that little bespectacled man, who made only a cursory attempt to cover his tracks. He replied, “It’s a well-known tale: Thales of Miletus was walking through the field, looking up at the stars, when he fell into a well. A Thracian slave who saw him laughed and asked, ‘How can a wise man know so much about the distant stars and not notice the well that’s in front of him?’ Well, in our case, we are twelve men who all fell into the well at the same time because we were looking up at the stars.”
Once Grimas had hidden his ledger book, he went back to finishing his soup of onions and meat.
“Arzaky won’t speak to me,” he said. “I wanted to meet you so I could give you some copies of Traces and remind you to take notes as you go along, so you’ll be prepared when it comes time for you to write the story of Arzaky’s case. I will ask that you maintain Tanner’s style.”
“I don’t have enough experience to be able to tell Arzaky’s adventures, much less in Tanner’s style. Besides, I can’t write in French. I’m just a temporary assistant, until Arzaky can find someone permanent.”
“We’re all temporary, Monsieur Salvatrio. We are all awaiting our replacement.”
I asked the editor about Grialet and Bradelli, and he in turn asked me, “Arzaky’s following up on the Hermetic lead?”
“Are you surprised?”
“No. I knew that Louis Darbon was on the trail of the tower’s enemies. Occultists are like detectives: they investigate the lines that join the macrocosmos to the microcosmos. But while detectives look for signs in corners, at the bottom of drawers, among the floorboards, the occultists do the opposite: they search in gigantic things, in monuments, in the shapes of cities, or the pyramids. Then they try to find a relationship between those enormous things and their own private miseries. Detectives go from the tiny corner to the world, occultists from the world to the tiny corner. That’s why the tower has made such an impression on them. Where others see beauty or ugliness, the steel or the height, they see the symbolism.”
“I thought they were interested only in the great monuments of the past. I wouldn’t have thought that the Eiffel Tower would attract their attention…”
“The Eiffel Tower is not the Eiffel Tower; it’s the tower of Koechlin, his assistant, who had to work long and hard to convince Eiffel to get on board with the project. Maurice Koechlin, an engineer like Eiffel, was the one who made the first sketch and later designed the structure. Now everyone talks about Eiffel, but you’ll see—in a few years it’ll be called the Koechlin Tower. You want to make a bet? Koechlin is Swiss, maybe that’s why he doesn’t like to draw attention to himself. He first thought of devoting himself to medicine, and studied anatomy in Zurich. When he designed the tower he was thinking of the organization of the fibers in the femur, which is a very strong, lightweight bone, the longest in the human body. Pythagoras was also obsessed with the femur; he found its relationship to music and, as a result, a link between that bone and universe’s hidden arithmetic. So our occultists are convinced that Koechlin is a Pythagorean devotee who divulged his greatest secret. The tower has always been a symbol of the center of the world, which is why these occultists believe ours is a false center that they must expose. Also, lately they’ve been leaning more toward the Catholic Church, and they don’t like the fact that the tower is taller than Saint Peter’s. It doesn’t really matter though; it’s a mistake for Arzaky to investigate them. I know them well, they’re harmless, I’ve published several of their magazines. Everything goes fine through the second issue, and then the infighting starts. It’s hard to work with people who want to publish their exploits and keep them secret at the same time.”
Grimas ate the last drop of soup and moved the plate away, onto a pile of papers. Caleb Lawson’s name was on the top page. It seemed sacrilegious to treat The Twelve Detectives’ material that way.
“Well, I’d still like to know where Grialet and Bradelli are.”
“Of course, the more moves Arzaky makes, the more pages you’ll write for me, isn’t that right?” I shook my head no, but he ignored me. “Arzaky’s adventures are the most chaotic, but our readers love them, who knows why. Tanner brought out the best in Arzaky. There was always a moment in his adventures when Arzaky seemed confused, about to admit defeat, sometimes he even disappeared for two or three days, and Tanner narrated the details of his absence with a master hand. He described his empty study on the top floor of the Numancia Hotel, his unopened correspondence, and the dust that gathered on his desk. Then Arzaky would make a triumphant return and resolution would come swiftly. Christ also had to spend a good while in the desert before allowing the prophecies to be fulfilled.”
Grimas stretched out his arm and handed me some back issues of Traces. It was obvious that it was a relief for him to be able to get rid of some of those papers.
“So you can familiarize yourself with Tanner’s style.”
“Thank you very much. I’d love to have them, although I’m already very familiar with Arzaky’s cases.”
“You already know them? Oh, of course, The Key to Crime.” Grimas said the name of the Argentine magazine disdainfully. He looked at the clock on the wall and leaped from his chair. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I have to go to the printer’s. I’m sorry I haven’t been much help with the two occultists. After involuntarily becoming one of the protagonists in the Case of the Magnetizer, Grialet went to live in Italy.”
“He was involved in a criminal investigation?”
“Yes, the detective was Arzaky. Didn’t he tell you anything about it? Ask him, or look for the case in issue forty-five of Traces, which I just gave you. The one with the green cover. As I said, Grialet went to Rome to live for a while. He became involved with the widow of a general, who gave him large donations for the Hermetic cause. I think the ruse he used was the publication of the complete works of Fabre d’Olivet. Once he had the money he returned to Paris, but he hasn’t been seen much since he got back. And, of course, he hasn’t published even a brief treatise. I don’t know where he lives now, but he’s not hard to recognize: his right ear is missing, lost in a fight at the now defunct Pythagorean Society of Paris. And as for Bradelli, he died three months ago.”
“A natural death?”
“Natural for a man with his somber disposition. He poisoned himself. During the last few years he had tried to apply his knowledge of alchemy to painting. His frequent use of mercury provoked fits of madness and finally poisoned him to death. Three years ago he had promised the Autumn Salon a painting in which he had created new colors never seen before. To heighten anticipation, he published an article in one of Grialet’s magazines, Anima Mundi, where he refuted Goethe’s theory of colors as well as Diderot’s. He announced the names of the new hues, which were a mix of Latin, Catholic liturgy, alchemy, and even necromancy. They were designed to alter the viewer’s perception and provoke sensations in him that transcended the subject matter. Painting, he said, must be a secret message; in the color one finds true meaning. When, after much beating around the bush, and many announcements and retractions, he finally presented his paintings, he pointed out the new colors: diabolical topaz, larva yellow, mandrake green, and silentium blue, and a dozen more. We saw only grays and blacks, and large areas where the white of the canvas hadn’t even been touched. That was Bradelli’s last work.”
I followed Grimas down the stairs and we said good-bye at the door.