The Cthulhu Encryption (20 page)

“Perhaps she’s saving herself for her impending revenge on her persecutor,” I suggested, in one of my more whimsical moments, when Dupin climbed back up after our penultimate stop before Alençon.

“I hope so,” he said. “That is to say, I hope she’s saving herself—I’m not yet convinced that she’s seeking revenge on Oberon Breisz for the kind of sexual exploitation to which you imagine he must have subjected her.”

“I don’t suppose you are,” I said. “We’re always reluctant to see such things in our own culture, preferring to scapegoat foreigners. In Paris they call child prostitution an English vice, like flagellation, but in London they think it a continental affair. In the same way, the French call syphilis
the Italian disease
, while Englishmen call it
the French disease
and the Italians
the Spanish disease
.”

“Whereas Americans have no such delusions?”

“About themselves, certainly. About Europe, none.”

When we reached the inn where we were to spend the night in Alençon, Dupin was quick to jump down again, to help Mademoiselle Leonys out of the coach. After what he had said about her being as frigid as a statue, I half-expected that he and Chapelain might have to carry her, but she stepped down in a lady-like manner, and thanked her loyal Tristan kindly. She even favored me with a brief smile, but it seemed to come from a long way away. She was obviously capable of speech, but I doubted that she would respond meekly to any sort of interrogation.

The inn was large, and moderately comfortable; the innkeeper came out into the courtyard to make arrangements for our feeding and accommodation, and I was able to hire two rooms upstairs for our exclusive use during the hours during which the coach was due to pause. Once we had sorted out our luggage, while my companions were still preoccupied with our enigmatic guide, I stepped into the inn’s dining-room to investigate its comforts. The dining-room and pot-room were both very quiet, but not quite deserted. A few local drinkers were gathered in the pot-room, while a lone traveler, who must have arrived not long before on horseback, was enjoying a hearty meal in a corner of the dining-room.

He looked up as I came in, and our eyes met. Strangely enough, he seemed more surprised that I was. It was the Comte de Saint-Germain.

“My God!” he said, when I had moved forward to confront him. “You’re at least twenty-four hours ahead of schedule. I had no idea that Dupin was capable of solving the puzzle as quickly as this. I expected him to be running around Paris for at least a day, digging up all the information he could find regarding Oberon Breisz, and poring over the medallion for hours on end.”

Feebly, I could think of nothing better to say than: “What are
you
doing here?”

“Going to Britanny, of course,” he replied. “I expected to wait for you in Rennes, with plenty of time in hand to make my preparations, and then to follow you clandestinely…assuming, that is, that Dupin knows where to….” He broke off suddenly, having seen something over my shoulder. I looked back, and saw my four companions making their way up the stairs, moving swiftly but not surreptitiously.

The President of the Harmonic Philosophical Society had been surprised to see me, but now he was flabbergasted. “Is that…,” he said, weakly—and then stopped in order to swallow. When he resumed speaking, it was to mutter: “I always
knew
, in my heart of hearts, that Dupin was a secret magician, only posing as a skeptic as a means of self-concealment—but I had never thought him capable of anything like
that
.”

He was referring to Ysolde Leonys’ transformation, of course, and had completely mistaken the manner in which it had occurred. I did not feel that I was under any obligation to correct his error. To tell the truth, I had occasionally suspected myself that Dupin was a secret magician, only posing as a skeptic for reasons of concealment. The conversation we had just had on the roof of the coach had done nothing to counter that suspicion.

A few minutes later, Dupin came downstairs again, and immediately came forward to stand beside me.

“I fully expected you to follow us,” he said to Saint-Germain, “but I did not expect you to ride so hard as to get here ahead of us. I pity your poor horse.”

“Actually,” Saint-Germain said, stiffly, “I came at a very leisurely pace, allowing my mount to rest at regular intervals. I would
never
abuse a fine horse. I know what kind of man you think I am, but you really ought not to keep hurling these careless slanders at me whenever we chance to meet. I see that you’ve brought your gorgon along—not to keep me at bay, I hope?”

Dupin turned on his heel and went to speak to the innkeeper, presumably to arrange for Ysolde, Madame Lacuzon and Chapelain to be served with food and drink in their rooms. I did not know what his own intentions were, and thought that he might intend me to take exclusive responsibility for dealing Saint-German, since I was the one who had gone to meet him at Saint-Sulpice. Thus, when the self-styled Comte invited me to set down at his table I did so, meekly.

“I suppose I still owe him a debt of gratitude for helping me to recover my stolen Guadagnini,” Saint-Germain said, with a sigh, “so I ought to be generous in regard to his rudeness, even though I have paid him back in triplicate by lending him the medallion. I do wish we could be friends, though. Imagine what the Society might accomplish if he and Oberon Breisz would consent to join it! We really are all on the same side, in the quest for enlightenment. We are scientists now, and ought to work together, in the common cause…not that the members of the Académie des Sciences are free of churlish rivalries and the hoarding instinct, of course.”

“How much do you know about Breisz?” I asked, conscious of my duty to play the interrogator, if Dupin really was going to leave that job to me.

“Very little, alas,” the Comte replied, contriving another sigh. “Not enough, obviously, else I’d not have been so astonished by his appearance last night. Who could have anticipated that he’d intervene on our behalf—and not even with the intent of taking possession of the medallion? I could have dispelled the hallucination myself, of course—but perhaps not in time to save your sanity as well as my own. Given that he’s been searching high and low for documents relating to Levasseur and other pirates of the Indian Ocean for many years, it’s difficult to imagine why he didn’t demand the amulet when he had the chance. I confess that I don’t understand the game he’s playing. Obviously, he doesn’t know where the treasure is, but…perhaps he’s pinning his hopes on Dupin’s ability to solve the cryptogram too.
Has
he solved it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, evasively, but could not resist the temptation to add: “But I don’t believe he’s looking for the kind of solution you seem to be expecting.”

“Really? You mean he doesn’t believe that it’s the key to Levasseur’s treasure?”

“No. I think he’d be bitterly disappointed if that was what it turned out to be. Indeed, it certainly seemed to me that what is inscribed on the medallion is the spell that Ysolde used to get rid of the shoggoths when they attacked us in my house.”

“The shoggoths came back?”

“More forcefully than the first time.”

Saint-Germain pulled a face. “I’d like to say ‘that’s strange’—but I know too little about such hallucinations to know whether it’s strange or not. I have magic enough to ward off things of that sort…but you might be in more danger than you think, even with Dupin to shield you.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what to think,” I admitted.

“Very wise,” he said, sarcastically. “It’s always best to keep an open mind. I wish I were better at that myself. Knowledge is sometimes a burden, don’t you think?”

“It can drive you mad,” I replied.

He laughed. I was oddly pleased—Dupin so rarely laughed at my quips.

“
You
should join the Society, you know,” he said. “I think you’d find it very interesting. I don’t issue very many invitations.”

“Mostly to people a good deal richer or more gifted than I am,” I retorted. “I’d be flattered, if I didn’t think that the invitation was just a ploy on your part, to annoy Dupin.”

“The last thing I want to do,” he told me, “is annoy Monsieur Dupin. I’d love to join your little expedition—and I really do believe that you might find my help useful. Breisz is only one man, however gifted a magician he might be, but he’s far from being the only man in France who’d like to lay his hands on what’s left of Levasseur’s loot.”

“If anything
is
left,” I put in, conscientiously.

“There is that possibility too,” he admitted. “Sometimes, when you chase wild geese, that’s all you end up with. There was a lot of gold, though, and I doubt that anyone with a heart could have bought himself to melt down the Flaming Cross of Goa. Angria probably ended up with every last penny of John Taylor’s share, but Levasseur came to France in order to keep his portion safe from that particular threat…ironic, isn’t it, that he was then arrested in the Seychelles?”

“Ironic,” I agreed. “Why did he go back, if he’d already brought the treasure to France?”

“I don’t know. Breisz might, given that he’s been hoarding as many documents as he can for longer than even Père France can remember, but I haven’t been able to find out, even with the resources of the Society behind me. If only I’d got to meet Levasseur face-to-face…at any rate, there was something he had to do—some obligation he couldn’t dodge…which, given that he was a pirate, and treachery was his business must have been an unusually heavy obligation.”

“An obligation to whom?” I asked, curiously.

“Come on!” he said, “You’re giving me nothing. You can’t expect me to tell you what I know, or even what I can guess, unless you’re prepared to do the same.”

I was about to make some cutting remark about working in a common cause, but I was interrupted by the innkeeper, who transferred two brim-full soup-dishes from his tray to the table, setting them down side by side, along with two spoons and a basket of bread. I was still looking at the second dish, feeling slightly puzzled, when Dupin sat down beside me, and immediately started spooning the hot liquid into his mouth.

“Eat,” Saint-Germain said to me. “Warmth is its chief virtue—if you let it go cold, you won’t enjoy it at all.” Then he turned back to Dupin to say: “Now that we’re breaking bread together, are we friends?”

“No,” Dupin said, succinctly.

“I lent you Levasseur’s medallion—surely I’m due some credit for that?”

“It wasn’t yours to lend,” Dupin told him. “Nor was it Levasseur’s. It has now been returned to its true owner, apparently. I suppose we owe you some thanks for that—but an honest man would regard it as his simple duty.”

“But it
was
Levasseur’s,” Saint-Germain protested, “and now it’s mine. It can’t possibly be
hers
.
La Buse
gave it to me himself, and I can account for its whereabouts ever since. I’ve tried everything I know to solve the cryptogram, but I have to admit that I failed. If you’ve succeeded, you’re a better man than I am.”

That was a temptation hard to resist, and it brought a compromise from Dupin. “I can’t yet claim the credit for deciphering it,” he said, “but I think I can recite it for you, if you wish.”

“Do you know where the treasure is?” Saint-Germain asked, bluntly

“Alas,” said Dupin, between mouthfuls of soup, “I don’t. I fear that you might have been harboring unrealistic expectations with regard to the significance of the cryptogram, which probably contributed enormously to your failure to decipher it. It’s not a set of instructions as to how to find the treasure—it’s what you would probably call a magic spell.”

“Which does what?” Saint-German asked, suspiciously.

“It re-encrypts stray shoggoths—which is to say, it dispels a certain kind of malevolent hallucination.”

Saint-Germain looked at me. I had already told him that, but he had not believed me. He was a little less certain as to whether the claim could be dismissed when it came from Dupin. “Oberon Breisz already knows how to do that,” he murmured, pensively

“Which is probably why he did not think it worthwhile taking possession of the medallion yesterday night,” Dupin said.

“So why has he been searching for it?” Saint-Germain wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Dupin said, “but I suspect that he hoped that the search might somehow lead him to Ysolde, who certainly seems to believe that it is hers, and who appears to have given him the slip in 1830. You doubtless heard the message that he asked my friend to deliver to me.”

“He’s been looking for the whore all along? Why? Does
she
know where the treasure is?”

“I think she might. What I don’t know is why
he
doesn’t, if, in fact, he doesn’t—or, if he
does
know where the treasure was, and has been in possession of it for a very long time, exactly what it is for which he is still searching.”