The Alibi

THE ALIBI

The same morning, back at Lurance, Marcueil had several pneumatic letters taken to a Paris post office.

To Doctor Bathybius he wrote:

My dear Doctor,

Don’t be annoyed with me any more because of my paradoxes: the Indian has been found. No scientist is more worthy than you to be his Theophrastus, nor to occupy what you termed the other day “a chair in the department of the impossible.”

Do come tonight.

A.M.

To the seven most highly quoted tarts on the day’s love exchange, he sent the address of the Chateau de Lurance and the time of the reception, scrawled in black with the edge of a silver coin across a bank note – although it is forbidden to send valuables in a pneumatique.

To his intimates, but “for men only” as it says on carnival posters – and only to those intimates who were bachelors or widowers – he sent a brief invitation, engraved on a visiting card. William Elson was not informed for, although his daughter went out without him, he seldom went out without his daughter. In any case, it was to be presumed that he was recuperating from the fatigue of his journey.

The courtesans were the first to arrive.

The general next.

Then Bathybius.

“What sort of joke is this?” were the doctor’s first words.

Paying no attention to his nods of doubt and annoyance, Marcueil explained what he wanted of him. It was simply a matter – “Simply!” cried Bathybius – of supervising an attempt by an “Indian,” in the great hall of Lurance, between midnight and midnight, to beat the record “so celebrated by Theophrastus.” The great hall, where a large divan-bed had been prepared for the occasion, had been selected not for its size but because a small adjoining room took its light from it by means of a small bull’s-eye window, which allowed everything that happened in the hall to be seen. In this retreat, now converted into a washroom, Bathybius could also carry out any examinations he might deem necessary to determine the authenticity of the experiment.

Bathybius was perplexed.

“Where is the Indian?” he finally inquired.

The women were already there, said Marcueil, but the Indian would not arrive until suppertime. Also, supper would be early, at eleven.

After a short hesitation the doctor agreed to undertake the singular role Marcueil was asking him to play. Actually, all that was required was that he enjoy the pleasant hospitality of Lurance for twenty-four hours. As for the problematical “Indian” and his “Record,” in his glassed-off retreat he would have a front seat from which to laugh at his failure – and also a front seat from which to observe for twenty-four hours the seven prettiest harlots in Paris, without a great deal of covering and in most intriguing attitudes. Now the doctor was an elderly man.

The general’s entry was blustery and cordial, as usual.