Under the leaden weight of sky the golden music of the waves was tarnished. Lament in the minor of a plane sped arrowwise against the blinding barriers of darkness, no sadder sound than this!

 

Rivière remembered that the place of an inspector, when the staff is on night duty, is in the office.

“Send for Monsieur Robineau.”

Robineau had all but made a friend of his guest, the pilot. Under his eyes he had unpacked his suitcase and revealed those trivial objects which link inspectors with the rest of men; some shirts in execrable taste, a dressing set, the photograph of a lean woman, which the inspector pinned to the wall. Humbly thus he imparted to Pellerin his needs, affections, and regrets. Laying before the pilots eyes his sorry treasures, he laid bare all his wretchedness. A moral eczema. His prison.

But a speck of light remained for Robineau, as for every man, and it was in a mood of quiet ecstasy that he drew, from the bottom of his valise, a little bag carefully wrapped up in paper. He fumbled with it some moments without speaking. Then he unclasped his hands.

“I brought this from the Sahara.”

The inspector blushed to think that he had thus betrayed himself. For all his chagrins, domestic misadventures, for all the gray reality of life he had a solace, these little blackish pebbles—talismans to open doors of mystery.

His blush grew a little deeper. “You find exactly the same kind in Brazil.”

Then Pellerin had slapped the shoulder of an inspector poring upon Atlantis and, as in duty bound, had asked a question.

“Keen on geology, eh?”

“Keen? I’m mad about it!”

All his life long only the stones had not been hard on him.

 

Hearing that he was wanted, Robineau felt sad but forthwith resumed his air of dignity.

“I must leave you. Monsieur Rivière needs my assistance for certain important problems.”

When Robineau entered the office, Rivière had forgotten all about him. He was musing before a wall map on which the company’s airlines were traced in red. The inspector awaited his chief’s orders. Long minutes passed before Rivière addressed him, without turning his head.

“What is your idea of this map, Robineau?”

He had a way of springing conundrums of this sort when he came out of a brown study.

“The map, Monsieur Rivière? Well—”

As a matter of fact he had no ideas on the subject; nevertheless, frowning at the map, he roved all Europe and America with an inspectorial eye. Meanwhile Rivière, in silence, pursued his train of thought. “On the face of it, a pretty scheme enough—but it’s ruthless. When one thinks of all the lives, young fellows’ lives, it has cost us! It’s a fine, solid thing and we must bow to its authority, of course; but what a host of problems it presents!” With Rivière, however, nothing mattered save the end in view.

Robineau, standing beside him with his eyes fixed on the map, was gradually pulling himself together. Pity from Rivière was not to be expected; that he knew. Once he had chanced it, explaining how that grotesque infirmity of his had spoilt his life. All he had got from Rivière was a jeer. “Stops you sleeping, eh? So much the better for your work!”

Rivière spoke only half in jest. One of his sayings was: “If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!” One day, too, he had said of Leroux: “Just look at him! I call it a fine thing, ugliness like that—so perfect that it would warn off any sweetheart!” And perhaps, indeed, Leroux owed what was finest in him to his misfortune, which obliged him to live only for his work.

“Pellerin’s a great friend of yours, isn’t he, Robineau?”

“Well—”

“I’m not reproaching you.”

Rivière made a half-turn and with bowed head, taking short steps, paced to and fro with Robineau. A bitter smile, incomprehensible to Robineau, came to his lips.

“Only ... only you are his chief, you see.”

“Yes,” said Robineau.

Rivière was thinking how tonight, as every night, a battle was in progress in the southern sky. A moment’s weakening of the will might spell defeat; there was, perhaps, much fighting to be done before the dawn.

“You should keep your place, Robineau.” Rivière weighed his words. “You may have to order this pilot tomorrow night to start on a dangerous flight. He will have to obey you.”

“Yes.”

“The lives of men worth more than you are in your hands.” He seemed to hesitate. “It’s a serious matter.”

For a while Rivière paced the room in silence, taking his little steps.

“If they obey you because they like you, Robineau, you’re fooling them. You have no right to ask any sacrifice of them.”

“No, of course not.”

“And if they think that your friendship will get them off disagreeable duties, you’re fooling them again.