Devil's Score: A Tale of decadent omen….

by Edouard Jourdan

  - My perdition? Would you ... insinuate that it was me ... who killed my father? ...

  The stranger resumed coldly, his eyes implacable and fascinating:

  - There are times when you are not sure about the opposite.

  "In any case, it would be easy to denounce yourself and prove in justice that you are guilty of parricide. Hush! We are not alone. Pull yourself.

  "Johan Bansberg, my friend, your concierge saw you coming out of your house on the night of the crime, the day before yesterday, a deadline that put you in bad shape. You looked concerned, distracted. Between this exit and your arrival at the police station, you had plenty of time to do your job on rue d'Assas. The prints of your hands are found on the furniture, on the murder weapon. This blade is identical to those you hide at home and a search would discover. (Moreover, if necessary, Regina would testify that she saw them, as well as your wife, and she would say many more things, Regina!)

  "All this, you know it, not true! But what you do not know yet is that the telegrams addressed to Valentin and your father have been typed with your typewriter; and that the thing is most recognizable, thanks to slight notches made to certain characters by our devoted Regina. It cuts you that, my friend!

  Johan, decomposed, said to him with contractions of the throat:

  - I did not touch the billhook, rue d'Assas!

  - Go and support that to the judge, when he took your fingerprints!

  - I did not touch it! Johan sobbed. It's you, with a molded glove ...

  - I only know one thing: your fingerprints are those of Danvers! Moreover, they will prove your guilt in another way: by proving that the crime was committed by a novice who did not think of putting on gloves or pinching his fingertips with a needle, to avoid not leave revealing traces. Fingerprints! no one will believe you, if you refuse the testimony!

  "You had too much interest in this death.

  "You will be accused of wanting to abuse public credulity by rejecting your crime on the memory of a dead person. Or you will be accused of trying to compromise mediums by hitting your father during a session, with all the lies and special effects used by these crooks of spiritualists. You will be accused of having learned all these things from M. de Varmand, to whom you have suddenly asked for occult lessons. That one, you will be accused of having made it disappear to get rid of a ... rival. By the way, my friend, did you know that your wife was having a great time with this old Marquis bastard? Regina, who did not miss a good opportunity to have fun, saw their affair ... It seems that he took a lot of fun with your beautiful wife ... Ask Katarina to talk about buttered sodomy! I'm still laughing ...

  - I ... You ... (Johan trembles with rage and sad stupor) ... Why, then, why did not you compromise me materially in the murder of M. de Varmand?

  "Because I did not want you arrested before your father's murder. In other words, I wanted to be able to talk to you once you touched the legacy. You understand? Besides, be quiet: you are compromised as instigator in the murder of M. de Varmand. They have prepared charming letters, typed with your typewriter, which prove your guilt and by which you have bought the death of your wife's lover.

  "So, you'll pay me the small amount, right? If so, hello! I disappear. If not, I eat the piece. See how simple it is.

  - What blackmail! muttered Johan, stunned.

  - Blackmail? Not! In all this, my dear Sir, I have made - or has not been made - to take security for the recovery of a claim I have on you. By this payment of a million you will not buy my silence; you will pay a debt. There is something you owe me.

  - What? ...

  - Your hands!

  - My hands? To you? ...

  - Your hands are mine.

  At these words, the stranger took his hands out of his pockets. With the tips of his teeth, he removed the blue wool gloves that covered them. They were metal hands, articulated, crushing orthopedic devices.

  "I am Danvers," he said. See again.

  And with a gesture left, with his hands inert, he spread his scarf, showing Johan a horrible scar that put him like a collar of infamy.

  Dramatic, incredible sight, worthy of dream and delirium!

  Johan heard the man speak to him as though through a thick wall:

  - I let my beard grow so that I would not be recognized. Because Danvers must remain dead for everyone. Danvers is an evil monster, forced to remain hidden. Danvers can no longer earn his bread, and he asks you to pay him the hands he has given up for your well-being ... A million the pair!

  "One million was the price you demanded from your old hands; it was the sum that insurance would have paid you ... It's not virtuoso's hands! But it's watchmaker's hands and I do not have any anymore! My opinion that I am entitled to compensation. Do you think I would have asked for less than a million to separate from my hands? If I had been treated with me, instead of mutilating myself while I could not, neither stir nor speak? … Oh! I do not want Petiot. He thought I was dead ... And I will tell you something else: all my victims ... I sacrificed them to Satan for one thing: to enrich myself by my profession. The Prince of Darkness has somehow honored our pact ... Fate has taken my hands but will make me rich. The Devil is not an ungrateful ...

  Johan's lips moved silently.

  - Yes, really: Danvers! confirmed the insightful returning.

  And he looked sadly at Johan's hands, which seemed to remind him of a past ...

  "Dr. Petiot," he continued, "had a very intelligent air, the very one who afterwards had the idea of​​nightmares, knives, and all that enterprise of which you see the end. He became my friend even before talking to me about his plans, even before I knew if I would survive. It's a rough rabbit.

  "When he saw my body and my head still shuddering, he had the idea to try a transplant.

  "My remains belonged to the medical school, which willingly gave it to him, supposedly to be dissected. As soon as my hands were cut, the other carried me to a closed room, and there went to work with two enthusiastic, bold and discreet comrades.

  " They succeeded. Oh! Satan is not for anything, not directly .... I am not a resurrected one! It just proves that death did not begin its work of corruption and that my tissues were still alive. Simple transplant, after all! ... And it must be said, Dr. Petiot is a bad guy in his soul ... So, Satan still took part in this little plot ...

  "But if I told you all the sufferings I endured! If I told you the terrible sensations of my slow return to life, the physical pains, the moral pains, the dreadful memory of having been beheaded ... Ah! Mr. Bansberg, you would have pity on me! You would understand that I expiated, at that time, many past and future mistakes ... And if I told you my despair of finding myself without hands, it is not a million you would give me; it's two!

  Danvers looked at Bansberg's hands, and Bansberg stared at the iron hands that Danvers, seized with a sinister gaiety, jiggled like puppets. In the midst of the tornado where his thoughts were overturning, a rapprochement was made in Johan's mind. He raised terrified eyes to the man.

  "Monsieur de Varmand," he said.

  "Indeed," Danvers acknowledged, affecting carelessness. It was I who castrated and massacred him. This old libertine swindler was becoming boring; he was only waiting for Petiot's confirmation to reveal our little shenanigans to justice; and in such a case the doctor would have given it to him! ... And then, that facilitated the second crime ...

  - That made it easier ... to whom? Whose?

  Danvers looked at Johan with a scornful look.

  - Satan is not an ungrateful man ... And then he sent me his apostle, Dr. Petiot, the "Doctor Satan" for his impious resurrection. Will you be kind enough to bring me my money?

  The demon, with his claws, clasped Johan's wrists until he turned pale, symbolic cruelty of the sovereign power he had taken over him! Then he let go, and told him again, ready to go away:

  - Nine o’clock! After tomorrow!

  - A moment! Please, Mr. Danvers ... bring me the evidence to exculpate me.

>   - In exchange for a million more?

  Johan lowered his head in defeat and assent.

  He went out of the bar after Danvers laughing with a frightful laugh.

  - One more drunkard! said a worker who was passing.

  11 – CONFESSION

  He found Katarina decked out in a blue apron, stirring pots and pans on the stove.

  - There you are! she told him. I'm almost happy you're late. Imagine that Regina is gone! Without warning! … What do you have?

  - I ... to talk to you, Katarina. Come here.

  It is fair to say that the persecutor of Johan did not foresee what will follow. His victim had accustomed him to more discretion. Suffering, trembling, fearing in silence, deploying all the resources of his mind to conceal his torments, such had been the conduct of the artist since the origin of his tribulations. In the presence of Danvers, he had just proved to him his weakness and submission. Why, all of a sudden, did he decide to put his wife in the secret? We believe that in this painful extremity he no longer found the strength to remain alone with his misfortune, and that he had not the courage to embark on the path of lying, which an obstinate silence opened before his eyes. not. Legitimizing in the eyes of Katarina the disappearance of a million francs, that included a building of cunning too heavy for him, who was frank of nature and cruelly suffered to remain mysterious.

  Still, thirty minutes later, Katarina knew almost nothing of the anxieties he had endured since leaving the clinic until the difficult hour that had just rang. But ... His mind refused to admit one thing ... His sexual relationship with the Marquis. He could not believe it. He refused to believe it.

  The story was so unexpected, so strong, so important, that the young woman was at first suffocated. But love filled her, and everything in her faded away to make way for the frantic devotion which is, in danger, the form of passion. She herself had to abdicate the weight of her sin with the dead Marquis.

  - That's where we are! Johan said. The damage is done! It comes from my hiding. I should have told you, from the beginning - but I dreaded this turpitude - to say to you, "I have assassin hands! "... I did not dare to touch you anymore; I would have believed some infamous power of attorney! These hands were moving away from you. It seemed to me that their flesh contaminated mine, and that my blood took in their vessels the taste of murder!

  Katarina had seized the famous hands, all moist. She pressed them eloquently, and hid them in hers.

  - Will you forgive me, Katarina? I lacked confidence, and now I am obliged to speak when it is too late, when my distrust itself has lost us. What could I do alone against the tortuous attacks of my enemies? ...

  - Ah! Johan, your heart beats in my chest! Never doubt it again! ... I forgive you all the more easily as myself, my friend, I did not always inform you of certain things ... And besides, I did some things ... I did one thing ... I am so ashamed of it ...

  - It could only be for my good! But I, Katarina, I fooled you, and you even ... Oh! will you forgive me? ... The jewels ... The jewels, it's me who took them in the trunk!

  - You!

  - Me. You understand ... My rings, these rings that you kept since the disaster, I knew it, I told myself that they would be too narrow for my new hands, and I took care not to talk to you about these rings ... But under what pretext to refuse to put them back, to put them on, even for a second, the day when the idea would come to you to return them to me? ... Their disproportion would give you, one or the other, suspicions!

  "I wanted to make them expand in secret ... For that, it was necessary to take them in the trunk, then to replace them there without you noticing them. It was difficult. The absence of the rings would have awakened you if you had opened the chest. Better to steal all of its content. So, your attention would not be drawn to the rings. You would believe in a robbery.

  "And in order to mislead you, to give this flight the appearance of a modern burglary, I invented the scarlet banner, and I wrote with my left hand, cleverer than the other, this business card. that you found in the trunk, instead of jewels! All was well, at least for the kidnapping. I went there while you were not there. The jewels were put in safety in the "Hand's Room" and the rings deposited with a silversmith, who returned them to me, wider, a few days later. However, you had discovered the subtraction. Your anxiety told me enough. Ah! I was devoured with sorrow! To see you so upset! To be the cause! How unhappy I was! not only of that, but also of the idea that I had stolen; that I had stolen my larceny as a delinquent by profession, with perverse refinements: that the scarlet banner could only be an inspiration of my hands, rather than a creation of my brain, and that in this I should was shown less Bansberg than Danvers! As soon as the goldsmith had returned the rings, I was followed by the impatience to put the jewels back in the trunk and put an end to this ugly comedy. It was a morbid, imperious need. To postpone a single day seemed impossible to me. I had, besides, combined my business and planned all the sleepers. (The ease of my discoveries and their malignity terrified me!) Unable to postpone restitution, I did not wait until the next day when I could have taken advantage of your departure; and the same evening ... you were in the living room. I had placed in the "Hand's Room", against the power outlets of my machines, the switch of an electrical bypass that allowed me to turn off and turn on the lamps in our bedroom, whose wires were passing by. I interrupted the circuit, paralyzing the action of the three switches in the bedroom. You, knowing how peaceful and sewing, I left without turning the electrician, whose buzz suffocated more than one noise and persuaded you of my presence in the "Hand's Room". Then, barefooted, carefully walking on the carpet, I reached the chest closet, carrying the jewels tied in a handkerchief with a map of the scarlet banner. I took the key in the hiding-place of the Directoire office, I opened the closet and the jewelry box. But the misfortune was that at that moment ...

  - God! Katarina said. That grip that grabbed me ... Ah! I understand his strength now!

  - Forgive me! Oh! forgive me, Katarina! It was the only way to leave you in the dark! What would I have said, what would you have said, if I had let myself be caught! I had to go to the end of my business, close the chest, replace the key and slip away without you guess what the intruder was doing and that the intruder was called Johan Bansberg!...

  " Oh! this phonograph! With what disgust of myself I employed him to cover my retirement! With what horror I admired the astuteness and efficiency of my experience! ... You smile? How good you are! My darling, how many times, mentally, I begged you to absolve me, I who fell, tied up, gagged! ... I had only one hurry: escape from this bedroom, run to the "Hand's Room", give back the light and deliver you from your shackles! Alas! my torture was not finished! Lie, always lie! And who to fool? My beloved, my wife, my surest friend! But I had dreaded that you insisted on making a complaint, and when I saw on the contrary that you dissuaded me from it, what thanksgiving! …Now you know everything. But what? Looks like you still have doubts? ... I swear, Katarina, that I have nothing more to say to you ... Wait, what am I looking for ... Ah! if ! The card of the scarlet banner in the safe of dad! May I tell you! On the night of the murder, I had contributed, like Mr. Ray, like Mr. Massu, to taking out papers and precious objects from the chest. Without paying attention, I had left on a trail of dust the mark of my fingers - the imprint of Danvers! And now Monsieur Sicot discovers it with his lamp! Distraught, trembling that the truth does not jump to the eyes, I look for a way to confuse it ... While all the people present have the nose in the trunk and contemplate the print, quickly, without turning myself, at the stolen, I take in my wallet a card of the scarlet banner, and, the files being on the table behind me, I slide it in the one of above! I was only thinking of adding to the imprint phenomenon by adding an additional enigma. Having never read Danvers' prose, I did not know that the writing of my left hand had remained his. My typewriter, I had bought it, really, only repelled by the laborious rehabilitation of my right hand and the puerility of the characters it traced! And t
hen, not only did the writing of my left hand displease me, but to write like that, to show me lefthanded in public, in front of you, was not it dangerous? Was not it to betray me? "This business card was the last. I had only written three of them. And it is by chance - by imprudence! - she was still in my wallet! This time, nothing is hidden from you anymore ... Katarina! Katarina! What are you thinking about?

  - And the white man, Johan? The traveler who was in your car? The corpse of disaster? Sir Melchior, finally?

  - The white man, you already told me about it. Sir Melchior, M. de Varmand did not hesitate to question me about him. Are they only one person? ... I swear I never spoke to Sir Melchior!

  - So, on the train, between Luxembourg and Saint Maur, he and you, nothing?

  - Absolutely nothing ! It is necessary that the collision brought us closer to one another by the violence of the shock ...

  Katarina, with her eyes closed, gave a big sigh. She seemed relieved at the last weight that still oppressed her, and her vast and charming eyes reopened as on a blessed valley. But her face darkens almost immediately, and she says: