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

by Edouard Jourdan

- Ah! cried Johan, reborn to life. Willingly! But unfortunately! it's not my hands that you press ...

  - It does not matter, come on! I urge you heartily, yes, sir. You are, pass me the expression, a brave and honest boy! Yes, with a good heart and with pleasure! Because, you see, in existence, one is mistaken and one sometimes gurgles. So, is not it, when we can repair, avenge, innocent ... you understand, well! that ... to say the real word, it feels good! ...

  - Here it is, your warrant! said M. Dupin, who was swinging a sheet of paper like a censer.

  - Thank you, sir. And you, Mr Bansberg, give me all the necessary information so that we do not rally your wretch. I know him, he will surely come to the rendezvous. Too confident, this guy! Believe yourself genius! Wait a minute, I'll flank you, me, genius!

  - What happiness! Katarina tells me. Here is one who sees clearly!

  "Yes," I replied. But I would not have thought it so impressionable, or so expansive ...

  "Gentlemen, you are free," announced M. Dupin.

  - Ah! hushed Johan with relief.

  And he went out, with some precipitation.

  13 – DEVIL’S TRAP

  Driven by the desire to witness the capture of the evil criminal, I had obtained permission from Sicot to cooperate.

  My mission was to stay hidden in a bar in the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts, in the company of a police officer, until the whistle that would order us to jump and lend a hand to the inspector. This one would arrive simply by the door. Another of his agents had received more complicated instructions, which would be awkward to explain.

  I left home early in the morning. The hurricane was just calming down. The floor was littered with branches, slates and other debris torn from the roofs.

  I opened a diary, and read that Dr. Petiot was suspected of murdering the wife of a factory manager.

  Thus, it was necessary, it was absolutely necessary that the odious criminal be caught in the mousetrap. Petiot would never confess to Johan these impious horrors. Deprived of this secondary support, but which might have gained importance by revelations concerning the surgeon's helpers, the unfortunate could no longer rely on the fatuity of Danvers and the intelligence of Sicot. That one was missing at the rendezvous, or that the other missed his shot, was done with my protege.

  Sitting face to face on a stool, the policeman and I had a little time to enjoy a glass of wine.

  The bar owner, obedient, totally ignored us.

  From time to time I looked at the table where Johan would come to sit.

  Finally, Johan showed himself.

  The rendezvous was for nine o'clock; the clock struck eight times; Sicot's plan was meticulously executed.

  A little pale, our Johan.

  - A grog! he said.

  Then he leaned on his suitcase - the money suitcase! - and he started smoking cigarettes.

  At half-past eight the door opened before a small man with a blond beard who walked straight to Johan and sat down beside him on the oilcloth seat.

  My heart leaped with joy. It was the individual Johan had described to us; nothing was missing, and it was enough to look at our friend to understand that he found there the companion demon of the other evening.

  Their discussion could be guessed:

  - Do you have the money? asked the scammer.

  - Yes, in this suitcase. But you, you have the glove and the other proofs?

  - I have them.

  The man, with his mechanical hand, blew the pressure off his raincoat, and rummaged through the inside pocket of his jacket.

  I saw him flinch violently.

  For a moment, under the bench, two robust hands, invisible to him, had come out of the floor by an old heat. I had followed their ascent. They had just closed like two vices on Danvers' ankles.

  He stooped. But the door had opened. A whistle sounded and we drew our revolvers targeting the bandit. The arrest was a success! Maintained on each side by Sicot and Johan, taken by the arms, taken by the feet, the six handles nailed him on the spot.

  Policemen arrived and asked the guests to leave the bar. In the street, other low-ranking policemen kept passers-by away.

  Sicot displayed handcuffs. But Johan warns him:

  - Warning! Remember that he has fake mechanical hands!

  Indeed, to handcuff the hands, wouldn’t it be like seizing a man by his umbrella?

  - Fake hands? You say! the inspector said softly.

  - But, Mr. Sicot objected Johan forbidden, beware! It's perfectly the day before yesterday! It's Danvers!

  - Danvers, him?

  The inspector, without the slightest precaution, raised the sleeves of the captive. He laughed like a tiger if laughter were not man's own.

  Mrs. Bansberg entered the bar. She could see Johan's tormentor, motionless, fierce, bowing his head and seeming to be losing interest in the inspector's actions, who closely examined the mechanical hands.

  - Remove them! He ordered.

  The other shrugged and smiled disdainfully. He rested his wrist on the corner of a table. Immediately, his false hand opened at the bottom; and, with the help of the other hand, which no longer had its mechanical appearance, he took it off as gloves are removed... for it was only a thin steel gauntlet.

  The police handcuffed the man with absolutely normal hands.

  - Two little masterpieces, these metallic gloves! Sicot chirped. Outside, they mimic the hands of the model, present during the murder of Tristan Varmand.

  Johan threw himself on the criminal and tried to strangle him.

  We separated them. Johan, white with rage, was shaking a kind of thing that stuck to his fingers like a strip of flypaper.

  - What is this horror? exclaimed Katarina. Sicot stood the ribs:

  - It's ... Ah! ah! This is the false scar of the resurrection! ... that ... Oh! Oh! Oh! ... it comes from Monsieur's neck!

  He freed Johan from the sordid streamer that would not let him go, and showed everyone a ribbon of paper, painted and cut in imitation of an abominable scar.

  Stripped of this ornament, the flesh of the man remained marked with a trace red like that of a burn. Sicot showed it to us by forcing the decapitated beheaded to lift his head. But that was just a sham on his part. As his prisoner raised his chin, he grabbed his beard from underneath and began to untie her.

  The beard and mustaches were fake too.

  And when the inspector, with a sudden gesture, had taken the cap down to the ears, we had in front of us a man with badly shaven cheeks, with black hair like coal. It was a southern, Italian or Spanish man can be.

  "Sisters and gentlemen," said Sicot, "I present to you Senior Ignacio Viera, a very talented boy, simultaneously an orthopedist, a film operator, a psychic, a nurse - and something else you were not unaware of ... Bloody criminal.

  "Monsieur Bansberg, this is the one who has been leading you since the catastrophe at Saint Maur. And he leads you alone, with no other accomplice than your former maid, Regina Delrio, who will soon be imprisoned, now that she is deprived of her ... pimp.

  "Ah! Mr. Ray, I told you, psychics are great psychologists!

  "Viera has been excluded from the world of honest spiritualists, practicing white magic. For many, he was a worshiper of the devil, a fervent Satanist. What has never been proven is the authenticity of his witchcraft. He had a huge psychological hold on Danvers. He had pushed Danvers to rape a nun, supposedly to get favors from the Devil. When Danvers was arrested, tried and beheaded in front of the crowd, he disappeared. Then he entered as a nurse at Dr. Petiot's. He would have blown, most likely, this ignoble doctor to graft the hands of Danvers, the man he had pushed to mystical madness and murder. He was never far away from you, Johan. He was watching you at the clinic and the sanatorium. He made a casting of the hands of Danvers certainly ... He knew that you were rich and famous ... But there is something that I do not understand. I, Sicot, I am a simple police inspector ... Why Danvers' hands were so special?

  - I recognize him! said Mrs. Bansberg.
I saw it at Dr. Petiot's. They looked closely. Viera constantly whispered things to him ...

  The criminal was stirring up a variety of feelings in me. To the aversion he inspired me was strangely intertwined with the curiosity one experiences at the end of a musical hall magic show, when the conjurer explains his wiles.

  "Of all the spiritualists who were working with the Marquis de Varmand and Edgar Bansberg," said Sicot, "Ignacio Viera is the only one I could not find. No known address, no family, let alone a phone number or a post office box. Charles Danvers had an accomplice ... Ignacio Vera. When Danvers' business was good, he hired Viera to help him in his watchmaking workshop ... When Johan described his blackmailer yesterday, I understood. The accomplice of Danvers was the witness not found. Viera, tell us, what connection did you have with Danvers, then with Petiot?

  -Danvers ... Ah, exclaimed Viera, that good old Charly ... Danvers was a watchmaker. He was a fervent Catholic who had lost faith. I gave him a new one. He wanted to achieve perfection as a watchmaker. His obsession was to produce a chronometer able to measure the duration of the breath of God ... The black masses were not enough, nor the profanations of burials. Neither the impious sacrifices ... No, he wanted to make a deal with Satan to have hands whose ability would rival God's. Danvers made a deal with Satan, and the prince of Darkness wanted to recover his due. I admit, gentlemen, to have helped him to sink into the murderous ignominy ... I'm still kidding. The rape of this filthy good sister was a wonderful entertainment. I helped him a bit, I confess ... As for the murder of the children, I finished the meal that was in the kitchen. I just allowed some cigar burns on the little boy ... As for Petiot, a home as I love them ... True quack and almost false doctor, I loved his coldness. The "Devil's Hands" obsessed him. He wanted to try something ... to prove that their power was transposable. What was possible. Petiot wanted to see if Johan Bansberg would be turned into an awesome demon ... I wanted money ... I forgot to tell you ... Satan, in his great goodness, had given Danvers talented hands. The pact was to be made in blood and decay. Mr. Bansberg, if you want to avoid joining Danvers in hell, you have only one solution ... Get rid of those hands. Unless you accept this infernal pact, and maybe one day, I'm sure you'll compose a demonic symphony ...

  Following these revelations, the glove with the fingerprints of Danvers was no longer very interesting ...

  The police threw the wizard Vera into a van bound for the courthouse.

  Sicot made a gloomy remark:

  "The death sentence is waiting for this man ... And surely hell. Redemption is not possible for such a man »

  Despite the outcome of this horrible story, Johan expressed no joy. Johan, already tormented as a damned, showed a bottomless sadness.

  All fire in him was dying out ... He was no longer an artist. It was a dark soul.

  Katarina wanted to hug him ... He pushed her away. Something was unleashed in him, as when he wanted to strangle Viera ...

  He rushed on his wife. First, he slapped her and yelled at him:

  - Dirty train, dirty whore, you cheated on me! This whole story is your fault! If you had not had that damn idea of​​taking me to Dr. Petiot's house. You should have let me die! You and your luxury tastes ...

  Then he broke loose ... He hit his wife. Kicks, punches.

  When the police mastered Johan, Katarina was already dead.

  I, Jean Ray, had watched the scene, taken aback. I am a coward. The passive and cowardly witness of an evil decay.

  Johan was arrested.

  The magistrates wanted this story not to be heard.

  Johan was sentenced to be interned in a mental asylum.

  A few years later, in his cell at Saint Anne's Hospital, he committed suicide. He sliced​​off the handles with a piece of glass. He was trying to cut off his hands, the "Devil's Hands" as Viera used to say. The “Demonoplasm” turned for him in some kind of remnant delusion. Nurses went superstitious and asserted the devil was chasing him. Supposedly, noises were heard from his cell.

  Strange fact ... Johan's hands were stolen from the hospital.

  Have they become a kind of godless talisman?

  Finding them became an obsession for me until the very day of my own death.

  Me, Jean Ray, journalist ...Here is my last drop of poisonous liquor.

  This story is an enigma. Eventually, someone will decipher and solve it…eventually.

  When I blow my brain out of my skull tonight in my damp I called a cabin, in the middle of bums, beggars and gypsies…The last thing I will see, will be the “Demonoplasm”…The devil himself.