Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  The eyes of Signor Petito seemed to be starting from their sockets. Was it from fear? Fear had something to do with it, but also the suffocation produced by the handkerchief which Theophrastus had thrust into his mouth. Signor Petito himself lay at full length on the table. Theophrastus had had the time and strength to bind his wrists and ankles with string. The Signor’s head projected a little beyond the table’s edge; and under his head was a bowl which M. Longuet had placed there not to make a mess. Theophrastus himself with twitching nostrils (that was what Marceline chiefly noticed in the terrifying face of her husband) had hold of Signor Petito’s right ear with the fingers of his left hand, and his right hand gripped a kitchen knife. He ground his teeth and said:

  “Strike the flag!”

  With these words he sliced neatly off Signor Petito’s left ear.

  He dropped the ear into a little basin which he had ready, caught hold of the right ear, sliced off that, then carried the little basin to the sink, and turned on the tap.

  He returned to the kitchen; and while he waited for Signor Petito’s ears to stop bleeding, hummed an old and forgotten French air, with the most cheerful face in the world. When the bleeding ceased, he fastened a dish-cloth round Signor Petito’s head, withdrew the handkerchief from his mouth, cut the string which bound him, and bade him get out of his flat at once if he did not wish to be arrested for burglary.

  As the groaning expert in handwriting was leaving the kitchen, Theophrastus bethought himself, rushed to the sink, took the ears out of the basin, and slipped them into their owner’s waistcoat pocket.

  “You go about forgetting everything!” he said indignantly. “What would the Signora Petito think, if you came home without your ears?”

  CHAPTER XI

  THEOPHRASTUS MAINTAINS THAT HE DID NOT DIE ON THE PLACE DE GRÈVE

  IN HIS ACCOUNT, in his Memoirs, of that terrible night, M. Longuet appears to attach very little importance to clipping the ears of Signor Petito. He seems far more deeply concerned with the psychology of Mme. Longuet. “The soul of woman,” he writes, “is a very delicate thing. I gathered this from the emotion of my dear Marceline. She would not admit that I was obliged to clip the ears of Signor Petito; and her process of reasoning was incredible and indeed incomprehensible. But I forgave her on account of her excessive sensitiveness. She said then that I was not obliged to clip Signor Petito’s ears. I answered that manifestly one was never obliged to clip any man’s ears any more than one was obliged to kill him; and yet, ninety-nine men out of a hundred, I affirmed (and no one will contradict me) would have killed Signor Petito when they found him in their flat at night. She herself, who was after all only a woman, would have done all she could to kill Signor Petito with the revolver in her hand, had it been loaded. She did not deny it. Well then, in clipping his ears, did I not demonstrate that there was no need to kill him?

  “A man prefers to live earless rather than die with his ears on; and Signor Petito found himself as thoroughly disgusted with night excursions into other people’s flats as if he had been killed.

  “I acted for the best with great restraint and inconceivable humanity.

  “The logic of this reasoning calmed her a little; and what was left of the night would have passed comfortably, if I had not taken it into my head to reveal to her the whole mystery of my personality. It was her own fault. She insisted on knowing the reason of my sudden courage: which was natural enough, since up to that day I had hardly been a man of courage. It is not in selling rubber stamps that one learns to see the blood flow. Thereupon I told her straight off that I was Cartouche; and in a boastful vein which surprised me, I bragged of my hundred and fifty murders. She sprang out of bed, with every sign of extreme terror, took refuge behind the sofa, and informed me that she would have nothing more to do with Cartouche and was going to divorce me. On hearing this, I was deeply moved and began to weep. At this she came a little nearer, and explained how difficult her position was, when she had believed herself married to an honest man, and all at once discovered that she was the wife of a horrible brigand; that henceforth there could be no peace for her. I dried my tears, and condoled with her on her misfortune. We resolved to consult Adolphe.

  “Adolphe came early next morning and had a long interview with Marceline in the drawing-room. When they came out, Adolphe regarded me sadly, asked me to go with him, for he had some shopping to do; and we strolled down into Paris. On the way I asked him if the study of the document had revealed any new fact concerning our treasures; and he answered that all that could wait, that my health was the first consideration, and we would all three take the evening train to Azure Waves Villa.

  “I turned the talk on to the subject of Cartouche; but he shrank from it, until I was on the point of losing my temper at his reticence. Then he began to talk about it, and presently warmed to the subject. He took up my story at the point of my enlistment, and informed me that at the end of the war the greater part of the troops were disbanded, and that I found myself in Paris without any resources save those of my natural ingenuity and my special accomplishments. I employed these with such fortune and address that my comrades lost no time in electing me chief; and since we were successful, our band very quickly increased in numbers.

  “Now, at that time, the Police of Paris was in such a wretched state that I resolved to make it my business. It was my intention that everyone, gentleman, tradesman, or churchman, should be able to walk at any hour in all tranquillity about the good city of Paris. I divided up my troops very skilfully, appointed a district to each, and a leader who would remain my obedient lieutenant. When anyone went abroad after the Curfew or even before it, he was accosted politely by a squad of my men, and invited to pay up a certain sum, or if he had no money on him, to part with his coat. In return for this he was furnished with the password, and could afterwards walk about Paris, all night long if he wished, in perfect security, for I had become the chief of all the robbers.

  “I should be unworthy of the name of man, if I shrank from admitting that, to my shame, I admired myself for having risen to such a prodigious height of criminal enterprise. Quite criminal, alas! for though my intention of policing Paris might have been an admirable idea in itself, its execution drew us on to excesses that the original good faith of the plan could not excuse. The tradesfolk did not understand, and often resisted; and their resistance produced disaster. The clergy, however, were not against us, since we respected the churches. Indeed an unfrocked priest, whom we called the Ratlet, rendered us some services which presently led him to pronounce the Benediction with his feet in the air, in communi patibulo.

  “Here I stopped Adolphe, to ask the meaning of the Latin words. He said that if I had really been a fellow-pupil of Voltaire at Clermont College I ought to know Latin, and that in communi patibulo meant ‘on the common gibbet.’

  “‘Ah! I know: we often passed it when we went to have a blow-out at Chopinettes mill,’ said I.

  “‘Oh, there were plenty of gibbets,’ answered Adolphe, giving me a look of which I did not catch the meaning. ‘The good city was not lacking in gibbets, gallows, or pillories. And even here...’

  “Again he gave me an odd look, and I saw that we had arrived at the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. ‘Do you want to cross the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville?’ he went on.

  “‘Of course I’ll cross it, if that’s the way you want to go,’ I said.

  “‘Have you often crossed it?’ he said.

  “‘Thousands of times.’

  “‘And has nothing uncommon happened? Have you experienced no odd feelings? Have you remembered nothing?’

  “‘Nothing at all.’

  “‘Are there any spots in Paris that you haven’t been able to cross?’

  “His look was insistent. It seemed to speak to me, to bid me reflect. Then I recalled several inexplicable aversions to places I had felt. More than once, on my way to Odéon Street, on finding myself in front of the Institute, I had turned into Mazarine Str
eet. I had no sooner set foot in it than I had turned right about face and gone round another way. I had been vaguely aware of these changes of route and had put them down to absent-mindedness. But the more I think of it the less I believe that it was anything of the kind. In fact, I have found myself at that point more than twenty times; and more than twenty times I have retraced my steps. Never — never have I walked along that part of Mazarine Street which begins at the Institute and continues to the corner of Guénégaud Street and to the foot of the Pont-Neuf. Never! At the same time when I have gone along Mazarine Street on my way to the quays, I have stopped at Guénégaud Street and gone down it with a sense of pleasure.

  “I told Adolphe all this; and he said, ‘Are there any other places from which you shrink?’

  “Then I remembered on reflection that I had never crossed the Pont-Neuf or the Petit-Pont; and that there is, at the corner of Vielle-du-Temple Street, a house with barred windows from which I have always recoiled.

  “‘And why do you shrink from these places and from this house in Vielle-du-Temple Street?’ he said.

  “Then I remembered exactly why; and the reason is the most natural in the world. I had thought I had no reason; but evidently I had, for it was because of the paving-stones.

  “‘Because of the paving-stones?’ he said in a tone of surprise.

  “‘Yes: because the paving-stones in those streets are red. I don’t mind red roofs or red-brick walls, but red paving-stones I cannot stand!’

  “‘And the soil of this Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville? Isn’t it red?’ said Adolphe, leaning over me with the air of a doctor listening to the beating of a patient’s heart.

  “‘Do you think I’m colour-blind?’

  “‘Don’t you know that this was the Place de Grève?’

  “‘Zounds! It was here that the gibbet stood — and the pillory, and the platform on which the wheel was set up! On the days of execution! Facing the entrance of Vannerie Street! I never crossed this Place without saying to my comrades, to the Burgundian, Fancy Man, Gastelard, and Sheep’s-head, “We must avoid the wheel.” And a lot of use it was to them!’

  “‘Nor to you, either!’ retorted Adolphe. ‘It was here that you were executed! It was here that you were broken on the wheel!’

  “I burst out laughing in his face.

  “‘Who told you that piece of idiocy?’ I said indignantly.

  “‘All the historians are agreed...’

  “‘The silly idiots! I know perfectly well that I died at the Gallows of Montfaucon!’ I said with absolute assurance.

  “‘You? You died at the Gallows of Montfaucon?’ cried Adolphe beside himself. ‘You died in 1721 at the Gallows of Montfaucon? But it was years since they had executed anyone there!’

  “But I protested still louder than he, so that we became the centre of a little crowd.

  “‘I didn’t say that I was hanged at Montfaucon! the Gallows of Montfaucon! I said that I died there!’ I cried.

  “As I shouted it, I must have seemed to call to witness the truth of my words the forty persons who seemed interested in our altercation, of which indeed they can have understood nothing, with the exception of one gentleman who seemed to have caught its meaning, for he said to Adolphe with the utmost calmness, and with extreme politeness:

  “‘Surely you’re not going to teach this gentleman how he died!’

  “Adolphe admitted himself worsted; and we walked along arm in arm towards the Pont-Neuf.”

  CHAPTER XII

  THE HOUSE OF STRANGE WORDS

  AMONG ALL THE papers I found in the sandalwood box, by Theophrastus himself, by M. Lecamus, or by Commissary Mifroid, those which relate to the death of Cartouche are beyond doubt the most curious and the most interesting. They are indeed of great historical interest since they contradict history. Moreover they contradict it with such force and with such irrefutable reasoning that one asks how men of such weight as Barbier, who was in the best position of all not to be duped, since he lived at the time, could have been the victims of a very poor comedy, and how succeeding generations have failed to suspect the truth.

  History then, serious history, teaches us that Cartouche, after having undergone the Question in its cruellest form without revealing one single name or fact, — how Cartouche, who had only to die and nothing to hope, was brought to the Place de Grève to be executed, and that there he decided to confess; that they took him to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and that he delivered to justice his chief accomplices; after which he was broken on the wheel.

  The papers of Theophrastus Longuet explain the fraud. Cartouche was not only an object of terror, but also an object of admiration. His courage knew no limits; and he proved it under torture. From the moment that the pain of the Boot failed to make him speak, it was morally impossible that he should speak. Why should he have spoken? All that was left for him was to die game. The greatest ladies of the Court and the city had hired boxes and windows to witness his execution. Among the three hundred and sixty people who were arrested were men whom he loved as brothers, and his tenderest and most constant flames. Some of them came to Paris from the Provinces, contemptuous of all danger, in the hope that, at the trial, the Child would have the consolation of seeing them for the last time. The account of the trial which describes these women as throwing themselves, after he had denounced them, into his arms at the Hôtel-de-Ville itself, is manifestly nonsense.

  I will not reproduce here all the protests of M. Longuet against the dishonourable death ascribed to Cartouche, but the few lines which precede this chapter seem, to me at any rate, to prove, a priori, that he is right.

  But at this moment all that M. Longuet knew was that he died at the Gallows of Montfaucon, but that he was not hanged there.

  In the course of discussing this serious question Theophrastus and his friend had reached Petit-Pont Street without having crossed the Petit-Pont. Theophrastus did not so much as look in the direction of the Petit-Pont. Half-way down the street Theophrastus, who was in a state half of memory, half of possession, said to his friend: “Look at that house next to the hotel there, ‘The Market-Gardeners’ Hotel.’ Do you notice anything remarkable about it?”

  Adolphe looked across the street at the hotel, a little old house, low, narrow, and dirty, with “The Market-Gardeners’ Hotel” newly painted on it. It seemed to be propping itself up against a large eighteenth-century building to which Theophrastus was pointing with his green umbrella. This building had a bulging balcony of wrought iron, of solid but delicate design.

  “I see a very fine balcony,” said Adolphe.

  “What else?”

  “The quiver of Cupid carved above the door.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Don’t you perceive the thick bars across the windows?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “At that time, my dear Adolphe, people took the greatest care to have their windows barred; never did one see as many barred windows in Paris as in the year 1720. And I could swear that these bars here were fixed the day after the affairs of Petits-Augustins Street. First the Parisians garnished all their ground-floors with bars. But this precaution gave us no trouble at all since we had Simon the Auvergnat.”

  Adolphe thought the moment opportune to find out who Simon the Auvergnat, who was always appearing in their talk without any appreciable reason, exactly was.

  “He was a very useful object, he was the base of my column,” said Theophrastus.

  “And what’s that — the base of your column?”

  “You don’t understand? I’ll just show you. Suppose you’re Simon the Auvergnat,” said Theophrastus with almost boyish eagerness.

  Adolphe was quite willing, but not for long. Theophrastus drew him across the road, set him against the wall of the Market-Gardeners’ Hotel, showed him the position he was to take: to set his legs apart, and lean, lowering his head and raising his crossed arms, against the wall.

  “I place you
here,” he said, “because of the little ledge on the left, I remember that it is very convenient.”

  “And next?” said Adolphe, leaning against the wall in the required position.

  “Next, since you are the base of my column, I mount on that base...”

  Before M. Lecamus had the time so much as to imagine a movement even, Theophrastus had climbed up on to his shoulders, sprung on to the ledge, leapt from it with one bound to the balcony of the house next door, and vanished through an open window into the room which opened on to it. M. Lecamus in a dazed consternation was gazing into the air, and asked himself where his friend Theophrastus could have vanished, when the street rang with piercing cries. A despairing voice howled, “Help! thieves! murderers!”

  “I might have expected it!” cried M. Lecamus; and he dashed into the house from which the screams issued, while the passers-by stood still, or hurried to the spot. He bounded up the great staircase with the swiftness of a young man, and reached the first floor at the very moment when a door opened, and Theophrastus appeared, hat in hand.

  He was bowing low to an old lady with chattering teeth, and crowned with curl papers, and said:

  “My dear madame, if I had thought for an instant that I should give you such a shock by entering your drawing-room by the window, I should have stayed quietly in the street. I am not, my dear madame, either a thief or a murderer, but an honest manufacturer of rubber stamps.”

  Adolphe seized his arm and tried to drag him down the stairs.

  But Theophrastus went on: “It is entirely Adolphe’s fault, my dear madame. He would have me show him how Simon the Auvergnat acted as the base of my column.”

  Adolphe, behind Theophrastus, made signs to the lady of the curl papers that his friend was off his head. Thereupon the lady fell fainting into the arms of her maid, who came running up. Adolphe dragged Theophrastus down the staircase just as the hall filled with people from the street. The crowd took them for fellow-rescuers; and they escaped from the house without difficulty.