Balaoo, after climbing ten flights of branches, arrived at his little set of pithecanthrope chambers. The hall-porter was standing at the door, with his beak wide open, gazing towards the distant blaze. Balaoo shaded his eyes with his hand and looked. The fire was flaring in the very middle of Saint-Martin, by the Place de la Mairie. He at once felt reassured. As long as Madeleine’s home was not in danger, nothing else mattered. His thoughts turned instinctively to the Three Brothers, who loved to play tricks on the members of the Human Race, like real pithecanthropes, and he said to himself that this great glare was perhaps an invention of theirs.
The sound of the alarm-bell filled his ears with a noisy and unpleasant booming. General Captain thought aloud that they were ringing the bells for the midnight mass to which Mlle. Franchet went once a year. Balaoo called him a fool and told him to hold his tongue. All this fuss and bustle in the village worried him. He was still thinking of his hanged man, of Madeleine’s grief, of Coriolis’ anger. When the light fell and the alarm bell ceased, he went indoors and struck a match.
He lit a candle, which had not cost him a large sum, any more than the candlestick. We may safely say that Balaoo had furnished his flat without going to great expense. The grocers’, drapers’ and other shops in the village had supplied him, in due course, with all he wanted; and he had provisions in his larder; for his hut, which he had built very neatly, solidly and comfortably, in the pithecanthrope style, with reeds, leaves, ferns and branches, was divided into two rooms, after the fashion of men. In the back room, he heaped up the fruit of his industry and the produce of his thefts; the front room, which was always very clean and nicely kept and almost decorative, contained the essential articles of furniture, that is to say, a mat; a chest of drawers filled with a few changes of clothes and linen, but especially plenty of well-starched collars and cuffs, for which Balaoo entertained a perfect passion: this chest of drawers had once belonged to Dr. Honorat; a pedestal cupboard, from the same source; a cabinet-photograph of Madeleine; and that was all. No bed. It was bad enough to have a bed, with sheets and blankets, in his rooms in the house at the village. Here, when you wanted to sleep, you lay down on the mat; and the same when you wanted to talk. Balaoo hated arm-chairs, of whatever style or period. This does not mean that he was averse to decorative art: for instance, he had hung his walls with picture-placards advertising the best chocolates and the daintiest biscuits. The owners of the Black Sun Inn had long misses a gorgeous cardboard poster, on which a young and lovely female, in short skirts, was pictured lifting her little finger as she sipped a glass of golden yellow bitters. This work of art, which had once adorned the Roubions’ summer dining-room, now figured in Master Balaoo’s picture-gallery, at his country-house in the Big Beech at Pierrefeu.
General Captain was attached to this palace, in the office of hall-porter, by one leg. His duties consisted not only in cleaning the whole establishment, with a deft beak, during his master’s absences, but also in admitting visitors and giving them beech-mast while they waited. For Balaoo, when in the mood, was at home to his friends of the woods and the underwood. For those who were heavy in their haunches, he had contrived a system of little notches cut into the trunk so as to form a staircase. He had taken the idea from General Captain’s perch at Mlle. Franchet’s. Balaoo, who had never seen a lift, was very proud of this piece of work, which allowed even his friend Dhol, who had never left the level of the ground, to walk about Balaoo’s tree as though he were at home and to give himself the airs of a jaguar, airs which, I am bound to say, looked absolutely ridiculous in a wolf.
Balaoo, as we have seen, struck a light. He next unfurled the splendours of the Empress’ gown before General Captain’s fascinated gaze. Then, after shaking it, as he had been taught to shake out stuffs, in order to remove the folds, he hung it on a nail. This done, he lay down dreamily on his mat, his brain afluster with the day’s events.
He longed for quiet; but General Captain never ceased asking him questions, to which, for that matter, he did not reply.
The Empress’ gown puzzled the hall-porter. He wanted to know if Balaoo had brought the garment for his own use and if he should soon see his master walking about in that fine white dress. He turned it with his beak and managed to tear a bit of lace from it, for which he got a box on the ear.
“You needn’t be angry,” he said, hurrying out of reach. “I am sure it would suit you beautifully. You ought to have a necklace of beads to go with it, like Mlle. Franchet.”
Balaoo was filled with concentrated fury at the idea that anyone could conceive him decked out like that old faggot of a Mlle. Franchet. General Captain, who was too stupid to notice his master’s bad temper, went on jabbering like a parrot:
“I hear that beads are much worn by the monkeys.” At this word, Balaoo pushed two fingers into his nostrils and sat up on his hind-quarters, a bad sign.
“A parakeet in the Cours Belzunce at Marseilles told me that, on the Equator, the macaques” — O fool of a General Captain, to use that name before Balaoo!— “have hairs behind their ears and rings and bracelets of yellow gold on their feet and necklaces of rare pearls round their necks.”
Balaoo withdrew the fingers from his nostrils, a sign that he had overcome his anger and recovered his spirits. One can’t lose one’s temper with a General Captain. And he said:
“General Captain, I suppose you don’t know what a jacare is?”
“A jacare? No, Balaoo, I don’t.”
“A jacare is a sort of crocodile who lives in the Forest of Bandong. When the Java panther begins to eat him by the tail, he does not move a step; when the Java panther has eaten half of him and satisfied his hunger for the day, the panther goes away, but the jacare remains. Yes, I give you my word, he remains waiting for the panther to come back, next day, and eat the other half. Isn’t he a fool?”
“Why do you tell me that?” asked the hall-porter, aghast.
“So that you may know that, in the Forest of Bandong, everything is finer and grander than here. Thus, for instance, the jacare is an even bigger fool than you. But don’t go building on it, General Captain! True, I sha’n’t ever eat you by the tail; but my friend As, if I gave him leave, might be less squeamish.”
At that moment, some one scratched at the door. Balaoo told his servant to open it, for he recognized a friendly scratch; and, as luck would have it, As the fox walked in, carrying a chicken between his jaws and waving a greeting with his arched brush.
Balaoo at once ordered him to go outside and leave his prey on the door-mat — Balaoo had recognized one of Mme. Boche’s chickens — and reproached him with his carnivorous instincts. As put the chicken carefully in a corner, within easy reach. His snout was covered with blood and feathers and he stretched it out on his paws with the air of a philosopher who claims the right to live as he likes and who can listen to the observations of others with equanimity, having his belly full and his dinner provided for the morrow. He let the virtuous Balaoo talk and descant upon the peaceful charms of a vegetarian diet; and, at the moment when the other least expected it, let fly an argument which, in a manner of speaking, struck the pithecanthrope all of a heap:
“You boast of being a man,” said As, “and you don’t even eat chicken!”
Balaoo said nothing, for a series of moments that, to himself, seemed endless. Would no fit answer ever occur to his brain? It was really not worth while going through a course of study, learning to read men’s words on wooden cubes and to write them first with a pencil and then with a pen and ink, only to allow one’s self to be flummoxed like that by a simple As. At last, he sat up, with glittering eyes, gave a cough and declared:
“I wouldn’t hurt a fly for the sake of food! True enough, I kill; but I kill because I’m annoyed and I never kill to eat: I call that disgusting; and you can take it straight from me.”
“Then you don’t like those who kill to eat,” said As. “If so, why do you like the Three Brothers, who kill to eat?”
B
alaoo retorted:
“I saw them kill the process server; and they did not eat the process-server.”
“Yes, but they kill us, here, in the forest; and they do it to eat us.”
“You flatter yourself,” said Balaoo, shrugging his shoulders. “The Three Brothers never eat fox. Men don’t eat fox. You are not even good to eat for those who eat everything, which is far from saying that the Three Brothers won’t kill you, for they don’t like chatterers and windbags.”
“I know more than you think about them,” said As, in a tone of vexation. “As I was going through the Rue Neuve, I saw them dragging one of the Race along ; and they had put a piece of white stuff, like that which you use to wipe yourself with, in his mouth; and they were kicking him to make him go faster. I ran away, because they had guns on their shoulders. They can do what they like, for all I care: they are no friends of mine; but, as you are so thick with them, you might tell them to leave me alone. Last year, I came home to find that they had set fire to my hole. They thought that I was there.”
“People who lead the life which you do must be prepared for everything,” replied Balaoo, sententiously, without making any promise. And he thought it his duty to add, “There are good and bad sides to forest life. And now, As, old chap, let me get to sleep.”
“It’s easy to sleep,” said As, who understood that he was being shown the door, “when one is the friend of men and has an easy conscience, like yourself. By the way, Balaoo, there’s a man hanging from the first tree on the left on the Riom Road; you ought to go and cut him down.”
Balaoo sprang at As’ paw and nearly broke it:
“Who told you that?”
“No one told me: I saw it!” said As, releasing and licking his paw.
“What did you see?” growled Balaoo.
As gave a glance to make sure that the door was open:
“I saw you putting his tie straight!” he flung to Balaoo, jumping out of the little set of chambers in the Big Beech at Pierrefeu.
Balaoo ran to the door, but the other was far away.
His nasty, sniggering laugh was heard in the dark and leafy distance.
Balaoo, choking with anger, could find nothing better than a word in man-language to express his animal wrath:
“Filth!” he shouted, in his terrible voice of thunder, into the black night of the forest.
Chapter XIII
ON THE DAY after that night of terror, at early dawn, the troops sent from Clermont-Ferrand began the famous siege of the Black Woods. It took no less, from the start, than a regiment of infantry and a squadron of cavalry, with M. le Vicomte de la Terrenoire at their head, to ring the space in which it was thought that the Three Brothers might have taken refuge. The police-officials of the chief town of the department, including M. le Prefet Mathieu Delafosse, were taken over the scene of the crime, heard the story of the tragic night from the mayor’s own lips and made their preliminary arrangements in concert with the military. On the other hand, the sub-prefect and the deputy for the arrondissement of Tournadon-la-Riviere, who were too deeply compromised with the Three Brothers, were requested, by the government to keep in the background.
M. Mathieu Delafosse was upset, to begin with, by the undoubted fact of the kidnapping of Dr. Honorat and showered reproaches on the mayor of Saint-Martin for not interfering when the ruffians were passing under his nose with their unfortunate victim, to which M. Jules replied, with no little common sense, that, if he had given the least sign of life, the result would have been a great massacre of his fellow-citizens and that, taking one thing with another, they could congratulate themselves on being let off, after such a night, with the disappearance of Dr. Honorat, who, at any rate, was an unmarried man.
These sage words did not, for the moment, have the effect of cheering monsieur le prefet, who felt a secret fear that the Three Brothers had seized upon the doctor’s person only with the object of holding him as a hostage, thus complicating a task which was difficult enough in itself. However, upon reflection, the fact that the three ruffians had already killed M. Herment de Meyrentin gave monsieur le prefet some little hope. Those scoundrels were thirsting for blood; and Dr. Honorat also was probably dead by this time. If that were so, there was no need for the authorities to hold their hands lest they should thereby be giving the doctor his quietus!
“They are impulsive brutes,” thought M. le Prefet Mathieu Delafosse, recovering his serenity. “They’ve killed him without thinking that they had the price of their ransom in their hands.”
Once this idea, that Dr. Honorat’s sufferings were at an end, had taken definite root in the brains of the first magistrate of the department, it was resolved to “go strenuously to work.”
There would be no shrinking from extreme measures.
The government was very much annoyed by this fresh bother, because of the rumour which began to be current that the Three Brothers, who were known for political agents, had held their tongues throughout the trial on the part which they played in the elections, only because they had been promised an absolute chance of escape.
And that escape had been neatly carried out indeed! It could not be explained except on the assumption that a helper had come from the outside, working at his leisure, undisturbed by the warders. The warders themselves declared that they could make nothing of it. The commission of enquiry came to no conclusion and declared itself powerless to explain the escape by ordinary human means. The Three Brothers, confined, in one cell and guarded by five armed policemen, had flown as though on wings. When it happened, the warders were playing cards in the cell, as usual, all seated round a table, while Siméon, Élie and Hubert stood behind, advising them. When the game was finished and the players raised their heads, they looked in vain for the prisoners, who had disappeared. Two of the bars at the window had been twisted out of shape with an effort which no man’s arm was capable of making. It was through this aperture that they had flown away. And there was really no other word for it: they must have skimmed across the roofs like birds. In short, the whole thing resembled a dream; and the ministry, who would certainly have to answer questions, could hardly come down to the Chamber with such a fairy-tale! And so the prefect and his staff were given clearly to understand that, since it was impossible to explain the escape, they must absolutely find the fugitives, alive or dead, so that any idea of complicity might be removed.
“Strenuous measures, major, strenuous measures!” said M. Mathieu Delafosse to the Vicomte de la Terrenoire, whom he found prancing on his sorrel outside Mme. Valentin’s windows, with all the village round him. “You will please trot down the Tournadon-la-Riviere Road with your men, till you come to the Grange-aux-Belles, and there join the detachment which is marching from the Chevalet side. That is the only road still open. It must be barred to the ruffians. You will then arrange with Colonel du Briage and drive the quarry between Moabit and Pierrefeu. And be sure to tell the colonel to send his whole regiment into the woods and to make his men beat all the bushes and hunt about everywhere. And, if the scoundrels defend themselves, they’re to be shot down like rabbits. Send me a message by one of your troopers, when you’re nearing Moabit, and we’ll enter the forest in our turn. Do you understand? Good-bye and good luck to you!...I shall go straight back to that old Vautrin hag, who may end by telling us something. When I think that they had the cheek to come home and fetch their belongings. What belongings? More politics, that’s certain! There was nothing found when the place was searched...And what’s become of the Zoé girl? The old woman says that she went scouring the forest with them. It seems hardly likely: she would be rather in their way...”
“Little Zoé knows the forest as well as they do,” said monsieur le maire, who had now arrived, “and she climbs the trees like a monkey. I tell you, they’re not caught yet! You would have done better to keep them in your prison, monsieur le prefet.”
The prefect pretended not to hear and, followed by the whole village, turned towards the Vautrins’ cabin,
where paralyzed old Barbe lay moaning in her recess by the chimney. The mayor and his two deputies sadly closed the procession.
The other actors in last night’s tragedy did not think of putting in an appearance. One and all were laid up with a feverish chill, including even Mme. Godefroy, the postmistress, though there was plenty for her to do. All the heroes and heroines of that fatal night wished themselves miles away, down to Mme. Valentin, who carefully kept her little powdered and painted face hidden behind the lace curtains of her dainty bedroom, although her maid told her that M. de la Terrenoire had passed under her windows on horseback to say good-bye before setting out for the war.
The only people who could have told the truth about the events of the night were either invisible or silent. And the population had embroidered on the terrible adventure to its heart’s content. Some went so far as to say that the Vautrins had loaded with chains at least half a score of prisoners, men and women together, and carried them off to the forest with Dr. Honorat and that the Three Brothers had started operations by slitting the tongues of everybody in the big room at the Black Sun.
Citizens who had had the courage to peep through their shutters on that accursed night had seen things fit to make you shudder. Mme. Toussaint, they said, who had tried to defend her Empress’ gown, had been dragged three times round the Place de la Mairie by the hair of her head.
The news soon spread all over the department. People struck work for thirty miles around. Peasants came across the vineyards waving their arms and asking, as soon as they were within earshot, if “they” had been caught. Their curiosity outweighed their very fears.
No, no, the Three Brothers had not been caught.
And what beat everything was that old Barbe, on her truckle-bed, laughed in her sleeve at all the questions which the prefect put to her. She was prouder than ever of having brought into the world that fine progeny which was keeping the whole Republic busy and upsetting an entire department. And she sent a cold shiver down the back of all who had entered her cabin by the way in which she said:
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 300
