“The general opinion is that the trouble was created by a sort of music-hall acrobat — as everybody knows, Mlle. Arlette des Barrieres began her career on the variety stage — or, at any rate, a low fellow who thought that he had some reason to be revenged on our charming little actress. M. Massepain has furnished the police with full particulars and we shall soon know what is at the bottom of this unpleasant affair. Meanwhile, we offer our sincere sympathy to Mlle. Arlette des Barrieres and her popular husband.”
Here is another note inserted in the Gaulois des dimanches of a week later:
“H. H. the Maharajah of Kalpurthagra has written to us to say that he has not been to Maxim’s since his arrival in Paris and that he has no connection with the person who introduced the fashion of raw rice and champagne (minimum brut of the famous Singsong brand) into that first-class establishment. We have telephoned to Henry, the well-known manager, who regrets this usurpation of rank on his customer’s part, all the more as he has not seen him since and as no one has yet called to pay the bill.”
A few other papers copied these paragraphs and embellished them with more or less witty comments, in the latest Boulevard style; and the various incidents seemed wholly forgotten, until, one day, the Vie à Paris published, in its evening edition, a paragraph headed, in large capitals:
“THE SHAM MAHARAJAH AGAIN.”
After reminding its readers of the first appearance of this worthy at Maxim’s, the newspaper went on to say:
“There was great excitement yesterday in the Rue Royale. A taxi-cab driver who had been victimized by the sham Maharajah of Kalpurthagra recognized him outside the Cafe Durand, where he was quietly drinking a bock, with the serenity begotten of an easy conscience. The driver at once pulled up beside the pavement and made a rush for his would-be Hindu Highness, clamouring for his fare for driving him all night through the gayest streets of the capital. However, the ‘Maharajah’ appears also to have recognized his chauffeur; for he hastened to leave his table, relinquishing his beer and of course forgetting to pay for it. The waiters joined the driver; and their shouts soon collected the usual crowd of onlookers. The police appeared upon the scene; and our ‘Mahajarah’ would undoubtedly have spent the night in the cells if, by some mysterious feat of gymnastics, he had not disappeared in the thick foliage of the trees on the boulevard, where it became impossible to find him.”
This peculiar manner of escaping pursuit resulted in establishing a natural connection in the minds of M. Massepain and his friends between the sham Maharajah of Kalpurthagra and the strange visitor to the Cafe de Mailly. There are not so many people in Paris capable of running away through the tree-tops! Lastly, a local paper published in the Quartier Latin suggested that there must be a relation between the incidents on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, those in the Rue Royale and the climbing of the walls, railings, gutter-pipes and gargoyles of the Musée de Cluny.
The newspapers promptly jumped to the conclusion that all the queer things that had happened in Paris for some months past must be put down to the score of a mysterious acrobat whose eccentricities, pointing to a mind tainted with madness, threatened to endanger the safety of the inhabitants.
And it was then that the press gave way to the panic to which I have alluded at the head of this chapter and lost that presence of mind which it should have communicated to the people of Paris, who were soon to be driven mad by the fantastic and criminal enterprises of the elusive Maharajah. But, between ourselves, it is no use protesting against the “scare-lines” in the evening papers.
The first article to spread consternation was headed:
“GIRLS, DO NOT QUIT YOUR PARENTS’ SIDE!”
This scare-line was followed by an account which stated that the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees had been seen in a chestnut-tree in the Tuileries Gardens and that there was reason to believe that he was not alone. Persons whose word could be trusted declared that they had seen him carrying a young girl in his arms, like a savage.
But this first scare-line, which caused excitement, was nothing compared with the second, which caused absolute terror:
“DISAPPEARANCE OF FOUR GIRLS.
“A monster, unworthy of the name of man, drags them by the hair through the trees and, carries them, like a prey; over the roofs of the metropolis.”
This was the alarming and tragic heading that appeared in the four o’clock edition of the Patrie en danger. The newspaper-vendors who excited the crowd with their mad rushing and shouting sold their copies up to five sous apiece. The father and mothers, above all, wanted to be informed and did not look at the cost, that day. People stopped drinking outside the cafes, stopped walking on the pavements. They read instead. Everybody read, or listened to others reading. The story was simple enough: since that morning, four girls had disappeared, carried off by the monster. One had vanished at the corner of the Rue de Médicis and the Rue de Vaugirard, another in the middle of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a third near the Square Louvois, while the fourth was picked off the top of a tram-car going along the Quai du Louvre. Note that all four had disappeared in places where there were trees. The monster hid himself in the trees and suddenly put out his hand, pulling the girl’s hair with invincible force. The girl followed, loudly screaming, and so rapidly that no one had time to hold her-back. A young person who had just been discharged from hospital and who was resting on a bench in the Square Montholon owed her safety to the fact that her head had been shaved during her illness. Only her false chignon remained in the monster’s hands. As for the monster, he was endowed with infernal speed; and people would still be looking for him in the trees; when he appeared on the other side of the street or boulevard, on a roof, to vanish then and there with his prey.
In conclusion, the Patrie en danger advised ladies and young girls not to walk under the trees. And, in a moment, the pavements of the boulevards were emptied and the roadways crammed with a crowd that blocked the traffic, all walking with their noses in the air.
On the evening of that memorable afternoon, an unfortunate lamp-lighter, who was cleaning a gas-lamp, standing on a ladder against the trunk of a tree, was nearly torn to pieces by a wild mob that stupidly took him for the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees.
The prefecture of police was on tenterhooks.
The Municipal Council was called upon to take exceptional measures. Certain idiots, of the class that always turns up at difficult moments when people are not inclined to make fun of them or any one, certain idiots contended that the only way to get rid of the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees was to cut down all the trees! The families of the girls who had disappeared were interviewed by the newspapers and photographed down to the fourth generation. The Ville Lumière was losing its head.
But the incredible scandal fell in all its horror on the panic-stricken city with the famous head-lines in a late edition of the greatest paper for news in the world: the Époque. Here is the gruesome heading:
PARIS A PREY TO THE MINOTAUR. THE MONSTER IS KNOWN. AN ANIMAL WITH A HUMAN BRAIN. A TALKING PITHECANTHROPE. FORMIDABLE INVENTION OF PROFESSOR CORIOLIS SAINT-AUBIN
And here is the article which was copied into every newspaper all over the world:
“There are no mysteries to the Époque. Its news service, which is unique in the journalistic world, has already enabled it to render the most signal services to the cause of humanity.
“History repeats itself. At the critical hour, when the metropolis is living in terror of the monster who seems to have established his empire on the roofs of Paris, the Époque has succeeded in penetrating the secret of the strange and formidable personality of the kidnapper of young girls. And we can tell the mothers’ to take comfort; for, the police authorities, informed by the Époque as to the nature of the enemy to be vanquished, will soon be able to rid us of this horror.
“It was by following step by step the fantastic appearances of the creature who was long taken for a music-hall acrobat gone mad that we were
enabled gradually to ascertain the space to which the monster usually confined his evolutions. We were thus led to the Quartier Latin and thence to the Rue de Jussieu, where we knocked at the deserted house of his owner, a man whose name will ring through the ages, M. Coriolis Boussac Saint-Aubin.
“In this house, which we entered by a window, everything was in the greatest disorder. The building seemed to have been hastily abandoned. We were received, however, by a parrot which, for more than an hour, never ceased screaming out a word, or rather a name, which at first conveyed nothing to us, but which also will remain famous in history. This word was:
“‘Balaoo! Balaoo! Balaoo!’
“‘Balaoo is the animal-name of the monster who, in the life of Paris, has his man-name: M. Noël. Balaoo is the name of the first monkey, the first ape to speak the language of men.
“M. Noël is well known in the neighbourhood, where his odd ways, his curious ugliness and his characteristic waddling gait did not pass unperceived, while the faces which he was in the habit of pulling around his eye-glass have more than once excited the laughter and witticisms of the little ragamuffins in the streets. But no one ever suspected that this somewhat eccentric, but, until recently, well-behaved person was a Javanese pithecanthrope or ape-man. For M. Noël was a customer of the Café Vachette and the Brasserie Amédée! M. Noël attended the lectures at the law-courts! M. Noël belonged to the Conférence Bottier! M. Noël dressed like a respectable man! M. Noël spoke French like anybody else! And yet, O unfathomable mystery of the races, M. Noël is not a man! M. Noël is only an anthropoid ape! He has four hands! He is directly related to the orang-utan and the large ape of the forests of Java, the archetype of which can be seen, at the Jardin des Plantes, in the ape Gabriel!
“And now what is this mystery which will throw all our readers into commotion? How did we succeed in discovering the secret? How did we find Balaoo’s master? It all happened very simply, but still it had to be thought of! We began by seizing the files filled with papers in M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin’s study. Here we discovered the most curious documents imaginable, relating to the transformation of Balaoo into M. Noël. These documents, we admit, do not belong to us. Judging by their importance, we may say that neither do they belong to M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin, their natural owner. They belong to universal science; and it is to universal science that we propose to dedicate them, day by day, by publishing them in our columns from to-morrow onwards, changing nothing, adding nothing, respecting the truth in accordance with the reputation which we have acquired among our readers.
“From the moment when, in the empty house in the Rue de Jussieu, we first glanced at those immortal notes, many incidents connected with the famous acrobat who walked in the trees, incidents which had seemed incomprehensible, became illumined with an unexpected and dazzling light; and we were able to understand the most curious actions and observations which, until then, had appeared to us, for the most part, to be invented by the maddened imagination of the crowd.
“Our object thenceforth was to find, with the least possible delay, the man whose scientific recklessness had let loose that monster upon humanity. There was no doubt in our mind, judging by the objects surrounding us, that this man, this gifted, but dangerous scholar, had fled, fled from the hateful consequences of his daring, fled on hearing of the crimes committed by his terrible pupil. He had to be found; he must, by fair means or foul, be set on the track of the great Java pithecanthrope. He alone was perhaps capable of instilling sense into that unique creature outlawed-by men and animals alike; he alone could save us!
“We at once embarked upon a close enquiry into the last public acts of M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin and we learnt that, a few days ago, he married his daughter to his nephew, M. Patrice Saint-Aubin; that the ceremony was performed in the strictest privacy and almost incognito; that M. Noël was not present; and that the young couple hurriedly took the train for Auvergne, while, almost at the same moment, the mysterious acrobat who walks in the trees was creating a disturbance at the wedding-breakfast of Mlle. Arlette des Barrieres and M. Massepain, the tenor.
“The coincidence between those two events, the flight of the newly-married pair and the disturbance on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, gave us ample food for reflection. The result of our reflections was not long in doubt. It slightly altered our first view of M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin’s flight. As M. Noël was pursuing the bride, we considered that the father must be chasing M. Noël, with a view to saving his daughter. He was bound to fear a tragedy. Did he arrive in time? Had he come up with them? We hastened on his tracks and we are now, unfortunately, in a position to say that M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin arrived too late! He found only his son in-law, under lamentable conditions which were certainly, so to speak, the prelude to all the crimes, all the abductions under which the capital is groaning to-day!
“The responsibility of that madman of genius is really terrible: terrible in the eyes of history, in the eyes of science and in the eyes of the law. We are not using this last word because we think that it behoves us to draw down the vengeance of justice upon a man who believed that he was accomplishing a great work: we are simply conveying a piece of news. M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin is at this moment in custody! He gave himself up two hours ago. We ourselves, at his own request, took him to our new prefect of police, M. Mathieu Delafosse.
“All these incidents, occurring at the moment when we are about to go to press, cannot be related with all the desired detail; but we shall publish in a few hours a special edition in which we shall continue to expound to our readers the formidable racial mystery in the Rue de Jussieu. For the present, we shall consider that our work has not been in vain if we have helped in any degree, however small, to dispel the morbid terror that was beginning to overcome the bravest of us and if we have restored some little peace to family-life. The wild beast is known; the tamer is known: it is only a question, let us hope, of bringing them face to face. But let the Cage be prepared, the cage in which to shut up the new minotaur, who, since he speaks French, will perhaps consent to tell us what he has done with his living prey.
“We will conclude by saying that we discovered M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin on a Bourbonnais road, hunting, with his son-in-law, for the traces of his child, who had been kidnapped by the monster. He thought that he was his pupil’s only victim. He did not know that there were other fathers groaning, mothers in tears, sisters trembling, brothers thirsting for vengeance; concerned only with his private tragedy, he knew nothing of all the tragedies in Paris. When we informed him of what was happening in the capital, he was thunderstruck, for he had no idea that the pithecanthrope, for whom he was looking in the country, was back in town.
“STOP-PRESS NEWS.
“Two of our reporters telephone that they have just found the monster’s tracks on the roof of the Hotel-de-Ville, where he is walking about in all security. Our staff will organize a pursuit without delay.”
This was the article that sent all the journalists of the capital flying to the prefect of police, only to learn that M. Mathieu Delafosse, the new prefect, whom the advent to power of an ultra-radical ministry had relieved of his disgrace, was at the Place Beauveau, where the minister of the interior had called an urgent meeting of the cabinet. I cannot do better than publish the official statement dictated, after the cabinet-council, to the journalists present:
“The prefect of police made a statement yesterday to the ministers assembled in cabinet-council. He declared as follows:
“‘A man of whom I had never heard, M. Coriolis Boussac Saint-Aubin, sent in his card to me, requesting me to see him at once. I sent to ask his business, but he replied that he would only speak in my presence and that there must be no delay, because it was a question of life and death. I had him shown in.
“He did not strike me as mad. Before I had time to speak, he said in a clear, deliberate and exceedingly sorrowful voice:
“‘Monsieur le préfet de police, I am a wretched and unhappy man. I have come to give my
self up to the police. I alone am guilty of the crimes which are horrifying Paris and for which it would be vain to prosecute a poor creature to whom I have not succeeded in imparting a sense of responsibility. I have been hideously punished for my pride and folly. God is chastising me in my heart and in my brain, in the child of my flesh and the work of my mind. It was I that made the mysterious acrobat who walks in the trees. I made him out of an animal, for hatred of mankind. The work of hatred can never be fruitful,” my strange visitor continued, “and the worker is the first victim. I am a wretched man and an unhappy man. I have lost my daughter, who may be dead by now, herself kidnapped by my pupil. And, in trying to turn an inferior creature into a civilized being, I have only succeeded in inventing a monster, the horror and terror of mankind. Yes, monsieur le prefet de police, I have done that, I have made an ape talk! I have made an ape talk like a man, but, for all my efforts, I have not succeeded in giving him a human conscience. Therefore, I have not made a man; therefore, I have made a monster; therefore, convict me, sentence me, imprison me, torture me: I deserve every form of punishment! I am accurst!...God has smitten me as I deserved!...I wanted to reform or to accelerate His work. To accelerate the work of God is the pride and the crime of man; and it has caused my downfall. My scalpel, by cutting a nerve under the tongue and allowing me to bring another close to it, forestalled the work of the evolution of species by a hundred thousand years; but, not possessing the requisite instruments, I could not supply the hundred thousand years of consciousness necessary to enable my pithecanthrope to move among men without danger...without danger of his committing unconscious crimes; for, as regards the others, monsieur le prefet de police, men see to that!”’
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 314
