“I did not have to be told twice. Without waiting for the old man, whom I left greatly agitated, to give me his permission, I rushed up the stairs which led to the studio. Christine stood leaning over the balcony.
“She was as calm as when, on the previous evening, she had come to my place. There was nothing in her manner, nor in her look, which betrayed the slightest sign of last night’s terrible experience. No one could imagine what my thoughts were at this moment. Can I express them?
“Here I was about to find myself in this room, where I knew that no one except Christine, her father, her fiancé — and their victim — entered, just a few hours after the murder, and I was about to be let in by Christine, who in her most natural manner pushed the door open for me.
“I glanced at once at the balcony joists, the studio floor, the table, and the immense chest, as though I expected to find there the sanguinary traces of the crime. It was childish! For, at the moment, when Christine received me in that room everything necessary had been done. But what astonished me was that the floor did not even seem as though it had been swept — nothing, nothing, nothing in this long room, which was flooded with daylight, nothing was here that could hold the gaze of the one best informed — my gaze. For I, myself, had seen Gabriel murdered.
“Nor was this all. From time to time I had learned from Mother Langlois’s veiled confidences that the old man, his daughter, and the young doctor were in the habit of shutting themselves in the studio for hours and hours at a time, with curtains drawn across the windows, engaged in some mysterious work, which was beginning to cause anxiety to the simple souls in the neighborhood. But, after one glance at this ordinary looking studio, I found myself beginning to wonder if Mother Langlois had not been dreaming.
“In one corner stood a large divan; hanging on the walls were canvases, studies, and modelings from the antiques; a model in rough clay covered with damp cloths was supported on two stools; and on one side was a glass bookcase, which did not even contain books, but only held a few polychrome statuettes.
“The sight of these brought back to my mind the fact that two years before Mademoiselle Norbert had exhibited at the Independent an Antinous Stand of rare beauty of workmanship, which had made her greatly talked about on account of the original substance of which it was made. But while an effort was being made to discover and name the substance, the artist, without any explanations whatever, withdrew her exhibit one morning.
“At the farther end of the studio a partly drawn portiere hung before a little room, which was undoubtedly Christine’s bedroom.
“As I could not fix my eyes on anything, my gaze wandered back to the wardrobe.
“And just at this time Christine calmly reminded me of my call by inviting me to take a seat in the armchair — the very armchair in which I had seen Gabriel sitting the night before.
“If she was self-possessed, I was not. My brain was on fire, and my hands were trembling.
“She sat opposite me, but I did not dare look at her. Only the night before they had murdered her lover, and here she was showing a keen interest in the grain and colors of my leather.
“She offered to give me some designs from which I would be able to make a mosaic.
“‘Then you want a de luxe binding?’
“‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but I must tell you that these books are not mine and are not intended for me. I am giving away a secret, but I am sure that you will keep it. They belong to the Marquis de Coulteray, our landlord, whom I saw recently. The marquis is looking for an artistic bookbinder, who would be willing to devote himself to work in his library under very exceptional conditions. Perhaps this would not be entirely disagreeable to you, since you are a neighbor. I took the liberty to speak to him of your work, and he requested me to get him some samples of it. I hope you will pardon the liberty.’
“I stammered my thanks like a timid and confused child. The little story about the books was of no great interest to me, but that she had thought of me! That she had recognized my existence! That she had even tried to do me a service! The thought made me like one intoxicated. A moment before I had approached this beautiful girl in horror, wondering what an impassive heart was beating under her blouse, and now I could have kissed the hem of her gown as the Goddess of Pity.
“Yes, yes, it was adorable of her to deign to stoop to my abominable personality, and to smile upon my hideousness. And she did smile upon me. Oh, the angel!
“Just the same, on this very spot, her lover had been murdered last night.
“This thought, surging up suddenly within me, made me sway, and my stupid glance again roved around this cursed room which would not give up any part of its secret. My glance stopped again at the great chest — the chest from which he had stepped and into which they perhaps had thrown him while preparing another tomb. Perhaps he is still in there!
“I am sure that he is in there!
“A force over which I had no control impelled me to walk over to this fatal piece of furniture.
“‘Where are you going, monsieur?’ she demanded. And this time it seemed to me that her voice was less assured and that the gesture with which she stopped me was somewhat over anxious.
“It was my turn to have pity. I pulled myself together and murmured, scarcely knowing what I said:
“‘That is an old Normandy chest.’
“‘It is not a chest, monsieur,’ she replied. ‘It is an old Renaissance Provençal wardrobe, quite authentic. It is the only piece of furniture left in my possession that belonged to my mother. It came to her from her grandmother. That wardrobe has held in its day some very strong and beautiful linen of a kind that is not made nowadays.’
“As I was ready to leave I made my bow. She held out her hand. But I felt that if I touched her hand with my lips I should do something foolish, so I hurried away. After all, he is dead. He is dead, and that is the main thing. Old man Norbert was within his rights. The old Roman right. The right of life and death beneath one’s own roof. It is true that he killed the gentleman in the cloak, but he had not touched a hair of his daughter’s head — she is sacred, no matter what she does. He is an honest paterfamilias. I shook hands with him as I passed through his shop before rushing over to shut myself up in my own. It is all so horrible.
CHAPTER V
“HEAVIER THAN AN ANGRY SEA”
“‘YES, MONSIEUR BENEDICT, it’s just as I tell you. There are things going on over there that ain’t natural. When I saw you going through that dining room this morning I wanted to throw myself in your way and prevent you from passing, I was so afraid that something dreadful might happen to you. One day I thought they were going to eat me up, because I went into the garden without their permission. They’re worse than savages, I tell you; worse than savages.
“‘They don’t want nobody, not nobody around them. I’m even astonished that they let a cleaning woman come, but there are some things that the young lady can’t do. For example, she can’t wash dishes — she hates to wash dishes — that doll with the hands of a fine lady and not a sou. They ain’t got nothin’, and they’re as proud as if they hadn’t sold everything piece by piece. I’ve seen the silver go out. I have — things that didn’t date from yesterday, you can bet — all the family heirlooms and pictures and furniture. For the past three years they’ve been getting rid of the things, and for what, I ask?
“‘They do say that the old man is searching for perpetual motion. What’s that, perpetual motion? I guess I’ve found it — I’m moving all the time; there’s never a minute’s rest for the poor.
“‘But if he is crazy, that old father Norbert, ain’t the other two any common sense to give him? I give you my word that doctor acts as cracked down there in his little laboratory at the bottom of the garden as the old man and the young lady up in their studio. I was just saying to that nice Mademoiselle Barescat that when he comes out of there in the morning when I arrive, and runs off to his classes his face looks like a corpse. What do you suppose
he’s up to all night?
“‘And as for the young lady, she always looks as though she was walkin’ in Paradise. She acts as though a body was nothin’ but a flea when she passes you.
“‘Just the same, I seen she’s got red eyes for the past two days. You know Monsieur Benedict, that house there makes me scared. I often feel when I leave as though I just won’t ever go back, and if it wasn’t for Mademoiselle Barescat, who’s just as curious as me, I’d say good-by to them long ago.’
“The above conversation took place in Mademoiselle Barescat’s back shop, which is the center of all the gossip of the quarter. Under the pretext that I wanted to find Mother Langlois, I had just dropped in, and what these two women said seemed to me to be very damaging to the watchmaker’s little family.
“Mademoiselle Barescat sat nodding her head and stroking her cat as she listened to Mother Langlois. There was nothing in this world that could separate Mademoiselle Barescat from her cat; only death could separate them. One was never absent from the other. Together they held the secrets of all the company who came there, together they escorted them to the door, and it was quite likely that when they were by themselves they hatched such plots as might well lead the most balanced mind to madness or suicide.
“Notwithstanding, I tried to reassure myself. The shopkeeper’s talk did not go beyond the ordinary limit of idle gossip, so I made a statement with which I meant to appease Mother Langlois’s anxieties.
“‘Imagination is a fine thing, Madame Langlois,’ I said. ‘It sets off the dullest, and it gives a sort of color to your conversation that I appreciate, for I have always enjoyed stories that scare one somewhat. In this respect I am still very much of a boy. That is why I like to hear you talk about old man Norbert, and his daughter, and his nephew, and this strange life that they lead.
“‘Now, I don’t want to hide anything from you, so I’ll own up to you that it was partly on account of what you’ve just said that I suddenly made up my mind to go into the forbidden garden and make a dash for the stairs which lead to that mysterious studio. However, I must say, Madame Langlois, that I found nothing up there that could justify your suspicions concerning these worthy people for whom you work. Why, it’s the most ordinary kind of a studio. I’ve seen twenty others on the same order during my life.’
“‘Well, then,’ she interrupted, ‘why do they make it so much a mystery — they don’t even want me to go in and sweep it up?’
“‘Oh,’ I said, ‘many artists have whims like that.’
“‘True enough,’ she cried. T know that artists like dust. But it is all the more strange to me, because that beautiful Christine herself is always as clean as a new penny. And there’s one thing that’s sure, she ain’t the one who sweeps. See here! There’s only one man that I’ve ever seen go into that studio — of course, not counting old Norbert and his nephew.
“‘It happened two months ago, and I spoke of it two months ago to Mademoiselle Barescat at the time.
Ah, he was a funny sort. He was dressed in a cloak that covered him from head to foot, and he wore high boots.’
“‘Oh, well,’ I said, trying to speak as naturally as possible, although I was strangely stirred by what the charwoman had said, ‘no doubt they have foreigners calling upon them.’
“‘A foreigner,’ she replied. ‘Sure he might have been a foreigner — he looked like one. We don’t dress like that nowadays. He had a hat with a buckle on it, just like you see in the movin’ pictures, like in the time of the Revolution. On my word, a body might have said he was an actor. But he was a fine fellow, though I didn’t have much time to see him. It happened one afternoon that I went there by chance and they didn’t expect me. They soon made him step lively.
“‘He was sitting in the garden when I got there, but Mademoiselle Christine took him on a run back to the studio, with the doctor following. Then old man Norbert had already grabbed me by the wrist and he made me go back to the shop with him. I can still hear his voice, when he said to me, “Well, now, what do you want, Mother Langlois?” And the way he looked at me.
“‘Begging your pardon if I disturb you, M. Norbert,’” I said to him, ‘“but I didn’t know you had company.”’
“‘Then he said something under his breath which I didn’t understand, so I told him what I had come to say, then I took myself off. You remember, don’t you, Mademoiselle Barescat?’
“Oh, yes, Mademoiselle Barescat remembered, so did her cat, from its wise look. They both purred in assent, one caressing the other.
“‘Yes, we even waited for him to come out,’ added Mother Langlois, ‘but he never came out. And I have never seen that man since.’
“‘No, and I never even saw him go in,’ said Mademoiselle Barescat, the thread and needle lady, pushing up her glasses on her forehead and fastening her dust colored eyes upon me.
“‘Yes, I know who you are talking about,’ I said. ‘It is some friend of the family. I have seen him go in there a few times, and I remember having seen him leave there about ten o’clock in the evening — about two months ago.’
“I lie! I lie!
“I am now their accomplice. I want to save her, no matter what she has done — no matter what they have done.
“I spend the rest of the day in an agitated frame of mind. I endeavor to get my thoughts back on the tragedy that I have witnessed — and to get some light on it from the chatter which I heard at the thread and needle woman’s shop.
“So then, Gabriel has been in that watchmaker’s house for two months and I didn’t know it. All the family had known that he was there. So Christine had not received him secretly. No! But she had kept him hidden in the closet. That was evident. I should say so.
“The others believed that he had left, but he had been hidden in the wardrobe.
“All of this is most extraordinary, for, at any rate, he could not have been in that wardrobe for two months when they murdered him. But how had he been able to escape from the incessant spying of the thread and needle woman, and from the charwoman, and from me, Benedict Masson, who am always spying out from behind my curtains. When I reflect upon that dreadful scene I am forced to believe that the two men were not completely taken by surprise at his presence there.
“I have tried in vain to give some sense to her father’s words, which have been ringing in my ear ever since with a strange music. They clearly showed that he, at least, was not entirely taken by surprise to find his daughter in the company of this mysterious visitor.
“‘He no longer obeys me. And it is your fault.’ “What queer words the father uttered at such a moment! Then there was Christine in a frantic state, crying imploringly:
“‘Do not kill him! Do not kill him!’
“But, all the same, the old fellow had killed him. Why? Why? Was it because he had found him with his daughter? Was it because the man no longer obeyed him? Perhaps for both reasons. But in what way did this man not obey him? What was it that old Norbert demanded of this unfortunate young man whom I had seen slaughtered in such a fiendish manner?
“And as for the fiancé — he must also have known what was going on, because if there was one person who kept cool throughout the whole affair it was he.
“After old Norbert had killed Gabriel he had acted and looked like a madman. And Christine had uttered moans as though she were giving up her soul. But this Jacques Cotentin! He had lifted up the body without any apparent emotion, and pushed it into the studio without saying a word.
“And now, what could they have done with the body? They have not yet buried it in the garden. Perhaps they will do that to-night, so I shall spend the night in my skylight. I have a presentiment that this night for certain I shall see something. Both men have a very preoccupied air. I can well guess what is troubling them — a red spot of blood is heavier than an angry sea. Lady Macbeth had tried the experiment long before my neighbors on the Isle of St. Louis.
“That night! Yes, that night will always weigh heavily upon
my memory. It was an oppressive night, with sooty clouds and sulphurlike vapors. It had rained a little. To me it seemed to be raining burning tears and gleams of sulphur.
“It was on this night that the ‘Virgin’ rose again and once more appeared before me in her harmonious grief.
“I am speaking of Christine. For why should I not continue to call her the ‘Virgin’? Because my eyes have seen — what have they seen? Do I really know what my eyes have seen? Do they know? Upon reflecting fully — it is possible to hide a gentleman in a wardrobe and still be pure. Now it pleases me to think that. I find Boubourouche sublime, and far more interesting than all the Sganarelles who laugh in the audience — it pleases me that this frightful drama — the reason for which I am entirely ignorant of — has not diminished my regard for my divinity.
CHAPTER VI
MY OWN TRAGEDY
“NOW LISTEN! NOW listen well to this: I also have a tragedy — the reason for which I am equally ignorant of — a tragedy which clutches me in its invisible tentacles, but which, little by little, will end by sucking all my thoughts — a tragedy at the end of which, if Fate so decrees, there will be, perhaps the scaffold. And I, notwithstanding that I am pure.
“Oh, Heavenly Father, let us not judge one another. Let us rather fear the form that things take, when they brush against us, and let us no longer say aloud with the mournful pride of the creature who only uses his five senses, ‘This is,’ and ‘This is not.’ Let us be on our guard! Yes, let us be on our guard! For the universe all around us is like an immense snare — and others before my time have cried: ‘Sham.’
“I will not go as far as that, so long as I believe in Christine.
“The night is so oppressive and hangs so heavy over the island that it appears more isolated than ever from the city.
“I feel as though I were being stifled under a bell — I can scarcely breathe.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 386
