Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “I felt a fierce hatred for the marquis and for all the other rich men, who have only to stoop and demean themselves to pick up such women.

  “But I! I! What could I ever have? Only the image of Christine within me — a charming and subtle effigy.

  “I feel as though I ought to tattoo myself like a savage, like a ‘merry fellow’ — with a heart pierced with an arrow and around it the words, ‘I love Christine.’ Perhaps then if I should gaze at myself in my wardrobe mirror I might believe that it has happened.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE SECRET PACKAGE

  “JUNE 10 — The sight of Dorga prevented me from paying the least attention to the Hindu doctor, the famous Saib Kahn, who was in the box with the marquis. I could hardly recall his womanish eyes, like the black eyes of a houri in a bearded mask. But to-day the marquis brought Saib Kahn into the library and I was able to observe him closely, and at my ease.

  “Saib Kahn is more on the Afghan type. He is handsome. They are all very handsome in that country. He is not so dark as the Indian princes from the banks of the Ganges. His solemn face is framed by a jet black, well-cared-for beard, which is trimmed to a point. He has a powerful physique, like Sangor, broad shouldered and upright.

  “He was handsomely dressed and shod — simple elegance, impeccable. I can well understand his power over women and the disturbance he inspires. He seems so sure of himself that it is almost impossible for any one not to be disturbed in the presence of this double mystery, who possesses the eyes of a woman and a very carnal mouth.

  “Where have I seen this dangerous smile and these tigerish teeth before?

  “Ah! In the portraits! Most especially in the one of Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome — the first of the four. And this same smile, always a trifle ferocious, but not quite so powerful, flits from time to time across the lips of our good liver, Georges-Marie-Vincent.

  “Both of them interest themselves in my work, which consists for the time being of listing the rarest documents. I had found the most valuable of these in a pile in the corner of the library, and am permitted to classify them according to my own taste and ideas.

  “The marquis is far from being a brute. While I do not find him to be an ‘informed’ collector, for this collection really owes nothing, or, at least, very little, to him, he is unmistakably a good scholar and has a knowledge of the literary movements of the past two centuries. This I cannot deny. During his travels he has always interested himself in libraries.

  “We have held a long discussion on the library in Florence, and about the manuscript of Longus, and about the famous inkspot of Paul Louis Courier. He did not defend Paul Louis for treating such a crime so lightly. I did not think that the marquis, who is such a lover of Daphne and Cleo — but all this is literature, the reality is Dorga.

  “While these things were passing through my mind Saib Kahn was no doubt thinking of them too, for his smile widened with glittering menace on his lower jaw, which was so much like that of a wild beast.

  “They evidently left the house soon after going out of the library, for I heard the sound of an automobile going through the courtyard.

  “And almost immediately the door which led into the small hall opened, and the marchioness appeared.

  “‘Where did he learn all that?’ she gasped. ‘Where did he learn that? Can you tell me? Georges-Marie-Vincent’s education was very much neglected, from what he says. He never could even tell me the name of his professor. So then — ?’

  “She had been listening behind the door. So it was all in vain, although she is physically better, she always retains her fixed idea — the absurd idea which makes me look at her now with a great sadness. She was not mistaken in my manner.

  “‘I make you unhappy, do I not? Christine must have aroused your pity for me.’ Then she continued in a lower voice, ‘Christine is not here?’

  “‘No, she has just gone.’

  “‘That’s a good thing,’ she remarked, ‘and now we can talk. They all think that I am mad. There are moments when I wish that I were dead. Yes, dead. But I am afraid even of death. Some day I will tell you why — unless you’ve already guessed it. I am afraid of death. I am afraid of life. I am afraid of Saib Kahn. He is all-powerful. He can do all that it is possible to do.

  “‘If he had been able to drag my idea from my body as they draw a tooth it would have been done long ago. I knew him in India. No mere idea can resist him. Then, why is he not successful with me? Because in my case my idea is not merely an idea, it is the reflection of a reality. Can you understand?

  “‘It is not the kind of simple imagination upon which a man like Saib Kahn can prevail. But it is the living and natural truth against which nothing can be done. Saib Kahn might command the mountains to disappear, but that would not make the Himalayas less solid at their base, would it? Well, neither is it within his power to disperse my idea of this inseparable, indestructible block — this block of the Coulterays — that is, not up to the present time. Do you understand me? Do you understand me?’

  “Then, placing her burning hand on mine, she said: ‘I assure you that they are all one and the same.’

  “Her great eyes sought mine, but I did not dare look at her, for fear that she would see the intense pity I felt for her.

  “‘Madame, madame!’ I exclaimed. ‘How can you? How can a woman like you — with your intelligence? Madame, take care. There is nothing more powerful in the world than the unknown. It is a study which has caused the soundest minds to go astray. There are ideas, madame, with which one must not play.’

  “‘Great Heavens!’ she cried. ‘Do I seem as though I am playing? This is a fact. I am speaking seriously. My husband, Georges-Marie-Vincent, has had no education. Only the first of the four, let us say of the five — counting this present one — only Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, who was one of the most debauched men of the Court of Louis XV, was educated. He was a learned man, a scholar.’

  “‘I know,’ I said. ‘He was also a great talker. He held his own with Duclos. He also shone at Holback’s. He has also written articles for the Grand Encyclopedia.’

  “‘Then,’ continued she, ‘I am telling you nothing new. He was brought up by his uncle, the Bishop of Frejus. Well, then, Monsieur Masson, I swear to you that the conversation you have just had with Georges-Marie-Vincent would not have been possible if Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome had not been given such an education.’

  “I was startled.

  “‘Nevertheless, madame,’ I argued, ‘allow me to tell you that Paul Louis Courier had not spotted the manuscript of Longus with ink in the time of Louis XV.’

  “‘So that is all it requires to make you think I am an idiot,’ she let fall. ‘However, I want to say that without this education, without the great knowledge of classics so obtained, Georges-Marie-Vincent would not be at all interested in the treasures of the Library of Florence.’

  “T beg your pardon, madame, but, at any rate, there is one thing that I will admit to you, and that is that I was indeed astonished by the solid foundation of the marquis’s education.’

  “‘Isn’t it astonishing?’

  “Again her eyes flashed, and again she took my hand.

  “‘Oh, if you will only be my friend — my friend.’

  “I spoke some sympathetic words to show my esteem. But her sudden agitation made me nervous. I was sorry that I was alone with her. At that moment I should like to have seen Sangor, or even Shing-shing, appear.

  “‘Yes, I feel it,’ she exclaimed. ‘You do understand me — you do — you do. I am probably the most miserable being in the world, hovering between life and death. Neither Christine nor Saib Kahn wish to understand me. Christine thinks that I am mad. Saib Kahn believes that I am ill, and that he can bring me back to life, in spite of myself. Oh, why does he bring me back? Why does he revive me for this other one? — unless he is an accomplice, and I am now beginning to believe that he is.

  “T have a horror of the life which Sai
b Kahn gives me at the price of so much misery. And, yet, he has forbidden me to die. Oh, my friend, my friend, have you ever been to the Chateau de Coulteray? No — you have never visited it? This chateau, which they say is historical, is down between Touraine and Sologne. The chapel is a masterpiece, quite worthy of comparison with the church at Brou.

  “‘But I pray you to believe that it was not the fine Gothic carving which attracted me. Oh, no. It was what I discovered after I had visited the crypt. The crypt contains the tombs of the Coulterays. Monsieur Benedict Masson, the tomb of Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome is empty. Empty, I tell you! Now, do you understand?’

  “‘Well, no, I do not understand.’

  “She seemed wearied at my persisting not to understand.

  “‘I mean that it is empty, and that is the last tomb of the Coulterays! There are no other tombs! The Coulterays do not die now!’

  “‘But, madame, if they have died abroad?’

  “‘Evidently!’ she exclaimed. ‘Evidently! But I tell you that the tomb is empty.’

  “‘That may be so. But the revolution passed by there and how many tombs were sacked?’

  “‘It is not that! It is not that. The revolution had nothing to do with that. The day after they placed the body of Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome in the crypt they found that the stone had been moved and that the tomb was empty.’

  “‘And then?’

  “‘What do you mean by and then? Don’t you know the story of the Coulterays? I thought that you were well informed on Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome. You told me just now that he had written articles for the Grand Encyclopedia — don’t you know on what subject? You do not know it? Wait for me here; I will go and get it.’

  “She rushed off, while I stood dazed by the bewildering conversation, which shocked me by its lack of reasoning. I had not the slightest shadow of a doubt now that the woman was quite mad.

  “In a few minutes she returned.

  “‘Quick, quick!’ she almost hurled the words at me. ‘Take this package home with you. Hide it. Read it, and you will know all. Shing-shing is on the stairs. Sangor is coming. Farewell.’

  “She slipped a small packet wrapped in some pages of a fashion magazine and tied with a black ribbon on the table in front of me. I picked it up and hid it under my coat. Then I went home, convinced that, at last, I was going to know about this other thing.

  CHAPTER XVII

  “WHERE DOES DEATH BEGIN?”

  “AT TEN O’CLOCK in the evening, behind the closed shutter of my shop, I was still reading. Now I know what the other thing is. It is incredible in our time. Now I understand why she repeated to me with such a haggard look ‘I am afraid to die,’ she who has such a fear of life. I understand what she meant by the phrase, he has forbidden me to die.

  “Somebody rapped at my shutters. I hear the voice of Christine. How does she dare to visit me at such an hour? And why? I open the door. She is accompanied by her fiancé Jacques Cotentin, whom she presents to me. They had been taking a short walk around the quays on this warm June evening, and, returning, they had seen the light in my place, and decided to come in and say ‘good evening’ to me before retiring.

  “They both came in as if they were visiting an old friend of the family.

  “I had never before seen the young doctor so near, and I could very well have gone on without knowing him, but the thought that Christine did not love him, and that she had betrayed him, at least morally, with Gabriel, made me feel that I could tolerate him.

  “He had big blue eyes and was short sighted, and I perceived that, in spite of his loutish clothes, he was intelligent and thoughtful. I do not know whether he even realized that he was in my place, because he appeared to be moon traveling, like so many other scholars, but, at his age, perhaps it was just a pose.

  “‘Oh, well,’ said Christine, sitting down. ‘I see that she has given you the packet. Have you read it? The marquis asked me to request you either to keep it here at your house, or to destroy it, but, in any case, not to return the package to her. Those are the papers which have made the poor woman ill. You can now understand where she got all her ideas.’

  “‘If I am not mistaken, this is it,’ I remarked, putting my hand on a short treatise entitled, ‘The Most Famous Brocolaques.’

  ‘Brocolaque’ is the Greek word which means what modern superstition has called by the name of vampire.

  “This work, printed in Paris during the time of the revolution, speaks with absolute seriousness of those beings believed to be dead, but which are not, and which come forth from their graves at night to nourish themselves on the blood of the living, while they sleep. Some of the vampires, whose names are given, returned to their sepulchres, well glutted, and it is there that one has been able to catch them unawares.

  “A certain number were taken by surprise, especially in Hungary and the south of Germany. They were of a ruddy tint, their veins full of the blood they had imbibed, and one had only to open them to see the blood flowing as fresh as that of a young man of twenty. Some of them never returned to their graves. They have a horror of it. Evidently, these are the most dangerous, because there is no way for one ever to get rid of them.

  “You cannot tell where you may find them. They mingle with the rest of the mortals, whose lives they exhaust to benefit their own which, in this manner, is indefinitely prolonged.

  “The only way to surely destroy a Brocolaque is to cremate its remains after having first cut off its head.

  “But how can one be sure that one is dealing with a Brocolaque, unless one finds it pink and robust in its grave?

  “The last name of the Brocolaque which was given in the treatise was that of the Marquis Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome de Coulteray, whose life, especially in the last years of the reign of Louis XV, had been a terror to the fathers of families, who had pretty girls of a marriageable age. These honest citizens believed that they were rid of the monster when he died. But, on the very next day, they learned that Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome had escaped from his tomb to which he never returned.

  “There were a number of testimonies from men who declared they had seen him since, wandering around their homes at night. Several young girls and young matrons, who had been imprudent enough to sleep with the windows of their rooms open, had been found the next day in a state of absolute decline, and it had not taken them long to find the proof that the vampire had passed there, for, behind the ear of each victim, a little wound was discovered.

  “The treatise added, in conclusion, that the fate of these young women was more than disastrous, for it was well known, from the most ancient times that the victims of vampires themselves became vampires after their death.

  “All the treatises that I found in the packet tied with black ribbon were on the same subject. Here are some of the titles: ‘The Horrible and Terrifying Tales of What Happened in the Faubourg St. Marcelle on the Death of a Miserable Brocolaque,’

  ‘Ghosts, Phantoms and Others, Who Did Not Want to Leave this World,’

  ‘How Vampires Nourish Themselves,’

  ‘Brocolaques Living in Sepulchres and out of Sepulchres,’ and then, the famous article by Chrysostome de Coulteray which had appeared in the first edition of the Grand Encyclopedia, in which the author spoke of vampires with an assurance and scientific knowledge which would have been terrifying, if it had not been amusing.

  “Among many other things he wrote, was this:

  “‘As one knows, the name vampire is given to a dead person who returns from the tomb to prey upon the living. They drain the blood. Sometimes they throttle them at the throat as if to strangle them. All manner of affection, or all sense of attachment, seems to be broken by the vampires, for they prefer to pursue their friends and relatives.’

  “‘Now you can understand,’ explained Christine, with a sad smile, ‘why the marquis would prefer to have the marchioness interest herself in some other kind of reading. Now that you know all his worries, you can well understan
d his feelings. He implores you to keep this an absolute secret, for, worse than anything else in this world, he hates to be ridiculed.’

  “‘Why ridiculed?’

  “‘Why, a vampire nowadays would be the delight of Paris. If Paris ever learned that the marchioness believes that her husband spends the nights imbibing her blood, society would no longer feel bored. There would be enough gossip spread around the drawingrooms, Montmartre, and the newspapers, to last to the end of the year. Just a careless word dropped, and there would be nothing else for the marquis to do but to return to Thibet.’

  “I said nothing, and she continued.

  “‘Hasn’t she ever shown you the pimple which has come out on her neck? No? Perhaps that is best for the moment. But I am sure that the first pimple which comes out on her shoulder will be shown to you. My friend, you are going through the same stages that she made me go through. She will show you the little scratch by which, she declares, this dreadful marquis takes her life’s blood. But you mustn’t laugh — you won’t, will you?’

  “‘I should say not,’ I assured her; ‘the marquis certainly has reason to fear ridicule, but, certainly she is the one who is most to be pitied.’

  “‘You are right,’ agreed Christine, in her most serious manner; ‘we can do nothing but pray for her.’

  “‘Pray for her!’ exclaimed a voice, which, up to now, had not made itself heard.

  “I was surprised at the tone in which the young doctor had unexpectedly uttered these words.

  “‘So you don’t believe in vampires, eh, monsieur?’ I inquired, smiling this time.

  “‘Monsieur,’ replied Jacques Cotentin, ‘I believe in all, I believe in everything, and yet, I believe in nothing. We are living in an age where the miracle of yesterday becomes the industry of to-morrow. On every side we meet contradictory theories. Science moves along uncertainly amidst a chaos of questions, which forms our universe.