Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  ‘When I came to myself I was in the kitchen, and I had lost an arm. The cripples were all around me. They had ceased their wrangling. They seemed to be united in the most touching harmony; in reality they were in a state of dazed intoxication which caused them to sway their heads like children who feel the need to go and lie down after eating their fill, and I had not a doubt but that they were beginning, alas! to digest me... I was stretched at full length on the floor, securely bound, and deprived of all power of movement, but I could both see and hear them. My old comrade, Gérard Beauvisage, had tears of joy in his eyes as he exclaimed:

  ‘“I should never have thought you would be so tender!”

  ‘Madame Beauvisage was not present, but she, too, must have taken part in the feast, for I heard someone ask Gérard how “she liked her share”.

  ‘Yes, monsieur, I have finished my story. I have finished my story. Those loathsome cripples having satisfied their weakness, must have at last realized the full extent of their iniquity. They made themselves scarce, and Madame Beauvisage, of course, escaped with them. They left the doors wide open but no one came to set me free until four days afterwards, when I was pretty Well dead with hunger...

  ‘Those miserable wretches had not even left the bone behind!’

  THE MYSTERY OF THE FOUR HUSBANDS

  Translated by Mildred Gleason Prochet and Morris Bentinck, 1929

  THE OLD SEA-DOGS who spent their evenings seated on the terrace of the inn which overlooked the sea had never seen Zinzin arrive in such a condition before. His eyes were popping from his head, and he was as pale as death. As soon as he had had time to drop into a chair, they pressed anxiously around him.

  ‘What is the matter, Zinzin? What is the matter, old fellow?’ Captain Michel asked.

  Zinzin made a sign that he was still unable to speak, but at last he wiped his forehead.

  ‘I have just come from the police commissioner,’ he began, ‘and he gave me a most horrible bit of news.’

  ‘Tell us about it before it becomes old stuff,’ Gobert exclaimed. ‘The story is sure to change with time.’

  ‘Oh, this doesn’t date from yesterday,’ Zinzin murmured with a sinister laugh.

  ‘Then why so much excitement today?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why shortly,’ the other replied dismally. ‘I was mixed up in it when I was very young. It narrowly missed making me a landlubber forever with a little garden plot over me! On my word! It’s not the fault of the damned wedding story if I’m not fertilizing a crop of dandelions today. It caused a lot of stir in its time. They even took the case up to the court of assizes!’

  ‘Stories of marriages exist by the legion,’ grouchy old Chaulieu remarked. ‘I know ten myself.’

  ‘I only know one,’ Zinzin replied with a groan, ‘but I warn you that it is more horrible than all ten of Chaulieu’s put together!’

  He sighed heavily again and lighted his pipe. ‘I never told you anything about it before,’ he spat out, ‘because it seemed such an utterly fantastic affair, but today I must talk! Good God! Good God!’

  ‘Well, what is it? What is it, Zinzin?’

  ‘It is a horrible story,’ Zinzin choked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Chaulieu added quietly and sceptically.

  Zinzin cast him a murderous look. ‘In all my life I have only been in love once,’ he went on, ‘and it was that time. It never happened again because I never met another such girl. Her name was Olympe, and there were a dozen of us who wanted to marry her.’

  ‘And here the impossible begins,’ sneered Chaulieu.

  ‘Twelve, I tell you! I’ll give you their names in a moment, and that doesn’t include those who did not openly propose. There wasn’t a man in the whole country who would not have wanted to. She wasn’t rich, but she came of good family - and beautiful! At the time of which I speak she was just seventeen years old. Her section of the country was noted for its beautiful women - a big pleasant suburb worth visiting if only to watch the girls come home from church on Sundays.

  ‘Well! In all the town there was not one girl fit to tie her shoes, and that meant a lot... Listen, if you have ever gone to Cagnes, perhaps you have seen Renoir’s portraits of young girls... Those pictures are pure fantasy - pictures of flowers and sunlight, not humans. Well, Olympe was like that: a ray of sun and the petals of a rose. A dream! But a dream with eyes and a mouth!... enormous childish eyes with supernatural purity in their gaze, and the mouth of a woman! The mouth alone was of flesh and blood! Olympe was like an angel come down to earth to kiss!

  ‘We were all crazy about her. She lived alone with her grandmother, who had taken her from school at the death of her parents and entrusted her to the safe care of the servant Palmire, who was the girl’s willing slave. Olympe was still much of a child, often playing with the country urchins, returning home with armfuls of wild flowers, baskets filled with wild strawberries. She would run behind the flocks with the sheepdogs when she crossed them on the road, and often scandalized the old women by returning home at night astride a goat!

  ‘In nice weather the old people would sit outside their doors on little wooden benches and wait for her to come. She had a wonderful imagination and told them stories which she made up as she went along.

  ‘The grandmother, who in her day had been the beautiful Madame Gratien, lived in a big old house in the Place de l’Abbaye. The gardens were closed in by walls and at the back looked out on the open country. She knew all the élite of the neighbourhood and had maintained connections in the city.

  ‘The behaviour of her granddaughter had amused her in the beginning but at last it began to preoccupy her. Olympe seemed very thoughtless for her age... What would happen when she was alone in the world? Madame Gratien suddenly decided to marry her off as soon as possible.

  ‘She had already received several offers for the hand of her granddaughter and when it was known that she no longer discouraged suitors, they besieged her on all sides. This flood of admirers was a new game for Olympe. Finally one Sunday we were all gathered in the living-room, when the grandmother gave Olympe a little talking-to. She told her that she was beginning to be very tired and weary with life and that she would like to see Olympe settled down before she died. Olympe greeted this announcement with tears. We thought that the prospect of the old lady’s death saddened her, but Olympe explained it differently. “As though it were gay to marry!” she said when we tried to cheer her up.

  ‘We burst out laughing at that and all swore that her husband would be perfectly willing to be her slave.

  ‘“First of all, I do not want to leave Grandmother,” she said, “nor Palmire... And secondly I want to live in our old house.”

  “‘Agreed, agreed,” we answered in chorus.

  “‘And now,” said good Madame Gratien, “which one are you going to choose?”

  “‘Oh, we’ll talk of that later,” said Olympe. “This is no way to marry people off. You’re really not serious about it, Grandmother!”

  ‘“For six months you’ve said the same thing: that you’d talk it over later. Now, it’s become a joke. You know that I have always done everything you wanted before... Come; if you were obliged to choose one of these gentlemen, which would you take?”

  ‘Olympe suddenly became serious, and we watched her anxiously... In spite of our apparent acceptance of the whole thing as a joke, we were deadly serious...

  ‘She stood up, walked around us, and sized us up from head to foot with such funny expressions that we were more than a little embarrassed. If I live to be a thousand, I’ll never forget that scene! What an examination! To be truthful, we hardly dared breathe.

  ‘She made us stand, lined us up, placing us, changing us — advancing a man to the head of the line and then, after looking him straight in the eyes, sending him back to third or fourth position. The grandmother encouraged us from time to time with a “Hold yourselves well, gentlemen!... Hold yourselves well!... Be serious.”

  ‘It was funny when o
ne thinks that we were not all young men either!

  I well remember the arrival of the town registrar, respectable Monsieur Pacifire, who for two years had openly bid for Olympe’s hand. He came late and naturally did not know what it was all about.

  ‘She met him at the door and placed him, dumbfounded, at the end of the line. He had the last number! You can imagine how we laughed. But you can bet that when he knew what it was all about, he did not laugh at all!

  “‘At last! It is done!” she announced. “If I marry I’ll take Monsieur Delphin first, then Monsieur Hubert, then Monsieur Sabin, then my little Zinzin (as you see, I was number four), then Monsieur Jacobini...” and she went on down the whole twelve of us... I’ll enumerate them: 1st, Monsieur Delphin, a nice fellow with a great future ahead of him, son of the town pharmacist; he had taken his degree in science, was working for a fellowship in chemistry and was very well spoken of at the university. 2nd Monsieur Hubert, still young, about twenty-five, head forest warden. 3rd, Dr Felix Sabin, just out of college, and as merry as a lark... I think he had settled himself in the country with the idea of getting into politics. 4th, yours truly, who had already taken to the sea but who would have given it all up to stay with Olympe. 5th, Lieutenant Jacobini, son of a colonel in the guards, a distinguished, smart fellow who had just come back from a mission in South Africa where he had made something of a name for himself. 6th, the son of a big landowner with lots of money. 7th, a young lawyer. 8th, the son of a solicitor. 9th, an old notary. 10th, a travelling salesman. 11th, the assistant of the district attorney. 12th, Monsieur Pacifire, the registrar... yes, that makes twelve. We were only twelve that day!

  ‘Six months later, Olympe married number one, young Delphin. We all went to the wedding - but not to have a good time. I tried to reason against it, but I would have given anything to be in Delphin’s shoes. The following year, however, I no longer envied him. He was dead!

  ‘No one knows exactly what he died of. They say that he was poisoned by some laboratory work, but nothing was sure. The physician who attended him, Dr Sabin, shook his head when he was questioned. I think that in reality he thought of only one thing, in short, that he had now become number two and that if anything were to happen to the forest warden who preceded him, he might yet hope for a chance!

  ‘It seemed impossible, but Olympe had become even lovelier since her marriage. Now, when she passed in her widow’s weeds, she was something to kneel before and worship. But she did not mourn her dead husband for long. In fact, if one can believe old Palmire, Monsieur Delphin was not excessively gay and for a young husband spent too much time in his laboratories, leaving his wife for entire days while he searched for heaven knows what in the bottoms of his test-tubes.

  ‘Monsieur Hubert’s turn was bound to arrive, and he did not lose time in pressing his suit and in promising her all the gaieties that she had missed since her first marriage. He was a jolly fellow, that Hubert, fond of good food, an excellent drinker and hunter as was fitting with a man of his position and name.

  ‘Big celebrations and big parties now took place at Olympe’s. She began to ride horseback and there was not another like her for fifty miles around. It was a sight to see her hunt the deer and wild boar. Nothing frightened her. We had trouble to keep up with her, and afterwards she presided over the banquet with a sparkle and an ardour that gave us all fever.

  ‘She was more courted than ever, but she made fun of us, and kept her loveliest and gayest smiles for Dr Sabin. “He is number three,” she exclaimed, laughing. “Everyone in turn!”

  ‘“Hey!” Hubert interrupted. “I never felt better in my life!”

  “‘And I take care of him,” replied the doctor. “He is the one man whom I’m not permitted to kill. Thank the fortune, Hubert, which prohibits me from choosing my victims!”

  ‘This was all very nice, but it seemed to me that Dr Sabin made too much use of his position of family doctor in order to be familiar with Olympe. They were often seen alone in the park behind the house, or even going for a little outing in the forest when Hubert, called away on business or some bachelor party in the neighbouring town, left Olympe for a few hours. She had become the general topic of conversation in the village. She scandalized the habitués of the five o’clock teas at Madame Tabureau’s, the mayor’s wife, or at Madame Blancmougin’s, the wife of the solicitor whose son had received number eight in the general classing. Madame Blancmougin never ceased congratulating herself on her son’s lucky escape.

  ‘In fact, after the death of old Madame Gratien, which had occurred in the meantime, Olympe no longer kept her desires within any limits and she frightened many people by the liberty of those desires. Hubert made no attempt to restrain her. He was amused and flattered by the number of victims won by those innocent blue eyes and that bright mouth which seemed to be always asking for a kiss.

  ‘He was a good liver, that Hubert, but not a real lover. “My!” Palmire would whisper to those who liked to be informed of all that went on in the house, “he certainly loves his food more than his bed. If Madame were not so honest, that fact might give him a bad jolt!”

  ‘And so saying, she shook her head on seeing Olympe and Dr Sabin come in from one of the lessons in driving. Those driving lessons had started a lot of gossip which was cut short by a new misfortune in Place de l’Abbaye.

  ‘Delphin had installed a laboratory in an isolated building in a far corner of the grounds and this Hubert had made into a sort of hunting-pavilion. He had furnished it with his guns, his knives, his rifles, his pistols, and had also stored his ammunition there. It was like a little armoury, with the exception of the walls, which were decorated with the usual trophies. It was a pleasant little spot, covered with climbing vines and flowers, and there was a fine view of the fields and country beyond. He often had lunch served there in order to be alone with his wife or friends away from the ears of the servants.

  ‘It was there that Hubert was found one afternoon in August with a pistol in his hands and a bullet through his heart.

  ‘Suicide or accident? Several even murmured the word: crime!... but it was said so low that no one heard them.

  ‘You can imagine what a stir it caused. An inquest was held. The assistant district attorney, who was number eleven, managed the affair. It was Dr Sabin, number three, who was called to give his opinion on the nature of the death. He pronounced it accident. The inquest hesitated a long time between accident and suicide, but they finally concluded with the theory of the accident.

  “‘My goodness!” Palmire sighed when she was besieged by many wanting to know what Madame had to say about the death of her husband. “What should she say? She knew nothing about it, of course. She had lunched in the little pavilion with Monsieur... They both had seemed very gay. She left him at about two-thirty in order to dress, for she was going to town with Dr Sabin. About three o’clock the gardener heard a shot and ran to the pavilion. He found Monsieur stretched out dead. And now you know as much as we do. Why should he have committed suicide? Life was beautiful and so was Olympe. He had everything to make him happy. And now Olympe is crying her eyes out, which is a stupid thing to do. No one is responsible for an accident, and it was his fault for not being more careful!”

  ‘So spoke Palmire. The next year Olympe married Dr Sabin.’

  ‘I expected it,’ interrupted Chaulieu; ‘if your blue-eyed angel with the passionate mouth had to give herself to all twelve of those gentlemen we haven’t finished and it’s not going to be a funny tale.’

  ‘I didn’t promise you a funny story. I told you that it was horrible. Olympe did not give herself to all twelve, since I was number four and I’m still alive. Nevertheless, I excuse Chaulieu for his remark because in the village they began to say: “They’ll all go. She’s capable of it.”

  ‘“And why not? If it pleases Olympe?” Palmire replied whenever she heard something of that kind. And she added, scratching her long chin, ‘She would be wrong in hesitating over it as far as the wort
h of those men is concerned!”

  ‘It was a terrible thing that she said, in the ignorance of a servant ready to perjure her soul for her mistress.

  ‘Dr Sabin was certainly a courageous fellow to marry into a household which seemed destined to misfortune. Some good old woman of the kind particularly skilful in slipping in a malicious remark between a frown and a smile, remarked, however, “Oh, nothing will happen to him. He knows what he is doing!”

  ‘The town was a-buzz with horrible remarks. Poor doctor! He did not deserve what was said, since he, too, died, exactly three months to the day after his wedding. He lasted even a shorter time than the others.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Gaubert whistled.

  ‘And so it came your turn,’ said Captain Michel.

  ‘It’s beginning to be very amusing,’ remarked Chaulieu.

  But they all stopped joking. Zinzin had become terribly pale and his hand trembled as he put down his glass. He looked with wild eyes at a man who was approaching the table.

  ‘Hello,’ exclaimed the captain, ‘here’s the police commissioner’s orderly.’

  It was he in fact, and he bent over and whispered in Zinzin’s ear:

  ‘We’ve just had a telephone message. She has been dead ten years. You don’t need to worry any longer.’ And with that he departed.

  As for Zinzin, he staggered into the captain’s arms and had to be taken home.

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t kick off before the end of his story,’ said Gaubert gently.

  Chaulieu shrugged his shoulders. ‘Bah,’ he said, ‘he is working for a climactic effect.’

  Nevertheless we did not know the end of the story until eight days later. Zinzin certainly had been very ill. This time we listened without interrupting him.

  ‘It was my turn then, number four’s turn. But I was still ignorant of the fact. I was sailing in the Baltic Sea when the thing happened, and I did not learn it until my return ashore. I threw myself on a train for home and on the way met Lieutenant Jacobini, number five, who had himself returned only a short while ago.