Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  ‘“Olympe looked up at me with frozen eyes. She was no longer crying. ‘There is no more tali-tali,’ she answered.

  ““Since when?’ I asked brutally, trying to gain control over her obstinate mind, which was clearly fighting against me now.

  ““Since I asked Delphin to destroy it. That was a gift, sir, which you should never have made, not that I believe that he died of it, but because it would have been your fault if he had killed me with it. Was it the poison that was closed in the belly of a mahogany fetish covered with bizarre signs and curious designs burned into the wood?’

  ““That was it, Olympe. There is no possible error. You know the tali-tali well.’

  ““Yes, Delphin used this poison and the barks of the tree which you brought him to make some experiments which interested me, much more than the rest of his work, as a matter of fact. His test-tubes and apparatus amused me in the beginning, but one tires of everything. I soon noticed, however, that Delphin was not well, and I blamed his languor on the bad air of the laboratory. I asked him to give up his work for a little while. He would not, so I asked him at least to do me the favour of destroying the tali-tali. He answered that there was nothing to fear because the tali-tali was only fatal to those who drank it and that he was certainly not crazy enough to drink the liquid, which he had already tried out on chickens and rabbits. He was amused at my childishness, but I gave him no peace until he had destroyed the tali-tali in front of me and Palmire. Tired of fighting with me about it he threw the fetish and the poison into the fire and it was burned up in a moment.’

  ““How did the poison act in the fire?’

  ““First there was a long green flame like a sky rocket and that was followed by a suffocating vapour which we ran from. As for the fetish itself, it was nothing more than an ember which flashed a last grimace before falling into ashes. That is all, sir, and I have nothing else to tell you, but if it was to hear this that you married me you might as well have dispensed with the ceremony. I would have given you the information just the same, and perhaps I would have loved you afterwards. But now please leave this house and never let me see you again.’”

  ‘When Jacobini reached this point he stopped and rolled himself a cigarette.

  ‘“And then?” I asked.

  ‘“Then I left her to question Palmire. I forced her to tell of the tali-tali also. I attacked her from all sides. She’s an ignorant peasant and she could not have invented the chemical effects which she had seen in the fire. All she said agreed to the letter with what Olympe had told me. I asked her all kinds of questions which Olympe could not have foreseen. I went on into other matters and at the end of my investigation I went back to Olympe and threw myself on my knees before her. She pardoned me, Zinzin, because besides being honest she is also very good.”

  ‘“Possibly,” I said, “but she is not proud!”

  ‘As you can well imagine, I did not go to call on them, but I saw Jacobini eight days later. An awful anguish was visible on his pale, restless face.

  ‘“Zinzin,” he said to me in a hoarse voice, “I think I’m infected with it, too. But perhaps it is only an idea. Yes, an idea! Even the thought of that tali-tali is enough to drive one mad.”

  ‘I didn’t have time to say a word. He had already gone and I was never to see him alive again.

  ‘And this is the frightful tragedy which occurred the next day according to the police, who with help from the dying Jacobini and Palmire’s statements reconstructed the scene.

  ‘At noon, Jacobini, who had not seen his wife since morning, went to the pavilion. He was filled with the darkest presentiments in spite of the fact that he tried to free himself of the idea of poison by trying to believe that his illness was due to swamp fevers which he had suffered from in the tropics.

  ‘Luncheon was served there, and, as Jacobini entered, a door closed hurriedly at the end of the room. At the same time he heard furtive steps and the sound of a box being closed. He ran to the door, half opened it and saw Olympe engaged in low conversation with Palmire. She seemed very much troubled.

  ‘At that moment a terrible cramp seized him in the intestines and he let the door close, having only strength enough to drop on the sofa. With one hand he had unconsciously taken hold of Olympe’s work-box, which was badly closed and showed bits of fine linen. Jacobini’s fingers, clutching at the lid feverishly from pain, opened it and fumbled in the lace. Suddenly they struck a hard object and he stood up, haggard and mad...

  ‘In his hand he held the fetish of death, the horrible phial, the hideous tali-tali which Olympe and Palmire had sworn was destroyed, burned before them. Olympe had lied. Olympe had poisoned him as she had poisoned the other two. He was to suffer the atrocious death which had tortured his predecessors.

  ‘Overcoming the agony for a few minutes, Jacobini poured what was left of the poison into a bottle of wine on the table. There was enough left for a terrible dose, and then he waited for his wife.

  ‘She was not long in coming. She kissed him and asked him how he felt this morning. He replied that he felt much better, but that the fever had not completely left him and that he was thirsty.

  “‘Then you must drink something, darling,” she said.

  ‘He did not wait for her to pour the wine out and filled two glasses himself.

  ‘“But you know that the doctors have forbidden me wine,” she said, “and that I only drink water.”

  ‘He insisted that she drink with him in the same glass, as they had often done. She turned her head away. He seized her brutally, threw her head back and savagely pinched her nostrils, thus forcing her to drink. As she cried with fear, he spoke. “Perhaps you would have preferred another glass,” he said, and showed her the tali-tali.

  ‘She cried for help, but suddenly put her hand to her abdomen and was taken with a horrible cramp. At the same time the pain clutched at him, and they fell together on the sofa. They shrieked together, agonized together, clutched and scratched and bit each other. They pulled at each other like wild beasts. They twisted and writhed, contorting themselves in the same hell.

  ‘Jacobini had still strength enough to insult her, naming the first victims. “You won’t kill any more. You are going to die. You are going to die with me.”

  ‘But the pain was too great. It seemed as though there was hell within him. He pulled weapons down from the walls, and he tried to stab himself with a knife and so end the horror at one blow; but he only succeeded in making a terrible wound. Then he turned the steel towards Olympe and slit her open from top to bottom like an animal. The room echoed with her last howl.

  ‘Possessed by a thousand demons he smashed her skull, pierced her like a pin-cushion, pulled out her eyes and cut her into pieces. She was nothing more than a bleeding, nameless horror when the servants rushed into the room.

  ‘But Jacobini did not die until the next morning and in his few moments of lucidity narrated the hideous details of their abominable martyrdom. The assistant district attorney who at one time had hoped to marry her was present, and he returned home and went to bed ill. During the night he was so delirious that they thought he would lose his mind and so add one more victim to the list.’

  Zinzin stopped. Perspiration beaded his temples. He let out a sort of groan.

  ‘The most horrible part,’ he went on, ’is the fact that she had done nothing.’

  ‘Oh!’ the others exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, she was innocent. I learned that the other day, only the other day.’

  ‘Palmire had done it all!’ Gaubert exclaimed.

  ‘As to her,’ said Zinzin with a terrible laugh, ‘the police took her and kept her. You can well understand that I did everything in my power to have her given full punishment. All she did was to say no, and to cry about Olympe. Concerning her mistress, however, she gave us explanations which dumbfounded us. They were so utterly stupid or naive. For example, when they asked her: “If your mistress was innocent, she would not have told her husband that the
tali-tali had been destroyed before the two of you.”

  ‘“Bah, that is simple,” Palmire answered. “We agreed between us to say that it had been because there were already rumours about and we did not want to be suspected; besides we did not know what had become of the tali-tali because we really believed that Monsieur Delphin had burned it all the day that he threw a few drops in to please Madame.”

  ‘Yes, she said just that,’ Zinzin went on, ‘and she was hissed and hooted. I cried louder than the rest.’

  ‘And what was she sentenced to?’ asked Chaulieu.

  ‘Death,’ replied Zinzin in a whisper.

  ‘But they don’t execute women?’

  ‘No... Her sentence was changed to life imprisonment. She died in her cell about ten years ago. I learned that the other day also.’

  ‘And did she repent? Did she confess?’ Michel asked.

  ‘No,’ Zinzin answered, looking at us like a madman, ‘and she had nothing to confess... She, too, was innocent!’

  ‘Good God!’ Chaulieu exclaimed.

  ‘But then, who was guilty?’ Gaubert asked.

  ‘A man who has just died and confessed on his deathbed. After the tragedy he left the town and settled not far from here. Yes, he died the other day at Mourillon. That man had owned some property which touched the edge of Olympe’s estate in the far corner where the pavilion was.’

  ‘But who was the man? — one of the twelve?’

  ‘Yes, one of the twelve - the twelfth, to be exact! He naturally could not ever hope to marry Olympe, because of course she would never go through with eleven husbands after such deaths, but he eliminated those who had been happier than he... and at the end he had fixed it so that the evidence all pointed to Olympe.

  ‘Do you remember, when the twelfth suitor arrived that day when we were all lined up in the drawing-room - the arrival of Monsieur Pacifire, the registrar - what fun Olympe made of him and how we had all laughed when she placed him at the foot of the line? Yes, we made fun of Monsieur Pacifire when he came into the room! Well, he avenged himself, that man!’

  THE INN OF TERROR

  Translated by Mildred Gleason Prochet and Morris Bentinck, 1929

  ‘Speaking of women,’ said Chaulieu, ‘I would never wish any of you a honeymoon like the one I took with my first wife. Besides coming very close to losing our lives... But here’s the story without any further preamble. On my return from Saigon, I asked headquarters for a furlough and took advantage of it to marry little Maria-Luce of Mourillon, as had been previously decided. Her father had died in Madagascar and she lived with her grandfather.

  ‘We went to Switzerland on our honeymoon. It was my idea, because at heart I’m a staid fellow, a landlubber, and I hate adventures. If I was a sea captain for twenty years, it was simply to follow the family tradition and to please my parents, but the very thought of it in the beginning made me seasick.

  ‘Well, there we were in Switzerland, my young bride and I, as in the days of Tôppfer. We were very much in love, and... Have you ever been in Soleure?’

  ‘I was married in Borneo,’ chuckled Dorat, the biggest wag in the party of old sea-dogs who spun their yarns on the terrace of the Cafe of the Old Wet-Dock in Toulon.

  ‘I see... Well, Soleure might be called the capital of French Switzerland - a long, quiet street with picture sign-boards swinging on their rods at the slightest puff of wind from the Wesseinstein.

  ‘The Wesseinstein is one of the summits in the Jura mountains. It rises at the north-west of the town. More than one tourist has lost his way in the gorges and paths of the forest, and there are no hotels before reaching the summit, with the exception of one which at the time boasted a very sinister reputation.

  ‘Two years before our trip, the town board had discovered, at the bottom of a well and in a nearby grotto, twelve skeletons and some objects belonging to travellers who had found a fatal hospitality there.

  ‘The inquest investigations brought to light the fact that the crimes had been committed by a couple who had so thoroughly terrorised the neighbourhood that even the death of the two innkeepers, the dreadful Weisbachs — you may remember the story perhaps; it was in all the newspapers at the time - did not loosen any tongues. You see, a few old-timers in the mountains had suspected some of the goings-on; but Jean Weisbach had made it very clear that he did not care to have people meddling in his business, and they had let bad enough alone.

  ‘The innkeepers had died quietly in their beds, in the end, rich and esteemed, as also did their factotum, one Daniel. When the mare’s nest was discovered, the examining magistrates were able after questioning hither and yon and forcing some stubborn old neighbours to speak, to reconstruct the crimes. The most important witness was an old woman with a goitre, who related certain horrible details which showed that, besides a grim greed for money, the Weisbachs had had a strain of sadism and cruelty in them that has rarely been exceeded.

  ‘Naturally, this story was the chief topic of conversation in Soleure. The travellers, who were to go by coach to the peak of the Wesseinstein, to sleep in the hotel made famous by Napoleon, and from there go back into France through the Belfort gap, promised themselves by all means to stop for a drink, half way up, at the “Inn of Blood”. It had been called that as much because of the story as for the colour it was painted. To stop there was one of the things planned in the trip up the mountain. While the driver gave the horses a drink, the tourists went inside to the bar and gossiped with the new proprietors. These two had been there only a year. Their predecessors, the immediate successors of the Weisbachs, had left the premises, as soon as the scandal broke, on the grounds that they were ruined. But the Scheffers, being shrewder, had said to themselves that there were plenty of fools in the world, whose curiosity would probably make them rich. Their reasoning had not been bad, if one could believe what was said in town. All the strangers now passing through Soleure wanted, of all things, to see the “Inn of Blood”, and some even went so far as to sleep there.

  ‘The weather was fine the day that Maria-Luce and I left for the Wesseinstein by diligence. We had had an excellent lunch and were prepared to enjoy a lovely drive, and live a few ideally romantic hours like a chapter from a novel. We had left our luggage in Soleure and were to return there for it. Maria-Luce had only a small handbag with her. Ah! we narrowly missed never returning to Soleure and also lived that romantic chapter of ours in a way we would never have wished! You will see why...

  ‘When I think of it!... Perhaps that is what killed my good little Maria-Luce!... She was so pretty, so gay, so full of life... with such a clear lovely skin, and cheeks like roses. Well, such is life - a never-tiring destroyer... I often wonder why we are born at all...

  ‘Ah! we were in love!... I had hired the coupé of the stagecoach just for the two of us, so that we could be by ourselves and kiss when we felt like it, which was only natural after all!

  ‘Just as we were about to leave, a man and woman arrived on the scene... a handsome pair! I’ll never forget them as long as I live, and with reason. They were Italians: he, a big, handsome man, too handsome, in the thirties, with big, dark eyes like velvet, the kind of eyes they have in Italy and that make the signorinas lose their heads... flashing teeth, olive skin, clean-shaven and the appearance of an actor. He was one, in fact, a tenor who was already well-known and had had a brilliant success at La Scala in Milan... Antonio Ferretti as we learned later... Amiable, jovial, in perfect health, he felt that he owned the world.

  ‘His companion, who adored him openly with every look, was obviously his, body and soul. She was a young, ravishingly beautiful woman, as golden-haired as a Venetian, which she was, and belonging to the highest aristocracy. Her name belonged to history from that day on, judicial history, alas!... Countess Olivia Orsino. The handsome tenor had abducted her.

  Tin telling you all this at the start to get rid of it, so that you can understand the people at first sight, which was more than we did; all we considered at the mom
ent was the fact that an annoying couple wanted to join us in the coupé, under the pretence that the interior compartment of the coach was already practically full, and would even have driven us out if it had been possible. An argument ensued, of course; the handsome tenor’s free and easy manner irritated me, and I was even more annoyed because I had been so pleased with the idea of just the two of us taking this little trip together. If he had been more polite, however, Antonio Ferretti would certainly have won his cause, because after all I’m not a roughneck, and as I said before, his companion was charming.

  ‘Maria-Luce advised me to give in, but one word spoiled everything, something like “damned savages, these French”. I slammed the door violently, and as I had already paid for the four seats I insisted on my right and they were obliged to sit with the others. As a matter of fact, if it annoyed them to travel by diligence they had only to rent a carriage, but it wasn’t an easy thing in those days before automobiles to find horses and carriage to go up to the Wesseinstein. They had to be wagons specially built like the diligence, with a hanging rod always ready to grip the road in case of slipping back, which was always to be feared. If I have lingered over this incident it is because it assumed a terrible importance, alas! for some of us.

  ‘Our drive started through a pretty little cut in the hills, fresh, wooded, resounding with rippling waters, and in which nestles a little retreat, famous in that neighbourhood — it was that of Saint Verène, Verena Einsiedolei, if I’m not mistaken — with chapels, grottos, overhanging rocks, and from time to time, beautiful blocks of Soleure marble which caught the sun and shone in great, blinding spots.

  ‘Three hours later we were in the depths of the forest, far from any dwelling, and the sun had disappeared. Big clouds floated between us and the mountain peaks, and before long a black veil hid the entire valley. At the same time a dull noise like thunder rumbled down towards us; but it was not the thunder yet: it was a heavy sledge, loaded with wood, which tumbled down the road on its runners with overwhelming rapidity. A young boy, perched up on top, steered it.