Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  ‘When I left the club for the second time, at six o’clock in the morning, I had won, in money and promises, no less than a couple of millions. But I had not once lost - not a single, solitary time. I felt myself becoming a raving madman. When I say that I had not lost once, I speak with regard to money, for when I had played for nothing, without stakes, to see, just for the fun of the matter, I lost inexorably. But no sooner had a punter staked even as low as half a franc against me, I won his money. It mattered little, a sou or a million francs. I could no longer lose. “Thou shalt win!” Oh, that terrible curse! That curse! For a whole week did I try. I went into the worst gambling-hells. I sat down to card-tables presided over by card-sharpers; I won even from them; I won from one and all against whom I played. I did nothing but win!

  ‘So, you no longer laugh, gentlemen! You scoff no more! You see now, good sirs, that one should never be in a hurry to laugh! I told you I had seen the devil! Do you believe me now? I possessed then the certainty, the palpable proof, visible to one and all, the natural and terrestrial proof of my revolting compact with the devil. The law of probabilities no longer existed as far as I was concerned. There were not even any probabilities. There remained only the supernatural certainty of winning eternally — until the day of death. Death! I could no longer dream of it as a desire. For the first time in my life I dreaded it. The terrors of death haunted me, because of what awaited me at the end!

  ‘My uppermost thought was to redeem my soul - my wretched, my lost soul. I frequented the churches. I saw priests. I prostrated myself at the foot of the church steps. I beat my delirious head on the sacred flagstones! I prayed to God that I might lose, just as I had prayed to the devil that I might win. On leaving the holy place I was wont to hurry to some low gambling-den and stake a few louis on a card. But I continued winning for ever and ever! “Thou shalt win!”

  ‘Not for a single second did I entertain the idea of owing my happiness to those accursed millions. I offered up my heart to God as a burnt-offering, I distributed the millions I had won to the poor, and I came here, gentlemen, to await the death which spurns me — the death I dread!’

  ‘You have never played since those days?’ I asked.

  ‘I have never played from that time until now.’

  Allan had read my thoughts. He too was dreaming that it might be possible to rescue from his monomania the man whom we both persisted in considering insane.

  ‘I feel sure,’ he said, ‘that so great a sacrifice has won you pardon. Your despair has been undoubtedly sincere, and your punishment a terrible one. What more could Heaven require of you? In your place, I should try—’

  ‘You would try - what?’ exclaimed the man, springing from his seat.

  ‘I should try whether I were still doomed to win!’

  The man struck the table a violent blow with his clenched fist.

  ‘And so this is all the remedy you can suggest! So this is all the narrative of a curse transcending all things earthly has inspired you with? You seek to induce an old lunatic to play, with the object of demonstrating to him that he is not insane! For I read full well in your eyes what you think of me: “He is mad, mad, mad!” You do not believe a single word of all I have told you. You think I am insane, young man! And you, too,’ he added, addressing Allan, ‘you think I am insane - mad, mad, mad! I tell you that I have seen the devil! Yes, your old madman has seen the devil! And he is going to prove it to you. The cards! Where are the cards?’

  Espying them on the edge of the table, he sprang on them.

  ‘It is you who have so willed it. I had harboured a supreme hope that I should die without having again made the infernal attempt, so that when my hour had come I might imagine that Heaven had forgiven me. Here are your cards! I will not touch them. They are yours. Shuffle them — deal me which you please— ‘stack’ them as you will. I tell you that I shall win. Do you believe me now?’

  Allan had quietly picked up the cards.

  The man, placing his hand on his shoulder, asked, ‘You do not believe me?’

  ‘We shall see,’ replied Allan.

  ‘What shall the stakes be?’ I inquired.

  ‘I do not know, gentlemen, whether you are well off or not, but I feel bound to inform you — you who have come to destroy my last hope - that you are ruined men.’

  Thereupon he took out his pocketbook and laid it on the table, saying: ‘I will play you five straight points at écarté for the contents of this pocketbook. This just by way of a beginning. After that, I am willing to play you as many games as you see fit, until I cast you out of doors picked clean, your friends and yourself, ruined for the rest of your fives — yes, picked bare.’

  ‘Picked bare?’ repeated Allan, who was far less moved than myself. ‘Do you want even our shirts?’

  ‘Even your souls,’ cried the man, ‘which I intend to present to the devil in exchange for my own.’

  Allan winked at me, and asked:

  ‘Shall we say “Done”, and go halves in this?’

  I agreed, shuffled the pack, and handed it to my opponent. He cut. I dealt. I turned up the knave of hearts. Our host looked at his hand and led. Clearly he ought not to have played the hand he held — three small clubs, the queen of diamonds, and the seven of spades. He took a trick with his queen. I took the four others, and, as he had led, I marked two points. I entertained not the slightest doubt that he was doing his utmost to lose.

  It was his turn to deal. He turned up the king of spades. He could not restrain a shudder when he beheld that black faced card, which, in spite of himself, gave him a trick.

  He scanned his hand anxiously. It was my turn to call for cards. He refused them, evidently believing that he held a very poor hand: but my own was as bad as his, and he had a ten of hearts, which took my nine - I held the nine, eight, and seven of hearts.

  He then played diamonds, to which I could not respond, and two clubs higher than mine. Neither of us held a single trump. He scored a point, which, with the one secured to him by his king, gave him two. We were ‘evens’, either of us being in a position to end matters at once if we made three points.

  The deal was mine. I turned up the eight of diamonds. This time both of us called for cards. He asked for one, and showed me the one he had discarded - the seven of diamonds. He was anxious not to hold any trumps. His wish was gratified, and he succeeded in making me score another two points, which gave me four.

  In spite of ourselves, Allan and I glanced towards the pocketbook. Our thoughts ran: ‘There lies a small fortune which is shortly to be ours, one which, in all conscience, we shall not have had much trouble in winning.’

  Our host dealt in his turn, and when I saw the cards he had given me I considered the matter as good as settled. This time he had not turned up a king, but the seven of clubs. I held two hearts and three trumps — the ace and king of hearts, the ace, ten, and nine of clubs. I led the king, my opponent followed with the queen; I flung the ace on the table, my opponent being compelled to take it with a knave of hearts, and he then played a diamond, which I trumped. I played the ace of trumps; he took it with the queen, but I was ready for him with my last card, the ten of clubs. He had the knave of trumps! As I had led he scored two, making ‘four all’. Our host smothered a curse which was hovering on his lips.

  ‘No need for you to worry,’ I remarked; ‘no one has won yet.’

  ‘We are about to prove to you,’ said Allan, in the midst of a deathly silence, ‘that you can lose just like any ordinary mortal.’

  Our host groaned. ‘I cannot lose.’

  The interest in the game was now at its height. A point on either side, and either of us would be the winner. If I turned up the king the game was ended, and I won twelve thousand francs from a man who claimed that he could not lose. I had death. I turned up the king — the king of hearts. I had won!

  My opponent uttered a cry of joy. He bent over the card, picked it up, considered it attentively, fingered it, raised it to his eyes, and we
thought he was about to press it to his lips. He murmured:

  ‘Great heavens, can it be? Then — then I have lost?’

  ‘So it would seem,’ I remarked.

  Allan nodded, ‘You now see full well that one should not place any faith in what the devil says.’

  The gentleman took his pocketbook and opened it.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he sighed, ‘bless you for having won all that is in this book. Would that it contained a million! I should gladly have handed it over to you.’

  With trembling hands he searched the pocketbook, emptying it of all its contents, with a look of surprise at not finding at once the twelve thousand francs he had deposited in its folds. They were not there!

  The pocketbook, searched with feverish hands, lay empty on the table. There was nothing in the pocketbook! Nothing!

  We sat dumbfounded at this inexplicable phenomenon — the empty pocketbook. We picked it up and fingered it. We searched it carefully, only to find it empty! Our host, livid and as one possessed, was searching himself and begging us to search him. We searched him - we searched him, because it was beyond our power to resist his delirious will; but we found nothing — nothing!

  ‘Hark!’ exclaimed our host. ‘Hark, hark! Does it not seem to you tonight that the wind sounds like the voice of a dog?’

  We listened, and Makoko answered, ‘It is true! The wind really seems to be barking - there, behind the door!’

  The door was shaking strangely, and we heard a voice calling, ‘Open!’

  I drew the bolts and opened the door. A human form rushed into the room.

  ‘It is the steward,’ I said.

  ‘Sir, sir!’ he ejaculated.

  ‘What is it?’ we all exclaimed, breathlessly, and wondering what was about to follow.

  ‘Sir, I thought I had handed you your twelve thousand francs. Indeed, I am positive I did so. Those gentlemen doubtless saw me.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ from all of us.

  ‘Well, I have just discovered them in my bag. I cannot understand how it has happened. I have returned to bring them back to you — once more. Here they are.’

  The steward again pulled out the identical envelope, and a second time counted the twelve one-thousand-franc notes, adding:

  ‘I know now what ails the mountainside tonight, but it terrifies me. I shall sleep here.’

  The twelve thousand francs were now lying on the table. Our host cried:

  ‘This time we see them, there before us! Where are the cards? Deal them. The twelve thousand in five straight points, to see, to know for certain. I tell you that I wish to know — to know.’

  I dealt. My opponent called for cards: I refused them. He had five trumps. He scored two points. He dealt the cards. He turned up the king. I led. He again had five trumps. Three and two are five! He had won!

  Then he howled: yes, howled like the wind which had the voice of a dog. He snatched the cards from the table and cast them into the flames. ‘Into the fire with the cards! Let the fire consume them!’ he shrieked.

  Suddenly he strode towards the door. Outside a dog barked — a dog raising a death howl.

  The man reached the door, and speaking through it asked:

  ‘Is that you, Mystère?’

  To what phenomenon was it due that both wind and dog were silent simultaneously?

  The man softly drew the bolts and half opened the door. No sooner was the door ajar than the infernal yelping broke out so prolonged and so lugubrious that it made us shiver to our very marrow. Our host had now flung himself upon the door with such force that we could almost think he had smashed it. Not content with having pushed back the bolts, he pressed with his knees and arms against the door, without uttering a sound. All we heard was his panting respiration.

  Then, when the death-like yelping had ceased, and both within and without silence reigned supreme, the man, turning towards us and tottering forward, said:

  ‘He has returned! Beware!’

  Midnight. We have gone our respective ways. Makoko and Mathis have remained below beside the dying embers. Allan has sought his bedroom, while, driven by some unknown inner force controlling me absolutely, I find myself in the haunted room. I am repeating the doings of the man whose story we had heard that night: I select the same book, open it at the same page; I go to the same window; I pull the curtain aside; I gaze upon the same moonlight landscape, for the wind has long since driven off the tempest-clouds and the fog. I only see bare rocks, shining like steel under the rays of the bright moon, and — on the desolate plateau — a weirdly dancing shadow - the shadow of Mystère, with her formidable jaws wide apart - jaws that I can see barking. Do I hear the barking? Yes; it seems to me that I hear it. I let the curtain drop. I take my candlestick from the chest of drawers. I step towards the wardrobe. I look at myself in its mirrored panel. I dream of him who wrote the words which lie concealed within. Whose face it is that I see in the mirror? It is my own! But is it possible that the face of our host on the fatal night could have been more pallid than mine is now? In all truth, my face is that of a dead man. On one side — there — there — that little cloud — that misty cloudlet in the mirror — cheek by jowl with my face — those fearful eyes - those lips! Oh, if I could but scream! I cannot. I am powerless to cry out, when suddenly I hear three knocks. And — and my hand strays of its own accord towards the door of the wardrobe — my inquisitive hand — my accursed hand.

  Of a sudden my hand is gripped in the vice I know so well. I look round. I am face to face with our host, who says to me in a voice which seems to come from another world:

  ‘Do not open it!’

  Epilogue

  Next morning we did not ask our host to give us the opportunity of winning back our money. We fled from his roof without even taking leave of him. Twelve thousand francs were sent that evening to our strange host through Makoko’s father, to whom we had told our adventure. He returned them to us, with the following note:

  ‘We are quits. When we played, both the first game, which you won, and the second one, which you lost, we believed, you and I, that we were staking twelve thousand francs. That must be sufficient for us. The devil has my soul, but he shall not possess my honour.’

  We were not at all anxious to keep the twelve thousand francs, so we presented them to a hospital in La Chaux-de-Fonds which was in sore need of money. Following upon urgent repairs, to which our donation was applied, the hospital, one winter’s night, was so thoroughly burned to the ground that at noon of the following day nothing but ashes remained of it.

  THE GOLD AXE

  Translated by Hannaford Bennett, The Windsor Magazine, 1925

  MANY YEARS AGO I was at Gersau, a small health resort on the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, a few miles from Lucerne. I wanted to complete certain work, and I had arranged to spend the autumn in the quiet of this delightful village whose ancient pointed roofs were reflected in the romantic waters of the lake on which William Tell sailed in days of old.

  It was the end of autumn, and tourists had scattered, while the many hideous Tartars who had descended upon us from Germany with their alpenstocks, their puttees and their little round hats decked with the indispensable feather, had returned to their lager, their sauerkraut and their ‘big concerts’, leaving the country between Pilatus, the Mythen and the Rigi free to us at last.

  Not more than half a dozen of us foregathered in the hotel at meal time, and when evening came related our experiences of the day or indulged in a little music.

  An old lady, always enveloped in deep mourning, who when the little hotel was swarming with noisy visitors had never addressed a word to anyone, and seemed the embodiment of woe, stood revealed as a pianist of the first rank, and without waiting to be pressed, played Chopin to us and, in particular, a certain lullaby by Schumann which she rendered with such exquisite tenderness that she brought tears to our eyes.

  We were all so grateful to her for the pleasant hours which she enabled us to pass, that we joined toge
ther to present her at the moment of her departure, with a slight souvenir of our stay at Gersau.

  One of us who went that day to Lucerne undertook to buy the gift. He returned in the evening with a gold brooch in the form of a small axe.

  Neither on that evening nor the following one did the old lady make her appearance; and the visitors who were leaving entrusted the gold brooch to my care.

  Her luggage was still in the hotel, and I was prepared to see her return, sooner or later, reassured as to her wellbeing by the proprietor who told me that she was in the habit of disappearing for a day or two, and he had no reason to feel anxious about her.

  As a matter of fact the day before my departure, as I was making a final tour of the lake and had pulled up a few steps from Tell’s Chapel, I saw the old lady standing at the entrance of the building.

  Never until then had I been impressed by the unspeakable distress depicted on her face down which the tears were coursing, and never had I so clearly observed the traces, which were still manifest, of her former beauty. She caught sight of me, lowered her veil, and walked towards the lake. Nevertheless I did not hesitate to overtake her, and bowing, expressed the visitors’ regret that we were about to lose her; and then, as I had the gift on me, I presented her with the small case containing the gold axe.

  She opened it with a sweet, faraway smile, but no sooner did she perceive the jewel inside than she began to tremble with emotion, and drew back some distance from me, as though she had something to fear from my presence, and with an insensate gesture threw the brooch into the lake.

  I displayed so much amazement at this unaccountable reception that she begged my forgiveness and burst into a fit of sobbing. A seat stood in this secluded spot, and we both sat down. And after a few lamentations against the decrees of fate which left me quite at a loss, she confided to me her strange, melancholy story which I was never to forget. For, in truth, I know of no more terrible destiny than that which befell the old lady in the black veil, who had played Schumann’s lullaby to us with such exquisite emotion.