Movie Monsters

by Peter Haining

  On the following Sunday, this paragraph appeared among the society-paragraphs in the Gaulois Des Dimanches:

  ‘H. H. the Maharajah of Kalpurthagra, who has come to France to study our habits and customs and the advantages of wireless telegraphy, sups every night at Maxim’s. His Highness has brought with him, from his own country, a recipe for raw rice in champagne which is highly appreciated by the customers of an establishment where it is still the fashion for a very ‘Parisian’ set to seek relaxation from the labours of the day. Henry, the popular manager, recommends that this exotic, but succulent dish should be prepared exclusively with the minimum brut of the well-known Singsong brand.’

  My next quotation is from a very curious report that appeared in the theatrical columns of the Bigarro on the day after the wedding of Mlle Arlette des Barrières, the celebrated musical-comedy-actress, and M Massepain, the tenor:

  ‘Contrary to the custom which has lately been introduced and which entails the disappearance of the husband and wife immediately after the light lunch that follows upon the marriage-ceremony, the newly-married couple had resolved to spend their wedding-day among their friends. These are many in number; and the large banqueting-room of the Restaurant de Mailly was called into requisition to hold them all, or nearly all. For every theatre and every branch of artistic talent was represented around the charming Arlette, who looked perfectly exquisite in white and orange-blossoms. The breakfast promised to be one of the most successful on record and a general gaiety was arising round the tables spread with a Gargantuan banquet, when a most grotesque and deplorable incident came and spoilt everything.

  ‘A practical joker – if that be the word, for I really do not know how to describe the dismal wag – whom no one was able to recognise under his perfect make-up as “Prince Charles” of the Folies-Bergère, eye-glass and all, appeared at the entrance to the reception-rooms and asked to speak to the bride. His manner was so peculiar and his excited demeanour seemed so threatening that the servants left him in the hall and went to inform M Massepain, who, at once, in great astonishment, quitted his seat in search of further particulars.

  ‘The popular tenor found himself confronted with a visitor who refused to give his name and who, without for a second ceasing to swing, sway and waddle from side to side, after the manner of “Prince Charles”, the famous chimpanzee aforesaid, declared that he would not go until he had spoken a word to the bride. He added, to the intense amusement of all who heard him, rudely sniffing the air as he spoke:

  “Oh, I know she’s here! It smells of orange-blossoms!”

  ‘M Massepain, impatient of a sort ofjest that threatened to be prolonged indefinitely, tried to take his visitor by the arm, but was flung back with such violence as to draw cries of indignation from the guests who had gathered round him. Some of them wished to interfere and give the clown a good hiding; but M Massepain pushed them aside and, going up to the man, who was slouching round and round the hall like a bear in its cage, said:

  “Sir, I don’t know you.”

  “Nor I you,” said the other, “but I know that the bride is here and I will not go away without speaking to her.”

  “Sir,” retored M Massepain, quite calmly, “my patience is nearly exhausted.”

  ‘The other replied, with unparalleled insolence, ceasing his sort of dance:

  “A man without patience is a lamp without oil!”

  “Sir,” cried M Massepain, angrily, “this farce has lasted long enough. Go away! You only excite our pity.”

  ‘And the other, who seemed to grow cooler as M Massepain became more heated, replied:

  “Pity is the finest and noblest passion of mankind!”

  “That’s enough of it! He’s getting at us! Turn him out!” shouted the guests, while the bride was surrounded by friends who prevented her from going to see what was happening and who were determined to protect her from that madman. “What does he want? Who is he? Why doesn’t he give his name, at least? He has no courage!”

  “Courage,” rejoined the irritating visitor, screwing his glass into his eye, “courage is the light of adversity!”

  ‘The guests did not know what to do under this rain of apophthegms; and the visitor held his ground. The waiters were sent for and tried to force him down the stairs. He pushed them back with an incredible display of strength and cried, in a voice of thunder that was heard all over the establishment, from top to bottom:

  “I will go when I have spoken to the bride. You need only say a word to her, just one word, and she will see me at once.”

  ‘The scandal was attaining such proportions that M Massepain, to put an end to it, asked the visitor:

  “What word do you want said to her?”

  “Say, ‘Bilbao.”

  “Bilbao?”

  “Yes, Bilbao, she will understand. Go on.”

  “Bilbao!” repeated the guests, laughing and humming, “You bet, he’ll grow, for he’s a Spanish lad!”

  ‘No sooner did the horrible fellow perceive that they were making fun of Bilbao – his native place, no doubt – than he went quite mad. Pushing and overturning all who tried to oppose his progress, he entered the banqueting-room. The bride had taken refuge in a private room, but it was a useless precaution, for the intruder guessed where she was and, while the others ran to the windows on the Boulevard Saint-Germain and shouted for help, he made his way, upsetting the tables and chairs and smashing the glass and crockery, to the door between himself and “Our Own Arlette” and broke the hinges with a tremendous kick. When he saw the bride fainting in the arms of her bridesmaids, he seemed quite astonished. He at once begged her pardon and said, aloud:

  “I must have made a mistake!”

  ‘Then he returned, with calm steps and knit brows, to the banquetting-room, where, as is easily understood, disorder and uproar reigned. Some policemen, who had hurried up the stairs, tried to take him by the collar; but he gave one bound to the window and jumped into a tree. An enormous crowd, attracted by the clamour that came from the restaurant, was standing on the boulevard. Loud shouts greeted the appearance and flight of the man, who sprang from branch to branch and tree to tree with a supernatural velocity which enabled him soon to escape the policemen in pursuit.

  ‘The general opinion is that the trouble was created by a sort of music-hall acrobat – as everybody knows, Mlle Arlette des Barrières began her career on the variety stage – or, at any rate, a low fellow who thought that he had some reason to be revenged on our charming little actress. M Massepain has furnished the police with full particulars and we shall soon know what is at the bottom of this unpleasant affair. Meanwhile, we offer our sincere sympathy to Mile Arlette des Barrières and her popular husband.’

  Here is another note inserted in the Gaulois Des Dimanches of a week later:

  ‘H H the Maharajah of Kalpurthagra has written to us to say that he has not been to Maxim’s since his arrival in Paris and that he has no connection with the person who introduced the fashion of raw rice and champagne (minimum brut of the famous Singsong brand) into that first-class establishment. We have telephoned to Henry, the well-known manager, who regrets this usurpation of rank on his customer’s part, all the more as he has not seen him since and as no one has yet called to pay the bill.’

  A few other papers copied these paragraphs and embellished them with more or less witty comments, in the latest Boulevard style; and the various incidents seemed wholly forgotten, until, one day, the Vie a Paris published, in its evening edition, a paragraph headed, in large capitals:

  THE SHAM MAHARAJAH AGAIN

  After reminding its readers of the first appearance of this worthy at Maxim’s, the newspaper went on to say:

  ‘There was great excitement yesterday in the Rue Royale. A taxi-cab driver who had been victimised by the sham Maharajah of Kalpurthagra recognised him outside the Café Durand, where he was quietly drinking a bock, with the serenity begotten of an easy conscience. The driver at once pulled up beside the pave
ment and made a rush for His would-be Hindu Highness, clamouring for his fare for driving him all night through the gayest streets of the capital. However, the “Maharajah” appears also to have recognised his chauffeur; for he hastened to leave his table, relinquishing his beer and of course forgetting to pay for it. The waiters joined the driver; and their shouts soon collected the usual crowd of onlookers. The police appeared upon the scene; and our “Maharajah” would undoubtedly have spent the night in the cells if, by some mysterious feat of gymnastics, he had not

  disappeared in the thick foliage of the trees on the boulevard, where it became impossible to find him.’

  This peculiar manner of escaping pursuit resulted in establishing a natural connection in the minds of M Massepain and his friends between the sham Maharajah of Kalpurthagra and the strange visitor to the Café de Mailly. There are not so many people in Paris capable of running away through the tree-tops! Lastly, a local paper published in the Quartier Latin suggested that there must be a relation between the incidents on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, those in the Rue Royale and the climbing of the walls, railings, gutter-pipes and gargoyles of the Musée de Cluny.

  The newspapers promptly jumped to the conclusion that all the queer things that had happened in Paris for some months past must be put down to the score of a mysterious acrobat whose eccentricities, pointing to a mind tainted with madness, threatened to endanger the safety of the inhabitants.

  And it was then that the press gave way to panic and lost that presence of mind which it should have communicated to the people of Paris, who were soon to be driven mad by the fantastic and criminal enterprises of the elusive Maharajah. But, between ourselves, it is no use protesting against the ‘scare-lines’ in the evening papers.

  The first article to spread consternation was headed:

  GIRLS, DO NOT QUIT YOUR PARENTS’ SIDE!

  This scare-line was followed by an account which stated that the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees had been seen in a chestnut-tree in the Tuileries Gardens and that there was reason to believe that he was not alone. Persons whose word could be trusted declared that they had seen him carrying a young girl in his arms, like a savage.

  But this first scare-line, which caused excitement, was nothing compared with the second, which caused absolute terror:

  DISAPPEARANCE OF FOUR GIRLS

  ‘A monster, unworthy of the name of man, drags them by the hair through the trees and carries them, like a prey, over the roofs of the metropolis.’

  This was the alarming and tragic heading that appeared in the four o’clock edition of the Patrie En Danger. The newspaper-vendors who excited the crowd with their mad rushing and shouting sold their copies up to five sous apiece. The fathers and mothers, above all, wanted to be informed and did not look at the cost, that day. People stopped drinking outside the cafés, stopped walking on the pavements. They read instead. Everybody read, or listened to others reading. The story was simple enough: since that morning, four girls had disappeared, carried off by the monster. One had vanished at the corner of the Rue de Médicis and the Rue de Vaugirard, another in the middle of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a third near the Square Louvois, while the fourth was picked off the top of a tram-car going along the Quai du Louvre. Note that all four had disappeared in places where there were trees. The monster hid himself in the trees and suddenly put out his hand, pulling the girl’s hair with invincible force. The girl followed, loudly screaming, and so rapidly that no one had time to hold her back. A young person who had just been discharged from hospital and who was resting on a bench in the Square Montholon owed her safety to the fact that her head had been shaved during her illness. Only her false chignon remained in the monster’s hands. As for the monster, he was endowed with infernal speed; and people would still be looking for him in the trees, when he appeared on the other side of the street or boulevard, on a roof, to vanish then and there with his prey.

  In conclusion, the Patrie En Danger advised ladies and young girls not to walk under the trees. And, in a moment, the pavements of the boulevards were emptied and the roadways crammed with a crowd that blocked the traffic, all walking with their noses in the air.

  On the evening of that memorable afternoon, an unfortunate lamp-lighter, who was cleaning a gas-lamp, standing on a ladder against the trunk of a tree, was nearly torn to pieces by a wild mob that stupidly took him for the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees.

  The prefecture of police was on tenterhooks.

  The Municipal Council was called upon to take exceptional measures. Certain idiots, of the class that always turns up at difficult moments when people are not inclined to make fun of them or any one, certain idiots contended that the only way to get rid of the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees was to cut down all the trees! The families of the girls who had disappeared were interviewed by the newspapers and photographed down to the fourth generation. The Ville Lumiêre was losing its head.

  But the incredible scandal fell in all its horror on the panic-stricken city with the famous head-lines in a late edition of the greatest paper for news in the world: the Époque. Here is the gruesome heading:

  PARIS A PREY TO THEMINOTAUR

  THE MONSTER IS KNOWN

  AN ANIMAL WITH A HUMANBRAIN

  A TALKING PITHECANTHROPE

  FORMIDABLE INVENTION OF PROFESSOR CORIOLIS SAINT-AUBIN

  And here is the article which was copied into every newspaper all over the work!:

  ‘There are no mysteries to the Époque. Its news-service, which is unique in the journalistic world, has already enabled it to render the most signal services to the cause of humanity.

  ‘History repeats itself. At the critical hour, when the metropolis is living in terror of the monster who seems to have established his empire on the roofs of Paris, the Époque has succeeded in penetrating the secret of the strange and formidable personality of the kidnapper of young girls. And we can tell the mothers to take comfort; for, the police authorities, informed by the Époque as to the nature of the enemy to be vanquished, will soon be able to rid us of this horror.

  ‘It was by following step by step the fantastic appearances of the creature who was long taken for a music-hall acrobat gone mad that we were enabled gradually to ascertain the space to which the monster usually confined his evolutions. We were thus led to the Quartier Latin and thence to the Rue de Jussieu, where we knocked at the deserted house of his owner, a man whose name will ring through the ages, M Coriolis Boussac Saint-Aubin.

  ‘In this house, which we entered by a window, everything was in the greatest disorder. The building seemed to have been hastily abandoned. We were received, however, by a parrot which, for more than an hour, never ceased screaming out a word, or rather a name, which at first conveyed nothing to us, but which also will remain famous in history. This word was:

  ‘‘Balaoo! Balaoo! Balaoo!”

  ‘Balaoo is the animal-name of the monster who, in the life of Paris, has his man-name: M Nöel. Balaoo is the name of the first monkey, the first ape to speak the language of men.

  ‘M Nöel is well known in the neighbourhood, where his odd ways, his curious ugliness and his characteristic waddling gait did not pass unperceived, while the faces which he was in the habit of pulling around his eye-glass have more than once excited the laughter and witticisms of the little ragamuffins in the streets. But no one ever suspected that this somewhat eccentric, but, until recently, well-behaved person was a Javanese pithecanthrope or ape-man. For M Nöel was a customer of the Café Vachette and the Brasserie Amédée! M Nöel attended the lectures at the law-courts! M Nöel belonged to the Conference Bottier! M Nöel dressed like a respectable man! M Nöel spoke French like anybody else! And yet, 0 unfathomable mystery of the races, M Nöel is not a man! M Nöel is only an anthropoid ape! He has four hands! He is directly related to the orang-utan and the large ape of the forests of Java, the archetype of which can be seen, at the Jardin des Piantes, in the ape Gabriel!

&n
bsp; ‘And now what is this mystery which will throw all our readers into commotion? How did we succeed in discovering the secret? How did we find Balaoo’s master? It all happened very simply, but still it had to be thought of! We began by seizing the files filled with papers in M Coriolis Saint-Aubin’s study. Here we discovered the most curious documents imaginable, relating to the transformation of Balaoo into M Nöel. These documents, we admit, do not belong to us. Judging by their importance, we may say that neither do they

  belong to M Coriolis Saint-Aubin, their natural owner. They belong to universal science; and it is to universal science that we propose to dedicate them, day by day, by publishing them in our columns from tomorrow onwards, changing nothing, adding nothing, respecting the truth in accordance with the reputation which we have acquired among our readers.

  ‘From the moment when, in the empty house in the Rue de Jussieu, we first glanced at those immortal notes, many incidents connected with the famous acrobat who walked in the trees, incidents which had seemed incomprehensible, became illumined with an unexpected and dazzling light; and we were able to understand the most curious actions and observations which, until then, had appeared to us, for the most part, to be invented by the maddened imagination of the crowd.

  ‘Our object henceforth was to find, with the least possible delay, the man whose scientific recklessness had let loose that monster upon humanity. There was no doubt in our mind, judging by the objects surrounding us, that this man, this gifted, but dangerous scholar, had fled, fled from the hateful consequences of his daring, fled on hearing of the crimes committed by his terrible pupil. He had to be found; he must, by fair means or foul, be set on the track of the great Java pithecanthrope. He alone was perhaps capable of instilling sense into that unique creature outlawed by men and animals alike; he alone could save us!