Movie Monsters

by Peter Haining

  ‘We at once embarked upon a close enquiry into the last public acts of M Coriolis Saint-Aubin and we learnt that, a few days ago, he married his daughter to his nephew, M Patrice Saint-Aubin; that the ceremony was performed in the strictest privacy and almost incognito; that M Nöel was not present; and that the young couple hurriedly took the train for Auvergne, while, almost at the same moment, the mysterious acrobat who walks in the trees was creating a disturbance at the wedding-breakfast of Mile Arlette des Barriêres and M Massepain, the tenor.

  ‘The coincidence between those two events, the flight of the newly-married pair and the disturbance on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, gave us ample food for reflection. The result of our reflections was not long in doubt. It slightly altered our first view of M Coriolis Saint-Aubin’s flight. As M NoI was pursuing the bride, we considered that the father must be chasing M Nöel, with a view to saving his daughter. He was bound to fear a tragedy. Did he arrive in time? Had he come up with them? We hastened on his tracks and we are now unfortunately, in a position to say that M Coriolis Saint-Aubrin arrived too late! He found only his son-in-law, under lamentable conditions which were certainly, so to speak, the prelude to all the crimes, all the abductions under which the capital is groaning today!

  ‘The responsibility of that madman of genius is really terrible: terrible in the eyes of history, in the eyes of science and in the eyes of the law. We are not using this last word because we think that it behoves us to draw down the vengeance of justice upon a man who believed that he was accomplishing a great work: we are simply conveying a piece of news. M Coriolis Saint-Aubin is at this moment in custody! He gave himself up two hours ago. We ourselves, at his own request, took him to our new prefect of police, M Mathieu Delafosse.

  ‘All these incidents, occurring at the moment when we are about to go to press, cannot be related with all the desired detail; but we shall publish in a few hours a special edition in which we shall continue to expound to our readers the formidable racial mystery in the Rue de Jussieu. For the present, we shall consider that our work has not been in vain if we have helped in any degree, however small, to dispel the morbid terror that was beginning to overcome the bravest of us and if we have restored some little peace to family-life. The wild beast is known; the tamer is known: it is only a question, let us hope, of bringing them face to face. But let the cage be prepared, the cage in which to shut up the new minotaur, who, since he speaks French, will perhaps consent to tell us what he has done with his living prey.

  ‘We will conclude by saying that we discovered M Coriolis Saint-Aubin on a Bourbonnais road, hunting, with his son-in-law, for the traces of his child, who had been kidnapped by the monster. He thought that he was his pupil’s only victim. He did not know that there were other fathers groaning, mothers in tears, sisters trembling, brothers thirsting for vengeance; concerned only with his private tragedy, he knew nothing of all the tragedies in Paris. When we informed him of what was happening in the capital, he was thunderstruck, for he had no idea that the pithecanthrope, for whom he was looking in the country, was back in town.

  STOP-PRESS NEWS

  ‘Two of our reporters telephone that they have just found the monster’s tracks on the roof of the Hôtel-de-Ville, where he is walking about in all security. Our staff will organise a pursuit without delay.’

  This was the article that sent all the journalists of the capital flying to the prefect of police, only to learn that M Mathieu Delafosse, the new prefect, whom the advent to power of an ultra-radical ministry had relieved of his disgrace, was at the Place Beauveau, where the minister of the interior had called an urgent meeting of the cabinet.

  I cannot do better than publish the official statement dictated, after the cabinet-council, to the journalists present:

  ‘The prefect of police made a statement yesterday to the ministers assembled in cabinet-council. He declared as follows:

  “A man of whom I had never heard, M Coriolis Boussac Saint-Aubin, sent in his card to me, requesting me to see him at once. I sent to ask his business, but he replied that he would only speak in my presence and that there must be no delay, because it was a question of life and death. I had him shown in.

  “He did not strike me as mad. Before I had time to speak, he said in a clear, deliberate and exceedingly sorrowful voice:

  “Monsieur le préfet de police, I am a wretched and unhappy man. I have come to give myself up to the police. I alone am guilty of the crimes which are horrifying Paris and for which it would be vain to prosecute a poor creature to whom I have not succeeded in imparting a sense of responsibility. I have been hideously punished for my pride and folly. God is chastising me in my heart and in my brain, in the child of my flesh and the work of my mind. It was I that made the mysterious acrobat who walks in the trees. I made him out of an animal, for hatred of mankind. The work of hatred can never be fruitful,’ my strange visitor continued, ‘and the worker is the first victim. I am a wretched man and an unhappy man. I have lost my daughter, who may be dead by now, herself kidnapped by my pupil. And, in trying to turn an inferior creature into a civilised being, I have only succeeded in inventing a monster, the horror and terror of mankind. Yes, monsieur le préfet de police, I have done that, I have made an ape talk! I have made an ape talk like a man, but, for all my efforts, I have not succeeded in giving him a human conscience. Therefore, I have not made a man; therefore, I have made a monster; therefore, convict me, sentence me, imprison me, torture me: I deserve every form of punishment! I am accurst! . . . God has smitten me as I deserved! . . . I wanted to reform or to accelerate His work. To accelerate the work of God is the pride and the crime of man; and it has caused my downfall. My scalpel, by cutting a nerve under the tongue and allowing me to bring another close to it, forestalled the work of the evolution of species by a hundred thousand years; but, not possessing the requisite instruments, I could not supply the hundred thousand years of consciousness necessary to enable my pithecanthrope to move among men without danger. without danger of his committing unconscious crimes; for, as regards the others, monsieur le préfet de police, men see to that!’”

  ‘After these words, which were accompanied by tears and every evidence of despair, the prefect of police put a series of direct questions to M Coriolis Saint-Aubin, who replied in such a way as to leave no room for doubt regarding the nature of the monster in question.

  ‘Of course, if this declaration had not been preceded by all the incidents that have been alarming the capital for some days past, it would only have been received with the utmost reserve. But it is impossible to resist the proofs, as the prefect of police impressed upon the council, after hearing the evidence of certain persons acquainted with M Coriolis Saint-Aubrin and his household.

  ‘In the cirumstances, it has been decided that every measure shall be taken to capture the monster at all costs, alive or dead; and the instructions on this point give full powers to the prefect of police. At the same time, we may mention the desire expressed by both the minister of public instruction and the minister of agriculture that the monster should, if possible, be taken alive, as they consider the study of this phenomenon to be of the highest value to universal science. But the prime minister’s orders were formal:

  “There are too many mothers in tears. The capital must be rid of the monster, at the earliest possible moment, by any and every means.”

  The town, pending the discovery of the mysterious hiding-place where the new minotaur had secreted his collection of girls, the town, I say, lived, more than ever, with its nose in the air. The monster was tracked over the roofs of the Hôtel-de-Ville by the journalists, the firemen, the clerks and also by the members of the central division of police, which force was called into requisition because of its celebrated physique. The police had instructions to capture the monster alive; and, for a moment, they thought that they had him.

  As a matter of fact, the chase was conducted with an energy that partook of both anger and despair. The ape was hunted f
rom garret-window to garret-window, from chimney to chimney, to the roof of a little outhouse opposite the Caserne Lobeau. The central police, equipped with ropes and lassoes that seemed very much in their way, were ready to spring upon him, when Professor Coriolis himself was brought out on the gutter and perceived that, in spite of the horror of that tragic struggle, the monster had retained a little of the veneer of civilisation which he had been at such pains to bestow upon him. The pithecanthrope, in fact, showed himself for a second, between two chimneys, leaping from one to the other, with an eye-glass in his eye!

  ‘Balaoo! . . . Balaoo!’ cried the professor, in a soft voice of distress containing less anger and reproach than the despair that yearns for consolation. ‘Balaoo! . .

  But, at the sound of this voice, this cry, the other, instead of replying to the one who called to him, seemed to discover a fresh energy. The fear which, but lately, had made him run away now turned into fury; and, rushing like a meteor upon a group of policemen and town-hall clerks – the latter armed with their paper-knives! – he butted them out of the gutter and sent three or four of them flying into space.

  The luckless men crashed on the stones of the square below, in the midst of the populace who came crowding up with a thousand cries of horror. Then a score of shots were fired at the monster, who received them point-blank, without seeming to mind them, and re-entered the Hôtel-de-Ville by a garret-window, after knocking down a stalwart policeman who had showed his head at that window.

  And the monster rushed down the corridors. He was seen to dart like an arrow through every department. Ratepayers, who had been waiting for hours to receive attention, fled howling and were never seen again.

  For Balaoo was now no longer being pursued: everybody was fleeing before him. He seemed to be everywhere at a time, on every floor. He reappeared in every corner, bumping against groups that vanished like smoke.

  He had a way of his own of descending a staircase, sliding down the well, like an eel in its trap.

  Through corridors and staircases, he made his way to the council-hall, where M Mathieu Delafosse was vainly striving to reassure a score of diles who had not yet left the sitting, thinking, perhaps, in their hearts, that they were safer there than elsewhere. Here too there was a general sauve-qui-peut; but the other had passed and was out of sight long before their fright was over.

  For twenty-four hours, no one knew what had become of him. The police hunted everywhere. They went to the length of burning straw in the cellars of the Hôtel-de-Ville, so as to smoke the monster out if he had found a refuge there. A cordon of troops, with ammunitions of war, surrounded the municipal buildings. Five detectives dragged Coriolis with them wherever they went; and the professor, tangle-haired and wild-eyed, allowed himself to be led from cellar to attic, calling:

  ‘Balaoo!. . . Balaoo! . .’

  But Balaoo did not reply. Where was he? No more girls had disappeared in Paris, through the agency of Balaoo or any other, and this was explained by the fact that the girls were all kept carefully immured in their parents’ homes. The sittings of the municipal council were suspended until further orders; and the anguish, increased by the mystery of that complete disappearance, was greater than ever, when the monster suddenly reappeared on the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques. The clerks of the meteorological office were the first to see him and fled, after informing the police. This time, there was little doubt that the end of the drama was at hand.

  The Tour Saint-Jacques, which was at once isolated by a circle of police and troops, was a very small and dangerous refuge for Balaoo. He himself seemed to realise as much, for, seeing himself hard pressed by a crowd of armed men and a mob of people loading him with curses, he worked himself into an uncommon state of fury, even for a large Java ape. His prolonged, rolling, rumbling cries were heard from the Place de la Bastille to the Louvre. The traffic in the Rue de Rivoli was of course interrupted. The tops of the omnibuses and tram-cars were thronged with people shaking their fists at the Tour Saint-Jacques and yelling for the death of the pithecanthrope.

  Sometimes the monster’s figure was seen dancing and turning somersaults at the very top of the tower; but he would disappear at once, to reappear swinging from a scaffolding. Already over fifty shots had been fired at him, with no other result than to increase his rage. Sheltering himself behind the scaffolding, he began to hurl blocks of stone at the crowd.

  A regular hail of stones came down, striking, wounding and killing the onlookers. The monster was not long in clearing the Rue de Rivoli and the Square Saint-Jacques. The troops and the police were driven back; and still the square continued to rain with stones. The pithecanthrope was actually demolishing the Tour Saint-Jacques in self-defence; and this so rapidly that there were wags ready to suggest that, after three or four days of that siege, there would be nothing left of the Tour Saint-Jacques but its scaffoldings!

  This, of course, was an exaggeration. But, all the same, it was manifest that the most exquisite gargoyles were lying in fragments on the roadway and that, taken all round, the monster was destroying the famous monument faster than the city architect could hope to repair it. And this lasted all the night through.

  In the morning, M Mathieu Delafosse arrived, together with the five detectives who were still dragging M Coriolis Saint-Aubin about with them. The new prefect of police was in at least as deplorable a condition as the ex-consul at Batavia himself. He was suffering from less despair and grief, but greater exasperation. A sort of diabolical fatality seemed to dog his career; and he could find no better comparison for his present curious and tragic difficulties than the unprecedented incidents of the siege of the Black Woods, at the time when he was prefect of the Puy-de-Dôme.

  Had he been able to suspect the undoubted relation between those two catastrophes and that Coriolis was the sole cause of both, he would certainly not have deprived himself of the satisfaction of strangling that ill-omened prisoner with his own hands. But the rapid succession of events and the quick action of the drama had not yet given the police time to institute an enquiry which would have explained many things by referring them to first principles in the shape of the French education of Master Balaoo.

  M Mathieu Delafosse came straight from the prime minister, who had threatened him with his dismissal within twenty- four hours if the pithecanthrope’s business was not settled that same day. And it was with a view to settling it that he arrived accompanied by Coriolis and the five detectives and also by a colossal sportsman in a pair of yellow-leather leggings, with a rifle over his shoulder.

  The attention of the crowd was at once fixed upon this new figure. He was a giant. He stood head and shoulders over everybody else. Soon, his name passed from mouth to mouth, for the man was famous. He was the celebrated lion-killer, Barthuiset.

  If the legends told at certain café-tables were to be credited, that man had killed more lions in Africa than the Atlas Mountains ever contained. It is not a good thing, even for real heroes, without fear and without reproach, that legend should exaggerate their exploits too lavishly. People at certain other, more sceptical café-tables began to believe that Barthuiset had never killed anything at all; and it was perhaps because of this that M Mathieu Delafosse had not at once applied to him in circumstances where a first-class rifle-shot might render the most signal service.

  Astonished and a little vexed at this neglect, Barthuiset might never have offered to save the situation for monsieur le préfet de police, if the lion-killer, whose heart was twice as big as that of ordinary men, had not at last taken pity on the good city of Paris. Donning his trusty hunting-leggings and his trusty hunting-belt and taking his trusty hunting-rifle and his trusty cartridges with the explosive bullets, Barthuiset waited on M Mathieu Delafosse at the moment when M Mathieu Delafosse returned from the prime minister’s, scared and dejected by the ultimatum of the government.

  The prefect of police, like everybody else, had heard of Barthuiset the lion-killer. He looked hard at him. Barthuiset, in all the
actions and at every hour of his life, resembled a fat Dutchman digesting a first-rate lunch. This phlegmatic attitude in the midst of the general excitement rather pleased M Delafosse than otherwise. He tapped Barthuiset on the shoulder and said, simply:

  ‘My dear M Barthuiset, if you don’t kill that pithecanthrope, I’m a dead man myself.’

  Barthuiset replied, with a wink of his left eye:

  ‘Show me your pithecanthrope, that’s all I ask. There will be time enough to make your will afterwards.’

  These words did not comfort the prefect of police particularly:

  ‘You can’t be sure of your shot,’ he said.

  ‘If it were a lion, I should never forgive you for saying that, monsieur le préfet de police. But I have never killed a pithecanthrope. There’s no harm in trying. There’s a first time for everything.’

  The prefect, therefore, brought him with him, but took care also to bring Coriolis.

  The little band entered the Square Saint-Jacques, amid the silence of the throng, bravely, at the risk of being crushed by a projectile broken from the historic pile. Balaoo had not given a sign of life that morning; but people were wary and no one had yet ventured to approach the scaffolding.

  When they were within ten yards of the tower, M Mathieu Delafosse said to Coriolis, who seemed to be wool-gathering and quite daft:

  ‘Call him.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Coriolis, looking more stupid than ever.

  ‘To parley with him! . . . Understand, we sha’n’t kill your pithecanthrope except in the last extremity,’ explained the prefect, ‘though he’s led us no end of a dance. As you say that he listens to reason, speak to him, coax him, say something to him, show us that he is not quite a savage.’