The Waxworks Murder

'Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and piquancy and phantasm. . . . There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.'

The Masque of the Red Death

'And we, all our lives, like Jules, are incurably romantic. We shall go, therefore, to our first ball at the Opera because it, too, will endeavour to revive the romantic age. ... And it will be the same. In the crystal cups on the buffet tables, the same golden sunlight of the champagne swims and sparkles. Beneath the black mask and below the broad concealing hat still shine the bright eyes of danger.'

GEORGE SLOCOMBE

A Ghost with a Brown Hat

1

Bencolin was not wearing his evening clothes, and so they knew that nobody was in danger.

For there is a legend about this man-hunting dandy, the head of the Paris police, which is known and believed in all the night haunts from Montmartre to the Boulevard de la Chapelle. Your Parisian, even one with cause to fear detectives, prefers them to be picturesque. Bencolin had a habit of lounging through the bottes de nuit, the fashionable ones which begin as you ascend the rue Fontaine, or the murkier places clustering about the Porte Saint-Martin. Even those worst regions which lie tucked behind the left-hand side of the Boulevard Saint-Antoine and which visitors seldom hear of, find him drinking beer and listening to the whining, tinny sound of tango-music under a thick haze of tobacco smoke. That, he says, is what he likes. He likes to sit obscurely at a table with a glass of beer, in a gloom of coloured lights, hearing the loudest jazz music possible — to dream whatever dreams go on behind the hooked eyebrows of Mephistopheles. It is not quite a true statement, because his presence is rather less obscure than a brass band. But he does not talk; he just smiles in a pleased fashion, and smokes cigars all night.

The legend, then, says that when he wears on these occasions an ordinary lounge suit, he is out for pleasure alone. Observing this costume, the proprietors of doubtful cafes become effusive, bow low, and, as like as not, offer him champagne. When he wears a dinner jacket, he is on the trail of something, but he is only speculating and watching; the proprietors, though uneasy, can give him a good table and offer a short drink like cognac. But when he walks in evening clothes, with the familiar cloak, top-hat, and silver-headed stick, when his smile is a trifle more suave and there is a very slight bulge under his left arm - messieurs, that means trouble, and be sure that everybody knows it. The proprietor does not offer any drink at all. The orchestra gets a little off key. The waiters drop a saucer or two, and the knowing ones, if they have a favourite mome with them, hasten to get her out before somebody pulls a knife.

Curiously enough, this legend is true. I have told him that it is beneath his dignity as juge d'instruction to adopt this procedure. It does not, strictly speaking, come under the head of his duties at all, and could just as well be done by a minor inspector. But I know that to tell him this is useless, for he enjoys it immensely. He will continue to enjoy it until some quicker blade or bullet drops him in a gaslit alley in God knows what ugly neighbourhood, with his opal studs flat in the mud, and his sword-stick half-way out of its sheath.

I have accompanied him occasionally on these evenings, but only once when he wore a white tie. In that instance the night was very rough until we got the chain on the wrists of his man. I had at least two holes in a new silk hat, and I cursed and Bencolin laughed, until finally we handed the noisy gentleman over to the gendarmes. On the night in October which begins this chronicle, therefore, I listened with what my brethren call mixed feelings when Bencolin telephoned to suggest an outing. I said, 'Formal or informal ? He replied that it was to be very informal, which was reassuring.

We had followed the pink lights of the boulevards out to that garish, grimy, roaring section round the Porte Saint-Martin where brothels abound and somebody always seems to be digging up the street. At midnight we were in a night club, basement level, with considerable drinking ahead of us. Among foreigners, particularly with my own countrymen, there is a persistent belief that the French do not get drunk. This hilariously funny statement, I remember, was being discussed by Bencolin as we crowded in at a corner table and shouted our order for brandy above the din.

It was very hot in here, though electric fans tore rifts in the smoke. A blue spotlight played over the tangled shadows of dancers in darkness; it made ghastly a rouged face which appeared, dipped, and then was swallowed by the heaving mass. Moving in rhythm with a long-drawn bray and thud, the orchestra pounded slowly through a tango. Another brassy cry of horns, another rise, stamp, and fall, and the murmuring dancers swished in time, their shadows reeling on the blue-lit walls. Shop-girls and their escorts yielded to it with closed eyes, for the tango, of all dances, has the most wild and passionate beat. I watched the strained faces appearing and going, as faces swept by a black wave, under a light now turned green; and some looked drunk, and all looked weird and nightmarish ; and, through lulls in the uproar, when the accordion-wail broke, you could hear the whir of the fans.

'But why this place in particular?' I asked. With a flourish and a clink of saucers, the waiter had whirled our drinks across the table.

Not raising his eye, Bencolin said: 'Don't look up now, but notice the man sitting two tables away from us in the corner. The one who is so obviously keeping his eyes away from me.'

Presently I looked. It was too dark to see distinctly, but once the green edge of the spotlight picked out the face he indicated. The man had his arms around two girls, and was laughing between them. In the brief weird glare I saw the gleam of black brilliantined hair; I saw a heavy jaw, a crooked nose, and eyes which looked fixedly into the spotlight. It did not fit into this prosaic atmosphere, but I was at a loss to tell why. Seeing those eyes glare and turn away in the beam, it was curiously as though you had flashed a light into a dark corner, and a spider there had jumped and scuttled away. I thought I should recognize him again.

'Quarry?' I said.

Bencolin shook his head. 'No. Not at present, anyhow. But we are waiting for an appointment here. ... Ah, there's our man! He's coming towards the table now. Finish your drink.'

The figure he indicated was squirming through the ranks of tables, clearly bewildered at the surroundings. It was a little man with a big head and limp white whiskers. When the green light shone in his eyes he shut them, and tripped over one of the parties at a table. He was growing panicky and his eyes besought Bencolin. The detective motioned to me; we rose, and the little man followed us towards the back of the room. I shot a glance at the man with the crooked nose. He had dragged the head of one of the girls to his breast; he was rumpling her hair with one hand, absently, while he stared unwinkingly after us. , .. Close by the orchestra platform, where the blare was deafening, Bencolin found a door.

We were in a low whitewashed passage, with an electric bulb burning dimly over our heads. The little man stood before us, his head on one side, his back bent, blinking up nervously. His red-rimmed eyes had an uncanny habit of seeming to grow round and then shrink, as with the beat of a pulse. His scraggly moustache and fan of white whiskers were much too large for the bony face; his cheek bones were shiny, but his bald head looked as though it had been covered with dust. Two tufts of white hair stuck up behind the ears. He wore a suit of rusty black, much too large for him, and he seemed nervous.

'I do not know what monsieur wants,' he said, in a shrill voice. 'But I am here. I have shut up my museum.'

'This, Jeff,' Bencolin told me, 'is Monsieur Augustin. He is the owner of the oldest waxworks in Paris.'

'The Musee Augustin,' explained the little man. He tilted his head and stiffened unconsciously, as though he were posing before a camera. 'I make all the figures myself. What! You have not heard of the Musee Augustin?'

He blinked at me anxiously, and I nodded, though I certainly had not. The Grevin, yes, but the Musee Augustin was a new one.

'Not so many people come as in the old days,' said Augustin, shaking his head. 'That is because I will not move down on the boulevards, and put up electric lights, and serve drinks. Pah!' He twisted his hat savagely. 'What do they think? It is not Luna Park. It is a museum. It is art. I work as my father worked, for art. Great men complimented my father on his work —'

He was addressing me half defiantly, half beseechingly, with earnest gestures, and twisting his hat again. Bencolin cut him short by leading the way down the corridor, where he opened another door.

At the table in the middle of a gaudy room, whose windows were muffled with shabby red draperies, and which was obviously used for assignation purposes, a young man jumped up as we entered. Such places have a sickly atmosphere of small lusts and cheap perfume, and there comes to die mind a picture of endless meetings under a light with a dusty pink shade. The young man, who had been smoking cigarettes until the stale air was almost choking, looked incongruous here. He was tanned and wiry, with short dark hair, an eye which saw distances, and a military carriage. Even his short moustache had the curtness of a military command. During the time he had to wait, you felt he was nervous and at a loss; but now that something concrete had presented itself, his eyes narrowed ; he became at ease.

'I must apologize,' Bencolin was saying, 'for using this place for a conference. Nevertheless, we shall have privacy. ... Let me present, Captain Chaumont, Monsieur Marie -an associate of mine - and Monsieur Augustin.'

The young man bowed, unsmiling. He was apparently not quite accustomed to civilian clothes, and his hands moved up and down the sides of his coat. As he studied Augustin he nodded, with a grim expression.

'Good,' he said. This is the man, then ?'

'I do not understand,' Augustin announced. His moustache bristled; he drew himself up. 'You act, monsieur, as though I had been accused of some crime. I have a right to an explanation.'

'Sit down, please,' said Bencolin. We drew up chairs round the table over which burned the pink-shaded lamp, but Captain Chaumont remained standing, feeling along the left side of his coat as though for a sabre.

'Now, then,' Bencolin continued, 'I only wish to ask a few questions. You do not mind, M. Augustin?'

'Naturally not,' the other answered, with dignity.

'You have been owner of the waxworks for a long time, I understand?'

'Forty-two years. This is the first time,' said Augustin, his red-rimmed eye wandering to Chaumont and his voice growing quavery, 'that the police have ever seen fit to - - '

'But the number of people who visit your museum is not large?'

'I have told you why. I do not care. I work for my art alone.'

'How many attendants do you have there ?'

'Attendants?' Augustin's thoughts were jerked back on another tack; he blinked again. 'Why, only my daughter. She sells tickets. I take them. All the work I do myself.'

Bencolin was negligent, almost kindly, but the other man was staring straight at Augustin, and I thought I detected in those eyes which saw distances a quiet hatred, Chaumont sat down.

'Aren't you going to ask him . . . ?' the young man said, gripping his hands together fiercely.

'Yes,' Bencolin answered. He took from his pocket a photograph. 'M. Augustin, have you ever before seen this young lady?'

Bending over, I saw a remarkably pretty, rather vapid face looking out coquettishly from the picture: a girl of nineteen or twenty, with vivacity in the dark eyes, soft full lips, and a weak chin. In one corner was the imprint of Paris's most fashionable photographer. This was no midinette. Chaumont looked at the soft greys and blacks of the photograph as though they hurt his eyes. When Augustin had finished studying the picture, Chaumont reached out and turned it face down. He leaned into the yellow pool of light; the brown face bitten and polished as though by sandstorms, was impassive, but a glow burnt behind his eyeballs.

'You will please think well,' he said. 'She was my fiancee.'

'I do not know,' said Augustin. His eyes were pinched. 'I - you cannot expect me to ...'

'Did you ever see her before ?' Bencolin insisted.

'Monsieur, what is this?' demanded Augustin. 'You all

look at me as though I What do you want? You ask

me about that picture. The face is familiar. I have seen it somewhere, because I never forget. People who come into my museum I always study, to catch' - he spread out delicate hands - 'to catch the expression - the shade - in living people - for my wax. Do you understand ?'

He hesitated.

Earnestly he regarded each of us, his fingers still moving as though the wax were under his hand. 'But I do not know! Why am I here? What have I done? I harm nobody. I only want to be left alone.'

'The girl in this photograph,' Bencolin said, 'is Mademoiselle Odette Duchene. She was the daughter of the late Cabinet Minister. And now she is dead. She was last seen alive going into the Musee Augustin, and she did not come out.'

After a long silence, during which he ran a shaky hand over his face and pressed his eyeballs heavily, the old man said in a piteous tone:

'Monsieur, I have been a good man all my life. I do not know what you mean.'

'She was murdered,' Bencolin responded. 'Her body was found floating in the Seine this afternoon.'

Chaumont, looking fixedly across the room, supplemented: 'Bruised. Beaten. And - she died of stab wounds.'

Augustin regarded those two faces as though they were driving 1dm back against a stone wall, slowly, with the prods of bayonets.

'You don't think,' he muttered at last, 'that ‘ ?'

'If I did,' said Chaumont, smiling suddenly, 'I would strangle you. That is what we want to find out. But I understand that this is not the first time such a thing has occurred. Monsieur Bencolin tells me that six months ago another girl went into the Musee Augustin, and — '

'I was never questioned on that!'

'No,' said Bencolin. 'The place was only one of the spots she was known to have visited. We thought you, monsieur, above suspicion. Besides, that girl was never found again. She may only have disappeared voluntarily. So many of these cases are like that.'

In spite of his fear, Augustin forced himself to meet the detective's gaze calmly. 'Why,' he asked - 'why is monsieur so certain she went into my museum and never came out?'

'I will answer that,' Chaumont interposed. ‘I was engaged to Mademoiselle Duchene. At present I am at home on a furlough. We became engaged a year ago, and I have not seen her since then. There has been a great change.

'That does not concern you. Yesterday Mademoiselle Duchene was to have tea at the Pavilion Dauphine with Mademoiselle Martel, a friend of hers, and myself. She had been behaving - oddly. At four o'clock she phoned me to say that she must break the appointment, giving no reason. I phoned Mademoiselle Martel, and found that she had received the same message. I felt that something was wrong. So I went immediately to Mademoiselle Duchene's home.

'She was just driving away in a taxi when I arrived. I took another cab - and followed.'

'You followed her... ?'

Chaumont drew himself up stiffly. Rigid muscles had tightened down his cheek bones. 'I see no reason to defend my actions, A fiance has his rights. ... I grew particularly interested when I saw her coming to this district. It is not good for young girls to be here, daytime or not. She dismissed the taxi in front of the Musee Augustin. It puzzled me because I had never known her to be interested in waxworks. I debated with myself whether to follow her in; I have my pride.'

Here was a man who never exploded. Here was a man who was growing into that austere mould which France had fashioned for her soldiers who were also gentlemen. He looked at us with a stare which defied comment.

'I saw on the signboard that the place closed at five. It was only half an hour. I waited. When the museum closed, and she had not come out, I supposed she had gone by another entrance. Besides, I was — angry - at having been made to stand in the street all that time - without result.' His head bent forward, and he looked up at Augustin with brooding steadiness, 'I learned to-day, when she had not come home, and I went to investigate, that the museum had no other entrance. Well?'

Augustin edged his chair back.

'But there is!' he insisted. 'There is another entrance.’

'Not for the public, I think,' Bencolin put in.

'No ,,. no, of course not! It goes out on a side-street; it communicates with the back walls of the museum, behind the figures, where I go to arrange the lights. It is private. But monsieur said — !'

'And it is always kept locked,' Bencolin went on, musingly.

The old man threw out his arms with a cry. 'Well? What do you want of me? Say something! Are you trying to arrest me for murder?'

'No,' said Bencolin. 'We want a look at your museum, for one thing. And we still want to know whether you have ever seen that girl.'

Rising shakily, Augustin put his withered hands on the table and leaned almost in Bencolin's face. His eyes were enlarging and shrinking in that queer, almost horrible illusion.

'Then,' he said, 'the answer is yes. Yes! Because there have been things going on in that museum, and I do not understand them. I have wondered whether I am going mad.' His head sank.

'Sit down,' suggested Bencolin, 'Sit down and tell us about it.'

Chaumont reached across and pushed the old man gently into his chair. The latter sat there nodding for a moment, tapping with his ringers against a bearded lip.

'I do not know whether you can appreciate what I mean,' he told us presently. The voice was eager and shrill. You felt he had long wished for a confidant. 'The purpose, the illusion, the spirit of a waxworks. It is an atmosphere of death. It is soundless and motionless. It is walled off by stone grottos, like a dream, from the light of day; its noises are echoes, and it is filled with a dull green illumination, as though it were in the depths under the sea. Do you see? All things are turned dead, in attitudes of horror, of sublimity. In my caverns are real scenes from the past. Marat is stabbed in his bath. Louis XVI lies with his head under the guillotine knife. Bonaparte dies, white-faced, in the bed of his little brown room at Saint Helena, with the storm outside and the servant drowsing in the chair. . . .'

The little man was speaking as though to himself, but he plucked at Bencolin's sleeve.

'And - do you see? - this silence, this motionless host in the twilight, is my world. I think it is like death, exactly, because death may consist of people frozen for ever in the positions they had when they died. But this is the only fancy I permit myself. I do not fancy that they live. Many a night I have walked among my figures, and stepped across the railings, and stood in the midst of them. I have watched Bonaparte's dead face, imagining that I was standing actually in the room of his death; and so strong was my fancy that I could see the night light quivering, and hear the wind, and the rattle in his throat....'

'That is damned nonsense!' Chaumont snapped,

'No ... let me go on!' Augustin insisted, piteously, in his queer far-away voice. 'Messieurs, I would feel weak after a thing like that; I would bathe my eyes and shiver. But, you understand, I never believed that my figures really lived. If one of them ever moved' - his voice rose shrilly - 'if one of them ever moved under my eyes, I think I should go mad.'

That was the thing he feared. Chaumont made an impatient gesture once more, but Bencolin silenced him. The detective, bearded chin in his hand and eyes heavy-lidded, wached Augustin with growing interest.

'You have laughed at people in the waxworks,' the old man rushed on, 'when they accosted wax figures and thought they were real?’ He looked at Bencolin, who nodded. 'You have also seen them when they thought some real person, standing about motionless, was made of wax; and you have seen them jump and cry out when the real person moved ? -Well, in my Gallery of Horrors there is a figure of Madame Louchard, the axe-killer. You have heard of her?'

'I sent her to the guillotine,' Bencolin answered briefly.

'Ah! You understand, monsieur,' Augustin said, with some anxiety, 'some of my figures are old friends. I can talk to them. I love them. But that Madame Louchard ... I could do nothing with her, even when I was modelling her. I saw devilry shape itself into the wax under my fingers. It was a masterpiece. But she scared me.' He shuddered. 'She stands in the Gallery, very demure, very pretty, with her hands folded. Almost she seems a bride, with her fur neckpiece and her little brown hat.

'And one night, months ago, when I was closing up, I could have sworn I saw Madame Louchard, in her fur neckpiece and her little brown hat, walking along the green-lit Gallery.

Chaumont struck the table a blow with his fist. He said, despairingly:

'Let us go. The man's mad.'

'But, no; it was an illusion. .. . There she stood, in her usual place. Monsieur,' Augustin told Chaumont, looking at him steadily, 'you had better listen, because this concerns you. Mademoiselle who disappeared, you say, was your fiancee. Good! ... You ask me why I remember this fiancée of yours. I will tell you.

'She came in yesterday, about half an hour before closing-time. There were only two or three people in the main hall, and I noticed her. I was standing over near the doorway which leads down into the cellars - where I have the Gallery of Horrors - and at first she seemed to think I was made of wax, and looked at me curiously. A beautiful girl. Chic. Then she asked me, "Where is the satyr ?" '

'What the devil,' rasped Chaumont, 'did she mean by that?'

'One of the figures in the Gallery. But listen !' Augustin leaned forward again. His white moustache and whiskers, his shining bony face, his pale-blue eyes, all quivered with earnestness. 'She thanked me. When she had started downstairs, I thought I would go up to the front and see how near it was to closing-time. Just as I went, I looked behind me. I looked down the stairs. .. .

'The greenish, very dim light was shining on the rough stones of the walls on either side the staircase. Mademoiselle was almost at the turn; I could hear her footsteps and see her picking her way carefully. And then I could have sworn I saw another figure on the staircase, following her down in silence. I thought it was the figure of Madame Louchard, the dead axe-killer from my Gallery, for I could see her fur neckpiece and her little brown hat,

The dry, shrill, sing-song voice stopped. Chaumont folded his arms.

'You are either a thorough rascal,' he said, crisply, 'or else you are really mad.'

'Softly!’ interposed Bencolin. 'It is more likely, Monsieur Augustin, that you saw a real woman. Did you investigate?'

'I was – frightened’ the old man answered. He looked miserable and on the point of tears. 'But I knew nobody like that had been in the museum all day. I was too terrified to go and look that figure in the face; I thought I might - see - a wax face, and glass eyes. So I went up and asked my daughter, who was on duty at the door, whether she had sold a ticket to anybody answering the description of Madame Louchard. She had not. I knew it.'

'What did you do then?'

'I went to my rooms and drank some brandy. I am subject to chills. I did not leave them until after closing-time....'

'You were not, then, taking tickets that day?'

'There were so few people, monsieur!' die old man responded, snuffling. He went on in a dull voice : 'This is the first time I have mentioned the matter. And you tell me I am mad. Perhaps. I don't know.'

He put liis head down in his hands.

After a time Bencolin rose, putting on a soft dark hat which shaded his narrow, inscrutable eyes. The furrows were deep from his nostrils down past his bearded mouth. He said:

'Let us start for the museum.'

We guided Augustin, who seemed half blind, out again into die din of the cafe, where the tango music burst forth again with an almost unnerving shock. My mind went back to that first man whom Bencolin had pointed out here, the man with the crooked nose and the queer eyes. He sat in the same corner, a cigarette glowing between his fingers; but he sat with the rigidity and glassy stare of a drunken man. His companions had deserted him. He contemplated a large pile of saucers on the table, and he smiled.

When we mounted the stairs to the street the garishness of the square was somewhat dimmed. The great stone arch of the Porte Saint-Martin rose up black against the stars; a wind tore at the tattered brown raiment of trees, and pushed dead leaves along the pavement with a scratching sound as of small nervous feet. A few cafe windows were alight, against which you could see the shadows of waiters stacking chairs. Two policemen, in gloomy conference on the corner, saluted Bencolin as we crossed the Boulevard Saint-Denis and turned down the Boulevard de Sebastopol to the right. We saw nobody. But I had a feeling that we were watched from doorways, that people were pressing back against the walls, and that behind the tiny chinks of light from closed shutters a subdued and stealthy activity paused, momentarily, as we went by.

The rue Saint-Appoline is a short and narrow street, its blinds drawn furtively. A noisy bar and dance-hall is at the corner, with shadows whisking past its murky curtains; but beyond it no gleam showed save a lighted red numeral, 25, on the left. Directly opposite this we stopped before a high doorway witii twisted stone pillars and doors bound in iron. A grimy sign, gilt lettering almost illegible, read :

'Musee Augustin. Collection of Wonders. Founded by J. Augustin, 1862. Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. to 12 p.m.'

In response to Augustin's ring the doors were opened with a clanking of bolts. We stood in a small vestibule, apparently open to the public during the day. It was illuminated by a number of dusty electric bulbs, set into the ceiling to form the letter A.

On the walls more gilt lettering testified to the extraordinary quality of the horrors to be found within and to the educational value of seeing the Spanish Inquisition practising torture, the Christian martyrs thrown to the lions, and a number of celebrated people stabbed, shot, or strangled. The naivete of these announcements did not lessen their allure. The man must be dead and buriable who does not respond to a healthy curiosity about things morbid. Of all our company, I noticed, the sober and commonsense Chaumont seemed to look at these announcements with the most appreciative glance. His dark eyes took in every word when he thought we were not watching him.

But I was looking at the girl who had let us in. This must be Augustin's daughter, but she did not resemble her father in the least. Her brown hair, which she wore in a long bob, was pulled behind her ears; she had heavy eyebrows, a straight nose, and brown-black eyes of such an electric, probing quality of watchfulness that they seemed to start from her head. She looked at her father as though she were surprised he had not been run down and hurt by a car in the street.

'Ah, papa!' she said, in a quick voice. 'These are the police, eh? Well, we have closed up and lost business for you, messieurs.' She frowned on us. 'Now I hope you will tell us what you want. I hope you have not listened to papa's nonsense ?'

'Now, my dear, new!' Augustin protested soothingly. 'You will please go in and put all the lights on in the museum —'

She interrupted in a brusque voice: 'No, papa. You do that, I want to talk to them.' Then she folded her arms, looking at him steadily until he nodded, smiled in a foolish way, and went to open the glass doors at the back. Then she went on: 'Step this way, if you please, messieurs. Papa will call you.'

She led us through a door at the right of the ticket-booth, communicating with living-quarters. It was a sitting-room, dingily lighted, running chiefly to lace, tassels, gimcrack ornaments, and an odour of boiled potatoes. Then she took up her position behind a table, still with folded arms.

'He is much of a child’ she explained, nodding towards the museum. 'Speak to me.'

Bencolin told her the facts briefly. He did not mention what Augustin had told us; he spoke in an almost careless manner, conveying that neither the girl nor her father could have had anything to do with the disappearance. But, studying Mlle Augustin, I realized that this was the very thing which made her suspicious. She regarded Bencolin's heavy-lidded eyes, wandering about the room absently, with a fixed look which became somewhat glassy. I thought that her breathing grew a trifle quicker.

'Did my father - comment on this?' she demanded, when he had finished.

'Only to say,' Bencolin answered, 'that he did not see her leave.'

'That is correct.' The fingers of the girl's folded arms tightened round her biceps. 'But I did.' 'You saw her leave?' 'Yes.'

Again I saw that play of muscles along Chaumont's thin jaws. He said: 'Mademoiselle, I dislike to contradict a woman, but you are mistaken. I was outside the whole time.'

She looked at Chaumont as though she were noticing him for the first time. She looked him up and down, slowly, but his eyes did not move.

'Ah! And how long did you remain, monsieur?'

'Until at least fifteen minutes after closing-time.'

'Ah!' the girl repeated. 'That accounts for it, then. She stayed to chat with me on her way out. I let her out after the doors were closed.'

Chaumont clenched his hands in the air, as though he were faced with a glass wall behind which this woman, unassailable, stared back.

'Well, in that case, our difficulties are solved,' murmured Bencolin, smiling. 'You chatted with her for fifteen minutes, mademoiselle?'

'Yes.'

'Of course. There is just one point we of the police are not certain of,' Bencolin said, wrinkling up his forehead. 'We believe some clothes are missing. How was she dressed when you spoke to her?'

A hesitation. ‘I did not notice,' Mile Augustin replied quietly.

'Well, then,' cried Chaumont, squaring himself, 'tell us what she looked like! Can you do that?' 'An ordinary type. It would fit many.' 'Light or dark?'

Another hesitation. 'Dark,' she said, rapidly. 'Brown eyes. Large mouth. Small figure.'

'Mademoiselle Duchene was dark. But she was fairly tall, and she had blue eyes. God in heaven!' snapped Chaumont, clenching his hands again. 'Why won't you tell the truth?'

'I have told the truth, I may have been mistaken. Monsieur must realize that many people go through here in a day, and I had no special reason to remember this one. I must have been confused. My statement remains : I let her out of here and I have not seen her since.'

Old Augustin came in at diat moment. He saw the frozen tension in his daughter's face, and spoke hurriedly:

'I have put the lights on, messieurs. If you want to make extensive examinations, you must use lamps; the place is never bright. But proceed, I have nothing to hide.'

Bencolin halted in an irresolute manner as he was turning towards the door. At that moment Augustin's elbow brushed the shade of the lamp, knocking it sideways so that a strong yellow light ran up the detective's face. It emphasized the high cheek bones, the moody eyes with the brows drawn down, glancing restlessily about the room....

'This neighbourhood!' he muttered. 'This neighbourhood ! Have you a telephone here. Monsieur Augustin ?' 'In my den. monsieur; my workroom. I will take you to it.'

'Yes, yes. I want it immediately. But one thing more. I think you told us, my friend, that when Mademoiselle Duchene first entered the museum yesterday she asked you a curious question - "Where is the satyr?" What did she mean by that?'

Augustin looked slightly hurt.

'Monsieur has never heard,' he asked, 'of the Satyr of the Seine?' 'Never.'

'It is one of my finest efforts. A purely imaginative conception, you understand,' Augustin hastened to explain. 'It deals with one of the popular Parisian bogies, a sort of man-monster who lives in the river and draws down women to their death. I believe it has some foundation in fact. There are records here, if you care to examine them.'

‘I see. And where is the figure?'

'At the entrance to the Gallery of Horrors, near the foot of the stair. I have been highly complimented —'

'Show me the telephone. If you care to look round the museum,' he told the rest of us, 'I will join you there shortly. Now, if you please.'

Mlle Augustin sat down in an old rocking-chair beside the lamp and took a work-basket from the table. Her bright black eye fixed on a needle she was threading, she said coldly:

'You know the way, messieurs. Do not let me disturb you.'

She began to rock energetically and to work on a purple-striped shirt with the needle, after pushing the bobbed hair behind her ears, and settling herself with an expression of outraged domesticity. But she watched us.

Chaumont and I went out into the vestibule. He took out his case and offered me a cigarette; we studied each other while we were lighting thein. The place seemed to confine Chaumont like a coffin. He had pulled his hat down on his brows, and his eye roved nervously, seeking an enemy.

He said, suddenly. 'You are married ?'

'No.'

'Engaged?' 'Yes.'

'Ah! Then you can understand what this means. I am not myself. You must excuse me if I am upset. Ever since I saw that body... ! Let's go in.'

I felt a curious kinship with this repressed, vital, unimaginative young man, who floundered now out of his element. As we entered the glass doors of the museum he walked warily; by his very tread you knew that he had been fighting under fierce suns. But I saw on his face now an expression almost of awe....

The very quiet of the place made me shiver. It smelt damp; it smelt - I can only describe it this way - of clothes and hair. We were in an immense grotto, running back nearly eighty feet, and supported by pillars of grotesque fretwork in stone. It swam in a greenish twilight, emanating from some source I could not trace; like greenish water, it distorted and made spectral each outline, so that arches and pillars seemed to waver and change like the toy caverns inside a goldfish bowl. They appeared to trail green tentacles, and to be crusted with iridescent slime.

But it was the motionless assemblage here which filled one with dread. A policeman stood stiffly at my elbow; you would have sworn he was a real policeman until you spoke to him. Along the walls on either side, behind railings, figures looked out. They stared straight ahead as though (I could not help the fancy) as though they were aware of our presence and were deliberately keeping their eyes from us. A little yellowish light made them stand out in the green gloom. Doumergue, Mussolini, the Prince of Wales, King Alfonso, Hoover; then the idols of sport, of stage and screen, all familiar and fashioned with uncanny skill. But these, you felt, were only a reception committee - a sort of gesture at respectability and everyday life - to prepare you for what lay behind. I started a little at seeing, on a bench down the middle of the grotto, a woman sitting motionless, and near her a man huddled in a corner as though he were drunk; I started, with a knock at my heart, until I realized that these also were wax.

My footsteps echoed as I walked down the vault hesitantly. I passed within a foot of that figure slumped back against the bench, straw hat over its eyes, and I felt an almost overpowering impulse to touch it, for assurance that it could not speak. To be watched from behind by glas3 eyes is quite as bad as being watched from behind by real ones. I heard Chaumont wandering about; when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw him contemplating dubiously the drunken figure on the bench....

The grotto opened into a rotunda which was almost completely dark but for the faintest of glows round its models. Over the archway a hideous grinning face looked down at me. It was a jester leaning over as though to touch me with his bauble, and winking. My footsteps caused the bells of his motley to tremble, jingling, ever so slightly. Here in the dark rotunda echoes assumed a dead and empty heaviness; the smell of dust and clothes and hair was more pronounced; and the wax figures took on a more lurid unearthliness. D'Artagnan preened, hand on his rapier. A giant in black armour, axe uplifted, glimmered from the shadows. Then I saw another archway, dimly lighted in green, with a flight of stairs going down between stone walls to the Gallery of Horrors.., .

The mere inscription of it, above the archway, caused me to hesitate. The word was definite; you knew what to expect, and like all starkly definite things, I did not know whether I wanted to face it. That staircase suggested walls pressing you in with the terrors, so that you might not be able to escape. Here before the stairs, I remembered, old Augustin had seen Odette Duchene going down, and he thought he had seen moving after her that horrible phantom without a face, the woman with the fur neckpiece and the little brown hat. .., It was much colder, descending the steps, and the footfalls had flat, mocking reverberations which rushed ahead as though somebody were jumping down the treads ahead of you. Suddenly I felt alone. I wanted to turn back.

The staircase turned sharply. Against the rough and green-lit wall a shadow rose up, and my heart thumped in my chest. A man with humped shoulders, his face shaded by a medieval hood, but with a long jaw which carried a suggestion of a smile - this gaunt model crouched against the wall. In his arms, partly covered by the cloak, was the figure of a woman ; an ordinary man, except that in place of an out-thrust foot he had a cloven hoof. The Satyr! An ordinary man, except that the artisan had caught with subtle genius a suggestion of the foul and the unholy, of gaunt ribs and unsmiling jaw. It was as well that the eyes were shaded. ...

I hurried past the leprous thing, down the tortuous corridor to where it opened into another rotunda on a lower level. Here were groups of figures in scenes, each in its compartment, each a masterpiece of devilish artistry. The past drew breath. A pallor was on each, as though you saw it through veils, yet you saw behind it into its own time. Marat lay backwards out of his tin bath, his jaw fallen, the ribs starting through his bluish skin, a claw hand plucking at the knife in his bloody chest. You saw this; you saw the attendant woman seizing an impassive Charlotte Corday, and the red-capped soldiers, their mouths split with yelling, smash through the door; all the passion and terror cried soundlessly there. But behind this brown room you saw the yellow September sunlight falling through the window, and the vines on the wall outside. Old Paris lived again.

I heard the sound of something dripping. ...

Panic seized me. Staring round at all those other groups beneath their pallor - at the Inquisitors working with fire and pincers, at a king under the guillotine knife, and the fury of the soundless drums - I felt it as contrary to nature that they did not move. They were more ghastly, these shadowy people, than though they had stepped forth in their coloured coats to speak.

It was not my fancy. Something was falling, drop by drop, slowly. ...

I hurried up the stairs in a tumult of echoes. I wanted light, and the knowledge of human presence in this choking stuffiness of wax and wigs. When I had reached the last turn of the stairs I tried to recover composure; I would not be frightened out of my wits by a lot of dummies. It was ridiculous. Bencolin and I would have a good laugh at it, over brandy and cigarettes, when we had left this evil place.

There they were, Bencolin and Augustin and Chaumont, just coming into the upper rotunda as I ascended. I steadied myself and called out. But something must have shown itself in my face, for they noticed it even in that dim light.

'What the devil ails you, Jeff?' the detective asked.

'Nothing,' I said. My voice told them it was a he. 'I was -admiring the waxworks - down there. The Marat group. And I wanted to see the satyr. It's damned good, the whole expression of the satyr, and the woman in his arms — '

Augustin's head jerked on his neck.

'What?' he demanded. 'What did you say?'

‘I said, it's damned good: the satyr, and the woman in —'

Augustin said, like a man hypnotized: 'You must be mad - yourself. There is no woman in the satyr's arms.'