The Waxworks Murder

Death in Silhouette

'Room of the juge d'instruction. Bencolin speaking. Connect with central, medical bureau.'

A buzz of wires, a prolonged clicking. 'Medical bureau, desk.'

'Juge d'instruction. Report autopsy of Odette Duchene. File A-forty-two, homicide.’

'File A-forty-two, reported on by commissaire, first arrondissement, two p.m., October nineteenth, nineteen hundred and thirty, to central office. Body of woman, found in river at foot of Pont au Change. Correct ?'

'Correct.'

'Compound fracture of skull, caused by fall from height of not less than twenty feet. Immediate cause of death, stab-wound in third intercostal space, piercing heart, from knife one inch wide by seven inches long. Minor bruises and lacerations. Cut about head, face, neck, and hands, caused by broken glass. Dead, when found, about eighteen hours.'

'That's all.... Central office, department four.'.

'Central office, department four.' A sing-song voice.

'Juge d'instruction. Who is in charge of case A-forty-two, homicide?'

'A-forty-two. Inspector Lutrelle.'

'If he is in the building, let me speak to him.'

The bleak autumn dusk was already setting in. I had not been able to see Bencolin until then; he had been summoned back to his office on routine business shortly before lunch, and it was past four o'clock when I arrived at his office in the Palais de Justice. Even then I did not find him in the great bare room with the green-shaded lights, where he conducts his examinations. He has a private room of his own at the very top of the vast building, a sort of den shut off from its buzz and clamour, but connected by a battery of telephones with every department of the Surete, and with the prefecture of police several blocks away.

The lie de la Cite, which really is an island shaped like a narrow ship, stretches for nearly a mile in the Seine; at the rear end, broadening out, is the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and at the front - tapering out in the fashion of a bowsprit -is a drowsy park bravely called The Square of Gallant Green. Between these two, jutting up over the bustle of the New Bridge, rise the buildings of justice. The windows of Bencolin's room are high up under the roof; they look down on the New Bridge, past this tapering point and up the dark river. From here you have an illusion of keeping watch over all Paris. It is an eerie place, with its brown wails, its easy-chairs, its grisly relics in glass cases, its framed photographs, and an old rug worn threadbare by the ceaseless pacing of Bencolin,

We sat in the dark, except for dim lights over bookcases in an alcove. Their yellow illumination was faint behind Bencolin, silhouetting his head as he sat beside the windows with a telephone in his hand. My chair was opposite his, beside the windows, also, and I wore a headpiece from an extension to the phone. I heard the clicking and buzzing, the ghostly voices which spoke from all parts of the building, and my hands were on all the filaments which stretched from this room, responsive to the slightest pull, wound invisibly about every house in Paris.

There was silence after his last request. I saw his long fingers tap impatiently on the chair arm, and my eyes wandered out of the windows. They rattled dimly, for a cold wind was sweeping down the river. The glass was still blurred with rain, which snapped there in little whips. I could see the smudgy lamps on the New Bridge, far below: it was thick with pedestrians, traffic whistles, the lights and rumble of buses. Then, out farther, there were a few gleams on the tapering point, reflected brokenly in the river. But the rest was lost. Cold lamps, a row of them on each bank of the river, moved away, grew blurred, and then were dimmed in rain.

'Inspector Lutrelle speaking,' sang a voice in my ear. We were far from that prospect in the cold. We were shut in behind glass, with great machinery in motion; with a scent of thick cigar smoke, and a frayed rug where those pacing footfalls followed killers.

'Lutrelle? Bencolin. What have you on the Duchene murder?'

'Routine, so far. I went round to see her mother this afternoon, and was told you had been there. Had a talk with Durrand. He's in charge of the Martel affair, isn't he?'

'Yes.'

'He says you believe the two are connected with the Mask Club in the Boulevard de Sebastopol. I wanted to crash in there, but he told me you'd issued orders to keep off. Is that right?'

'For the present.'

The voice said, querulously: 'Well, if those are instructions, all right. I don't see the idea, though. The body was picked up against the foot of the Pont au Change, against one of the piles of the bridge. The current is swift, and that hadn't been allowed for. It was probably thrown in just about there, where it got wedged in. And that bridge is right at the end of the Boulevard de Sebastopol. It could have been brought down from the club in a direct line.'

'Anybody notice anything suspicious?'

'No. We've questioned that neighbourhood. That's the devil of it.'

'Laboratory reports?'

'Laboratory can't tell anything. She was in the water too long, and it destroyed indications as to the clothes. There's one more lead, if you insist on keeping away from the club. ...' '

'The glass cuts in her face, eh? The glass is probably of an unusual type - opaque, certainly, and probably coloured - and you found pieces of it. Oh, yes, Inspector. She either jumped or was thrown out of a window, and windows of that club would in all likelihood have —'

Over the wire there was a smothered exclamation of annoyance. 'Yes,' the voice admitted grudgingly, 'there were slivers in some of the cuts. It's dark red and very expensive. So you saw that, eh? We're questioning all the glaziers within a mile of the Porte Saint-Martin. If they got that window repaired . .. Any instructions?'

'None for the present. Keep after it; but understand ! No inquiries of any kind at the Mask Club until I give you permission.'

The voice grunted and rang off. Bencolin put down his telephone, shifting his fingers nervously up and down the arms of the chair. We were silent, listening to the distant hum of the building and the spurting rain.

'So,' I said, 'the Duchene girl was killed at the club. That seems to establish it. But Claudine Martel... Bencolin, was she killed because she knew too much about the first death?'

He turned his head slowly. 'What makes you think so?'

'Well, her behaviour at home on the night of Duchene's disappearance. You know — the crying, the agitation, and telling her mother "You can't help me. Nobody can help me." She seems ordinarily to have been a very self-possessed young lady. ... Do you think they were both members?'

He leaned over slightly to draw closer to him a tabouret on which stood a decanter of brandy and a box of cigars. The light from the alcove behind lay along the side of his face, hollowing the cheek bone, and glowed scarlet through the liquid in the decanter.

'Well, we can make a shrewd guess. Odette Duchene, I think, was not. The Martel girl, however, clearly was.'

'Why "clearly" ?'

'Oh, there are any number of indications. First, because she certainly was known to Mademoiselle Augustin, and well known; Mademoiselle Augustin had her freshly in mind, though she may not have known the name. Claudine Martel must have been in the habit of going to the club through the waxworks, by which we may infer she was a constant visitor. ...'

'One moment! Suppose her face was known to Mademoiselle Augustin, and fresh in the lady's mind, because she had seen Claudine Martel dead?'

Pouring out a glass of brandy, he regarded me thoughtfully.

'I see, Jeff. You are trying to tangle up our waxworks proprietress in a guilty knowledge of the murder? - Well, it is possible from several angles. We will discuss that point later. But, as to Mademoiselle Martel's being a member of the club, there was (secondly) the black mask we found in the passage beside her body. It obviously belonged to her.'

I sat up straight and said: 'What the devil! I distinctly heard you tell Inspector Durrand, and prove it by the mask, that it belonged to another woman!'

'Yes,' he said, chuckling - 'yes, I was forced to deceive you both in order to deceive the inspector. I was afraid for a moment he would see the ghastly and glaring flaw in my reasoning —'

'But why?'

'Deceive him? .. . Because, Jeff, Inspector Durrand is too much a man of action to be discreet. He believes that she was lured to the club, an innocent girl, and murdered during a brutal attack; that is what I want everybody to believe. If Durrand had known she was a member, he would instantly have called on her parents - her friends - everybody, and he would have told them all that fact. Result: they would either have flown into a terrific rage and kicked us all out of the house, or else slammed the door in our faces to begin with. In any event, we should have received no help or information whatever. ... As you may have noticed, I have not told either family that these deaths were connected, or that either girl had any connexion with the club.’

I shook my head. 'It's a damned intricate game.'

'It has to be! Otherwise, we shall get nowhere. A public scandal of this club, now, would blast our whole hope of getting at the truth. But about the mask: here was the weak point in the argument I put before the inspector. If you remember, the woman whose appearance I deduced from the indications could have been nobody else but the dead girl!

Small, dark complexion, brown hair worn long: why, it fitted perfectly, and there was the mask to prove it. But by sleight-of-hand reasoning I convinced Durrand'

'There was lipstick on the mask. You pointed out that the dead woman wore none.'

This time his chuckle became a roar of laughter. 'And yet you yourself picked up the lipstick she was carrying in her bag! Why, Jeff, surely you realize that her wearing no lipstick at the time of her death does not mean she never wore the mask. ... I grieve to think how easily Durrand swallowed it. On the contrary, all it means is that she had definitely worn the mask in the past, but did not have it on then.'

'The torn elastic?'

'Torn, my friend, by the murderer in his or her frantic search through her handbag. You see? She took the mask with her in her handbag when she left home that night. In all probability, the old-fashioned severity of the Martels prevented her from applying lipstick before she left; and then she forgot it. Definitely she was coming to the club. The final point to prove she was a member .. . Well, let us discuss the whole thing.'

He sat back, his finger-tips together, and stared out of the window.

'From the beginning, we know that the "lady in the brown hat", Gina Prevost, has been somehow concerned with the disappearance of Odette Duchene. Old Augustin saw her, you remember, following the Duchene girl down the stairs of the waxworks that afternoon, and mistook her for a ghost. We may also say that Claudine Martel was also concerned with this disappearance, for, considering her membership of the club and the facts we have heard about her behaviour on that night, there can be no other interpretation. I do not say that these two are necessarily implicated in the murder. On the contrary, I think I have an idea of how they are implicated. But they are afraid, Jeff - horribly afraid they may be implicated. So they arrange for a meeting, Gina Prevost and Claudine Martel, and on that night Claudine Martel is murdered.

'At twenty-five minutes to twelve, then, we have Mademoiselle Prevost waiting in front of the waxworks, where she is seen by the policeman. She is not only upset, but indecisive. Unquestionably she has arranged to meet her friend either (a) in the waxworks itself or (b) in the passage, for girls of that type would scarcely wait outside the passage door giving on to the Boulevard de Sebastopol - it's not a pleasant neighbourhood to loiter in doorways, you know. But what happens? Something has gone wrong, Jeff, and we do not need to look far in search of it. She reaches the museum at eleven thirty-five, but the museum is closed.

'Sheer chance has upset things. Sheer chance caused me to telephone Monsieur Augustin for an appointment, and sheer chance made him lock up his waxworks half an hour before its usual closing-time. On her arrival, Mademoiselle Prevost finds the gates shut and the museum dark. It has never happened before, and she does not know what to do. She hesitates. Undoubtedly she has accustomed herself to go in by way of the museum, and so she hesitates to enter by the door giving on to the Boulevard de Sebastopol.

'Claudine Martel has arrived before her. Whether or not she arrived also after the museum was closed, or whether she is accustomed to using the Boulevard de Sebastopol entrance, this we do not know. In any case, she clearly entered by the boulevard door. 'Why so?'

'She had no ticket, Jeff!' Bencolin leaned forward and slapped the arm of his chair impatiently. 'Surely you know that (if only for appearance's sake) each member of the club must buy a ticket for the waxworks when entering. But there was no museum ticket among her effects. Surely we can't be so mad as to suppose that the murderer might have stolen it, for why should he? He left her in the museum; he certainly tried to make no mystery of her presence there.'

'I see. Go on.'

'Therefore we have Mademoiselle Martel going in one door, and her friend waiting in the street before the waxworks. While each waits, and each wonders where the other is, we come to the significant points.

'The first significant point is this. Once inside that passage, there are three ways by which the murderer could have approached his victim. First, there is the door with the Bulldog lock, opening on to the street. Second, there is the door into the actual club itself, in the rear of the brick wall. Third, there is the door from the museum. Now this last door is significant; it has a spring lock, and can be opened only from inside the museum. It is used, but by people going one way only - viz., into the club. They never leave that way; they have no keys. And why? Because the club keeps late hours. After twelve, when the museum closes, they couldn't go tramping out through the waxworks, unbolting and unbarring that huge front door, and making it necessary for Mademoiselle Augustin to get up and lock it again every time somebody left! That in itself would be unpractical, to say nothing of the fact that it must surely be discovered by old Augustin, and stopped. You yourself have seen how anxious his daughter was to conceal it from him. ... No, no, Jeff! A person could enter by way of the museum; but that spring lock was always caught on the museum side, and the key thrown away; the exit was the boulevard door.

'Now, then. In determining which way the murderer approached his victim, we have these three doors. The murderer, you see, could have come by one of the first two -from the street or from inside the club. But,' said Bencolin, emphasizing each word by a tap on the chair arm - 'but if he came in either of those ways he could not possibly have carried the body into the waxworks. Do you see? The museum door being locked on the inside, he could not have opened it from the passage. Therefore, my friend, we see that the murderer must have crept upon her from inside the museum, by opening that door from the inside. .. . '

I whistled. 'You mean,' I said, 'that when old Augustin locked up the museum at eleven-thirty, he locked the murderer in?'

'Yes. Locked him in - in the dark. Now, clearly, anybody who wanted to get out when Augustin closed up, could have got out; it was no accident. The killer waited there deliberately, knowing that Mademoiselle Martel would enter the passage. It did not matter which way she came - museum or street door - he would have her. And he could hide himself very nicely in that cubbyhole behind the dummy wall where the satyr stands.'

As he paused to light a cigar, eagerly, his hands trembling as he saw the recital unfold, my first ominous thought came back.

'Bencolin,' I said, 'might it necessarily have been somebody from outside who was locked in the museum?'

'What do you mean?' The match flame lit briefly the gleam of his eyes. He was touchy when you questioned any point of his reconstruction, and he spoke irritably,

'The Augustin woman was alone in the museum. There is that queer affair of her turning on the lights on the staircase — you remember? She said she thought somebody was moving about in the museum. ... By the way,' I said, remembering suddenly, 'how the devil did you know she had ? You asked her about it, and she admitted it, but there was no indication. . . . '

'Oh, yes, there was!' he corrected, recovering a little of his good humour. 'Jeff, precisely what are you trying to tell me? That Marie Augustin committed the murder?'

'Well ... no, not exactly. There isn't the shadow of a motive. And I can't see why she would have stabbed the girl and then taken the trouble to lug the body in and dump it right in her own museum, where it pointed directly to her. But her presence alone there - and the lights — '

He gestured with the red end of his cigar. I could sense his satirical grin.

"You are insistent on those lights. Let me explain actually what happened,' suggested Bencolin. He leaned forward again, his voice becoming grave. 'First, we have Mademoiselle Martel in the passage. Second, we have the murderer in the cubbyhole. Third, we have Mademoiselle Prevost waiting outside the museum.... What has happened in the meantime? The Augustin woman is, as you say, alone in their living-quarters. Imagine it! She glances out of the window giving on to the street. In the light of the street lamp she sees - as the policeman saw - the face of Gina Prevost and she sees Gina Prevost pacing up and down nervously. Now, whatever her faults, Mademoiselle Augustin is a conscientious young lady; she earns her money from whoever pays it. And she knows what the other wants. To refuse entrance may mean the loss of a lucrative position. So she switches on the lights .. . the central ones, you recall, and those on the staircase which leads to the door into the passage ... so that the visitor's way may be illuminated. Then she unbolts the big front entrance of the museum.

'And Mademoiselle Prevost is gone! It is nearly twenty minutes to twelve and she has decided to go in by the other way. The street is deserted. Marie Augustin is puzzled, doubtful, and suddenly a bit suspicious. Was this (she might wonder) by any chance a trap of some kind ? I can see this resolute young lady peering up and down the rue Saint-Appoline, thinking. Then she bolts the door again. She walks into the museum, I fancy, as a matter of habit; she stares round in that green gloom....

'In the meantime, what has happened in the passage behind? The murderer has been waiting, since eleven-thirty, in the cubbyhole between the dummy stone wall and the museum door into the passage. At eleven-thirty the lights have been turned out in the museum. The killer is in complete darkness. Shortly afterwards he hears the door to the Boulevard de Sebastopol being unlocked. It opens, and the figure of a woman is outlined, very dimly, against the lights from the boulevard outside....'

In that high room under the rain, I saw the scene take form. Our darkened room; the dull yellow bar of light from the alcove, with Bencolin's satanic face bent forward and his hand half lifted against it; the scurry of rain on the windows, and the thin mutter of traffic - all this dissolved into the damp passageway he pictured. The boulevard door was opening, throwing a spangled glimmer like moonlight. A woman stood there, Bencolin's low voice quickened :

'It is Claudine Martel. She is coming into the passage, where she is to wait (let us say) for Gina Prevost. She is silhouetted there, but too dimly. The murderer does not know - he cannot know, since he came by way of the museum - that this is his victim, Mademoiselle Martel. He thinks this is she. But he must make sure, and it is too dark to be sure.

'He must have undergone some horrible moments of indecision while he hears her pacing up and down the passage in the dark. He hears her footsteps on stone, the click of her heels, but he cannot see her. She paces here, Mademoiselle Prevost paces outside the waxworks, and there are three hearts beating heavily; all because the museum has been closed at eleven-thirty and the lights turned out. .. . Jeff, if Claudine Martel had illuminated the passage by pressing that light-button at the entrance! If she had done that, the whole tale would have been different. But she didn't. This we must know from that vital statement of Mademoiselle Prevost, which you heard, "It was dark."

'Note now how the time must synchronize with each act, in order to get the situation as we found it, and see what inevitably followed:

'It is precisely eleven-forty. Gina Prevost determines to enter the passage by way of the boulevard door. So she leaves the front of the waxworks, and turns up into the Boulevard de Sebastopol. Immediately afterwards, Mademoiselle Augustin turns on the lights inside the museum, and, in doing so, she switches on that green light which is in the corner of the staircase beside the satyr. As I pointed out to you, with the dummy wall and the museum door into the passage both open, the green light would shine faintly into the passage beyond . . . just enough for a person to be recognized at close range.. . .

'Seeing the light, Claudine Martel whirls round. It falls green on her face as she stares, and she sees before her the silhouette of the murderer. As she retreats a step towards the brick wall, he hesitates no longer. She has not even time to scream before he pulls her against him and drives the knife into her back. . ..’

'And this, Jeff, occurs at the very instant when Gina Prevost unlocks the boulevard door with her silver key and opens it!'

He paused, his voice tense, and the cigar had gone out in his fingers. My blood pounded at the suggestion of that scene: the dull green glow, the murderer's thrust, just as the lock clicked to the turn of the silver key, and another woman's figure loomed in the passage. How the murderer's heart must have turned over in a sick wrench when he saw it!

A long silence, eerie with portent, like small fingers stroking the nerves, and the ceaseless gurgling splash of the rain . ..

'Jeff,' the detective continued, slowly, 'what went on in that passage we can only guess. Thus far we have been able to reconstruct with tolerable certainty, but the sequel — ? The light was so dim that the murderer could have recognized his victim only at close quarters. Therefore it is not reasonable to say that Gina Prevost, being some distance away, could have recognized either murderer or victim. Clearly, however, judging by her talk with Galant, she must have known at least who the victim was.

'It is inconceivable that she ran down to investigate. She must have seen the gleam of the knife, the blood, the fall of the body; she knew it was murder, she saw a killer turning his face towards her, and she would not be likely to want to see much more....

'She screamed and ran, leaving the door open. Therefore we must believe that Claudine Martel, with the dagger buried under her shoulder-blade, must have cried out some words. Gina Prevost recognized the voice and knew that it was her friend who had been stabbed. If we assume this, we must assume something more than a cry or a scream; Gina Prevost could scarcely have known, from a mere outcry, whose voice it was. Words, Jeff; several words!' He paused, and then his low voice rolled through the gloom: 'We may say then, that, with death clouding her brain, Claudine Martel cried out, echoing along those hollow walls, the name of her murderer.'

Bencolin's telephone rang stridently. He picked it up.

'Allo!' I heard his voice from a distance, and a buying. Who? Madame Duchene and Monsieur Robiquet? ... Hm. Well, all right. Send them up,'

Some Charming Habits of Red-nose

Bencolin's words I scarcely heard. I knew he was speaking on the telephone, but I heard him as one hears a radio programme when absorbed in a book. More than any person I know, he has in his choice of words the power to suggest. A few phrases clang in the mind like bells, and then go reverberating with multitudinous echoes through every corner of that brain, so that spectres are roused. The whitewashed passage, with the green light falling into it, seemed now more ghastly than ever before. The sudden spring of the murderer from his cubbyhole in the dark took on a suggestion of the inexorable savagery of an animal. I could feel the shock of horror, like a blow under the heart, which Claudine Martel must have experienced when the thing, he or she, leapt. And, more terrifying than even the rest was the thought of the dying girl crying the name of her murderer to the senseless walls . . .

'Madame Duchene and Monsieur Robiquet.' For the first time I recalled the words. Bencolin had switched on the hanging light over his desk; its yellow pool threw into shadow all the room save the vast flat-topped desk, which was littered to confusion with papers. He sat down in a padded chair behind it, a slouching image with heavy-lidded eyes, face shadowed and lined harshly, and the greying black hair which was parted in the middle and twirled up like horns. One hand lay on the desk, idly. Beside it, as he stared at the door, I saw glittering on the blotter a small silver key.

An attendant ushered in Mme Duchene and Robiquet; Bencolin rose to greet them, and indicated chairs beside his desk. Despite bad weather, the woman was exquisitely turned out - sealskin and pearls, her face almost youthful under the wings of a tight black hat. The pouches under her eyes might have been shadows, like her pinched look; she hardly seemed the bedraggled and sharp-featured woman we had seen that morning. Her eyes, I now perceived, were not black; they were of a misty dark grey. With one gloved hand she tapped on the desk a copy of a newspaper, and, as she tapped, her wet face became grey with something like despair....

'Monsieur Bencolin,' she said in her dry voice, 'I have taken the liberty of coming to you. Certain insinuations were dropped to me by an inspector of police who called this afternoon. I did not understand them. I should have forgotten them entirely, but ... I saw this.' Again she tapped the paper. 'I asked Paul to bring me here.'

'Of course,' said Robiquet, nervously. He was bundled into a thick overcoat, and I saw that he was glancing at the silver key.

'The pleasure is mine, madame,' said Bencolin. She made a gesture, as of brushing politeness aside. 'Will you speak to me frankly?' 'About what, madame?'

'About my daughter's - death. And Claudine Martel's,' breathlessly. 'You did not tell me about that this morning.'

'But why should I, madame? You surely had enough on your mind, and any other painful —'

'Please, please don't try to evade me! I must know. I am sure they are related. This matter of Claudine's being found in a waxworks, that is police subterfuge, is it not?'

Bencolin studied her, his fingers at his temple. He did not reply.

'Because, you see,' she went on, with an effort, 'I myself was once a member of that Club of Masks. Oh. years ago! Fifteen years. It is not a new institution, though I suppose,' bitterly, 'it is under new management since my time I know where it is situated. The waxworks - no, I might never have suspected the waxworks at all. But I sometimes suspected that Claudine went there, to the club. And when I learned of her death - and thought of Odette's death. ... She moistened her lips with her tongue. The greyness had settled on her face. She continued to tap the newspaper spasmodically. . . .

'All of a sudden, monsieur, it rushed over me. I knew. Mothers do. I have felt something wrong. Odette was concerned. Wasn't she?'

'I do not know, madame. If so - innocently.'

A blankness had come into her eyes. She murmured:

' "Unto" ... what is it? . .. "unto the third and fourth generation." I have never been religious. But I believe in God now. Oh, yes. And His wrath. On me.'

She had begun to tremble. Robiquet was so pale that his face resembled wax; he dug his chin into his coat collar and said, in a muffled voice:

'Aunt Beatrice, I told you - you shouldn't have come out. It's useless. The gentlemen are doing all they can. And - - '

'Then, this morning,' she rushed on, 'when you sent your friend down to listen to Gina talking to that man, I should have known. Of course. Gina is concerned. Her behaviour! Her horrible behaviour. My little Odette. They were all concerned in it. ...'

'Madame, surely you are overwrought,' the detective observed, gently. 'The mere formality of a man calling at the house, and Mademoiselle Prevost's seeing him . . .'

'Now I will tell you something. I got a shock then, and it made me think. It was the voice of that man.'

'Yes?' prompted Bencolin. His fingers began to tap softly on the desk.

'As I say, it started me thinking. I have heard it before.' 'Ah ! You are acquainted with this Monsieur Galant?' 'I have never seen him. But I have heard his voice four times.'

'Robiquet stared, hypnotized, at the gleaming silver key as madame went on steadily:

'The second time was ten years ago. I was upstairs, and Odette - she was a little girl - was with me, learning how to do fancy-work. My husband was reading down in the library; I could smell the smoke of his cigar. The door-bell rang, the maid admitted a visitor, and I heard a voice in the hall. It was pleasant. My husband received him. I could hear them talking, though not what was said. But several times the visitor laughed. Later the maid let him out. . .. I remember that his shoes squeaked and he was still laughing. A few hours after that I noticed powder fumes instead of cigar smoke, and I went downstairs. My husband used a silencer on his pistol when he shot himself, because - because he didn't want to wake Odette. ...’

'Then I remembered when I had heard that voice for the first time. In the Club of Masks, where I had been - oh, before I was married, I swear it! I heard it from a masked man, who was laughing. That must have been twenty-three or four years ago. I remembered it only because the man had a hole cut in the mask for his nose, which was a horrible red thing, all twisted; and to see him was like a nightmare; so I never forgot it, or the voice... .'

She bowed her head.

'And the third time, madame?' said Bencolin.

'The third time,' she replied, swallowing, 'was less than six months ago, in early summer. It was at the home of Gina Prevost's parents, at Neuilly. It was in the garden. Towards evening. There was a yellow sky, and I could see a summer-house down at the end of the garden walk, dark against it. I heard somebody's voice talking inside the summer-house. It had a spell in it, as though the man were making love; but all the high trees seemed to get cold, and the sun turned dark, because I recognized it. I ran away. Ran, I tell you! But I saw Gina Prevost come out of the summer-house, smiling to herself. Then I said to myself I was mistaken, and hysterical. . ..

'But to-day, when I heard it again, all this rushed back over me. And I knew. Don't deny it! My little Odette. ...

I didn't pay any attention to your glib explanations. When I read this paper, about Claudine ... !'

She glared at him. He remained motionless, his elbow on the chair arm and his fingers at his temple, watching her out of bright unwinking eyes. Presently, when the emotional tension had spent itself, she said, eagerly,

'You have nothing to tell me?'

'Nothing, madame.'

Another silence. I heard somebody's watch tick.

'Oh ... I see,' she said. 'I - h-had hoped you would deny it, monsieur. Somehow, I still hoped. But I see now.' Smiling faintly, she shrugged her shoulders, snapped the clasps on her handbag in an aimless manner, and glanced round with something of wildness. 'Do you know, monsieur, I read in the paper that Claudine had been found in the arms of a wax figure called the Satyr of the Seine. That is the way this man had impressed me. I don't know about the Seine . .. but a satyr, a ghoulish ...'

Robiquet interposed hurriedly. He said: 'Aunt Beatrice, we had better go. We are taking up monsieur's time. We can do no good here.'

They both rose as the woman did. She continued aimlessly to smile. Bencolin took her hand as she extended it; he made a brief courtly bow.

'I fear I can give you no comfort, madame,' he murmured. 'But this at least I promise you' - he raised his voice slightly and pressed her hand - 'that before many hours are out I will have this man where I want him. And, by the living God, he will not trouble you, or anyone else, ever again! - good afternoon, and ... take courage.'

His head was still bowed when the door closed after them. The light shone on the thick grey patches in his hair. He walked slowly behind his desk again and sat down.

'I grow old, Jeff,' he observed, suddenly. 'Not very many years ago I would have permitted myself a secret smile at that woman.'

'Smile? Good God!'

'And I would be saved from hating all human beings, as Galant does, only because I could laugh at them. That has always been the essential difference between us.'

'You're comparing yourself to that — ?'

'Yes. He saw a world mismanaged, and loathed it; he thought, by striking into poor squashy faces, that he was battering down a little of an iron world. And what about me, Jeff? I continued to chuckle, like a broken street-organ, and I turned the crank, like the blind man, and I threw my thin little dissonances against the passion and pity and heart-break that jostled me in the street. - Pass me that brandy like a good fellow, and let me talk foolishness for a minute! I get little enough chance to do it. Yes. So I laughed, because I feared people, feared their opinion or their scorn....'

'Permit me,' I said, 'to laugh myself at that idea.'

'Oh, yes, I did! So, because they might take me for less than I was, I tried to be more than I am; like many others. Only my brain was strong, and damn me! I forced myself to become more than I am. There walked Henri Bencolin - feared, respected, admired (oh, yes!) - and behind him now begins to appear a brittle ghost, wondering about it.'

'Wondering what ?'

'Wondering, Jeff, why they ever took as a wise man that fiendish idiot who said, "Know thyself." To examine one's own mind and heart, and explore them fully, is a poisonous doctrine; it drives men crazy. The man who thinks too much about himself is padding his own cell. For the brain is a greater liar than any man; it lies to its own possessor. Introspection is the origin of fear, and fear builds these walls of hate or mirth, and makes me dreaded; and I am paid back, many times over, by dreading myself.. . . Never mind.'

It was a curious mood. He had rattled off his words in jumbled fashion. I did not understand, but I knew that of late these fits of black depression had been more frequent.