The Waxworks Murder

all equipped with silencers.) I felt their eyes on me : lurking men, with a suggestion of a crouch even when they stood up straight, and their eyes had a sliding motion behind the holes in the mask. The idea of silencers on the pistols lent them an even more ugly quality. Removing coat and hat into the hands of the cloakroom attendant - who contrived, imperceptibly, to be sure I bore no weapon - I held out my key. One murmured, 'Nineteen,' a book was consulted, and I had a heart-pounding instant while all the eyes were fixed on me. Then the ring of white masks dissolved. The men melted into shadows. But I heard the low leather creak of a holster as I sauntered towards the lounge, and I still felt eyes.

I was inside, with the hands of my watch pointing to eleven-eighteen.

The lounge was another long hall, rather narrow, and even more dimly lighted. It was hung in black velvet. Its only illumination came in scarlet glowing from the mouth and eyes of bronze figures shaped like satyrs, and holding nymphs in their arms. They were life-size these figures; they reminded me of the satyr in the waxworks, and the scarlet light from their eyes and mouths trembled with changing weirdness on the black hangings. About ten feet down, on my left, I saw great glass doors - these, I knew, led to the covered passage communicating with the big hall in the court. I caught the scent of hothouse flowers; the passage was banked with them. As in the room of Odette's coffin....

The murmur of the orchestra, through these doors, grew louder. I could hear a buzz from inside, and somebody laughed breathlessly. Arm in arm, a man and a woman -both wearing black masks - drifted from the lounge through the passage. They looked hypnotized in the red-and-black swinging shadows, and the woman's lips were fixed in a faint smile. She looked old; he looked young and nervous. Another couple sat in a corner with cocktail glasses. Now suddenly the orchestra changed its tempo; it pounded with die fleshly beat of a tango, and the invisible crowd seemed to breathe with something of its murmur and hysteria. Then, in the gloom, I saw another figure.

It stood motionless, with arms folded, at the foot of the black-marble staircase far down at the end of the hall. Towering above it, one of the bronze satyrs flicked scarlet light on the newel-post: it lit the bulge of heavy shoulders and a face in a red mask. But the nose of the mask had been cut away to show a ridged and discoloured nose, and the man was smiling. ...

'Your number, monsieur?' breathed a voice in my ear.

I swallowed hard. It seemed to me that Galant, standing down there by the staircase, had singled me out for suspicion. Still he did not move, but he appeared to grow larger. Turning, I saw at my elbow a woman in a white mask — it appeared to be the badge of attendants - and a low-cut black gown. She wore a heady perfume; and, as the tango beat and fell with muted strings, I found myself looking into a pair of long-lashed hazel eyes. 'Nineteen,’I said.

My voice seemed startlingly loud, and I wondered whether Galant might have heard it, even at the distance. But then, I remembered, during Bencolin's interview with him I had not uttered a single word. If, on the other hand, he knew the real Robiquet. .. . The woman was moving to one side, where she pulled open the curtain of a small alcove. Inside was an illuminated board, with a small numbered buttons. She pushed one, and dropped the curtain again.

'The door of monsieur's room is opened,' she told me. (Was it alarm, suspicion, scrutiny in her look ?)

'Thank you,' I said carelessly.

'Will monsieur have something to drink?' As I stepped forward, she had slid in front of me with smiling obsequiousness. ‘I will bring it to monsieur in the main hall.'

'Why - yes. A champagne cocktail, please.'

'Thank you, monsieur.'

She moved away towards the bar. Danger? It looked uncomfortably like an attempt to draw me. But I should have had to look into the main hall for a few minutes, at least. I took a cigarette out of my case, lighting it with elaborate care, and watched her from the corner of my eye. She was approaching Galant now on her way to the bar. She paused an instant, turned her head, and spoke a few words....

Hard bands had tightened across my chest. Deliberately steadying my hand, I put the cigarette-case back in my pocket and sauntered towards the glass doors The red-breathing satyrs had all acquired a sardonic leer. The music of the tango had taken on a fierce drum-beat. And then, grouped behind Galant, lurking in shadow, I saw other figures.

Apaches.

Galant's bodyguard, without a doubt. Not the old apache, who was half a music- hall song, but the new post-war breed from Saint-Denis. Born in starvation. Never, unlike the American gangster, protected by the police or any underworld lord; sharpened always to a murderous hardness because he has never known easy money. He is undersized and cold, his eyes are vacant, and he is as deadly as a tarantula. You will see him at the sporting centres, at Paris gates, at the markets, playing dominoes in bars. His clothes are loud and shabby; he speaks seldom; he wears, instead of a collar, a neckcloth loosely tucked, and that - beware of it - is where he carries his knife. ... Three of him were sitting now in an alcove near Galant. They were scrubbed, but they had a look of decay. I could see the glowing ends of their cigarettes in gloom. Their sallowness was hidden behind white masks, but not the pale, imbecilic, snakish beadiness of their eyes. No eye is so terrifying as the brainless one.

I had to go through with it. I had to saunter idly down the flower-lined passage. Straight ahead it ran for some distance, without lights. Down at the end I could hear the subdued noise under the orchestra; it had an echo, as though the main hall were vast, and I could see goblin masks swimming in a dusk, black and green and scarlet masks, of people who were trying for an hour to forget their homes. ... I glanced at my watch. Good God ! Twenty- five minutes past eleven. I couldn't go in there for my drink. Gina Prevost might arrive at any moment. But there was Galant standing at the foot of the staircase. Did he suspect? If so, I was caught. There was no way out. I put my hand against the flowers at one side of the passage, half-way down its darkness, visualizing the white masks. In the boom of drums echoed a warning.

Somebody touched my shoulder from behind. . . .

Gina Prevost is Stubborn

I must have shaken to that touch. To this day I do not know how I kept from betraying myself, and if the voice had not spoken I might have done so.

'Monsieur's champagne cocktail,' said a voice reproachfully.

Relief choked me. I could see die girl dimly, holding a tray. But what now? I couldn't tell her to take it in there; time was becoming too precious. On the other hand, to go upstairs now alone would look insane, particularly with Galant standing at the very foot of the steps on guard against police spies. And then the girl spoke again.

'Monsieur,' she murmured, 'I have received instructions to tell you. Number nineteen. I fear there has been a slight accident....'

'Accident?'

'Yes, monsieur,' humbly. 'Monsieur's room has not been used for many months. Only a day or more ago, a cleaning-woman - oh, so careless! - smashed a window there. I am so terribly, terribly sorry! Will it inconvenience monsieur? It has not been repaired.. . .'

Again I found myself steadied! This, then, was why she had taken so much trouble. This was why she had spoken to Galant. Was there any other reason? Wait! Odette Duchene, found dead with glass cuts about the face, fallen from a window. Murdered inside the club; murdered, it might be, in that very room.

'That is bad,' I said gruffly. 'H'm! And I know the rules about other rooms. Well, never mind. Give me the drink. I'll go up and look at it now.'

What ho! Things were looking up. I drank the cocktail at a gulp, brushed past her severely, and strode up to the lounge. My pulses were pounding with excitement, but I toned my hurry to a walk. What ho again, Galant, and to hell with you! I walked straight up to him, compressing my mouth with dignity like a hotel guest who finds cockroaches in his room, then, at the last moment, I seemed to change my mind and ascended the stairs in an outraged way. He was still impassive, and his apaches continued to smoke in the alcove....

Steady now! I was upstairs safely, but I had to find my way along the dim and thick-carpeted halls. Number 19 would be round at the far side. I hoped there were no attendants up here, to notice my indecision; I hoped,