The Waxworks Murder

I could not see her in the dark, but I could feel her body pressing against my side. Triumph went singing and bounding along my veins. We had Galant now! Oh, we had him! . .. 'Where to?^’ I heard her murmur.

'The waxworks. We must look for that knife. Then I'll phone Bencolin. He's waiting at the Palais de Justice ... I suppose we must go round to the front to get into the waxworks ?'

'No. I have a key for the passage door. It's the only one, though. The rest of the people must go out the other way.'

She was leading me up towards the back door to the museum. I felt sweat running down from under my arms, and my wound pounded anew; it was beginning to bleed once more. But the triumph of escaping gave pleasure even to that. It was an honourable scar. I said:

'Wait, I'll strike a match.'

The match flame sputtered up. Suddenly Marie Augustin's fingers dug into my arm. ...

'O my God !' she whispered, 'what's that?' 'What?'

She was pointing to the door which led into the back of the museum. It stood ajar.

We stood there staring at it until the flame crumpled up and went out. Open. You could see the gleam of the catch, and the stuffy air blew out into our faces. Some intuition told me that we were not yet through with horrors for this night. The door even swung and creaked a little, suggestively. It was here that the murderer had stood last night when he launched himself at Claudine Martel. I wondered whether we mould see a green light suddenly spring up there, and, silhouetted against it, a head and shoulders. . ..

'Do you suppose,' she whispered, 'there's somebody — ?'

'We can see.' I put one arm around her, drew the revolver, and pushed the door open with my feet. Then I went through into darkness.

'We'll have to get the lights on,' she was insisting in a tense voice. 'Let me lead you. I know every step of the way in the dark. Up to the main grotto. . .. Watch the steps, now.'

She did not even grope as we went through the door, through the cubbyhole, and out on the landing. In thick darkness I felt the edge of the satyr's robe brush my wrist and I started as at the touch of a reptile. Our footfalls scraped on the gritty stone; the damp and musty air had an almost strangling quality. I stumbled on the stair. If there were anybody else about, that person must certainly have heard us.

How she picked her way along in the dark I do not know. I had lost all sense of direction after climbing the stairs and heading towards the grotto. But you could feel the presence of all the wax figures, indefinably sinister, as you could smell their clothes and hair. I remembered old Augustin's words, touching my ears as though somebody had just murmured there, 'If any of them ever moved, I should go mad. . ..'

Marie Augustin let go my arm. There were a clink of metal and a rasp of a switch thrown into place. Green twilight illuminated the main grotto, where we stood now. She was smiling at me, very white.

'Come on,' she muttered. 'You wanted to go down to the Gallery of Horrors and look for the knife. ... '

Again we traversed the grotto. It was just as it had looked the night before, when I found the body in the satyr's arms. Our footsteps scraped and echoed in the enclosed staircase. No matter how cautiously you approached, the figure of the satyr alv’ays seemed to appear as with a spring at you. It was in place again, the green lamp burning behind it in the corner. I shuddered when I remembered its robe brushing my hand. . . .

The Gallery of Horrors. I could see coloured coats, and wax faces peering out, in a dimness which was even more eerie than the dark. We were close to the Marat tableau now; yet for some reason I hated to look at it. Dread kept my eyes fixed on the floor. Something seemed to whisper, with little words which were as the tapping of hammers on my ear drums, that I should see a ghastly thing. ... I raised my eyes slowly. No. It was the same. There was the iron railing in front of it. There was Marat, naked above the waist, lying backwards, his glass eyes glaring at me upside down. There was the serving-woman in the red cap, shouting to the soldiers at the door, and seizing the wrist of pale Charlotte, the murderess. I saw the dim, pale September sunlight drooping through the window. . .. No! Something was wrong. Something was missing. .. .

In the heavy unnatural silence, Marie Augustin's voice boomed.

'The knife is gone,' she said.

Yes. there was his bluish hand clutching at a chest thick with blood, but no knife protruded from it. My companion's breath whistled through her nostrils. We did not think; we knew that we were very close to murder which was not done in wax. The weird, yellowish light seemed to grow even more dim. ... I ducked under the iron railings and went up among the figures of the tableau, and she followed me ....

The boards in the flooring of that mimic-room creaked under my feet. A little shiver seemed to run through the figures there; I noticed that the serving-woman's foot was almost out of the cloth slipper she wore. By passing inside that railing, you actually seemed to step into the past. The waxworks was blotted out. We were in a dirty brown-painted room high up in old Paris of the Revolution. There was a map hanging disarranged on the wall. Through the window, past the brick wall where dead vines hung, I thought I could see the roofs of the Boulevard Saint-Germain. We, like the figures, were simply frozen after the horror of a murder committed here. I turned, and the serving-woman leered at me, the soldier's eyes were fixed on Marie Augustin.

All of a sudden Marie screamed. ... There was a creak, and one of the window-panes swung open. A face was pushed through, looking at us.

Framed in the window, it showed huge white eyeballs and irises pushed up under the upper lids. Its mouth hung open in a sort of hideous grin. Then the mouth was obscured by a gush of blood. It gurgled, its head twitched sideways, and I saw that there was a knife projecting from the neck. It was the face of Etienne Galant.

He uttered a sort of whimpering moan. He plucked once at the knife in his throat, and then pitched forward over the sill into the room.

The Killer of the Waxworks

I stop here, momentarily, in the writing. Even the tracing down of that scene on paper brings it back so vividly that it shakes my nerves and I feel only the exhaustion I felt then. As the climax of all that night's events, I think that it might have broken steadier nerves than mine. Ever since I had entered the club at eleven-thirty, the terrific pace had steadily mounted until almost anybody, I believe, would have been at the breaking-point. For weeks afterwards, Galant's face rode my nightmares, as I saw it in that single awful instant before he crashed through the window at our feet. A leaf, brushing my window at the dead of night, or even the sudden creak of a casement, would bring it back with such clearness that I shouted for lights....

So I hope I shall not be accused of weakness if I say that I remember nothing very clearly for half an hour. Later, Marie Augustin told me that everything was very quiet and orderly. She says that she shrieked and ran, falling over the iron railings; that I caught her and carried her upstairs, quietly; and that we went in to telephone Bencolin. Our talk was to discuss, with the utmost seriousness, what a bad bump on the head you could get if you tumbled on that railing and hit the stone floor.. . .

But I don't remember that. The next thing which comes back with any clearness is the frowsy room with the horsehair furniture, and the shaded lamp on the table. I was sitting in a rocking-chair, drinking something, and across from me stood Bencolin. In another chair Marie sat with her hands over her eyes. Apparently I must have told the whole story, rather clearly, to Bencolin, for I was just describing Galant when memory returned. The room seemed to be full of people. Inspector Durrand was there, and half a dozen gendarmes, and old Augustin in a wool nightshirt.

Inspector Durrand was looking somewhat pale. When I had finished, there was a long silence.

'And the murderer - got Galant,' he said, slowly.

Again I found myself talking, in a coherent and even normal way. 'Yes. It simplifies things, doesn't it? But how he got down there I don't know. The last time I saw him was up in his room, when he set his thugs on me. Maybe an appointment...'

Durrand hesitated, gnawing at his under lip. Then he came forward, put out his hand, and said, gruffly: 'Young man .. . shake hands, will you?'

'Yes,' said Bencolin. 'It wasn't bad, Jeff. And that knife .. . messieurs, we were all fools. We have Mademoiselle Augustin to thank for showing us.'