Werewolf of Paris (20 page)

“Yes, monsieur, I know that.”

The judge glared at this man who knew and didn't know at the same time. “And Article Thirty-eight? Do you know that one?”

“No, monsieur.”

“That entrance into a cemetery at night is forbidden?”

“Yes, monsieur, I know that, but…”

Positively this was too much for the judge. “Do you know or don't you?” he bellowed.

“I know, I know,” Robert repeated weakly.

“Then tell me what are Articles Forty-eight and Forty-nine under Heading Ten?”

Unable to express himself quickly, Robert faltered: “I don't know.”

With that the judge gave it up. He sank back, shrugged his shoulders, and said in tones of plain disgust: “Forty-eight forbids dogs; Forty-nine forbids the walls to be climbed. And seeing that you know nothing of the very rules that apply to your own occupation, and which are posted everywhere so that you may familiarize yourself with them, I doubt if you would know Article Three-sixty of the
Code d'Instruction Criminelle.”

As Robert made no answer, the judge's voice rose: “Speak up!”

Robert hastily confessed his ignorance.

“Sera puni d'un emprisonnement et coetera,”
the judge intoned. “Whoever shall have rendered himself guilty of violation of tombs or sepultures shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to one year and with a fine of from sixteen to two hundred francs. This is not to limit the punishments accorded for any other crimes or infractions which may be associated thereto.—This last sentence applies to the theft of the pocketbook,” he generously added in explanation.

“And let me read you the decision of the
Cour de Cassation
of June twenty-third, eighteen-sixty-six: ‘For violation of sepulture to be a crime the culpable intention of the violator must be shown. But mere violation of sepulture necessarily implies the intention of insulting the dead.'

“The law has furnished us with delicate pincers, there,” the judge admired. “The crime of violating a tomb must rest upon the intentions of the culprit. To be sure. But these intentions are plainly culpable if the tomb has been violated.” He smiled with satisfaction. He appreciated the subtlety of the law. His face again oozing friendship, beaming with love, he addressed the prisoner:

“You see how our beneficent laws extend their protection even over the dead. No corpse has anything to fear in France.”

Meekly Robert hastened to confirm that.

Next the question of the theft of the pocketbook was taken up, and when the law had been expounded on this matter too, Robert was asked to make a statement. The greffier took down Robert's tale of how he had indeed been guilty of wishing to earn some additional money and had planned to share this money with a certain few employees whose aid in the matter was indispensable. Aside from that, however, he had done nothing. The general had given him the money. The grave had been discovered already violated. The general had fainted and he had fled in terror.

With this the examination was completed. The judge had now no further duty but to decide whether there was need for holding the prisoner for a trial or not.

This decision was not far to seek. Honesty and innocence never involved contradiction. Only crime involves men in such a tangle of knowing and not knowing. The man was plainly guilty and must stand trial. Meanwhile he was ordered transferred to the Grande Roquette prison: “… within a stone's throw of the scene of the crime at Père-Lachaise,” so the judge phrased it, and there Robert was to await the recovery of the general who was to testify against him.

Robert clasped his hands in prayer. “But the general knows I am innocent!”

To which the judge allotted one of his kindest smiles. His huge face fairly burst with kind joviality. “Then, of course, he will say so at the trial.”

“But my work—my family?”

“This is a court, my friend, not heaven. The law punishes crime, it does not reward innocence.”

As Jean Robert was being led out, the judge observed: “Why is ignorance of the law so universal?” He shrugged his shoulders. It was as if an earthquake had lifted mountains. The great folds of his robe flowed like the tide. And the majesty of the law arose to retire for a moment in the recently installed lavatories flushed by water, even as in the best English manner.

Unfortunately, at this inopportune moment the general chose to breathe his last. The newspapers naturally recalled the harsh fate that had struck him in these last few days and so the matter came to Aymar's notice. “Bertrand did that once,” he observed to himself, thinking of Vaubois. The more he thought it over, the more convinced he was. He hastened to the prison to see Judge Le Verrier.

Introduced, he began at once: “I think I know the criminal of Père-Lachaise. I mean I think I know who is responsible for the mutilation of the child's body.”

“Really?” the judge smiled broadly, but without that warmth that could light up his face like the door to a furnace.

“A young man with whom I lived for many years and who has shown that propensity on previous occasions.

“What is his name?”

“Bertrand Caillet.”

“Of Paris?”

“I think he is living in Paris now. He ran away from home.”

“So? But you know that we have apprehended the criminal already?”

“I know, but the man you have may not be guilty of that act.”

“That will be a matter for the jury and the judges to decide,” the juge d'instruction observed coldly.

“But perhaps the man you are holding may know something of the real culprit. I mean of Bertrand Caillet.
There
is a man who should be behind bars. Once he begins to commit crimes, you will not hear the end of him; there will be a whole series.”

The judge bent forward until the chin of his great head rested on the top of his desk. And now he spoke, while his head bobbed up and down as his chin moved in the formation of his words.

“And if I held
you
, would there be any further crimes?”

“Me? Why, what have I to do with the matter?”

The judge pulled his head back. Decidedly the world of men, untrained in law, was full of contradictoriness. First they knew, then they didn't know; first one thing, then its opposite.

“I thought you had something to do with this case! But if you have nothing to do with the matter, then what are you putting your nose in here for?” His voice rose to the volume of thunder.

Aymar shrank back, muttered some excuses and hobbled out as fast as he could.

But he continued to watch the papers, and he was rewarded on the following day with another violation of a fresh grave at Père-Lachaise. Then there followed spoliations at the Montmartre cemetery and more again at Lachaise. Despite his unkind reception by the juge d'instruction (he shuddered to think what might have happened had he explained the real nature of the case to that man), Aymar determined to see the conservateur at the cemetery of Montmartre. The latter was a kind old man, and when his clerk brought him the purpose of Aymar's visit, he admitted him at once and introduced him to the conservateur of Père-Lachaise who happened to be present.

“We'll be interested in hearing what you have to say, for we've just come to an astounding conclusion.”

“What is that?” Aymar asked, unwilling hastily to presume that they had discovered the werewolf.

“Tell us first what you have to say.”

“There is a young man, a distant relative, who back in our province showed a similar penchant.”

“Hm.”

“He has lately come to Paris, and I am looking for him, since I know, somewhat, how to restrain him.”

“Hm.”

“Well, and I imagine that this would be his work.”

“I'm afraid your case has little to do with ours.”

“Why?”

“A very careful examination of footprints around the desecrated graves shows that both here and at Lachaise the matter involves, not a young man, but—”

“But a wolf,” Aymar interjected, “—or a dog,” he added quickly.

“How did you know? We hadn't thought of a wolf. What makes you say that?”

“Well, you see, he, ah, well, he has a trained dog (part wolf, you understand), and that dog helps him.”

“I see,” said one of the two gentlemen. He asked Aymar for various information, names, details, etc., to which the latter answered the best he could, while the conservateur took notes.

“Well, we expect to see the end of this soon,” he confided to Aymar. “We are placing, every night, heavy spring traps near every newly dug grave, and the marauder, man or dog or wolf or all three, will soon find himself within a pair of uncomfortably powerful nippers.”

“The only trouble,” said the other, “is that the war will soon move into our cemeteries. Both here and at Lachaise cannon are to be mounted, so that Paris will be in a position to resist if the outer fortifications should fall, which God forbid!”

“You would think,” said the first of the two gentlemen, “that people are in great haste to die, the way there's one war after another in this world. Do they imagine that if they don't kill each other they are likely never to die? I assure you they are under a mistaken notion if they do. Since I can remember, I've never seen a day without a funeral.”

The lugubrious and reminiscent turn in the conversation allowed Aymar to conceal his fright: poor Bertrand, mangled in a powerful steel trap. Well, why not? One way or the other, it had to end.

He went home and waited. But nothing happened. Apparently the violations had ceased. Five days passed and inquiry at the cemetery revealed no further attempt to disturb any graves.

The conservateur said: “Either we are mistaken about the theory of a dog, or else he can smell our traps. More than likely, you are right, M Galliez, and it's a man. Perhaps one of our own personnel or at any rate in communication with our staff. How else account for the fact that these nearly daily spoliations suddenly ceased on the placing of the traps and in the last five days there has not been a single repetition?”

Chapter Eleven

T
he issue of the seventeenth of November of
Galignani's Messager
contained among the faits divers an inconspicuous item that by chance came to the attention of Aymar, as he was perusing this sheet, and naturally struck him at once.

“Tales of wolves depredating Paris are always afloat in times of war. Here is a legend that will not die. The severity of the coming winter, heralded by the recent cold, and the famine that now reigns in our poor city, have again conspired to revive this imperishable legend. In the outlying quarters there is talk of a wolf, some even say droves of wolves (!), and one informer would have us believe that a specimen wolf was actually secured and taken to the Jardin d'Acclimatation for identification. What happened there is left vague. It is never wise to submit a legend to a scientist like our esteemed A. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.”

The article provoked a sudden spasm in Aymar. He was at once certain that the story did have a foundation of truth and that that foundation was nothing less than Bertrand. Remote connection indeed. But in the frame of mind he was in, weeks in Paris, with no clue to Bertrand except a series of horrible crimes which no one but himself ascribed to a wolf-man monster, he was capable of seizing upon the slightest clue and finding everything in it, as a microscopist discovers whole populations in a drop of foul water.

“How should a wolf come into Paris?” he asked himself. Through the German lines? Ridiculous! Ergo that wolf was our Bertrand. He formed in Paris! A far jump, but no farther than Newton made from the falling apple to the eternally falling moon. Yes, here was a spoor. Definite and direct. Moreover, the slightest chance was worth investigation. He made up his mind.

The famine in Paris, of which the newspaper article spoke, had at this period reached considerable proportions, if we may be allowed to speak of nothingness reaching magnitude. Although the question of feeding Paris had come up at once upon the opening of hostilities, Paris being almost a frontier city and exposed to the advance of the enemy across a short distance of French territory, nothing much had been done until the night of August 4-5, when the danger became acute. The government had just received a telegram announcing the defeat at Wissembourg.

M. Henri Chevreau, who had lately replaced the famous and infamous Haussmann, beautifier of Paris, as Prefect of the Seine, gathered together a committee of municipal counselors and functionaries and moved to gather into the city a sufficient supply of foodstuffs, meats, hay and grain for horses, salt, wine, etc. Although the legislative body was repeatedly assured that everything had been done to safeguard Paris from famine during a long siege, and although over six weeks elapsed before the city was completely invested, nevertheless a shortage of food and consequent rise in prices declared itself almost at once. Government rationing could not help. The poor took the matter philosophically and intelligently as they always do. They noticed that every time after an announcement of peace negotiations, false though the announcement might be, food at once reappeared in quantities on the stalls and prices sank. Everyone who was in a position to do so was hoarding food, hoping for greater profits, but partly scared into releasing their hoards upon the prospect of the siege ending suddenly. There were indeed great quantities of food in Paris, but private profit was manipulating the market.

The name of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire also caught Aymar's attention. “Saint-Hilaire?” he said to himself. “Especially that combination: Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. I wonder now. Could that be the same fellow I used to know?” If so, his task was easier. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire could not have forgotten him and would extend him every courtesy. It must be the same. The Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires were always connected with zoölogy.