Werewolf of Paris (37 page)

“I am implying no criticism,” Aymar declared quickly, “but you know, of course, that I have had my nephew in my care for many years?”

“Yes.”

“Well, have you ever observed him change?”

“Change? What do you mean?”

“I mean into a wolf.”

“Into a wolf?”

“Why, yes. You know, of course, that he is afflicted with lycanthropy?”

“To be sure, but that is a mere name.”

“I beg your pardon, it is the truth.”

“Ah, come, M Galliez. You would not have me believe that your nephew does more than delude himself? You know, his disease is quite common. I have in fact made a study of it. And given considerable attention to the huge mass of testimony in the medieval werewolf trials. There is, in all this testimony, full proof that no one ever saw a werewolf, and the patients themselves confess that they only felt like wolves.”

“Whatever may have been the case,” Aymar returned, “—and I am not prepared to agree with you, for I have studied the matter myself—I am certain that my nephew has been a wolf, and does change into a wolf.”

“And you have seen him do it?” the doctor smiled.

“No. But I am convinced he does.”

“Have you seen the wolf?” Dr Dumas insisted.

“No, but—”

“You seem easily convinced then.”

The two men, a little flushed from the wine, slowly raised their voices. The doctor could no longer pretend to be a friend of religion. He began to berate the Catholic Church for having burned the werewolves. Aymar defended the Church, claiming that the burning was a kind of sanitary device to stop the infection. Somehow D.D. Home
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came into the discussion. They went astray here for a moment, while the doctor recalled how Home used to give séances before Impératrice Eugénie. He used to cause harmonicas to float in the air and play tunes by themselves. “Do you believe that?” the doctor asked.

“The Church says that this is the work of the devil, though similar phenomena occur in the lives of the saints. In any case, I should want to see it with my own eyes.”

“Well, of course,” Dr Dumas agreed. “Precisely. But here we have a case which you confess no one has ever seen. Not you, yourself!”

“I have never seen the wolf, true enough,” Aymar came back. “But I have as many good proofs as I want. I have, or rather I once had, a silver bullet which was shot into a wolf by the garde champêtre of our district, and that silver bullet I extracted from the leg of my nephew. I saw his deeds. I heard of his dreams. I have seen, many people have seen, his footprints. I have heard his breath and his snort. There are stranger things. Shall I mention one of many? After he removes his clothes, when the change is about to overcome him, he finds it imperatively necessary to urinate. He has told me of that. Now I ask you, has my victim of lycanthropy read Petronius and other more obscure sources, to know that this is a universal trait of werewolves before the metamorphosis, and why should he want to follow their hints as to the manner of the ceremony? Nonsense.”

“I can't quite see the point you wish to make, monsieur. I do not deny that the symptoms of the delusion are alike in all its victims. On the contrary, the symptoms would be alike. And if urinating is one of them, why, then of course it belongs there, like a fever in diphtheria. Moreover, the act of urinating can be explained more simply by the cold air striking the skin of the body. A lowering of temperature invariably brings on the desire to rid the body of the larger amount of moisture required in a warmer atmosphere. It is akin to a sudden condensation and precipitation.”

“Why not to the sudden necessity of getting rid of an excess of moisture because a wolf naturally carries less? Good Lord, doctor, do you think I lived twenty years with this thing without debating with myself every single minute point? Ten years would not suffice here to recapitulate the entire story of the origin and mystery of this creature. I was as unwilling as you to accept the facts. I am not by nature gullible.”

“I take for granted your original incredulity. I ask myself only how you ever changed. How could you ever come to believe that he was metamorphosed into a wolf? That is per se preposterous!”

“Certain things. Many things, some small in themselves, but all of them together presenting an invincible argument made me change my mind. His birth on Christmas Eve, for example.”

“Statistics will show, I am sure, said Dumas eagerly, “that thousands born on that day have had lives no different from the rest of us. Are you going to bring up astrology?”

“Not at this moment,” said Aymar, “but science has still not explained many phenomena of human character and emotion.”

“Would you set limits to science?” Dumas raised his voice. “Man is a compound of chemicals and some day we shall write the chemical reaction of love!”

“Tommyrot!” Galliez retorted. “Man is a union of spirit and matter. In the instant between life and death, for example, what leaves the body: a chemical?”

“No, but the chemical order or aggregation is altered there.”

“Ha, ha! So we do have a remarkable change of form, here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply that the alteration from man to wolf is no greater than from life to death.”

“Rhetoric, monsieur!”

“That's no answer. Are you at loss for a scientific argument?”

“But, man!” Dumas bellowed. “Consider what you are saying: that a man can turn into a wolf. A wolf, remark you, that has no sweat glands, whose bones and teeth, hardbodies, mindyou, are all differently shaped, whose every cell and every hair and nerve—”

“And why not?” said Galliez, flourishing his wine glass. “Do not such changes take place in nature? Have you never seen water change to ice?”

“Oh, come.”

“Have you never seen two gases unite suddenly into a snowy powder?”

“Yes, but—”

“And a worm change into a showy butterfly?”

“Yes, but in a whole month of time.”

“What difference does time make? Is not time infinitely divisible? If a wheel can turn once a year can it not also turn a million times a second? The life of some animals is the twinkling of an eye, while of others it is a century.”

“I concede you that,” said Dumas slowly, “but you have mentioned the butterfly. Have you ever seen it turn back into a worm?”

“No, but if, as you said, life is a chemical reaction, is there any reason why it should not be reversible?”

“No,” the doctor said slowly, for he was beginning to recall his professional discretion. He'd better not argue himself out of a patient here. He swung slowly around until he was agreeing with Aymar.

“And those eyebrows that meet,” Aymar pursued.

“Yes, I've noticed that, but I took that for a sign of hereditary syphilis.”

“Not at all,” said Aymar. “And those nails.”

“A common enough sign.”

“Interlocking teeth set with little spaces between.”

“Of course, there are wide variations in the dentition of man.”

“And those hairy palms.”

“Very strange, that, isn't it?”

“Not so much any one of these signs, but all together. It is as if the beast in him peeped forth here and there. And then, of course, his actions, more than anything else.”

“Hm,” said the doctor. “You know, M Galliez, that what you say there interests me immensely. It unfolds a remarkable new theory for all the inexplicable manifestations of morbid and abnormal psychology. The intrusion, even in partial degrees, of lower forms of life into the human form. Of course, attractive though the idea is, I cannot accept your conclusions fully. But I intend to study the matter.”

From this point the discussion grew more and more one-sided and even more flattering to Aymar. When he arose to go, it was with renewed and increased faith that in Dr Dumas' sanatorium he had found the ideal spot for Bertrand. In fact he felt a little concerned for the doctor. “I hope you can do him some good, Dr Dumas, but let me give you a little friendly warning. Be careful. He's a dangerous criminal. Watch out for him. And if you must approach him, remember to cross yourself.”

“Thank you for your advice,” the doctor replied. “I shall avail myself of it. And may I communicate to you the results of my observations?”

He stood at the door and as he watched Aymar go off with a more unsteady limp than usual, he snorted quietly: “I may have two patients yet, out of that family.”

Bertrand, when not in a rage and not drugged, had now no pleasures in life but these two: the singing of Sophie, and the hope of revenge on Paul. As for communication with his uncle, that had best be given up, even as a dream. For it was plain that they would never let Aymar up here, and equally plain that they would never let him down unless he was drugged. If not by food, then by an injection. And as for writing, there was no possibility of that; not only was material lacking, but how to post a letter, even should one succeed in writing it?

Often, when ruminating thus over his miserable fate Bertrand was overcome with sadness, it might happen that the faint singing of Sophie would sound through the wall. The bitterness would vanish from his grief. Tears would come to his eyes. “Sophie,” he would say to himself, “Sophie.” And he would lie down on his mattress, which was on the floor and constituted his entire bed, in fact his entire furniture, and imagine she was in his arms. Her black curls were in his face, her soft, moist lips against his, and her slender arms about his body. And the dream would last until the singing ceased. Then he would beg: “Sing again, Sophie. Sing another song.” And if, as sometimes happened, the flat, drawn-out notes rose again, then he was almost certain that she knew he was here, in the room next door, and that she knew he wanted to hear her sing.

After a while the singing alone was not enough. The mere dream of Sophie no longer held. He must get into the next room. But how? He formulated a hundred bold plans and rejected all. He discovered, however, that he could manage to leap up to the oval window, catch on to the sill, and by digging his toes into the wall, almost hitch himself up to a seating position. If only his toes could secure abetter hold on the wall. With his fingernails, with a splinter of bone, he remedied that. Two little niches now served to give him a good purchase on the wall and actually to seat himself on the sill.

Chance favored him there. The entire framework of the oval window, bars and all, was loose in its setting of stone. Evidently the workman who had made a permanent opening above the glass, for ventilation, had loosened the frame from the plaster and not bothered to repair his damage. Or else time had shrunk the wood to its present size. In any case, one could take hold of the bars and pull out the whole window as if it were a stopper. Having made sure of this, Bertrand waited feverishly until late at night to explore further.

Just outside the oval window, to the right, was a steep roof, and from this projected a dormer window. That led, evidently, to Sophie's room. On the other side was a blank wall, so that escape on that side was impossible. But the dormer window might be reached. The steep roof was dangerous, but accessible. Trembling with excitement, Bertrand made his preparations. He rolled up his mattress lengthwise, into a cylinder, and pushed it through the opening until it dropped to the ground below. “We'll jump on that,” he determined. “We'll either hit it and run off together, or miss it and die together in suicide, as we so often planned.”

It happened on this night that Paul was in a mood to be with a woman, and this was unfortunate, for the patient who had been accustomed to receive him for several years now had just been removed by her relatives. The only other possibilities were two female patients, who were, so to speak, the property of the other two orderlies. Paul debated whether to affront the jealousy and anger of one of his comrades or attempt to sneak out of the asylum and get to the village. Then the little mongoloid occurred to him. That'll be fun, he promised himself. He knew she was fond of candy, so he took some up with him and expected no difficulty—nor did he encounter any.

His pleasure, however, was short-lived. He heard a noise at the window, looked up and had no time to escape a dark form that hurled itself at him. In a second the combat was over. The blood spurted from his torn artery in a high wide are and splashed onto the floor. The arc diminished, sank back to its origin, where now the blood only welled up in ever slower pulsations.

Bertrand lay there in a kind of stupor, from a surfeit of ecstasy. At last he roused himself, struggled against the sluggishness of his mind and looked about in the dark room. In this chamber, lit only by the moonlight from outside, he saw a strange, dwarfish woman with a heavy brown face and stringy gray hair. She was seated on the bed, naked, and sucking at a stick of barley sugar, and because it was good, she began to coo to herself.

His mind was incapable of accepting this. “Sophie!” he said, bewildered. “What have they done to you?”

There was a noise outside in the hall. Without puzzling out the matter, he picked her up and cried, “Come, Sophie, let us die together.” And holding her clasped tightly in his arms, he stepped upon the sill and leaped for the mattress lying on the lawn below.

“My most profitable patient, too,” Dr Dumas said, and sighed.

Investigations being annoying things at best, the doctor suppressed the triple death as much as he could, filled out appropriate death certificates, dated them differently and held the funerals at a week's interval. There were only two funerals. Dr Dumas had long been anxious to dissect the mongoloid and wrote for permission to the marquis, saying that he would pay the usual price. “The old skinflint will be glad to earn a couple of francs.”

But the old skinflint was not. “The remains of Mme la Marquise de la Roche Ferrant must rest in the family vault,” he declared proudly and sternly. And when one comes to think it over, why not? Alive and in the family castle, she might have been a source of annoyance. But whom could she disturb or embarrass in the family tomb?