[Wizard of 4th Street 04] - The Wizard of Rue Morgue

by Simon Hawke - (ebook by Undead)

  "Max," she said softly, "what's the matter? Don't you want me?"

  "Yes, Joelle, I want you," he said in a tired voice. "I want you to put your clothes on and go home. This isn't going to work. It's pointless."

  "But Max—"

  "Get dressed, Joelle," he said impatiently. He reached for his wallet. "I'll pay you for your time, though Lord knows, you've wasted mine."

  She stared at him and he saw the anger flare up in her eyes. He knew what was coming and he braced himself for it with an air of resignation. The brandy snifter shattered as she hurled it to the floor and launched into a torrent of scathing verbal abuse, questioning his masculinity, his talent, calling him a tired old man . . . he'd heard it all before. He simply sat there quietly, waiting for her to run out of steam and make her dramatic exit. He had been through variations of this scene many times before and it no longer angered or even surprised him very much. It just left him feeling sullen and depressed.

  Tomorrow, she would undoubtedly tell all her friends that the great "See-gal," as they pronounced his name in Paris, had asked her to pose for him and that the moment she got to his studio, the passion between them had been so overwhelming that they had made love with wild abandon all through the night and he had raised her to new heights of ecstasy. And the next time he asked someone to pose for him, chances were he'd run into the same damn problem. There was a time when he had thoroughly enjoyed it, but he was weary of it now. It happened over and over again, with monotonous regularity, and for the thousandth time, he wondered why he bothered painting nudes. Doing landscapes or bowls of fruit would have been infinitely less aggravating.

  Unfortunately, he had already tried that, but there was simply no demand for him to do that sort of work. They wanted Siegal to paint women, preferably naked women or girls in various states of deshabille. He could sell a painting of a cafe street scene for a few hundred thousand francs because, after all, it was a "See-gal," but the nudes were what brought the big prices at the galleries. Such was his legend, the handsome, muscular, passionate and temperamental Italian Jew from Brooklyn who spoke French as well as any native-born Parisian, who could drink and swear and brawl with the best of them, and who could do amazing things with light and color on canvas, producing images of women that conveyed such a powerful, stimulating sensuality that he had become one of the most famous painters in a city that had produced such immortal talents as Picasso, Dali and Chagall.

  It was a pathetic joke. Siegal knew perfectly well that he wasn't on the same level with such people. He knew what real talent was and he also knew he didn't have it. He was merely competent. He would sometimes gaze for hours on end at a Van Gogh and be moved to tears, knowing he could never hope to produce such work. He had never even planned to become a painter. He had come to Paris to study thaumaturgy at the Sorbonne, but despite all his efforts, it had not taken him long to realize the dismal truth. He simply had no talent for magic.

  He could never be a wizard. At best, he could perhaps achieve the status of a lower-grade adept, learning a few simple and relatively undemanding spells such as levitation and impulsion, enabling him to get a license as a public transportation adept so he could pilot a barge down the Seine or operate a cab or bus. As for becoming a sorcerer, which had been his dream, it was simply out of the question. The only magic he was capable of performing was the illusion of making women look like wanton angels when he painted them. And it was a cheap trick, at that.

  He winced as Joelle slammed the door behind her. He took a slug of cognac from the bottle and examined the aborted painting on the easel with disgust. He picked up the canvas and looked at it for a moment, then swore and smashed it down over the easel in a sudden fit of temper, tearing a gaping hole in it. He left it that way, impaled on the easel, picked up the bottle and settled down on the couch for yet another night of solitary drinking.

  It had all come about by accident. He had always been able to draw, but he had never seriously pursued it beyond making caricatures of people for his own amusement. He started painting only after he had come to Paris, because Paris was awash in artists and many students liked to fancy themselves painters. It was a good way to meet attractive women. One day, while he was out walking with a date, they happened upon an artist painting a young woman at a sidewalk cafe.

  There was a crowd of people watching. The painter was none other then Francois Benet, then the current rage of the Paris art world. Max had heard of him and seen some of his work. He thought the man was overrated. As they stopped to watch him paint, Max's date had teasingly asked him what Benet was doing wrong. Without thinking, because he was preoccupied with watching the man work, Max told her. Benet had overheard him.

  He suggested wryly that if the young man thought he could do better, perhaps he should take the brush himself and show them all how it should be done. With an amused look, the painter handed him the brush and palette. Max stepped up to the easel, pursed his lips and closely examined what the artist had been doing, then carefully selected a few tubes of paint, made subtle changes in the pigment mixtures that Benet was using, and quietly began to paint. The artist moved up close behind him, watching intently over his shoulder as he worked. After a few moments, Max heard Benet swear softly and say, "Yes . . . yes . . . of course, exactly!"

  He continued painting while Benet watched With growing enthusiasm. Soon the people in the crowd were asking who the young painter was. And that was how it started.

  It wasn't long before the paintings of Max Siegal were appearing in the Paris art galleries, commanding prices Max wouldn't have dreamed possible. It was Benet who had started him on painting nudes and Max soon became famous for it.

  Inevitably, women started coming to him, wanting him to paint them, and he soon had more models than he knew what to do with.

  It all went to his head. He started frequenting chic night spots, drinking to excess and making a reputation for himself as a wild carouser. He became romantically involved with women who had posed for him, many of whom had lovers or even husbands, which led to the inevitable public confrontations, brawls, and lawsuits. The newspapers loved him because he was flamboyant copy and before long, his escapades were being exaggerated or even fabricated outright. He would come home to find naked women in his studio. People he didn't even know claimed intimacy with him. It all became too much for him and he started drinking even more. He was out of control and well on the way to self-destruction. And then he met Jacqueline.

  They met at a party hosted by a wealthy collector who had bought many of Max's paintings, along with many nearly priceless works by the old masters. Max had been the center of attention, as usual, with all the women in the room fawning over him while the men smoldered with resentment. All the women except one.

  He had noticed her immediately, a woman in her late thirties or early forties, with shoulder-length dark hair prematurely streaked with gray. She had been dressed in a neo-Edwardian black suit and boots, she chain-smoked unfiltered French cigarettes and spoke in a husky, whiskey baritone. There was something about her, quite aside from her striking beauty, that Max had found incredibly compelling. There was a certain knowingness about her, an utterly implacable self-assurance that was evident in her slightest gesture and expression. He was fascinated by the character in her face and he decided that he had to paint her. Only she had refused.

  Her refusal had astonished him. He was besieged by women who wanted him to paint them and here was one not in the least bit interested. He kept after her, pressing his card on her, but it was no use. She wouldn't change her mind. This only made him want to paint her that much more. Eventually, the ebb and flow of the party took him away from her and he did not see her again that evening. He asked everyone who she was, but no one seemed to know her. And then, the next day, it was discovered that several of his host's most valuable paintings had disappeared. When Max found out about it, he was mildly insulted that none of his own paintings were among those that had been stolen. The police came to que
stion him, not that he was a suspect, but they were anxious to learn who had been present at the party. They showed him several photographs. One of those they showed him was Jacqueline's.

  He had not even known her name at that point and when the police had seen him hesitate on seeing her photograph, they asked him if he recognized her as someone he'd seen at the party. Without really knowing why, he told them no. As an artist, he said, he merely found her face quite fascinating. He asked them who she was. Her full name, they told Max, was Jacqueline Marie-Lisette de Charboneau Monet.

  They told him that she was a witch, a talented adept with an extensive dossier at most of the police agencies of Europe, as well as at the Bureau of Thaumaturgy and the I.T.C., the International Thaumaturgical Commission. She had been arrested scores of times, under suspicion for crimes ranging from fraud to grand larceny, but she had never been convicted. She was, they told him, one of Europe's most successful and accomplished thieves, and it was rumored that she had a link with a man known only by the name of Morpheus, a deadly international assassin.

  Max had been astounded. He had heard that such people existed, but he had never actually met anyone like that before. The police were certain that Jacqueline was responsible for the theft of the paintings, but they had only circumstantial evidence, merely the fact of her presence at the party. There was no proof. They thanked him for his assistance and departed, leaving Max wondering if he would ever run into her again. Then several days later, he came home to find her waiting in his studio.

  If he still wanted to paint her, she had told him, she would be willing to sit for him, but only under several conditions. She would not pose nude and the painting would be only of her face. Furthermore, he was not to tell anyone that she had ever sat for him and he was to sell the painting to her the moment it was finished. It was not to be displayed. It was to be a present for a friend and he could name his price. Amused more than irritated by these demands, he had named a truly outrageous figure, even for an original Max Siegal. She had readily agreed to it.

  It had been the beginning of what became a very close and intimate friendship. It was a relationship unlike any that Max had ever had before. They eventually became lovers, but it was months before that happened and when they finally did become physically intimate with each other, it was not the sort of grand, yet ephemeral passion that Max had experienced so many times before. They went to bed as friends, as a logical extension of their warm and affectionate feelings for each other. They loved each other, but they were not in love, a subtle distinction that, perhaps, only the French could fully appreciate.

  Jacqueline loved someone else, but Max understood that it was an unrequited passion and he soon came to suspect who that other person might be, though they never spoke of him by name. As for Max, he was thoroughly burned out on passion. It had brought him nothing but pain, problems and frustration. He told her that if he had slept with even half the women who claimed that they'd been intimate with him, he would have been hospitalized long ago for sheer exhaustion. Jacqueline had laughed and told him that if she had committed only half the crimes she was accused of, she would be one of the richest women in the world. He always found an ease with her that he could not find with anybody else. He hadn't heard from her in months and he missed her terribly. He seemed more in control of things when Jacqueline was around.

  As he drank morosely, he mused about what his life had become since that fateful day when he had met his mentor Francois Benet. He had become a famous man, a flamboyant personality often written about in the gossip columns. He knew that thousands of struggling artists in the city would kill to be in his position, and yet he could find little pleasure in the pinnacle of success he had achieved. Despite his popularity, he felt that he was only second-rate. He felt that he was stagnating, that his work was becoming derivative of itself, and for all his frenzied social life, he was a lonely man. It seemed to him that everything in his life had become repetitive and somehow automatic. He desperately longed for something different, something new.

  He was wealthy now, but he continued to live simply, in a garret like a starving artist, spending his money on entertainment and assisting other artists less fortunate than himself. Conscience money, he called it. He had financed several galleries and restaurants, merely to help his friends and taking no profit for himself. His famous temper was still with him and he was arrested fairly regularly for brawling in one night spot or another; it was practically expected of him and the Paris police generally regarded his escapades with nothing more than mild amusement. They always treated him with courtesy. They were courteous when they came to see him the next morning, but they were not at all amused.

  He had passed out on the sofa, fully dressed, and he awoke with a hangover, startled out of sleep by the relentless pounding on the door. He had no idea what time it was and his head felt as if it were being squeezed slowly in a vise. Each knock on the door was like a hammer blow directly to his skull. He swore and lurched up off the sofa, then swore again as he struck his shin on the coffee table.

  "All right! All right! I'm coming!" he shouted, pressing his hands up to his temples at the pain caused by the sound of his own voice.

  He opened the door to admit two police officers dressed in civilian clothing.

  "Police, Monsieur Siegal," one of the men said, giving his name the French pronunciation and showing him his badge and identification. "We would like to ask you a few questions, please."

  Max groaned. "What is it now?" he said in a surly tone. "Whom did I assault this time?"

  The two men exchanged glances. "May we come in, monsieur?"

  "Yes, yes, come in, come in," Max said, standing aside to let them enter. "Pardon the mess, but I was drunk last night."

  They glanced at one another once again.

  "You have been drinking heavily, monsieur?"

  "Of course, I have been drinking heavily. I'm always drinking heavily. Don't you read the newspapers? What is it you want? If you're going to place me under arrest, get on with it, but kindly do it quietly. My head is simply killing me."

  Another exchange of glances.

  "Monsieur Siegal," said the other man, "are you familiar with a young woman by the name of Joelle Muset?"

  "Joelle?" said Max. He grunted. "Ah, lovely Joelle. I should have known she would be trouble."

  Another meaningful exchange of glances. "We understand that she was here last night," the first policeman said. "To model for one of your paintings."

  "Yes, yes, she was here," said Max, slumping back down onto the sofa and putting his head in his hands. "The whole thing was a mistake," he said." It was never meant to happen. I should have known that it would lead to trouble, the silly little bitch.

  She had probably told the police he had assaulted her, to get even with him for not succumbing to her nubile charms. He'd been through this sort of thing before. There would be reporters and an investigation, possibly a trial; it would get very tiresome now, tiresome and sticky—

  "Marcel. . ." said one of the policemen. "Have a look at this."

  Max looked up. They were both standing by the easel, looking at the painting of Joelle that he'd smashed over the easel in a fit of pique.

  "What happened here, monsieur?" the one named Marcel said, pointing to the ruined painting, on which Joelle's face was still clearly visible. The easel impaled her image right through the chest. "You had an argument last night? A fight, no? The famous Siegal temper? She was, perhaps, not quite as obliging as you'd hoped?"

  Max could see where this was leading, but he was simply too hung over to deal with it. He sighed. "Look, why don't you just arrest me and get it over with?" he said with resignation. "I simply can't take this now. Let my lawyer handle it. I haven't got the stomach for it anymore."

  There was a brief moment of silence as the two policemen looked at one another, and then the one named Marcel said, "Monsieur Siegal, it is my duty to inform you that I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Joel
le Muset."

  Max's head jerked up. "What? Wait a minute—"

  "Please come along quietly, monsieur."

  "Wait! What the hell are you talking about?" He leaped up from the couch and swayed unsteadily, fighting a sudden surge of dizziness and nausea. "Joelle's been murdered?"

  "Come along, monsieur—"

  The policeman reached for his arm, but Max shook him off furiously. "Let go of me, damn you! I'm trying to tell you—"

  It was the wrong response. He suddenly found himself thrown to the floor and handcuffed. Stunned, he tried to protest as they hauled him back up to his feet and quickly patted him down.

  "Wait a minute! Wait! This is all wrong! There's been some sort of mistake!"

  "Tell it to the inspector, monsieur," Marcel said. "Please come along peaceably. Resisting will only make it worse for you."

  Stunned, Max allowed himself to be half marched, half carried outside. The bottom had dropped out of his stomach. He felt sick and he couldn't think clearly. This can't be happening, he thought, but it was happening and through the fog of his hangover, he suddenly realized that what he'd said to them made things look very bad, indeed. She'd been at

  his studio, modeling nude, and the painting ... the painting! God, the way he'd smashed it down over the easel, they must think . . . they did think it! They thought he'd gotten drunk and killed her. And there was no way he could account for his whereabouts last night. He had been drunk, at home. Alone. As they escorted him to the waiting police car, he realized that there was no way he could prove his innocence.

  "I didn't kill her," he said as they got into the car.

  In a daze, he kept saying it over and over again as they drove down to police headquarters.

  Chapter

  TWO