“I understand, Captain. I know the differences of opinion that divide you and the Angels of the Waters. But was it not to be foreseen? What does it matter? Take courage, forget the evil past, and those devil’s arguments, and I am quite sure that your feeling for humanity will triumph.”
“What gibberish are you talking?” he growled as he rose to his feet. “It has nothing to do with all that, but simply with my wife, whose conduct is extraordinary. I mention it to you, Monsieur Herbert of Renich, simply because I hope that you may be able to help me to explain it.”
“What’s the trouble?” I asked in a tone alike of the friendliest interest and the greatest curiosity.
“The trouble is that I don’t recognise her in her attitude towards me. Any pretext is good enough if she can keep away from me, and we used to live for each other. No, I no longer recognise her. True, after the terrible events of the last few days she suffered from a nervous strain which depressed her to such an extent that she needed perfect quiet and the most assiduous care. I understand that. But what does it mean? There is a constraint when she comes near me that I don’t understand. We are never alone. She won’t allow the maid to leave her day or night. And I feel that my presence embarrasses her. More than that, or rather, worse than that, I am sure that she dreads the sight of me. Why?... Why? Can you tell me? Have you any idea? I have questioned her in the humblest and tenderest tones. She can give me but one reply, namely, that she is in a state of extreme weakness and will not recover her strength until I have landed my prisoners in England, and handed them over to the English authorities.”
“Well,” I returned, “it’s perfectly clear. Mrs. G — is ailing because this simple thing was not done long ago. I won’t hide from you, Captain, that I acquainted her with the dangers which the prisoners run on board this ship. And knowing her mind as you know it how can you doubt that the delay is making her quite ill?” The Captain stared at me for some moments without answering, and then he made a movement to the door, rapping out:
“No.... There’s something else.... Something much worse than that, and I must know what it is.” At that moment a telegram received by the wireless service was brought to him.
“Excellent,” he said, yielding to the gloomy air that had so often put me in a state of the greatest apprehension. “Excellent, there’s to be a naval battle. My espionage service in Germany informs me that the German Fleet is preparing a sortie in the North Sea. I shall at once inform the British Admiralty, and we shall hasten to the battle. Let us hope that we may arrive in time to assist our friends, and may this mortal combat be helpful to ourselves if there is no longer any love in the world.”
As he uttered these last wild words, he disappeared and I myself was about to leave the vast saloon when I seemed to hear some movement behind me, and a shadow glided behind the furniture. I ran after it but I did not discover it. I thought that I glimpsed Von Treischke’s nephew... Was he then on board? Doubtless he had been made prisoner at the time of the attack on Goya Castle. But how was it that he was wandering about at random instead of being locked up with the other prisoners? In reality, anything might be possible in the state of anarchy to which both persons and things were reduced on board the ship.
The most terrible thought was that he had perhaps overheard my conversation with Captain Hyx, and if that were so, he was acquainted with the tremendous secret of which young Herbert of Renich was the guardian.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FLAG THAT REPLACED THE BLACK FLAG AND ITS GLORIOUS END
I REACHED MY cabin in a mental condition which had become less and less cheerful. I locked and bolted the door opening it only to the Indian servant, Buldeo, to whom I telephoned to bring me a roll of bread and a stick of chocolate.
I tried to detain him so as to discover what was happening. He told me that he thought the prisoners were to be got rid of at once, which was none too soon. Thereupon he disappeared. His face wore its usual inscrutable expression of Oriental fatalism which imparted to what he said a significance that was all the more terrible.
During the night I heard in the alley-ways, the tramping of men, words of command, the clang of the butts of rifles on the deck, cries, and then silence, followed by more sounds quickly stifled; and suddenly in the morning a deafening uproar arose like the howling of devils; and then nothing more... silence... the silence of death this time. It was as though the world were dead.
What did it all mean? I risked opening the door of my cabin, and slipped out into the passage where so many dread noises had continued for more hours than I could enumerate, and I went forward on the chance of obtaining some information. Suddenly, I caught the distant sound of murmurs, a sort of monotonous chant, which served to guide my footsteps, and I wended my way to the little chapel which was filled with a listening throng whom at first I scarcely recognised. Nevertheless the same men were there whom I had seen during the preceding days, thirsting for blood. The faces so recently ravaged by the cruellest of passions, the passion of revenge, were now affected by I know not what vision of justice and goodness, and the eyes which the day before had blazed with the fury of the torturer, were veiled and softened by such tears as are shed on the tombs of martyrs and saints. The voice of a woman had accomplished this miracle, a woman who holding herself erect on the topmost step of the altar had cast a spell over the assembly.
At her feet lay the quivering body of Amalia, and my beloved friend was despairingly clasping in her arms her little children.
A crowd of Huns pale with dread; over whom a flame from the forge of the terrible doctrine of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, had swept; a crowd of Huns already stained with blood, already suffering from punishments inflicted by the Angels of the Waters, were filling, with their lamentations and their hoarse choking voices, an entire corner of the little chapel at the feet of her who had saved their lives by the sole power of her gentle and unlooked-for speech.
It was an expression of the sacred influence and spirit of Miss Campbell, and it was also an expression of the noble and immortal soul of France which had inspired the speech of the veiled lady, a daughter of France. I watched the defeated master, the famous Captain seated on the cathedra, and he, too, betrayed the deepest emotion.
For she sought the inspiration of her words in her own splendid heart, this woman who rejected the gospel of torture and spoke only in the name of the progress of mankind in paths made luminous by the Godhead. The gloomy reasoning of the master of the “Vengeance” was swept away by this clear, crystal voice, so soft and yet so moving, awakening a deeper echo in the human conscience than the sound of trumpets can awake in the ears of warriors transported with joy after the carnage of a triumphant victory.
And the wild men who were present were vanquished by the gentle voice, were plucked like brands from the burning. And now they mourned with her over the misery of the world, and prayed with her that the misery might one day be alleviated, not by vengeance but by justice, the day when good and evil should be weighed in the balance without anger or weakness or deceit.
But how is it possible to convey an impression of this gentle and burning eloquence, this sacred flame? She should have been heard, this veiled lady. As Æschines said to his enraptured pupils to whom he had read Demosthenes’ speech “On the Crown”—” Oh, if you had heard the monster!”...
The monster in this case was an angel.
* * * * * * * *
But what was happening? Why those shouts? Why that rush and excitement and storm in an assembly which seemed to have recovered its calm by the supreme exercise of reason, justice, pity? What was this new delirium? What Last madness was agitating the mind of Captain Hyx? Why was his wife struggling in his arms? Why did she throw up her arms in despair? Why did Amalia utter a heartrending cry? Why do naked swords leap forth around Amalia as she is being carried away?...
Suddenly I saw and understood. The Captain in his enthusiasm for his wife who had won them all to sanity and goodness had thrown
himself on his knees before her, and clasped, as he believed, her hands... And that is why he cried: “She has no hands!”
The enemy had cut off her hands in Belgium. And the false hands under the mittens had come away and the veiled lady despairingly held the stumps above the heads of the frenzied crowd — the crowd that wanted now to begin by cutting off Amalia’s hands.
* * * * * * *
Everything became dear in this ominous light. All her actions at Renich and in Spain seemed natural now that I knew that everything she said and did had for its object to conceal this horror.
She could not say “I cannot write” for that would have been tantamount to telling the truth. So she said “I will not write.” In the same way she was “forbidden” to touch a ladder or fasten a rope for her escape. I understood.... I understood now.
I discovered later that Von Treischke had received orders to make an end of her as soon as the Hun authorities learnt that in the general massacre their men had cut off the hands of the eminent French woman, married to a neutral, the American millionaire G — . It was necessary that the proof of this barbarity should disappear for ever. But Von Treischke who knew that the American had uttered diabolical threats against him, considered that it would be wise to save Mrs. G— ‘s life, to keep her in hiding, and to use her as a hostage. Thus she soon acquired an inestimable value when he learnt that his own wife was the Captain’s prisoner.
Von Treischke ran no risk, in the circumstances, of being betrayed by the veiled lady when she was in Luxemburg among her captors. She realised better than anyone that an imprudent word would mean a sentence of death. Moreover she was accompanied everywhere by her housekeeper, and could not write. We have seen that when she was in Spain, where the Tiger took her as a lure so as to recover his own wife, she was treated as a prisoner.
It must be remembered, too, that the veiled lady was anxious to keep her cruel secret not only for her own sake, but particularly for the sake of her who would be the victim chosen by her husband when he discovered that his wife had been mutilated. And she wished to keep the secret for the sake also of those against whom he had vowed vengeance and the most atrocious tortures by way of reprisals. Thus she hoped to save them by revealing her existence to the Captain, but she did not want him to come near her until the wretched creatures were out of the reach of his anger.
Good, gentle, queenly, angelic veiled lady! Was your noble work of charity to be destroyed at the very moment when you deemed that it had emerged victorious? No! Heaven would not have it so.
In the midst of the general confusion, when blood might have been shed by the avenging “Angels,” the “middy” rushed among the crew and shouted the order to clear for action. At those words each man recovered his composure, or rather turned his fury against the enemy, and there was no thought but of the enemy.
Then Chief Engineer Mabell appeared and stated that the water ballast tanks could not be worked. Here, doubtless, was seen the hand of the prisoners. The vessel which was running awash could not now submerge.
“Well, we shall fight in the open,” cried the veiled lady, “and God will see us.”
“Hoist my black flag,” ordered the Captain.
“We are not fighting under the black flag any longer,” she exclaimed in a moment of splendid inspiration. “I want the tricolour hoisted on board.”
The tricolour was hoisted on the “Vengeance.” The flaming words of this woman had inspired all our hearts.
We felt that we were heroes, and each man rushed forward to meet the danger. I, too, sprang on deck. We were in the thick of the battle. I will not describe it. It is a well-known battle. Splendid stories have been written of those noble exploits, and if the wonderful end of the “Vengeance” has not been officially recounted, that is because there have been reasons of high diplomacy.
But I... I saw the fight. I saw the “Vengeance” firing her four guns and discharging her torpedoes until her last breath. I saw her crew, or rather what remained of her crew, grouped on her deck, when broken and leaking in all parts, the enormous and glorious wreck sank slowly beneath the waves.... The men were singing as the blows of the enemy rained on them amidst the bloodstained ruins with which the sea was bestrewn.... I saw Captain Hyx and his heroic wife clasped in each other’s arms under the tricolour flagstaff. I heard her singing to the last moment the grand hymn which the sailors under Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse sang to the Republic when another “Vengeance” in days of yore sank beneath the waves.
EPILOGUE
THE AUTHOR, PERHAPS I should say the editor, has done his utmost to maintain in these memoirs, or rather in these confessions, which describe an adventure of an unparalleled character, the moral unity which certainly guided the sometimes anxious, often pusillanimous, but always honest mind of M. Herbert of Renich through a thousand meanderings.
We may wonder what became of our hero.
The few papers which remain give me little information in this respect, and tend rather to make me believe that he did not after all enjoy the rest which he so much desired, and which, all things considered, he so well deserved.
The half-youth, as he called him, who brought me the papers on his little platform — it must have been Potage — disappeared without saying a word, and I have never seen him since.
I gather from the papers that are in my possession that M. Herbert of Renich saw nothing in his future that foreboded any good for him, for he knew too much about the galleons and the gold, and he was not at all sure that a certain nephew of Von Treischke was dead inasmuch as several Hun prisoners escaped from the “Vengeance” at the last moment.
As to the fate of Von Treischke and Amalia, I possess a note which explains in a few words how matters ended for them at the moment when the glorious submarine went down.
M. Herbert of Renich was able to rescue the hapless lady and her little children and put them on board a ship’s boat which was already pretty well filled. Amalia had swooned.
Now when the boat was leaving the spot where the “Vengeance” was disappearing for ever, a man, swimming desperately, held on to the side and almost capsized the boat, whereupon M. Herbert of Renich begged him to let go his hold. At the same time he recognised in the swimmer Admiral von Treischke. As Von Treischke persisted in his attempt to enter the boat M. Herbert did not hesitate to discharge his revolver point-blank at him. It was at this juncture that Amalia came to herself and observed what was happening.
“Unhappy man,” she cried. “What have you done? I will never marry the man who killed the father of my children.”
M. Herbert of Renich replied to her with that somewhat doleful logic which was one of his characteristics:
“But if your husband had lived, my dear Amalia, since your religious principles forbid divorce, I could not have married you in any event.”
The Kiss That Killed (1923)
Translated by Hannaford Bennett, 1934
Original French Title: ‘La poupée sanglante’
This novel was originally published in France as a 40 part story in Le Matin, between 1 July and 9 August 1923 and then published in book form by Tallandier. The English translation was published in New York by the Macaulay Company in 1934. This is one of Leroux’s later novels and a sequel was published, La Machine à Assassiner, although the books can be read as stand-alone stories. Both novels fall into the genre of fantastical fiction and it has been suggested that Leroux was inspired by the novel L’Homme au sable by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The novel was also written in the aftermath of the trial and execution of Henri Désiré Landru, also known as ‘the Bluebeard of Gambais’, one of the most notorious serial killers in French criminal history and the violent themes of La poupée sanglante are thought to have been influenced by this too. Landru murdered at least seven women between 1915 and 1919 and in c.1914-1915, it is thought he killed a number of other women and a young man.
Christine is the daughter of a skilful watchmaker and also the fiancée of the scientist, Jacques Cotentin
. Her father, the watchmaker, experiments with the science of mechanics and has even claimed to have achieved perpetual motion. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Christine has a beautiful automaton named Gabriel and she is very fond of him, but he lacks one important feature — a soul. How can a machine — because at its most basic, that is all Gabriel is — have feelings like their neighbour, the gentle Bénédict Masson? One cannot expect cogs and mechanics to have empathetic experiences of the world.
Although he has a beautiful soul, a fine and sensitive mind and is skilled with his hands (he is a bookbinder), Benedict is also afflicted with a physical ugliness that deters Christine from getting to know him better. Sometimes, Bénédict looks out of his window and sees his mechanical neighbour, who is fashioned as a stunning young man of noble bearing, visiting Christine, whom Bénédict has fallen deeply in love with; yet, any romantic approach on his part is firmly rejected by Christine. Bénédict is oblivious to the fact that Gabriel is not a real person and feels that he can never rival such a beautiful man for Christine’s affections. Then one evening Bénédict hears an argument between Christine and her father. Christine begs him not to ‘kill’ someone. For whose life is she pleading?
It transpires that the death in question is to be that of Gabriel, an event witnessed by Bénédict. From this point, he is propelled into a series of bizarre encounters with a series of grotesque characters, including a voracious, ancient vampire known as the brucolac and his servants, who are members of an oriental death cult. As well as navigating these strange encounters, Bénédict strives to understand the nature of what Gabriel was and the involvement of the watchmaker’s landlord, the Marquis de Coulteray. Even more sinister events occur… why have a series of young women disappeared in the vicinity of Bénédict’s villa in the countryside?
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 383