He turned back to the stalls to examine a rare jewel-box, which had caught his eye. Claiming to date from the days of St Louis, it was carved in an exquisite fleur-de-lys design, and Lalouette liked to fancy that perhaps it once had held the love-letters of some beautiful court favourite.
Over his shoulder he heard:
‘No matter what any one says, he’s without fear.’
‘Yes,’ said a second voice, ‘but I don’t mind telling you I’d rather be in my shoes than his. Come on, we mustn’t be late.’
Again Lalouette turned around. This time he saw two elderly men hurrying as fast as they could in the direction of the French Academy.
‘Is it possible,’ thought Lalouette, ‘that these old men have suddenly gone as crazy as the young ones? Those two sound as though they were on their way to the same duelling-ground.’
Occupied with these thoughts, Gaston Lalouette was sauntering up the Rue Mazarin, when he came face to face with four men in frock coats and silk hats. They also were very much excited.
‘All the same, I can’t believe he has made his will.’
‘Well, if he hasn’t, it’s a pity.’
‘They say he’s faced death more than once.’
‘True. And when his friends called to plead with him, he put them out of the house.’
‘Still, don’t you think he may change his mind at the last moment?’
‘You don’t think he is such a coward, do you?’
‘Look! Here he comes!’
The four men started to run, and darted across the street.
Gaston Lalouette gave no more thought to antiques. His one idea was to see the man who was about to risk his life, for what reasons Lalouette did not yet know. Mere chance, he thought, had brought him close to a hero.
He hurried to overtake the four frock-coated men and soon found himself in a little square packed with people. Automobiles were trying to move forward; drivers cursed each other. Under an arch leading to the outer court of the Academy, a noisy crowd was pressing around a man who seemed to be having great difficulty in making his way through the admiring throng. And whom should he see but the four dignified men shouting ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ at the top of their lungs.
Lalouette lifted his hat, and turning to one of them asked, quite timidly, what was happening.
‘Can’t you see? It’s Commander d’Aulnay.’
‘Is he going to fight a duel?’ asked Lalouette, very respectfully.
‘No, of course not. He’s been made one of the forty members of the French Academy and is about to deliver his speech accepting the honour.’
Meantime, Lalouette had been caught up in the milling throng. Friends of Maxime d’Aulnay, who had escorted him in and congratulated him warmly, were now trying to fight their way into the auditorium.
Lalouette found himself pinned in between the peaceful paws of the stone lion that guards the threshold of the Academy.
Now Monsieur Gaston Lalouette, in his profession of antiquarian, held literature in very high esteem. He was himself an author. He had published two books - the pride of his life. In one he treated of the signatures of celebrated painters and the means of recognizing the authenticity of their works. The other concerned the art of pictureframing. As a result of this authorship, he had been awarded an honorary title, ‘Officer of the Academy.’ But he had never been inside the Academy. Moreover, the idea he had been able to form of it did not agree at all with what he had just heard and seen in the last fifteen minutes. Never, for example, in order to make an address, would he have thought it useful to have made one’s last will and testament, and to have fear of nothing under the sun. So the good man fought his way from between the lion’s paws and after accepting humbly the hundred blows rained on all parts of his anatomy, squeezed into as good a place as possible in the gallery. Every one around him was on tiptoe, eagerly straining to see what was going on.
Maxime d’Aulnay, looking somewhat pale, entered just then. On either side walked his sponsors, paler even than he.
A shiver went through the audience. Women, numerous and of the best society, could not suppress their admiration or their anxiety. One pious dowager crossed herself as he passed, and when he ascended the steps to the platform every one stood up, moved by the same deep respect shown a funeral cortège as it passes in the street.
The newly elected member reached his seat and sat down between his sponsors. He raised his eyes and looked steadily around at his colleagues, the audience, the speaker’s desk, and then upon the sombre faces of the members of this illustrious Academy whose duty it was to receive him into membership.
While Lalouette was taking in this panorama he lost not a word of what was being said around him.
‘Poor Jean Mortimar was young and handsome, too, just like him.’
‘And so happy about his election.’
‘You remember how he looked when he stood up to make his address?’
‘Yes indeed. He seemed radiant with the joy of life.’
‘You can’t tell me it was a natural death. People don’t die that way.’
Lalouette turned around to ask whose death they were talking about. He saw he was addressing the very same man who had answered his questions so crabbedly a few minutes before. This time he didn’t mince words.
‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t you ever read your newspapers?’
Well, no, Monsieur Lalouette didn’t read the papers and for a reason we shall have occasion to explain a little later, and which Monsieur Lalouette did not shout from the house-tops. So, as he was not in the habit of reading the newspapers, the mystery into which he had walked was deepening more and more every minute. That was why he didn’t understand the meaning of the protest that was apparent when an important-looking woman, whom he had heard some one call Madame de Bithynia, came into the box reserved for her. That was why also he did not understand what she meant when she looked at the audience with an expression of proud arrogance, spoke a few words to friends with her, and then levelled her lorgnette on Maxime d’Aulnay.
‘She’ll bring him bad luck,’ a voice called out.
‘Indeed she will. She’ll bring him bad luck, too.’
‘Why is she going to bring him bad luck?’ Lalouette asked, but he got no answer. The man on the platform, ready to make his speech, was Maxime d’Aulnay, he gathered; he was commander of a ship; he had written a book called A Voyage Around My Cabin; he had been elected to fill the chair in the Academy formerly occupied by Monsignor d’Abbeville.
Then with shouts and crazy gesticulations the mystery began to unfold. Those seated in the galleries jumped to their feet and yelled:
‘Just like the other letter!’
‘Don’t open it!’
‘Look, the letter!’
‘Like the other one!’
‘Just like the other one!’
‘Don’t read it!’
‘Don’t let him read it!’
Lalouette leaned over and saw a messenger carrying a letter to d’Aulnay. The sight of the letter was enough to throw the audience into a state of great excitement. Only the members of the reception committee were self-possessed, but it was evident that Monsieur Hippolyte Patard, secretary of the Academy, was all a-tremble.
Maxime d’Aulnay arose, stepped forward, took the letter from the messenger and read it. A smile passed over his face. The gallery murmured:
‘He’s smiling, he’s smiling. Mortimar smiled, too.’
Maxime d’Aulnay passed the letter to his sponsors, but they did not smile. At once the import of the message was in every one’s mouth. Lalouette learned that it was: ‘There are some voyages more dangerous than those one makes around one’s cabin.’
That line threw the audience into the highest pitch of excitement. When order was restored, the unimpassioned voice of the president announced that the meeting had opened. A dramatic silence fell.
Maxime d’Aulnay was on his feet — more than brave — reckless!
Now
he had begun to read his address in a deep, sonorous voice.
He began with great dignity by thanking the members of the Academy for honoring him. After a brief allusion to a loss that so recently struck into the very body of the Academy itself, he spoke of Monsignor d’Abbeville.
He spoke at length.
The man seated beside Lalouette murmured under his breath words which Lalouette thought - wrongly, of course - were inspired by the length of the speech.
‘He’s holding out longer than the other one.’
As d’Aulnay came to the end of his eulogy of Monsignor d’Abbeville, he showed excitement. He talked with great animation of the great prelate’s talents. Then in a splendid outburst, he cried:
‘Six thousand years ago, gentlemen, divine vengeance chained Prometheus to his rock. I too am not one of those who fear the thunder of men, I fear only the lightning of God.’
Scarcely had he uttered these words when he tottered forward, passed his hands over his face desperately, and crashed to the floor.
A cry of terror rang through the auditorium. The members of the Academy rushed forward; they leaned over the lifeless body.
Maxime d’Aulnay was dead!
Dead, just as two months before, during his reception into the Academy, had died Jean Mortimar, the poet, author of Tragic Perfumes, and the first man chosen to succeed Monsignor d’Abbeville. He too had received a threatening letter brought to the Academy by a messenger who then had mysteriously disappeared - a letter in which Mortimar had read, ‘Perfumes are sometimes more tragic than one might think.’ A few minutes later he had dropped dead. This was what Lalouette had learned at last, very vaguely, as he listened with eager ears to the excited words of that crowd which had packed the auditorium a few moments ago and had just poured out into the streets in indescribable disorder. Now, at least, he knew why. Jean Mortimar’s tragic death had made them fear for Maxime d’Aulnay. True, he heard them hint of vengeance, but he attached little importance to it. However, to satisfy his curiosity, he asked who was seeking revenge. For answer, they poured upon him such a flood of fantastic vowels that he thought they were only making fun of his ignorance. So, with night coming on, he decided to go home.
As he crossed the street he passed some Academy members and their friends. He noted that they too were deeply stirred by the terrible coincidence of these two sinister events; one was still trembling with the excitement he had just passed through. Lalouette stepped up to him and asked:
‘Does any one know what killed him?’
‘The doctors say he died of a haemorrhage of the brain.’
‘And the other one, of what did he die - the first one?’
‘The doctors say he died of the bursting of a blood vessel.’
Just then a sinister shadow passed between them and whispered:
‘All that is sheer nonsense. Both of them died because they wanted to sit in the Haunted Chair.’
Lalouette was so startled that the shadowy form had vanished before he could distinguish his features. He was lost in deep thought as he slowly walked home.
The day after this terrible event, Hippolyte Patard, the secretary, walked into the Academy just as the hour was striking. The superintendent was standing in the doorway. He handed the mail to the secretary and said:
‘You’re ahead of time today, sir. No one has come yet.’
Patard took his mail and was going on his way without a word.
The superintendent was astonished at such an oversight.
‘You seem very preoccupied, sir. As a matter of fact, everybody else was struck speechless by the shock.’
Monsieur Hippolyte Patard paid not the slightest attention.
Then the superintendent asked Monsieur Patard whether he had read the story in the morning Epoch about the Haunted Chair. The secretary went on without replying.
Had he read the article about the Haunted Chair? Indeed, he had! What else could he have read all these many weeks? And since the sudden death of Jean Mortimar, if the newspapers had their way, no one would be allowed to be indifferent to a subject so rich in dramatic possibilities.
And yet what intellect that had any sense (and here Monsieur Patard stood stock-still in order to ask himself once more), what sensible mind would have dared to see in these two deaths anything more than a regrettable incident? Jean Mortimar had died of the bursting of a blood vessel; nothing unnatural about that. And Maxime d’Aulnay, deeply moved by the tragic end of his predecessor, and by the impressiveness of the ceremony, and also by the annoying forecasts with which those meddling ‘ornaments of literature’ had accompanied his election, had died of cerebral haemorrhage. Nor was there anything the least unnatural about that, either.
‘If only there hadn’t been those two letters; those two letters signed with the initials E D S E D T D L N,’ he said to himself. ‘Those are the initials of that plotting mystifier, Eliphas.’
Then he began to repeat aloud the name of the man who by some sort of criminal wizardry had unloosed the chains of Fate upon the illustrious and peaceful Academy: ‘Eliphas de Saint-Elmo de Taillebourg de la Nox.’
Any one with such a name to have dared to aspire to a seat! This self-styled prophet, who insisted on being addressed as Sire; who had published a book, absolutely ridiculous, called The Surgery of the Soul — this charlatan to have hoped for the immortal honour of occupying the chair left vacant by Monsignor d’Abbeville!
Yes, a magician — you might even say a sorcerer — who pretends to know the past and the future, and all the secrets than can make a mere man the master of the universe; an alchemist; an astrologer; a wizard; a necromancer! That such as he should dream of being elected to the Academy!
The secretary choked at the very thought. Yet, since this magician had been blackballed as he deserved to be, two unfortunate men who had been elected to fill that very seat had died suddenly.
Ah indeed! had the secretary read the article about the Haunted Chair? Yes. He had re-read it this very morning in the newspapers and he was just going to read it again in the Epoch. As a matter of fact he was unfolding the paper with an energy ferocious for his age. It took up two columns on the first page, and it repeated all the absurdities which had long since wearied his secretarial eyes. He could no longer go into a drawing-room or a library without hearing, ‘Well, how about the Haunted Chair?’
With regard to the overwhelming coincidence of the death of two men, the Epoch deemed it its duty to report at length the legend which was being formed around d’Abbeville’s chair. In certain Parisian circles closely in touch with the affairs of the Academy, people were persuaded that this chair was from now on haunted by the vengeful spirit of Sire Eliphas de Saint-Elmo de Taillebourg de la Nox! And since, after his rejection, this Eliphas had disappeared, the Epoch could not cease regretting that he had, just before he disappeared, uttered threatening words, followed very evilly by equally regrettable and sudden deaths. When, for the last time, he left the Pneumatic Club (taking its name from the word pneuma: meaning the soul) which he had founded in the drawing-room of the beautiful Madame de Bithynia, Eliphas had been heard to say emphatically, in speaking of d’Abbeville’s chair: ‘Evil be to those who sit in that chair before I do!’ In short, the Epoch was very suspicious. It said, referring to the letters received by Mortimar and d’Aulnay just before their deaths, that the Academy might perhaps have to deal with a charlatan but that it was possible that it had to deal with an insane man. The paper demanded that Eliphas be found; it was hinted that it might urge an autopsy on the bodies of Mortimar and d’Aulnay.
The article was not signed, but Monsieur Patard, after having declared him an idiot, consigned the anonymous writer to hell.
Chapter 2. The Haunted Chair
THE SECRETARY CLOSED the door of the Dictionary Room after him. He took off his hat and replaced it with a little, tight-fitting black velvet cap. Then he walked softly around the table, looking at the chairs drawn up so snugly, and so carefully distanced from e
ach other as to seem to form separate little boxes for their occupants. They had certainly seated some famous men, he mused, as he murmured a few illustrious names.
He looked long at a chair facing him.
It was like all the other chairs, with its four claw-feet and its square back - in no way different - but it was in this chair that d’Abbeville had sat and listened to the Academy’s deliberations.
Ever since his death it had been vacant.
Not only had poor Jean Mortimar and Maxime d’Aulnay not sat in it; they had not even had an opportunity to cross the threshold of the room where the Academy’s private conferences were held - always known as the Dictionary Room. Here are placed forty chairs — the seats of the immortals.
‘The Haunted Chair!’ said the secretary, half aloud, as he stood gazing at d’Abbeville’s unoccupied seat. Then he shrugged his shoulders and, in a derisive tone, uttered those fatal words, ‘May evil come to him who shall hope to sit in this chair before I do!’
Suddenly he strode near enough to touch it.
‘Well, I,’ he cried, striking his chest as though bolstering his courage, ‘I, Hippolyte Patard, who am afraid neither of bad luck nor Eliphas de Saint-Elmo de Taillebourg de la Nox, I - I am going to sit down in you, O Haunted Chair!’
And turning about, he was just on the verge of sitting down when he stopped, drew himself up straight again and said:
‘No, I won’t do that. That’s too stupid... one ought not to pay any attention to such nonsense.’
As the secretary went back to his own chair, the door swung open and the chancellor came in, leading the director. Now the director of the Academy at this time was the great Lonstalot, one of the foremost scholars of the world. He used to permit himself to be led about by the arm, just as a blind man is led. Not that the director didn’t see perfectly well; but he lived so completely in his ethereal abstractions that the members of the Academy had decided not to allow him to take one step unattended. He lived in the suburbs. When he left his home to come into Paris, a little boy of ten would come with him and leave him in the superintendent’s lodgings. There the chancellor would take charge of him.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 493