Werewolf of Paris

by Guy Endore

  Finally he stood on a landing and knocked at the door that faced him. A slatternly woman with two small children clinging to her skirts and one held in the crook of her arm opened the door. With her free hand she brushed strands of black hair away from her dark, not unhandsome face. Then with a snarl of scorn on her mouth, she spoke:

  “He’s under the bed, the coward!”

  The officer, his timidity turned to courage, even to actual bravado, before this display of greater timidity than his own, whistled to his men, who came bounding up at once.

  “Drag him out!” and pointed to a large, unmade bed heaped high with feather mattresses and pillows.

  What they dragged forth was obviously a man mad with terror. Clutched in his hand was a heavy billfold of red leather, bearing an elaborate coat of arms worked out in gold thread.

  “Hm,” said the officer and snatched the case.

  Four thousand francs in bills on the Banque de France.

  “Well, well,” the officer laughed and said gaily, teasing the man who had now dropped on his knees.

  “Yours, of course?”

  “Mine!” cried the coachman wildly. “Mine, mine. Oh, don’t take it away. We need it so badly. It’s mine, I swear before all the saints of heaven. Don’t you see how poor we are?”

  “Of course it’s yours, my friend. And did you think we’d be so cruel as to separate it from you? No, you must come, both together. Allons, mon cher croque-mort! En route!” The men prodded the coachman from his kneeling position.

  Jean Robert threw a glance of despair at his wife: “And you, even you.”

  She turned her head away. “Take him away. The thief! The dirty dog! I slaved for him to the bone and bore him five children, because I loved him, because I thought he’d never steal again.”

  “Steal again,” said the officer and whistled. “So that’s it, eh? When?”

  “He was in prison at Besangon for three years,” she said. “Oh, how he swore by all the saints of heaven that he would never steal again if I but took him back! God, why was I fool enough to believe him? Now get out, all of you!”

  After a visit to the Permanence, where his name and address, etc., were taken down, the coachman, Jean Robert, was led a short distance away, around great somber walls, wet with cold rain, to the Depot, where the prefecture of police was busy night and day. There Robert was left in a little cell to attempt to puzzle out the curious fate that had overtaken him. Rich suddenly and now poorer than ever. He had small success with his problem. But he did recall a thought given to him long ago by the priest who used to visit him in the prison at Besangon. There, when Robert would complain that he had played only a small share in the crime for which his associates had nevertheless received shorter sentences, this old healer of souls used to say: “My son, a guilty man must often bear the punishment that belongs to some other criminal. And so great is the sin of this world that sometimes even an innocent person must suffer; and so great is the virtue of this world that sometimes a sinful person will enjoy his life in peace. But these are exceptions. In general it is the great group of guilty people who suffer for the guilt of their kinds, while the great group of innocent are rewarded. The few exceptions must not blind us to the rule. And that rule is: if you transgress no moral law, you need never fear retribution.”

  So often had this kind and benevolent priest assured him of this fact that Robert had memorized the words if not the import. Now, however, he saw their meaning: If you violate no law, if you commit not the slightest infraction of rules, you are absolutely safe. It is the borderline people, those who have been neither great criminals nor great saints, who have reason to complain of the severity of justice, for it often strikes them harder than they deserve. “My son,” the priest used to warn Robert, “avoid even the appearance of sin.”

  Robert was forcibly reminded of this caution when an officer came to lead him before the juge d’instruction, in a small chamber nearby. A few benches, a special chair for himself, a greffier busy writing: “Par devant nous, Gustave Le Verrier, juge d’instruction, sont comparus: Jean Robert, cocher attaché aux services des pompes funèbres,” etc., although Gustave Le Verrier, the examining judge, was as yet nowhere to be seen.

  When he came, however, there was no escaping seeing him. He was immense. He was mountainous. His ample robes swayed about his body with the grand freedom and magnificent folds of stage curtains. His enormous roseate face, with its light beard through which the pink of his flesh shone, was wreathed in smiles. He looked upon the prisoner with such benevolence that the sun of hope rose in his dark interior.

  “Quel temps, quel temps affreux,” he muttered, but in a booming voice, and sought the prisoner’s eyes for confirmation.

  And when Robert did not know what to do or say, the judge leaned forward, his gigantic face came nearer to Robert, its cavernous mouth, lined with lustrous teeth and rosy gums on which the saliva sparkled, seemed to exhale an immense: “W E L L? And you have nothing to say?” until Robert gasped:

  “Oui, monsieur le juge…rotten weather, rotten weather, indeed!”

  Then the great body withdrew, the wreath of smiles came forth again and the fat lips trumpeted, while the little glittering eyes buried in fat held the prisoner: “But we’re due for a change,” with a deprecating gesture of his white, sausage-like fingers. A pronouncement which Robert enthusiastically seconded.

  After some preliminary formalities and some questions addressed to the commissionaire and to an austere gentleman who was the conservateur of the cemetery (Robert knew him from a distance), the judge demanded of the culprit:

  “Do you not know Article Thirty-seven of Heading Seven?”

  “No, monsieur.” Robert trembled.

  “What! You are a coachman in the funeral service and do not know that private hiring of coachmen is forbidden?”

  “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 violat
ed.” 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

 
The 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.