Werewolf of Paris (15 page)

When the dance was over, the mood was a little merrier. The girls were fanning their perspired faces with their handkerchiefs. Madame had left to fetch some champagne. Raoul had just finished one uproariously funny song and was beginning another.

The champagne added to his previous drinks, the dancing and singing had inflamed Bertrand a little.

Now Madame suggested delicately that it was getting late. She opened the door and showed the way upstairs.

Bertrand was alone with his girl. He was all at once prey to a terrible feeling of fatigue. He could scarcely stand up. His nerves could not bear the excitement. He wished the embarrassing preliminaries were over; in fact, he wished the whole business were over.

The girl laughed across to him. She was accustomed to shy young men. Her method of attack was to tease them. Now she said: “Monsieur must be very modest, if he intends to make love with his clothes on.”

Thereupon he began to unbutton his jacket.

“Look,” she said suddenly, “you must first write something nice in my book of autographs.” She brought over a heavy volume.

He opened the book and was surprised to see the name of Victor Hugo, signed with an immense flourish beneath a dirty verse.

On another page was Horace Vernet beneath a miserable, filthy picture.

The next page showed a sonnet signed “Tout à vous, Adolphe Thiers.”

There were Dumas, Garibaldi, and even a large crown and seal hastily sketched, beneath which was the name: Napoleon III.

Bertrand was at first taken in, in fact he was overwhelmed, and before he realized his mistake he had signed his name, Bertrand Caillet, Mont d'Arcy.

Then he understood. All this was mere fantasy. A cruel trick imagined by the first person to enter his name and perpetuated by those who followed.

“Can you read?” he asked.

She blushed, and shook her head.

He understood vaguely. She wore glasses for the same reason she kept a book of autographs: to conceal her misfortune, her lowly station.

“Aren't you going to write something more?”

He pleased her and added above his name the lines:

O mon amante!

O mon desir!

Sachons cueillir

L'heure charmante!

As Bertrand was still shy, the girl, Thérèse, suggested a little game. She would take off two pieces of her clothing to every one of his. There was a little argument as to whether he should count his cap. No, she said, for if he counted his outdoor clothes, so could she. They must start from scratch, as it were. Bertrand soon fell in with her mood and took off the jacket which he had already unbuttoned. She took off a jabot and a lace bolero. Apparently her costume, unadorned as it seemed, consisted of innumerable parts, several petticoats, corset-cover and corset, garters and whatnot else, to all of which she gave a name as she took it off with a giggle of triumph. But in the end she had only a stocking and a shift, and when Bertrand took off his last undergarment, he exclaimed: “It's a tie!”

“No, it isn't,” she retorted, and took off one stocking and her eyeglasses and remained in her slip. “I won,” Thérèse said, pointing to her last garment.

“But your spectacles—that isn't fair,” he objected.

“Yes, it is,” she asserted, “I've won, and for punishment you must take off this last piece yourself, only you are not allowed to use your hands.”

She joined Bertrand, who, still a little modest, had, in his nudity, retreated to the protection of the bed.

“What shall I do?” he said, laughing nervously. “How can I take it off without using my hands?”

“You have teeth and toes left, haven't you?”

He began a little timidly to seize the thin material in his teeth.

“It'll rip,” he said.

“Then you'll buy me another,” she warned. “But it's very cheap,” she encouraged with a laugh.

He set to work again.

“Aïe! Oh, you're biting me! Jésu-Marie…”

He had caught a piece of her skin between his teeth, along with the material. He heard her scream, he felt a drop of blood oozing through the linen. He had his arms laced about her body. He wanted to release her, but a strange rage had overcome him. Holding her down with one arm, he stopped her screams with the heel of his other hand. She, feeling his hand there strangling her cries, bit down for her part too, and fought out wildly with her fists.

Early the following morning Jacques and Raoul came to an agreement: “Let's leave Bertrand here, and run offtogether. It will give him a good scare.”

When Madame presented her bill they paid only what they had to. Champagne, use of ballroom (!), all the other items with which the bill was decorated, they left for Bertrand.

“He'll pay,” they reassured the procuress. “He's rich.”

“Really?” she asked. She had herself noticed that he was much better dressed than the other two.

“Very rich,” they answered.

She thought to herself: “In that case, I'll see if there isn't something else I can add to the bill.” And filled with her plan, she bade her customers good-bye and retired to write out a new and fancier bill. Local business wasn't any too good; the visiting traffic must therefore be made to bear all it could stand.

Jacques and Raoul returned to their inn, packed their books and waited for Bertrand. But Bertrand did not show himself.

“Let's go back and see what happened to him,” Jacques suggested. But their return to normal life had brought on a feeling of shame for their escapade. Neither of them cared to return to that house in broad daylight.

Meanwhile the landlord wanted his inn cleared. “I'll have to charge for another day if the gentlemen are going to stay any longer.”

Raoul, whistling a merry tune, decided to wash his hands of the whole matter and departed for his home, feeling that something was amiss and he'd better be out of it as soon as possible, for if it came to the ears of his parents he was done for.

As for Jacques, he too had become uneasy. To the bravado of the previous night had succeeded qualms of conscience.

“Well,” the landlord interrupted Jacques's thoughts, “you'd better take out your friend's belongings too, unless he's holding the room.”

“No, I'll take them,” Jacques decided, “and I'll leave a note for my friend if he should come.” Thinking thus to have solved the matter, Jacques made a bundle of his roommate's books, wrote out a brief note telling Bertrand that he had all the books and had gone on home, and thereupon set out.

Back in the village, he waited nervously for news of Bertrand. When he heard that Bertrand was sick at home, his trepidation increased. “Now the whole thing is bound to come out,” he thought. But nothing happened. He ventured to ask his mother:

“What's the matter with Bertrand?”

“Oh, she said harshly, “who can ever say what's going on in that house! I hear that old Galliez beat the poor lad to within an inch of his life. Shame on the old roué! For that's all he is!”

He made no answer: he knew his mother's attitude to the Galliez establishment, and content to know his own skin still safe, he impatiently awaited his approaching departure to a distant farm where he was to work during the summer. He would be back about the middle of August and leave again at once for Paris, to attend the medical school there. Though the war started that summer, that did not alter his mother's plans. She could not imagine anything sufficiently important to delay her sole ambition.

*
“Where fools are ordinarily housed.”

Chapter Eight

O
n that morning when Jacques and Raoul had gone off leaving Bertrand saddled with the major part of the bill, the landlady had retired to evolve a new bill which was to be a masterpiece. This accomplished, she waited for her guest to arise. It was already late, but since a girl with a guest frequently slept late, she thought nothing further of the matter and went about her duties.

But at ten o'clock she became impatient and went to knock at Thérèse's door. There was no answer.

“Those rich people…” she thought to herself in disgust, her sense of propriety outraged. She went downstairs again to add on another day's lodging to her bill. That brought the figure to over a hundred francs. Would he have that much? Well, she would show herself amenable to bargaining for the limit in his pockets. “Including that fine watch he has,” she determined.

At eleven she went to knock again. There was no answer. She put her ear to the door. A faint groan was audible. She turned the knob and entered.

Thérèse, but what a Thérèse, lay alone in bed and was moaning softly. Great brown bloodstains covered the sheets. Of her customer there was not a sign.

Madame's screams brought the other girls to Thérèse's room.

“Run for a doctor,” Madame commanded.

“Get the police, too,” said one of the girls.

“No!” cried the mistress. “Don't anyone dare.” She did not stand in any too well with the authorities, and the last thing she wanted was to be further implicated. If the police were necessary that could wait until the last moment.

When Thérèse had had her wounds washed and bound and could talk, her mistress asked:

“And how could you let him do such things to you?”

“Well, I guess I must have fainted.”

“And for all this, you didn't get a centime?”

“How did I know he was going to do this?”

“Men that want that kind of thing pay heavily in Paris,” said Madame, to whom Paris was the arbiter elegantiarum in all matters pertaining to the tariff, etc., in establishments of her kind.

“He didn't seem that sort,” Thérèse complained weakly.

“Now if only I had his name!” Madame cried.

“But I have it in my book of autographs,” said Thérèse.

“Bah,” her mistress exclaimed impatiently and with scorn: “your book of autographs!…”

“Yes,” Thérèse answered her. Thereupon Madame took a look, just for the remote possibility of the thing, and there sure enough stood “Bertrand Caillet, Mont d'Arcy.” That sounded real enough. And Mont d'Arcy could be reached in a two hours' drive.

That very day she took a hired carriage and had no difficulty in discovering that the Caillets lived in the fine Galliez house, behind the alley of locust trees. The latter were then in bloom and gorgeous with thousands of drooping yellow blossoms. The ground was carpeted with petals. The air full of a slow yellow rain.

The portly purveyor of love
en détail
was not intimidated by the exterior elegance, which she knew only too often concealed expensive vices. On the contrary, she felt assured of a good financial return from her visit, and marched up boldly to ring the bell.

Aymar Galliez had her admitted to his study.

“I've come to tell you about your son Bertrand,” the proprietress of the maison tolérée began.

“Well,” said Aymar.

She told him her story, embellishing it with art, but making no attempt to conceal her profession, which, in fact, at times she liked to flaunt before the rich bourgeoisie.

“And what do you want me to do?” said Aymar, boiling inside, but outwardly maintaining a certain indifference.

“Parbleu, monsieur. I wish to be reimbursed for damages and expenses. Who would have thought that such a nice refined boy…”

“It seems to me that this is a matter for the police,” Aymar interrupted her, wondering if this would not be the very opportunity he wanted to get rid of Bertrand at last.

Madame suppressed her fright. While she certainly had the right and, in truth, the duty of going to the police, the fact that Bertrand was a minor and that she would thus involve herself in a criminal pursuit made it necessary to avoid that way out, which moreover could not possibly yield her a cent of profit.

While she pretended to consider the matter, actually she was busy thinking up a good excuse.

“Very well, monsieur,” she said suddenly. “I shall go to the police. I thought, at first, that you would appreciate the opportunity of settling this matter without publicity, but I see that I have wasted my time and my charitable intentions.”

Aymar fought with himself. Why did he feel that a werewolf was a disgrace? What stupid sense of shame was it that prevented him from facing the world boldly with this monster? A monster, moreover, not produced by him but by a stranger, and saddled onto him through a chance set of circumstances.

Where by was he helping matters by concealing this beast-man? And yet he could not bring himself to expose Bertrand. His efforts on the boy's behalf had been crowned with so much success that he had almost shelved the whole matter, but it was plain once more that the lad was a permanent source of danger, and not, no, certainly not to be trusted to go to study medicine in Paris.

With a sigh, he gave in. “How much do you want?” he asked.

“Five thousand francs,” she said, pinching her lips.

“Give me your address,” he said quietly, “and I shall send you one thousand francs before tonight, and I shall expect to hear nothing further of the matter.”

His quiet decision intimidated her. Even a thousand was something. She rose and departed. On the journey home she conceived a brilliant idea. The first thing she did when she reached her house was to upbraid everybody, and particularly Thérèse. “I could kill you!” she screamed at the poor, suffering girl.

“Oh, madame,” Thérèse wept through her bandages.

“And we can't even get the doctor bills paid for you. In fact, I was threatened with prosecution for having admitted a minor.”

Eventually she relented. “Well, I guess I'll have to pay the doctor myself,” she said. “You poor fools never think of saving your money, and if I didn't pay for your treatment, you'd probably have to let yourself die.”

Thérèse thanked her mistress profusely. “You'll see, madame, she promised, “I'll work hard for you.”