The
cackling crowd had circled around a dreadful thing, covered with a greasy piece
of linen.
Eyes were
fixed for a moment on the human form beneath the filthy shroud, and then they
rose to the upper floor of a dreary building, whose ramshackle façade bore a
decaying "For Rent" sign.
"Look,
the window is open!" It has fallen from there!
"He
has fallen... or has jumped!
The dawn
was unpleasant, and a few lanterns were still burning here and there. The crowd
consisted mainly of people who had to get up very early to go to the factory or
office. Although it led to Cornhill, the street was not very lively; It was a
long time before the bobbies discovered the corpse, which would remain there,
in its ridiculous posture of a disjointed doll, until the commissioner arrived.
He soon appeared on the opposite sidewalk, accompanied by a young man with an
intelligent face.
The
commissioner was short and short-handed, and did not seem to have fully
awakened yet.
-Accident,
murder, suicide? What's your opinion, Inspector White?
"It is
possible that it is a murder. Of a suicide, perhaps, although the motive is not
too clear.
"To me
it is a minor case," said the commissioner laconically. Did you know the
dead man?
-Yes, his
name was Bascrop. "Bachelor and quite wealthy, he lived like a
hermit," replied White, who was trying to adopt the dry tone of his
implacable superior.
"Did
he live in this house?"
-Of course
not, since it is about to be rented.
"If
so, what was he doing in it?"
"This
property belonged to him.
"Ah!
Well, it will be a minor survey, Inspector White. I don't think it will take up
much of his time.
When the
jury had ruled out the possibility of murder, White resumed the investigation
on his own. In fact, nothing allowed us to exclude the possibility that it was
a crime.
The young
police officer had been particularly impressed by the expression of
indescribable anguish that had been preserved, in death, on the face of the
unsociable Bascrop.
He had
entered the empty house, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and finally
entered the mysterious room, the window of which had been left open. As he
passed, he had observed that all the rooms were completely devoid of furniture.
In it, however, there were several miserable-looking objects: a rickety chair
and a white wooden table. On the latter stood a candle, which a draught of air
must have extinguished, shortly after the drama.
A layer of
dust covered the table, which was only clean in three places. In fact, the
powder bore the marks of two small circles and a completely regular rectangle.
White didn't have to think long to figure out the cause.
"Bascrop,"
he said to himself, "sat down to read by candlelight. In the place of that
rectangle the book was to be found; As for the two circles, they were
undoubtedly formed by the elbows of the deceased. But where is the book in
question? No one but myself has entered this house, after the death of the
owner. Therefore, the unfortunate man surely had it in his hand at the moment
of his fall.
White
continued his reasoning. On the one hand, the street ended in Cornhill, indeed;
but, at the other extreme, he ended up in a labyrinth of alleys of very bad
reputation. On most of the doors could be read this inscription traced in
chalk: "Call at four."
A night
watchman had to live in the vicinity, and it was possible that this man knew
something.
The night
watchman was a dirty, loathsome old man who smelled of alcohol a mile away, and
who greeted White with obvious displeasure.
-I know
nothing, absolutely nothing. I was told that a man tired of life jumped from
the third floor. These are things that happen.
-Let's go!
White said dryly. Give me the book you found near the corpse, if you don't want
to get involved in a murder.
"Finding
is not stealing," the old man sneered. And, on the other hand, I was not
there.
"Be
careful! White threatened. That book may be the beginning of a rope that ends
around his neck...
The old man
hesitated for a few moments, and at last murmured, reluctantly:
"Well,
that book might be worth a shilling.
"Here
is your shilling!"
That was
how White got into possession of the book he was looking for.
* * *
"A
book of magic, and dating from the sixteenth century!" The inspector
growled. At that time, the executioners did not stop burning this kind of work,
and they did it perfectly.
He began to
leaf through it slowly. A page folded at one end caught his attention. He began
to read with growing interest. When he had finished, his face had a grave
expression.
"Why
shouldn't I try it too?" he murmured.
A little
before midnight he went to the deserted street, pushed open the door of the
sinister mansion, and climbed the stairs in the darkness.
The
darkness was not absolute: a full moon swept across the sky with its cold rays
and sent enough light through the dusty panes of the windows.
Arriving at
the drama room, White lit the candle, took Bascrop's place, and opened the book
to the page previously indicated. It read:
"Light
the candle at a quarter to twelve at night and read the formula aloud."
It was a
prose text, very obscure, of which the inspector understood nothing. But when
he had finished reading and coughed lightly to clear his throat, he heard the
clock of a steeple strike the twelve fateful strokes.
White
raised his head and uttered a frightful cry of horror.
* * *
White has
never been able to describe precisely what he saw at that moment. Today, he
still doubts that he has really seen anything. However, he had experienced the
sensation of seeing a gloomy and threatening being advancing towards him, which
forced him to retreat towards the window.
Unspeakable
fear flooded his heart. He thought that he had to open that window, that he had
to continue to retreat, and that finally he would throw himself into the street
to crash against the pavement, three stories below. An invisible force impelled
him to do so.
His will
left him, he was perfectly aware of it. But a kind of instinct – that of the
policeman who has to fight for his life – remained awake in him. A superhuman
effort allowed him to seize his revolver. Drawing on all the strength he still
had at his disposal, he managed to point the gun at the mysterious shadow and
pull the trigger.
A dry
detonation tore through the silence of the night, and the candle was blown to
pieces.
White lost
consciousness.
* * *
The doctor
who was at the bedside when he woke up, shook his head, smiling:
"Well,
my friend! he exclaimed. I had never heard that the devil could be struck down
by means of a single revolver. And yet, that's what you did.
"The
devil! The inspector stammered.
"My
young friend, if you had not reached the sail with that shot, there is no doubt
that your end would have been the same as that of the unfortunate Bascrop.
Since the knot of the mystery was the candle, precisely. Its antiquity dates
back at least four centuries, and it was made with a wax soaked in some
terrible volatile matter, the formula of which was possessed by the sorcerers
of the time. The length of the magical text to be read was calculated in such a
way that the candle would have to burn for a quarter of an hour, which is more
than enough for an entire room to be filled with a dangerous gas, destined to
poison the human brain and awaken in the victim the haunting idea of suicide. I
confess that this is nothing more than a guess, although I don't think it is
very far from reality.
White had
no desire to engage in a discussion on the subject. On the other hand, what
other hypothesis could he have made? Unless... No, it was preferable not to
think about that matter any more.
END
