THE WAX DEVIL

 

 

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