Balaoo/3/5

CHAPTER V: CUTTINGS FROM A PANIC-STRICKEN PRESS

We shall now see the memorable circumstances in which the private misfortunes of the Saint-Aubin family assumed the proportions of a public calamity.

Let me first quote two paragraphs which appeared in the Patrie en danger and the Observateur impartial respectively and which passed unnoticed at the time. It was not until later that people thought of connecting them with the extraordinary incidents that upset the whole existence of the capital. The Patrie en danger wrote, in its "Paris Notes:"

On the same day, the Observateur impartial contained the following, under the heading:

On the following Sunday, this paragraph appeared among the society-paragraphs in the Gaulois des dimanches:

My next quotation is from a very curious report that appeared in the theatrical columns of the Bigarro on the day after the wedding of Mlle. Arlette des Barrieres, the celebrated musical-comedy-actress, and M. Massepain, the tenor:

Here is another note inserted in the Gaulois des dimanches of a week later:

A few other papers copied these paragraphs and embellished them with more or less witty comments, in the latest Boulevard style; and the various incidents seemed wholly forgotten, until, one day, the Vie à Paris published, in its evening edition, a paragraph headed, in large capitals:

After reminding its readers of the first appearance of this worthy at Maxim's, the newspaper went on to say:

This peculiar manner of escaping pursuit resulted in establishing a natural connection in the minds of M. Massepain and his friends between the sham Maharajah of Kalpurthagra and the strange visitor to the Cafe de Mailly. There are not so many people in Paris capable of running away through the tree-tops! Lastly, a local paper published in the Quartier Latin suggested that there must be a relation between the incidents on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, those in the Rue Royale and the climbing of the walls, railings, gutter-pipes and gargoyles of the Musée de Cluny.

The newspapers promptly jumped to the conclusion that all the queer things that had happened in Paris for some months past must be put down to the score of a mysterious acrobat whose eccentricities, pointing to a mind tainted with madness, threatened to endanger the safety of the inhabitants.

And it was then that the press gave way to the panic to which I have alluded at the head of this chapter and lost that presence of mind which it should have communicated to the people of Paris, who were soon to be driven mad by the fantastic and criminal enterprises of the elusive Maharajah. But, between ourselves, it is no use protesting against the "scare-lines" in the evening papers.

The first article to spread consternation was headed:

This scare-line was followed by an account which stated that the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees had been seen in a chestnut-tree in the Tuileries Gardens and that there was reason to believe that he was not alone. Persons whose word could be trusted declared that they had seen him carrying a young girl in his arms, like a savage.

But this first scare-line, which caused excitement, was nothing compared with the second, which caused absolute terror:

This was the alarming and tragic heading that appeared in the four o'clock edition of the Patrie en danger. The newspaper-vendors who excited the crowd with their mad rushing and shouting sold their copies up to five sous apiece. The father and mothers, above all, wanted to be informed and did not look at the cost, that day. People stopped drinking outside the cafes, stopped walking on the pavements. They read instead. Everybody read, or listened to others reading. The story was simple enough: since that morning, four girls had disappeared, carried off by the monster. One had vanished at the corner of the Rue de Médicis and the Rue de Vaugirard, another in the middle of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a third near the Square Louvois, while the fourth was picked off the top of a tram-car going along the Quai du Louvre. Note that all four had disappeared in places where there were trees. The monster hid himself in the trees and suddenly put out his hand, pulling the girl's hair with invincible force. The girl followed, loudly screaming, and so rapidly that no one had time to hold her-back. A young person who had just been discharged from hospital and who was resting on a bench in the Square Montholon owed her safety to the fact that her head had been shaved during her illness. Only her false chignon remained in the monster's hands. As for the monster, he was endowed with infernal speed; and people would still be looking for him in the trees; when he appeared on the other side of the street or boulevard, on a roof, to vanish then and there with his prey.

In conclusion, the Patrie en danger advised ladies and young girls not to walk under the trees. And, in a moment, the pavements of the boulevards were emptied and the roadways crammed with a crowd that blocked the traffic, all walking with their noses in the air.

On the evening of that memorable afternoon, an unfortunate lamp-lighter, who was cleaning a gas-lamp, standing on a ladder against the trunk of a tree, was nearly torn to pieces by a wild mob that stupidly took him for the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees.

The prefecture of police was on tenterhooks.

The Municipal Council was called upon to take exceptional measures. Certain idiots, of the class that always turns up at difficult moments when people are not inclined to make fun of them or any one, certain idiots contended that the only way to get rid of the mysterious acrobat who walked in the trees was to cut down all the trees! The families of the girls who had disappeared were interviewed by the newspapers and photographed down to the fourth generation. The Ville Lumière was losing its head.

But the incredible scandal fell in all its horror on the panic-stricken city with the famous head-lines in a late edition of the greatest paper for news in the world: the Époque. Here is the gruesome heading:

And here is the article which was copied into every newspaper all over the world:

This was the article that sent all the journalists of the capital flying to the prefect of police, only to learn that M. Mathieu Delafosse, the new prefect, whom the advent to power of an ultra-radical ministry had relieved of his disgrace, was at the Place Beauveau, where the minister of the interior had called an urgent meeting of the cabinet. I cannot do better than publish the official statement dictated, after the cabinet-council, to the journalists present:

The town, pending the discovery of the mysterious hiding-place where the new minotaur had secreted his collection of girls, the town, I say, lived, more than ever, with its nose in the air. The monster was tracked over the roofs of the Hotel-de-Ville by the journalists, the firemen, the clerks and also by the members of the central division of police, which force was called into requisition because of its celebrated physique. The police had instructions to capture the monster alive; and, for a moment, they thought that they had him.

As a matter of fact, the chase was conducted with an energy that partook of both anger and despair. The ape was hunted from garret-window to garret-window, from chimney to chimney, to the roof of a little outhouse opposite the Caserne Lobeau. The central police, equipped with ropes and lassoes that seemed very much in their way, were ready to spring upon him, when Professor Coriolis himself was brought out on the gutter and perceived that, in spite of the horror of that tragic struggle, the monster had retained a little of the veneer of civilization which he had been at such pains to bestow upon him. The pithecanthrope, in fact, showed himself, for a second, between two chimneys, leaping from one to the other, with an eye-glass in his eye!

"Balaoo! . . . Balaoo!" cried the professor, in a soft voice of distress containing less anger and reproach than the despair that yearns for consolation. "Balaoo ! . . ."

But, at the sound of this !voice, this cry, the other, instead of replying to the one who called to him, seemed to discover a fresh energy. The fear which, but lately, had made him run away now turned into fury; and, rushing like a meteor upon a group of policemen and town-hall clerks — the latter armed with their paper knives! — he butted them out of the gutter and sent three or four of them flying into space.

The luckless men crashed on the stones of the square below, in the midst of the populace who came crowding up with a thousand cries of horror. Then a score of shots were fired at the monster, who received them point blank, without seeming to mind them, and re-entered the Hôtel-de-Ville by a garret-window, after knocking down a stalwart policeman who had showed his head at that window.

And the monster rushed down the corridors. He was seen to dart like an arrow through every department. Ratepayers, who had been waiting for hours to receive attention, fled howling and were never seen again.

For Balaoo was now no longer being pursued: everybody was fleeing before him. He seemed to be everywhere at a time, on every floor. He reappeared in every corner, bumping against groups that vanished like smoke.

He had a way of his own of descending a staircase, sliding down the well, like an eel in its trap.

Through corridors and staircases, he made his way to the council-hall, where M. Mathieu Delafosse was vainly striving to reassure a score of ædiles who had not yet left the sitting, thinking, perhaps, in their hearts, that they were safer there than elsewhere. Here too there was a general sauve-qui-peut, but the other had passed and was out of sight long before their fright was over.

For twenty-four hours, no one knew what had become of him. The police hunted everywhere. They went to the length of burning straw in the cellars of the Hotel-de-Ville, so as to smoke the monster out if he had found a refuge there. A cordon of troops, with ammunitions of war, surrounded the municipal buildings. Five detectives dragged Coriolis with them wherever they went; and the professor, tangle-haired and wild-eyed, allowed himself to be led from cellar to attic, calling:

"Balaoo! . . . Balaoo! . . ." But Balaoo did not reply. Where was he? No more girls had disappeared in Paris, through the agency of Balaoo or any other, and this was explained by the fact that the girls were all kept carefully immured in their parents' homes. The sittings of the municipal council were suspended until further orders; and the anguish, increased by the mystery of that complete disappearance, was greater than ever, when the monster suddenly reappeared on the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques. The clerks of the meteorological office were the first to see him and fled, after informing the police. This time, there was little doubt that the end of the drama was at hand.

The Tour Saint-Jacques, which was at once isolated by a circle of police and troops, was a very small and dangerous refuge for Balaoo. He himself seemed to realize as much, for, seeing himself hard pressed by a crowd of armed men and a mob of people loading him with curses, he worked himself into an uncommon state of fury, even for a large Java ape. His prolonged, rolling, rumbling cries were heard from the Place de la Bastille to the Louvre. The traffic in the Rue de Rivoli was of course interrupted. The tops of the omnibuses and tramcars were thronged with people shaking their fists at the Tour Saint-Jacques and yelling for the death of the pithecanthrope.

Sometimes the monster's figure was seen dancing and turning somersauts at the very top of the tower; but he would disappear at once, to reappear swinging from a scaffolding. Already over fifty shots had been fired at him, with no other result than to increase his rage. Sheltering himself behind the scaffolding, he began to hurl blocks of stone at the crowd.

A regular hail of stones came down, striking, wounding and killing the onlookers. The monster was not long in clearing the Rue de Rivoli and the Square Saint Jacques. The troops and the police were driven back; and still the square continued to rain with stones. The pithecanthrope was actually demolishing the Tour Saint-Jacques in self-defence; and this so rapidly that there were wags ready to suggest that, after three or four days of that siege, there would be nothing left of the Tour Saint-Jacques but its scaffoldings!

This, of course, was an exaggeration. But, all the same, it was manifest that the most exquisite gargoyles were lying in fragments on the roadway and that, taken all round, the monster was destroying the famous monument faster than the city architect could hope to repair it. And this lasted all the night through.

In the morning, M. Mathieu Delafosse arrived, together with the five detectives who were still dragging M. Coriolis Saint-Aubin about with them. The new prefect of police was in at least as deplorable a condition as the ex-consul at Batavia himself. He was suffering from less despair and grief, but greater exasperation. A sort of diabolical fatality seemed to dog his career; and he could find no better comparison for his present curious and tragic difficulties than the unprecedented incidents of the siege of the Black Woods, at the time when he was prefect of the Puy-de-Dôme.

Had he been able to suspect the undoubted relation between those two catastrophes and that Coriolis was the sole cause of both, he would certainly not have deprived himself of the satisfaction of strangling that ill-omened prisoner with his own hands. But the rapid. succession of events and the quick action of the drama had not yet given the police time to institute an enquiry which would have explained many things by referring them to first principles in the shape of the French education of Master Balaoo.

M. Mathieu Delafosse came straight from the prime minister, who had threatened him with his dismissal within twenty-four hours if the pithecanthrope's business was not settled that same day. And it was with a view to settling it that he arrived accompanied by Coriolis and the five detectives and also by a colossal sportsman in a pair of yellow-leather leggings, with a rifle over his shoulder.

The attention of the crowd was at once fixed upon this new figure. He was a giant. He stood head and shoulders over everybody else. Soon, his name passed from mouth to mouth, for the man was famous. He was the celebrated lion-killer, Barthuiset.

If the legends told at certain café-tables were to be credited, that man had killed more lions in Africa than the Atlas Mountains ever contained. It is not a good thing, even for real heroes, without fear and without reproach, that legend should exaggerate their exploits too lavishly. People at certain other, more sceptical cafe-tables began to believe that Barthuiset had never killed anything at all; and it was perhaps because of this that M. Mathieu Delafosse had not at once applied to him in circumstances where a first-class rifle-shot might render the most signal service.

Astonished and a little vexed at this neglect, Barthuiset might never have offered to save the situation for monsieur le prefet de police, if the lion-kiler, whose heart was twice as big as that of ordinary men, had not at last taken pity on the good city of Paris. Donning his trusty hunting-leggings and his trusty hunting-belt and taking his trusty hunting-rifle and his trusty cartridges with the explosive bullets, Barthuiset waited on M. Mathieu Delafosse at the moment when M. Mathieu Delafosse returned from the prime minister's, scared and dejected by the ultimatum of the government.

The prefect of police, like everybody else, had heard of Barthuiset the lion-killer. He looked hard at him. Barthuiset, in all the actions and at every hour of his life, resembled a fat Dutchman digesting a first-rate lunch. This phlegmatic attitude in the midst of the general excitement rather pleased M. Delafosse than otherwise. He tapped Barthuiset on the shoulder and said, simply: "My dear M. Barthuiset, if you don't kill that pithecanthrope, I'm a dead man myself."

Barthuiset replied, with a wink of his left eye:

"Show me your pithecanthrope, that's all I ask. There will be time enough to make your will afterwards."

These words did not comfort the prefect of police particularly:

"You can't be sure of your shot," he said.

"If it were a lion, I should never forgive you for saying that, monsieur le prefet de police. But I have never killed a pithecanthrope. There's no harm in trying. There's a first time for everything."

The prefect, therefore, brought him with him, but took care also to bring Coriolis. The little band entered the Square Saint-Jacques, amid the silence of the throng, bravely, at the risk of being crushed by a projectile broken from the historic pile. Balaoo had not given a sign of life that morning; but people were wary and no one had yet ventured to approach the scaffolding.

When they were within ten yards of the tower, M. Mathieu Delafosse said to Coriolis, who seemed to be wool-gathering and quite daft:

"Call him."

"What for?" asked Coriolis, looking more stupid than ever.

"To parley with him! . . . Understand, we sha'n't kill your pithecanthrope except in the last extremity," explained the prefect, "though he's led us no end of a dance. As you say that he listens to reason, speak to him, coax him, say something to him, show us that he is not quite a savage."

Coriolis allowed himself to be taken in by these words. For, as the prefect guessed, the terrible thing was that, in spite of Balaoo's crimes and Madeleine's abduction, Coriolis instinctively wished to save Balaoo. His hails on the roofs of the Hotel-de-Ville were, above all, warnings, entreaties to fly!

The moment that it was no longer a question of killing Balaoo, Coriolis would call to him in different terms; and, in fact, he ceased to address him with a man's shout and cried, in monkey language:

"Tourôô! Tourôô! Tourôô! . . . Gooot! . . . Woop!"

Then and there, the monster was seen to put his head cautiously between two planks of the scaffolding and anxiously to look down upon that numberless and, for the moment, silent crowd.

This silence, after the late tumult, seemed to surprise and alarm him. With a hesitating movement, he screwed his eye-glass into his eye and leant still further forward, bending almost his whole body over the group whence came the friendly words of his native tongue:

"Tourôô! . . . Gooot! . . . Woop!"

And bang! The shot was fired, the shot from the rifle with the explosive bullets of Barthuiset the lion killer.

An immense, prodigious and prolonged shout, made up of thousands and thousands of cries, rose up from the town, from the streets of the delivered capital.

The pithecanthrope had toppled over and, in his turn, fell at the foot of those walls of which he had been the terror. But he fell upon a mound of soft earth and did not succumb for the first few minutes. And the citizens of Paris were able to hear the dying agony of the monkey, of the great anthropoid ape, of the great ancestor, as it is heard in the depths of the equatorial forests and as it lingers in the expiring bodies of our mysterious brothers the animals, even among those which are not exactly pithecanthropes.

The citizens heard that despairing wail, of which Louis Jacolliot, the traveller, has written:

"At the supreme moment of death, the terrible brute gives forth sounds that are very nearly human. . . . Its last wail gives you the impression of something higher in the scale of nature; and you feel as though you had committed a murder."

Coriolis, as that shot rang out, felt his heartbreak; and it was, for a moment, as though he himself had been shot dead. He saw the great body spin through the air, he rushed forward as if to catch it in his arms. Fortunately, the creature crashed to the ground beside him, without touching him. Coriolis flung himself upon those dying remains that lay groaning like a man.

He bent over the body. . . and, suddenly, he rose to his feet, with a mad yell of triumph: it was not Balaoo!