by Wilkie Collins
Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to be
staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived,
I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of our sojourn. One
night we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to
what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to
Frascati’s; but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew Frascati’s, as the
French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there,
merely for amusement’s sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was
thoroughly tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social
anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. “For Heaven’s sake,” said I to my
friend, “let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard,
poverty-stricken gaming with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it all.
Let us get away from fashionable Frascati’s, to a house where they don’t mind
letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or
otherwise.” “Very well,” said my friend, “we needn’t go out of the Palais Royal
to find the sort of company you want. Here’s the place just before us; as
blackguard a place, by all report, as you could possibly wish to see.” In
another minute we arrived at the door, and entered the house, the back of which
you have drawn in your sketch.
When we got upstairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the doorkeeper,
we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not find many people
assembled there. But, few as the men were who looked up at us on our entrance,
they were all types–lamentably true types–of their respective classes.
We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is
a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism–here there was
nothing but tragedy–mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible.
The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the
turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who
pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won,
and how often red–never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture
eyes and the darned great-coat, who had lost his last sou, and still looked on
desperately, after he could play no longer–never spoke. Even the voice of the
croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and thickened in the atmosphere
of the room. I had entered the place to laugh, but the spectacle before me was
something to weep over. I soon found it necessary to take refuge in excitement
from the depression of spirits which was fast stealing on me. Unfortunately I
sought the nearest excitement, by going to the table and beginning to play.
Still more unfortunately, as the event will show, I won–won prodigiously; won
incredibly; won at such a rate that the regular players at the table crowded
round me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious eyes, whispered to
one another that the English stranger was going to break the bank.
The game was Rouge et Noir. I had played at it in every city in Europe,
without, however, the care or the wish to study the Theory of Chances–that
philosopher’s stone of all gamblers! And a gambler, in the strict sense of the
word, I had never been. I was heart-whole from the corroding passion for play.
My gaming was a mere idle amusement. I never resorted to it by necessity,
because I never knew what it was to want money. I never practiced it so
incessantly as to lose more than I could afford, or to gain more than I could
coolly pocket without being thrown off my balance by my good luck. In short, I
had hitherto frequented gambling-tables–just as I frequented ball-rooms and
opera-houses–because they amused me, and because I had nothing better to do
with my leisure hours.
But on this occasion it was very different–now, for the first time in my
life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My success first bewildered,
and then, in the most literal meaning of the word, intoxicated me. Incredible as
it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that I only lost when I attempted to
estimate chances, and played according to previous calculation. If I left
everything to luck, and staked without any care or consideration, I was sure to
win–to win in the face of every recognized probability in favor of the bank. At
first some of the men present ventured their money safely enough on my color;
but I speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk. One after
another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked on at my game.
Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher, and still won. The
excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted by a
deep-muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different languages, every
time the gold was shoveled across to my side of the table–even the
imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in a (French) fury of
astonishment at my success. But one man present preserved his self-possession,
and that man was my friend. He came to my side, and whispering in English,
begged me to leave the place, satisfied with what I had already gained. I must
do him the justice to say that he repeated his warnings and entreaties several
times, and only left me and went away after I had rejected his advice (I was to
all intents and purposes gambling drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible
for him to address me again that night.
Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: “Permit me, my
dear sir–permit me to restore to their proper place two napoleons which you
have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir! I pledge you my word of honor, as an old
soldier, in the course of my long experience in this sort of thing, I never saw
such luck as yours–never! Go on, sir–SacrŽ mille bombes! Go on boldly, and
break the bank!”
I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate civility,
a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout.
If I had been in my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as
being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling, bloodshot
eyes, mangy mustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room
intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever
saw–even in France. These little personal peculiarities exercised, however, no
repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that
moment, I was ready to “fraternize” with anybody who encouraged me in my game. I
accepted the old soldier’s offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and
swore he was the honestest fellow in the world–the most glorious relic of the
Grand Army that I had ever met with. “Go on!” cried my military friend, snapping
his fingers in ecstasy–“Go on, and win! Break the bank–Mille tonnerres! my
gallant English comrade, break the bank!”
And I did go on–went on at such a rate, that in another quarter of an hour
the croupier called out, “Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for to-night.”
All the notes, and all the gold in that “bank,” now lay in a heap under my
hands; the whole floating capital of the gambling-house was waiting to pour into
my pockets!
“Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir,” said the old
soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap of gold. “Tie it up, as we
used to tie up a bit of dinner in the Grand Army; your winnings are too heavy
for any breeches-pockets that ever were sewed. There! that’s it–shovel them in,
notes and all! CrediŽ! what luck! Stop! another napoleon on the floor! Ah! sacrŽ
petit polisson de Napoleon! have I found thee at last? Now then, sir–two tight
double knots each way with your honorable permission, and the money’s safe. Feel
it! feel it, fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon-ball–Ah, bah! if they
had only fired such cannon-balls at us at Austerlitz–nom d’une pipe! if they
only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as an ex-brave of the French army,
what remains for me to do? I ask what? Simply this: to entreat my valued English
friend to drink a bottle of Champagne with me, and toast the goddess Fortune in
foaming goblets before we part!”
Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all means! An
English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah! Another English cheer for the
goddess Fortune! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!
“Bravo! the Englishman; the amiable, gracious Englishman, in whose veins
circulates the vivacious blood of France! Another glass? Ah, bah!–the bottle is
empty! Never mind! Vive le vin! I, the old soldier, order another bottle, and
half a pound of bonbons with it!”
“No, no, ex-brave; never–ancient grenadier! Your bottle last time; my
bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army! the great Napoleon! the
present company! the croupier! the honest croupier’s wife and daughters–if he
has any! the Ladies generally! everybody in the world!”
By the time the second bottle of Champagne was emptied, I felt as if I had
been drinking liquid fire–my brain seemed all aflame. No excess in wine had
ever had this effect on me before in my life. Was it the result of a stimulant
acting upon my system when I was in a highly excited state? Was my stomach in a
particularly disordered condition? Or was the Champagne amazingly strong?
“Ex-brave of the French Army!” cried I, in a mad state of exhilaration, “I
am on fire! how are you? You have set me on fire! Do you hear, my hero of
Austerlitz? Let us have a third bottle of Champagne to put the flame out!”
The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I expected to
see them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty forefinger by the side of
his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated “Coffee!” and immediately ran off into an
inner room.
The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a magical effect
on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose to depart.
Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but finding that my new
friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from getting dead drunk, had now
abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on my winnings. Whatever their motive
might be, at any rate they went away in a body. When the old soldier returned,
and sat down again opposite to me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I
could see the croupier, in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating
his supper in solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.
A sudden change, too, had come over the “ex-brave.” He assumed a
portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his speech was
ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no finger-snapping, enlivened by no
apostrophes or exclamations.
“Listen, my dear sir,” said he, in mysteriously confidential tones–“listen
to an old soldier’s advice. I have been to the mistress of the house (a very
charming woman, with a genius for cookery!) to impress on her the necessity of
making us some particularly strong and good coffee. You must drink this coffee
in order to get rid of your little amiable exaltation of spirits before you
think of going home–you must, my good and gracious friend! With all that money
to take home to-night, it is a sacred duty to yourself to have your wits about
you. You are known to be a winner to an enormous extent by several gentlemen
present to-night, who, in a certain point of view, are very worthy and excellent
fellows; but they are mortal men, my dear sir, and they have their amiable
weaknesses. Need I say more? Ah, no, no! you understand me! Now, this is what
you must do–send for a cabriolet when you feel quite well again–draw up all
the windows when you get into it–and tell the driver to take you home only
through the large and well-lighted thoroughfares. Do this; and you and your
money will be safe. Do this; and to-morrow you will thank an old soldier for
giving you a word of honest advice.”
Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones, the coffee
came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed me one of the
cups with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it off at a draught.
Almost instantly afterwards, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more
completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously;
the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the
piston of a steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a
feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose from my
chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered out that I felt
dreadfully unwell–so unwell that I did not know how I was to get home.
“My dear friend,” answered the old soldier–and even his voice seemed to be
bobbing up and down as he spoke–“my dear friend, it would be madness to go home
in your state; you would be sure to lose your money; you might be robbed and
murdered with the greatest ease. I am going to sleep here; do you sleep here,
too–they make up capital beds in this house–take one; sleep off the effects of
the wine, and go home safely with your winnings to-morrow–to-morrow, in broad
daylight.”
I had but two ideas left: one, that I must never let go hold of my
handkerchief full of money; the other, that I must lie down somewhere
immediately, and fall off into a comfortable sleep. So I agreed to the proposal
about the bed, and took the offered arm of the old soldier, carrying my money
with my disengaged hand. Preceded by the croupier, we passed along some passages
and up a flight of stairs into the bedroom which I was to occupy. The ex-brave
shook me warmly by the hand, proposed that we should breakfast together, and
then, followed by the croupier, left me for the night.
I ran to the wash-hand stand; drank some of the water in my jug; poured the
rest out, and plunged my face into it; then sat down in a chair and tried to
compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs, from the fetid
atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied,
the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the glaring gaslights of
the “salon” to the dim, quiet flicker of one bedroom-candle, aided wonderfully
the restorative effects of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to
feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of
sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still greater risk of
trying to get out after the house was closed, and of going home alone at night
through the streets of Paris with a large sum of money about me. I had slept in
worse places than this on my travels; so I determined to lock, bolt, and
barricade my door, and take my chance till the next morning.
Accordingly, I secured myself against all intrusion; looked under the bed,
and into the cupboard; tried the fastening of the window; and then, satisfied
that I had taken every proper precaution, pulled off my upper clothing, put my
light, which was a dim one, on the hearth among a feathery litter of wood-ashes,
and got into bed, with the handkerchief full of money under my pillow.
I soon felt not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I could not even
close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve in my body
trembled–every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. I
tossed and rolled, and tried every kind of position, and perseveringly sought
out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no purpose. Now I thrust my arms
over the clothes; now I poked them under the clothes; now I violently shot my
legs straight out down to the bottom of the bed; now I convulsively coiled them
up as near my chin as they would go; now I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed
it to the cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now I
fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the board of the
bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain; I groaned with
vexation as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night.
What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some
method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition to
imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brain with forebodings of every
possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in suffering all
conceivable varieties of nervous terror.
I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room–which was brightened
by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window–to see if it
contained any pictures or ornaments that I could at all clearly distinguish.
While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre’s
delightful little book, “Voyage autour de ma Chambre,” occurred to me. I
resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough
to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness, by making a mental inventory of every
article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the
multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may
be made to call forth.
In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much
easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections, and thereupon soon gave
up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre’s fanciful track–or, indeed, of thinking
at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did
nothing more.
There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things in
the world to meet with in Paris–yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster,
with the regular top lined with chintz–the regular fringed valance all
round–the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having
mechanically drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the bed
when I first got into the room. Then there was the marble-topped wash-hand
stand, from which the water I had spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still
dripping, slowly and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs,
with my coat, waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large elbow-chair
covered with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and shirt collar thrown over the
back. Then a chest of drawers with two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry,
broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then the
dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very large
pincushion. Then the window–an unusually large window. Then a dark old picture,
which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was a picture of a fellow in a high
Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister
ruffian, looking upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently
upward–it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At
any rate, he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.
This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward too–at the top
of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and I looked back at
the picture. I counted the feathers in the man’s hat–they stood out in
relief–three white, two green. I observed the crown of his hat, which was of
conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been favored by Guido
Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn’t be at the stars; such
a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high
gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come
into possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the
feathers again–three white, two green.
While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual employment,
my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight shining into the room
reminded me of a certain moonlight night in England–the night after a picnic
party in a Welsh valley. Every incident of the drive homeward, through lovely
scenery, which the moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my
remembrance, though I had never given the picnic a thought for years; though, if
I had tried to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled little or nothing
of that scene long past. Of all the wonderful faculties that help to tell us we
are immortal, which speaks the sublime truth more eloquently than memory? Here
was I, in a strange house of the most suspicious character, in a situation of
uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to make the cool exercise of my
recollection almost out of the question; nevertheless, remembering, quite
involuntarily, places, people, conversations, minute circumstances of every
kind, which I had thought forgotten forever; which I could not possibly have
recalled at will, even under the most favorable auspices. And what cause had
produced in a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect?
Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.
I was still thinking of the picnic–of our merriment on the drive home–of
the sentimental young lady who would quote “Childe Harold” because it was
moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past amusements, when, in an
instant, the thread on which my memories hung snapped asunder; my attention
immediately came back to present things more vividly than ever, and I found
myself, I neither knew why nor wherefore, looking hard at the picture again.
Looking for what?
Good God! the man had pulled his hat down on his brows! No! the hat itself
was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers–three white, two
green? Not there! In place of the hat and feathers, what dusky object was it
that now hid his forehead, his eyes, his shading hand?
Was the bed moving?
I turned on my back and looked up. Was I mad? drunk? dreaming? giddy again?
or was the top of the bed really moving down–sinking slowly, regularly,
silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its length and
breadth–right down upon me, as I lay underneath?
My blood seemed to stand still. A deadly paralysing coldness stole all over
me as I turned my head round on the pillow and determined to test whether the
bed-top was really moving or not, by keeping my eye on the man in the picture.
The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black, frowzy outline
of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel with his waist. I
still looked breathlessly. And steadily and slowly–very slowly–I saw the
figure, and the line of frame below the figure, vanish, as the valance moved
down before it.
I am, constitutionally, anything but timid. I have been on more than one
occasion in peril of my life, and have not lost my self-possession for an
instant; but when the conviction first settled on my mind that the bed-top was
really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up
shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous machinery for murder,
which was advancing closer and closer to suffocate me where I lay.
I looked up, motionless, speechless, breathless. The candle, fully spent,
went out; but the moonlight still brightened the room. Down and down, without
pausing and without sounding, came the bed-top, and still my panic-terror seemed
to bind me faster and faster to the mattress on which I lay–down and down it
sank, till the dusty odor from the lining of the canopy came stealing into my
nostrils.
At that final moment the instinct of self-preservation startled me out of my
trance, and I moved at last. There was just room for me to roll myself sidewise
off the bed. As I dropped noiselessly to the floor, the edge of the murderous
canopy touched me on the shoulder.
Without stopping to draw my breath, without wiping the cold sweat from my
face, I rose instantly on my knees to watch the bed-top. I was literally
spellbound by it. If I had heard footsteps behind me, I could not have turned
round; if a means of escape had been miraculously provided for me, I could not
have moved to take advantage of it. The whole life in me was, at that moment,
concentrated in my eyes.
It descended–the whole canopy, with the fringe round it, came
down–down–close down; so close that there was not room now to squeeze my
finger between the bed-top and the bed. I felt at the sides, and discovered that
what had appeared to me from beneath to be the ordinary light canopy of a
four-post bed was in reality a thick, broad mattress, the substance of which was
concealed by the valance and its fringe. I looked up and saw the four posts
rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that
had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary
presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful
apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as
it came down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a
dead and awful silence I beheld before me–in the nineteenth century, and in the
civilized capital of France–such a machine for secret murder by suffocation as
might have existed in the worst days of the Inquisition, in the lonely inns
among the Hartz Mountains, in the mysterious tribunals of Westphalia! Still, as
I looked on it, I could not move, I could hardly breathe, but I began to recover
the power of thinking, and in a moment I discovered the murderous conspiracy
framed against me in all its horror.
My cup of coffee had been drugged, and drugged too strongly. I had been
saved from being smothered by having taken an overdose of some narcotic. How I
had chafed and fretted at the fever fit which had preserved my life by keeping
me awake! How recklessly I had confided myself to the two wretches who had led
me into this room, determined, for the sake of my winnings, to kill me in my
sleep by the surest and most horrible contrivance for secretly accomplishing my
destruction! How many men, winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to
sleep, in that bed, and had never been seen or heard of more! I shuddered at the
bare idea of it.
But, ere long, all thought was again suspended by the sight of the murderous
canopy moving once more. After it had remained on the bed–as nearly as I could
guess–about ten minutes, it began to move up again. The villains who worked it
from above evidently believed that their purpose was now accomplished. Slowly
and silently, as it had descended, that horrible bed-top rose towards its former
place. When it reached the upper extremities of the four posts, it reached the
ceiling, too. Neither hole nor screw could be seen; the bed became in appearance
an ordinary bed again–the canopy an ordinary canopy–even to the most
suspicious eyes.
Now, for the first time, I was able to move–to rise from my knees–to dress
myself in my upper clothing–and to consider of how I should escape. If I
betrayed by the smallest noise that the attempt to suffocate me had failed, I
was certain to be murdered. Had I made any noise already? I listened intently,
looking towards the door.
No! no footsteps in the passage outside–no sound of a tread, light or
heavy, in the room above–absolute silence everywhere. Besides locking and
bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which I had found
under the bed. To remove this chest (my blood ran cold as I thought of what its
contents might be!) without making some disturbance was impossible; and,
moreover, to think of escaping through the house, now barred up for the night,
was sheer insanity. Only one chance was left me–the window. I stole to it on
tiptoe.
My bedroom was on the first floor, above an entresol, and looked into a back
street, which you have sketched in your view. I raised my hand to open the
window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest hair-breadth, my chance
of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a House of Murder. If any part of the
frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was a lost man! It must have occupied me
at least five minutes, reckoning by time–five hours, reckoning by suspense–to
open that window. I succeeded in doing it silently–in doing it with all the
dexterity of a house-breaker–and then looked down into the street. To leap the
distance beneath me would be almost certain destruction! Next, I looked round at
the sides of the house. Down the left side ran a thick water-pipe which you have
drawn–it passed close by the outer edge of the window. The moment I saw the
pipe I knew I was saved. My breath came and went freely for the first time since
I had seen the canopy of the bed moving down upon me!
To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed
difficult and dangerous enough–to me the prospect of slipping down the pipe
into the street did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had always been
accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my school-boy powers as a
daring and expert climber; and knew that my head, hands, and feet would serve me
faithfully in any hazards of ascent or descent. I had already got one leg over
the window-sill, when I remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my
pillow. I could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully
determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their plunder
as well as their victim. So I went back to the bed and tied the heavy
handkerchief at my back by my cravat.
Just as I had made it tight and fixed it in a comfortable place, I thought I
heard a sound of breathing outside the door. The chill feeling of horror ran
through me again as I listened. No! dead silence still in the passage–I had
only heard the night air blowing softly into the room. The next moment I was on
the window-sill–and the next I had a firm grip on the water-pipe with my hands
and knees.
I slid down into the street easily and quietly, as I thought I should, and
immediately set off at the top of my speed to a branch “Prefecture” of Police,
which I knew was situated in the immediate neighbourhood. A “Sub-prefect,” and
several picked men among his subordinates, happened to be up, maturing, I
believe, some scheme for discovering the perpetrator of a mysterious murder
which all Paris was talking of just then. When I began my story, in a breathless
hurry and in very bad French, I could see that the Sub-prefect suspected me of
being a drunken Englishman who had robbed somebody; but he soon altered his
opinion as I went on, and before I had anything like concluded, he shoved all
the papers before him into a drawer, put on his hat, supplied me with another
(for I was bareheaded), ordered a file of soldiers, desired his expert followers
to get ready all sorts of tools for breaking open doors and ripping up brick
flooring, and took my arm, in the most friendly and familiar manner possible, to
lead me with him out of the house. I will venture to say that when the
Sub-prefect was a little boy, and was taken for the first time to the play, he
was not half as much pleased as he was now at the job in prospect for him at the
gambling-house!
Away we went through the streets, the Sub-prefect cross-examining and
congratulating me in the same breath as we marched at the head of our formidable
posse comitatus. Sentinels were placed at the back and front of the house the
moment we got to it; a tremendous battery of knocks was directed against the
door; a light appeared at a window; I was told to conceal myself behind the
police–then came more knocks and a cry of “Open in the name of the law!” At
that terrible summons bolts and locks gave way before an invisible hand, and the
moment after the Sub-prefect was in the passage, confronting a waiter
half-dressed and ghastly pale. This was the short dialogue which immediately
took place:
“We want to see the Englishman who is sleeping in this house?”
“He went away hours ago.”
“He did no such thing. His friend went away; he remained. Show us to his
bedroom!”
“I swear to you, Monsieur le Sous-prefect, he is not here! he–”
“I swear to you, Monsieur le Garon, he is. He slept here–he didn’t find
your bed comfortable–he came to us to complain of it–here he is among my
men–and here am I ready to look for a flea or two in his bedstead. Renaudin!
(calling to one of the subordinates, and pointing to the waiter) collar that man
and tie his hands behind him. Now, then, gentlemen, let us walk upstairs!”
Every man and woman in the house was secured–the “Old Soldier” the first.
Then I identified the bed in which I had slept, and then we went into the room
above.
No object that was at all extraordinary appeared in any part of it. The
Sub-prefect looked round the place, commanded everybody to be silent, stamped
twice on the floor, called for a candle, looked attentively at the spot he had
stamped on, and ordered the flooring there to be carefully taken up. This was
done in no time. Lights were produced, and we saw a deep raftered cavity between
the floor of this room and the ceiling of the room beneath. Through this cavity
there ran perpendicularly a sort of case of iron thickly greased; and inside the
case appeared the screw, which communicated with the bed-top below. Extra
lengths of screw, freshly oiled; levers covered with felt; all the complete
upper works of a heavy press–constructed with infernal ingenuity so as to join
the fixtures below, and when taken to pieces again, to go into the smallest
possible compass–were next discovered and pulled out on the floor. After some
little difficulty the Sub-prefect succeeded in putting the machinery together,
and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The
smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it
lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-prefect, his answer, simple as it was,
had a terrible significance. “My men,” said he, “are working down the bed-top
for the first time–the men whose money you won were in better practice.”
We left the house in the sole possession of two police agents–every one of
the inmates being removed to prison on the spot. The Sub-prefect, after taking
down my “procŽs verbal” in his office, returned with me to my hotel to get my
passport. “Do you think,” I asked, as I gave it to him, “that any men have
really been smothered in that bed, as they tried to smother me?”
“I have seen dozens of drowned men laid out at the Morgue,” answered the
Sub-prefect, “in whose pocketbooks were found letters stating that they had
committed suicide in the Seine, because they had lost everything at the gaming
table. Do I know how many of those men entered the same gambling-house that you
entered? won as you won? took that bed as you took it? slept in it? were
smothered in it? and were privately thrown into the river, with a letter of
explanation written by the murderers and placed in their pocket-books? No man
can say how many or how few have suffered the fate from which you have escaped.
The people of the gambling-house kept their bedstead machinery a secret from
us–even from the police! The dead kept the rest of the secret for them.
Good-night, or rather good-morning, Monsieur Faulkner! Be at my office again at
nine o’clock–in the meantime, au revoir!”
The rest of my story is soon told. I was examined and re-examined; the
gambling-house was strictly searched all through from top to bottom; the
prisoners were separately interrogated; and two of the less guilty among them
made a confession. I discovered that the Old Soldier was the master of the
gambling-house–justice discovered that he had been drummed out of the army as a
vagabond years ago; that he had been guilty of all sorts of villainies since;
that he was in possession of stolen property, which the owners identified; and
that he, the croupier, another accomplice, and the woman who had made my cup of
coffee, were all in the secret of the bedstead. There appeared some reason to
doubt whether the inferior persons attached to the house knew anything of the
suffocating machinery; and they received the benefit of that doubt, by being
treated simply as thieves and vagabonds. As for the Old Soldier and his two head
myrmidons, they went to the galleys; the woman who had drugged my coffee was
imprisoned for I forget how many years; the regular attendants at the
gambling-house were considered “suspicious” and placed under “surveillance”; and
I became, for one whole week (which is a long time) the head “lion” in Parisian
society. My adventure was dramatized by three illustrious play-makers, but never
saw theatrical daylight; for the censorship forbade the introduction on the
stage of a correct copy of the gambling-house bedstead.
One good result was produced by my adventure, which any censorship must have
approved: it cured me of ever again trying “Rouge et Noir” as an amusement. The
sight of a green cloth, with packs of cards and heaps of money on it, will
henceforth be forever associated in my mind with the sight of a bed canopy
descending to suffocate me in the silence and darkness of the night.
This Man's View 