I hurried past the leprous thing, down the tortuous corridor to where it opened into another rotunda on a lower level. Here were groups of figures in scenes, each in its compartment, each a masterpiece of devilish artistry. The past drew breath. A pallor was on each, as though you saw it through veils, yet you saw behind it into its own time. Marat lay backwards out of his tin bath, his jaw fallen, the ribs starting through his bluish skin, a claw hand plucking at the knife in his bloody chest. You saw this; you saw the attendant woman seizing an impassive Charlotte Corday, and the red-capped soldiers, their mouths split with yelling, smash through the door; all the passion and terror cried soundlessly there. But behind this brown room you saw the yellow September sunlight falling through the window, and the vines on the wall outside. Old Paris lived again.
I heard the sound of something dripping. ...
Panic seized me. Staring round at all those other groups beneath their pallor - at the Inquisitors working with fire and pincers, at a king under the guillotine knife, and the fury of the soundless drums - I felt it as contrary to nature that they did not move. They were more ghastly, these shadowy people, than though they had stepped forth in their coloured coats to speak.
It was not my fancy. Something was falling, drop by drop, slowly. ...
I hurried up the stairs in a tumult of echoes. I wanted light, and the knowledge of human presence in this choking stuffiness of wax and wigs. When I had reached the last turn of the stairs I tried to recover composure; I would not be frightened out of my wits by a lot of dummies. It was ridiculous. Bencolin and I would have a good laugh at it, over brandy and cigarettes, when we had left this evil place.
There they were, Bencolin and Augustin and Chaumont, just coming into the upper rotunda as I ascended. I steadied myself and called out. But something must have shown itself in my face, for they noticed it even in that dim light.
'What the devil ails you, Jeff?' the detective asked.
'Nothing,' I said. My voice told them it was a he. 'I was -admiring the waxworks - down there. The Marat group. And I wanted to see the satyr. It's damned good, the whole expression of the satyr, and the woman in his arms — '
Augustin's head jerked on his neck.
'What?' he demanded. 'What did you say?'
‘I said, it's damned good: the satyr, and the woman in —'
Augustin said, like a man hypnotized: 'You must be mad - yourself. There is no woman in the satyr's arms.'
Blood in the Passage
'There is a woman now,' said Bencolin. 'A real woman. And she is dead.'
He held the beam of the big flashlight on the group, while we crowded about him.
The wax figure of the satyr was tilted slightly against the wall, there on its landing at the turn of the stairs. Its arms were curved and cupped in such a way that the small body of the woman had been laid there without overbalancing it. (These figures, I have since learned, are built up on a steel framework and can support a heavier weight.) Most of her weight was distributed on his right arm and against his chest; her head had been pushed inwards, partly under that arm, and the coarse black serge of his cloak had been pulled up to hide her cheek and the upper part of her body. ... Bencolin directed the beam of his light downwards. The satyr's leg, covered with coarse hair, and his cloven hoof, also, were stained. Blood had gathered in a widening pool about the base.
'Lift her out of there,' Bencolin said, briefly. 'Be careful; don't break anything. Now!'
We eased out the light burden and straightened it on the stone landing. The body was still warm. Then Bencolin threw the light on her face. The eyes were brown and wide open, fixed in a stare of pain and horror and shock; the bloodless lips were drawn back; and the tight-fitting blue hat was disarranged. Slowly the light moved along her body.. ..
At my elbow I heard heavy breathing. Chaumont said, in a voice he tried to make calm: 'I know who that is.'
'Well?' demanded Bencolin, not rising from his kneeling position with the flashlight.
'It's Claudine Martel. Odette's best friend. The girl we were to have tea with on the day Odette broke the appointment and ... O, my God!' Chaumont cried, and beat his fist against the wall. 'Another one!'
'Another daughter,' Bencolin said, speculatively of an ex-Cabinet Minister. The Comte de Martel. That's the one, isn't it?'
He glanced up at Chaumont, apparently calm; but a nerve twitched beside his cheek bone, and Bencolin's face was as evil as the satyr's.
'That's the one,' Chaumont nodded. 'How - how did she die?'
'Stabbed through the back.' Bencolin lifted the body sideways, so that we could see the blotch on the left side of the light-blue coat she wore. 'It must have pierced the heart. A bullet wound would not make so much blood.... Ah, but there'll be the devil to pay for this! Let's see. No signs of a struggle. The dress isn't disarranged. Nothing at all - except this.'
He indicated a thin gold chain about the girl's neck. On it she had apparently worn a pendant of some sort, and kept it inside the bosom of her frock; but its ends had been snapped off, and the pendant, whatever it had been, was gone. A part of the chain had been caught under the collar of the coat, so that it had been prevented from falling.
'No ... certainly not a struggle,' the detective was muttering. 'Arms limp, fingers unclenched; a swift, sure blow, straight to the heart. Now, where is her handbag? Damnation! I want her handbag! - they all carry one. Where is it?'
He flashed his light about impatiently, and it chanced to flash across Augustin's face. The old man, who was huddled up in a grotesque way, plucking at the satyr's serge robe, cried out as the beam struck his eyes.
'Now you are going to arrest me!' he shrilled. 'And I had nothing to do with this! I —'
'Oh, shut up!' said Bencolin. 'No, wait. Stand out here.
This girl, my friend, has been dead less than two hours. At what time did you close up here ?'
'Shortly before eleven-thirty, monsieur. Just after I received monsieur's summons.'
'And did you come down here before closing up?'
'I always do, monsieur. Some of the lights are not turned off at the main switches upstairs; I must attend to a number of them.'
'But there was nobody here then ?'
'No! Nothing!'
Bencolin looked at his watch. 'Twelve forty-five. A little over an hour since you were down here, say. I gather that this girl could not have gained admission through the front door?'
'Impossible, monsieur! My daughter would open it to nobody but me. We have a special ring as a signal. But you can ask her.. ..'
The flashlight's beam shifted across the floor of the landing; it moved along the base of the wall and up the wall itself. The figure of the satyr stood with its back to the extreme rear wall of the museum - that is to say, parallel with the front - so that one turning the bend in the staircase saw it sideways. At the junction of this wall with the one which followed the steps downward again, Bencolin's light halted. A dim green bulb was placed in this corner so as to illumine the side of the satyr's hood cunningly; it did not reveal any difference in the stone of the wall, but the bright flashlamp showed that a portion of the wall was wood, painted to resemble stone.
'I see,' muttered the detective. 'And that, I suppose, is the other entrance to the museum?'
'Yes, monsieur! There is a narrow passage which goes down to the Chamber of Horrors behind these walls, where I can get at the hidden lights from the inside. Then there is another door, beyond it....'