“This,” I said, “is the mark of no human hand.”
“Read now,” replied Dupin, “this passage from Cuvier.”
It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the
large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic
stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and the
imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to
all. I understood the full horrors of the murder at once.
“The description of the digits,” said I, as I made an end of reading,
“is in exact accordance with this drawing. I see that no animal but
an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed
the indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair,
too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier. But I
cannot possibly comprehend the particulars of this frightful mystery.
Besides, there were two voices heard in contention, and one of them was
unquestionably the voice of a Frenchman.”
“True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost unanimously,
by the evidence, to this voice—the expression, ‘mon Dieu!’ This,
under the circumstances, has been justly characterized by one of the
witnesses (Montani, the confectioner) as an expression of remonstrance
or expostulation. Upon these two words, therefore, I have mainly built
my hopes of a full solution of the riddle. A Frenchman was cognizant of
the murder. It is possible—indeed it is far more than probable—that he
was innocent of all participation in the bloody transactions which took
place. The Ourang-Outang may have escaped from him. He may have traced it
to the chamber; but, under the agitating circumstances which ensued, he
could never have re-captured it. It is still at large. I will not pursue
these guesses—for I have no right to call them more—since the shades of
reflection upon which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth
to be appreciable by my own intellect, and since I could not pretend to
make them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will call them
guesses then, and speak of them as such. If the Frenchman in question is
indeed, as I suppose, innocent, of this atrocity, this advertisement,
which I left last night, upon our return home, at the office of ‘Le
Monde,’ (a paper devoted to the shipping interest, and much sought by
sailors,) will bring him to our residence.”
He handed me a paper, and I read thus:
CAUGHT—_In the Bois de Boulogne, early in the morning of the
⸺ inst._, (the morning of the murder), _a very large, tawny
Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species. The owner, who is
ascertained to be a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel, may
have the animal again, upon identifying it satisfactorily and
paying a few charges arising from its capture and keeping. Call
at No. ⸺, Rue ⸺, Faubourg St. Germain—au troisieme._
“How was it possible,” I asked, “that you should know the man to be a
sailor, and belonging to a Maltese vessel?”
“I do not know it,” said Dupin. “I am not sure of it. Here, however,
is a small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from its greasy
appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in one of those
long queues of which sailors are so fond. Moreover, this knot is one
which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar to the Maltese. I
picked the ribbon up at the foot of the lightning-rod. It could not have
belonged to either of the deceased. Now if, after all, I am wrong in my
induction from this ribbon, that the Frenchman was a sailor belonging
to a Maltese vessel, still I can have done no harm in saying what I did
in the advertisement. If I am in error, he will merely suppose that I
have been misled by some circumstance into which he will not take the
trouble to inquire. But if I am right, a great point is gained. Cognizant
although innocent of the murder, the Frenchman will naturally hesitate
about replying to the advertisement—about demanding the Ourang-Outang. He
will reason thus:—‘I am innocent; I am poor; my Ourang-Outang is of great
value—to one in my circumstances a fortune of itself—why should I lose it
through idle apprehensions of danger? Here it is, within my grasp. It was
found in the Bois de Boulogne—at a vast distance from the scene of that
butchery. How can it ever be suspected that a brute beast should have
done the deed? The police are at fault—they have failed to procure the
slightest clew. Should they even trace the animal, it would be impossible
to prove me cognizant of the murder, or to implicate me in guilt on
account of that cognizance. Above all, I am known. The advertiser
designates me as the possessor of the beast. I am not sure to what limit
his knowledge may extend. Should I avoid claiming a property of so great
value, which it is known that I possess, I will render the animal, at
least, liable to suspicion. It is not my policy to attract attention
either to myself or to the beast. I will answer the advertisement, get
the Ourang-Outang; and keep it close until this matter has blown over.’”
At this moment we heard a step upon the stairs.
“Be ready,” said Dupin, “with your pistols, but neither use them nor show
them until at a signal from myself.”
The front door of the house had been left open, and the visitor had
entered, without ringing, and advanced several steps upon the staircase.
Now, however, he seemed to hesitate. Presently we heard him descending.
Dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again heard him coming up.
He did not turn back a second time, but stepped up with decision and
rapped at the door of our chamber.
“Come in,” said Dupin, in a cheerful and hearty tone.
A man entered. He was a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and
muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of
countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt,
was more than half hidden by whisker and _mustachio_. He had with him
a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed
awkwardly, and bade us “good evening,” in French accents, which, although
somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative of a Parisian
origin.
“Sit down, my friend,” said Dupin. “I suppose you have called about the
Ourang-Outang. Upon my word, I almost envy you the possession of him;
a remarkably fine, and no doubt a very valuable animal. How old do you
suppose him to be?”
The sailor drew a long breath, with the air of a man relieved of some
intolerable burden, and then replied, in an assured tone:
“I have no way of telling—but he can’t be more than four or five years
old. Have you got him here?”
“Oh no; we had no conveniences for keeping him here. He is at a livery
stable in the Rue Dubourg, just by. You can get him in the morning. Of
course you are prepared to identify the property?”
“To be sure I am, sir.”
“I shall be sorry to part with him,” said Dupin.
“I don’t mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing, sir,”
said the man. “Couldn’t expect it. Am very willing to pay a reward for
the finding of the animal—that is to say, anything in reason.”
“Well,” replied my friend, “that is all very fair, to be sure. Let me
think!—what should I have? Oh! I will tell you. My reward shall be this.
You shall give me all the information in your power about these murders
in the Rue Morgue.”
Dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. Just as
quietly, too, he walked toward the door, locked it, and put the key in
his pocket. He then drew a pistol from his bosom and placed it, without
the least flurry, upon the table.
The sailor’s face flushed up as if he were struggling with suffocation.
He started to his feet and grasped his cudgel; but the next moment he
fell back into his seat, trembling violently, and with the countenance
of death itself. He spoke not a word. I pitied him from the bottom of my
heart.
“My friend,” said Dupin, in a kind tone, “you are alarming yourself
unnecessarily—you are indeed. We mean you no harm whatever. I pledge
you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman, that we intend you no
injury. I perfectly well know that you are innocent of the atrocities in
the Rue Morgue. It will not do, however, to deny that you are in some
measure implicated in them. From what I have already said, you must know
that I have had means of information about this matter—means of which
you could never have dreamed. Now the thing stands thus. You have done
nothing which you could have avoided—nothing, certainly, which renders
you culpable. You were not even guilty of robbery, when you might have
robbed with impunity. You have nothing to conceal. You have no reason for
concealment. On the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor
to confess all you know. An innocent man is now imprisoned, charged with
that crime of which you can point out the perpetrator.”
The sailor had recovered his presence of mind, in a great measure, while
Dupin uttered these words; but his original boldness of bearing was all
gone.
“So help me God,” said he, after a brief pause, “I will tell you all I
know about this affair;—but I do not expect you to believe one half I
say—I would be a fool indeed if I did. Still, I am innocent, and I will
make a clean breast if I die for it.”
What he stated was, in substance, this. He had lately made a voyage
to the Indian Archipelago. A party, of which he formed one, landed at
Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. Himself
and a companion had captured the Ourang-Outang. This companion dying,
the animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble,
occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home
voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own residence
in Paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity
of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it
should recover from a wound in the foot, received from a splinter on
board ship. His ultimate design was to sell it.
Returning home from some sailor’s frolic on the night, or rather in the
morning of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bed-room,
into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as
was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was
sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in
which it had no doubt previously watched its master through the key-hole
of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in the
possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it, the
man, for some moments, was at a loss what to do. He had been accustomed,
however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods, by the use of
a whip, and to this he now resorted. Upon sight of it, the Ourang-Outang
sprang at once through the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and
thence, through a window, unfortunately open, into the street.
The Frenchman followed in despair; the ape, razor still in hand,
occasionally stopping to look back and gesticulate at its pursuer, until
the latter had nearly come up with it. It then again made off. In this
manner the chase continued for a long time. The streets were profoundly
quiet, as it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. In passing down
an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue, the fugitive’s attention was
arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of Madame L’Espanaye’s
chamber, in the fourth story of her house. Rushing to the building, it
perceived the lightning-rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility,
grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and,
by its means, swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. The
whole feat did not occupy a minute. The shutter was kicked open again by
the Ourang-Outang as it entered the room.
The sailor, in the meantime, was both rejoiced and perplexed. He had
strong hopes of now recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely escape
from the trap into which it had ventured, except by the rod, where it
might be intercepted as it came down. On the other hand, there was much
cause for anxiety as to what it might do in the house. This latter
reflection urged the man still to follow the fugitive. A lightning-rod
is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor; but, when he had
arrived as high as the window, which lay far to his left, his career was
stopped; the most that he could accomplish was to reach over so as to
obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room. At this glimpse he nearly
fell from his hold through excess of horror. Now it was that those
hideous shrieks arose upon the night, which had startled from slumber the
inmates of the Rue Morgue. Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, habited
in their night clothes, had apparently been arranging some papers in the
iron chest already mentioned, which had been wheeled into the middle of
the room. It was open, and its contents lay beside it on the floor. The
victims must have been sitting with their backs toward the window; and,
from the time elapsing between the ingress of the beast and the screams,
it seems probable that it was not immediately perceived. The flapping-to
of the shutter would naturally have been attributed to the wind.
As the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized Madame L’Espanaye
by the hair, (which was loose, as she had been combing it,) and was
flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of the motions of a
barber. The daughter lay prostrate and motionless; she had swooned. The
screams and struggles of the old lady (during which the hair was torn
from her head) had the effect of changing the probably pacific purposes
of the Ourang-Outang into those of wrath. With one determined sweep of
its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body. The sight of
blood inflamed its anger into frenzy. Gnashing its teeth, and flashing
fire from its eyes, it flew upon the body of the girl, and imbedded its
fearful talons in her throat, retaining its grasp until she expired.
Its wandering and wild glances fell at this moment upon the head of the
bed, over which the face of its master, rigid with horror, was just
discernible. The fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the
dreaded whip, was instantly converted into fear. Conscious of having
deserved punishment, it seemed desirous of concealing its bloody deeds,
and skipped about the chamber in an agony of nervous agitation; throwing
down and breaking the furniture as it moved, and dragging the bed from
the bedstead. In conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the daughter,
and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then that of the old lady,
which it immediately hurled through the window headlong.
As the ape approached the casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor
shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than clambering down it,
hurried at once home—dreading the consequences of the butchery, and
gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the
Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party upon the staircase were the
Frenchman’s exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the
fiendish jabberings of the brute.
I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped
from the chamber, by the rod, just before the breaking of the door. It
must have closed the window as it passed through it. It was subsequently
caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very large sum at the
_Jardin des Plantes_. Le Bon was instantly released, upon our narration
of the circumstances (with some comments from Dupin) at the _bureau_
of the Prefect of Police. This functionary, however well disposed to
my friend, could not altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which
affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or two, about the
propriety of every person minding his own business.
“Let them talk,” said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply.
“Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience. I am satisfied with
having defeated him in his own castle. Nevertheless, that he failed in
the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which
he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too
cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no _stamen_. It is all head and
no body, like the picture of the Goddess Laverna,—or, at best, all head
and shoulders, like a codfish. But he is a good creature, after all.
I like him especially for one master stroke of cant, by which he has
attained his reputation for ingenuity. I mean the way he has ‘_de nier ce
qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas_.’”[A]
[A] Rousseau, Nouvelle Heloise.