The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (novels in english txt) 📖

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 visiter 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 freind,” 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, any thing 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 sailors’ frolic 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 occupied in 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

phrenzy. 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