The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Part 4

Sit down, my friend. 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?

Eh?-Ahhh! It is such a relief to know that you have him! Well, I have no way of telling his age—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.

I don’t mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing, sir. Couldn’t expect it. I will pay a reward for the finding of the animal—that is to say, anything in reason.

Well, 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.

I shall first just lock this door and pocket the key. There, and have a good look at my pistol! I am placing it upon the table, where your cards belong.

Why you! I should. . . ! Oh, why fight over it. My inability to stop these killings will ruin me, ruin me!

My friend 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.

You must admit, however, you are complicit. From what I have already said, you must know that I have had means of obtaining information about this matter—means of which you could never have dreamed.

Yes but…

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. Clearly you have nothing to conceal, and you have no reason for concealment. On the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor to confess all you know. By keeping silent you have allowed an innocent man to remain imprisoned and charged with that crime. But you can point out the perpetrator.”

Certainly sir, though it ruins me. I never wished to be such a villain. So help me God, 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.

That’s a good man, then!

I have lately made a voyage to the Indian Archipelago. A party, of us landed at Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. Myself and a companion captured the Ourang-Outang. My companion dying from a fever, the animal fell into my own exclusive possession.

After great trouble, and grievous wounds, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of my captive L’grande orange, on the home voyage, I at length succeeded in lodging it safely at my own residence here in Paris. I brought him from the docks at four in the morning on a cart, disguised as an injured sailor.

Once established, not to attract any unpleasant nosiness of my noisy neighbors, I kept it carefully secluded in a windowless attic room, just until it could recover from an infected wound in one foot, resulting from a splinter on board ship. My ultimate design was to sell it, of course.

Do go on.

Returning home from a frolic with some of my old shipmates one night, or rather one morning, the day of the murder, I found the beast occupying my own bedroom. It had broken in from the small room adjoining, where it had been, as I thought, securely confined.

Razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting to shave, an operation it had no doubt previously watched me perform through the key-hole. I confess I was never more terrified than at the sight of that dangerous steel in the possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it. So for some moments I was at a loss what to do.

That is when he escaped, eh?

I hesitated a little too long, you see. I had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods, by the use of a whip, and so I went for it a little too directly, if you know what I mean. Upon sight of it, the Ourang-Outang sprang through the door of my bedchamber, down the stairs, through a window, accursedly left open, and out into the street.

I followed as best I could. The razor-waving ape at times stopped to look back and gesture at me, until I had nearly caught up with him. He then again took off at speed. In such-wise manner I kept chasing him for what seemed like forever. The streets were dead quiet, as it was nearly three o’clock in the morning.

Loping down an alley in the rear of the home where the murders in the Rue Morgue had been perpetrated, the big fellow’s attention was arrested by a light. That light was in the open window of Madame L’Espanaye’s fourth-storey chamber. The rough beast scampered toward the manse, leapt over the front gate, apparently saw the lightning rod, clambered up it like a panther up a tree after a sleeping monkey, then grabbed onto the shutter, and swung on it like a child on a gate.

Yessir! He propelled that shutter back against the wall, he did, sir, and swung himself onto the headboard of that poor lady. The whole trapeze act was but one motion, as it were, and took less than ten seconds. I was happy to see he had kicked that shutter again as he pushed off it and leapt into that poor unfortunate old woman’s room.

Well, my spirit soared to see him go indoors, and yet I also felt flummoxed and terrified. I finally saw some hope of recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely escape from the trap into which it had ventured, except by the rod, where I might intercept it as it slid down. On the other hand, I know there was much cause for anxiety as to what that beast might do in the mansion. That convinced me to follow the horrible beast.

As a sailor, I felt I could ascend the nearby lightning rod without difficulty, sir. Yet when I had arrived as high as the window, which lay far to my left, my career on the high wire was stopped; the most that I could do was to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the inside of that room. At that sight I nearly fell from my hold through sheer, mind-reeling horror. Then those shrieks began that awakened all the inmates of the quarter to the murders in the Rue Morgue.

The poor ladies had been arranging some papers in an iron chest. It was open, and its contents lay beside it on the floor. The brute’s victims must have been sitting with their backs to the window; and, from the moment the beast arrived until the screams began, they clearly never knew he was there. They may have attributed the flapping shutter to the wind.

As I 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 one shaving. The daughter lay motionless. The screams and struggles of the lady (during which the hair was torn from her head) changed the expression of the Ourang-Outang from harmless curiosity to anger. With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body.

The sight of blood or the struggle inflamed it into a frenzy. Gnashing its teeth, its eyes glowing, it flew upon the body of the girl, and imbedded its fearful talons in her throat, apparently retaining its grasp until she had expired. Its wild glances fell at this moment upon me outside near the head of the bed. The beast shifted its outlook from fury to fear. Perhaps conscious of deserving punishment, it sought to conceal its bloody deeds, and skipped about in an agony of agitation; thus throwing down and breaking the furniture, and dragging the bed from the bedstead. It seized the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney; then the body of the old lady, it immediately hurled toward the window.

Yes. As the ape approached me with its mutilated burden, I shrank back in terror to the rod, and, glided down it, and hurried at once home—dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly abandoning any solicitude about the fate of my Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party on the stairs, which we have all read of in the newspapers, were my exclamations, as well as the fiendish jabberings of the brute.

I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the lightning rod. It must have left just before the door was broken in, and must have closed the window as it passed through it.