A Capillary Crime, and Other Stories

by Francis Davis Millet

A CAPILLARY CRIME

NEAR the summit of the hill in the Quartier Montmartre, Paris, is a little street in which the grass grows between the paving-stones, as in the avenues of some dead old Italian city. Tall buildings border it for about one third its length, and the walls of tiny gardens, belonging to houses on adjacent streets, occupy the rest of its extent. It is a populous thoroughfare, but no wheels pass through it, for the very good reason that near the upper end it suddenly takes a short turn, and shoots up the hill at an incline too steep for a horse to climb. The regular morning refuse cart, and on rare occasions a public carriage, venture a short distance into the lower part of the street, and even these, on wet, slippery days, do not pass the door of the first house. Scarcely two minutes’ walk from the busy exterior boulevards, this little corner of the great city is as quiet as a village nearly all day long. Early in the morning the sidewalks clatter with the shoes of workmen hurrying down to their work, children scamper along playing hide-and-seek in the doorways on their way to school, and then follows a long silence, broken only by the glazier with his shrill cry, “Vi-i-i-tri-er!” or the farmer with his “À la crème, fromage à la crème!” In the late summer afternoons the women bring their babies out and sit on the doorsteps, as the Italians do, gossiping across the street, and watching the urchins pitch sous against the curb-stone, or draw schoolboy hieroglyphics on the garden walls. There is a musical quiet in this little street. Birds sing merrily in the stunted trees of the shady gardens, the familiar calls of hens and chickens and the shrill crows of the cock come from every enclosure, and all the while is heard the deep and continuous note of the rumble of the city down below. At night the street is lighted by two lanterns swung on ropes between opposite houses; and the flickering, dim light, sending uncertain shadows upon the blank walls and the towering façades, gives the place a weird and fantastic aspect.

Montmartre is full of these curious highways. Quite distinct from the rest of the city by reason of its elevated position, few or no modern improvements have changed its character, and a large extent of it remains to-day much the same as it was fifty years ago.

It is perhaps the cheapest quarter of the city. Rents are low, and the necessities and commodities of life are proportionately cheaper than in other parts of the town. This fact, and the situation the quarter affords for unobstructed view of the sky, have always attracted artists, and many cosy studios are hidden away in the maze of housetops there. On the little street I have just described are several large windows indicating unmistakably the profession of those occupying the apartments.

Late one dark and stormy evening a gate creaked and an automatic bell sounded at the entrance to one of the little gardens halfway up the street. A young woman came out into the light of the swinging lantern, and hurried down the sidewalk. Her unnaturally quick and spasmodic movements showed she was anxious to get away from the neighborhood as quickly as possible. Her instinctive avoidance of the bad places in the sidewalk gave evidence of her familiarity with the locality. In a few moments she had left the tortuous narrow side street that led down the hill, and stood upon the brilliantly lighted boulevard. Pausing for an instant only, she rapidly crossed the street, and soon stood beside the fountain in the Place Pigalle. Here she watched for a moment the surface of the water, ruffled by the gusts of wind and beaten by the fierce rain-drops. Suddenly she turned and hurried away down the Rue Pigalle, across to the Rue Blanche, and was shortly lost in the crowd that was pouring out of the doorway of the skating-rink.

The little street on the hill remained deserted and desolate. The lights in the windows went out one by one. The wind gusts swayed the lanterns to and fro, creaking the rusty pulleys and rattling the glass in the iron frames. Now and then a gate was blown backward and forward with a dull sound, a shutter slammed, and between the surges of the wind could be heard the spirting of the stream from the spouts and the rush of the water in the gutters. Towards midnight a single workman staggered up the street from the cheap cabaret kept in the wood-and-charcoal shop on the corner. A little later a sergent de ville, wrapped in a cloak, passed slowly up the sidewalk, until he came to a spot where the asphalt was worn away, and there was a great pool of muddy water. There he stopped, turned around, and strode down the street again. The melancholy music of the storm went on.

Suddenly, towards morning, there was a dull, prolonged report like the sound of a distant blast of rocks. The great studio window over the little garden flashed red for an instant, then grew black again, and all was still. Away up on the opposite side of the street a window was opened, a head thrust out, and, meeting the drenching rain, was quickly withdrawn. A hand and bare arm were pushed through the half-open window, feeling for the fastening of the shutter. In an adjoining house a light was seen in the window, and it continued to burn. Then the mournful music of the tempest went on as before.

Shortly after daybreak the same young woman who had fled so hastily the evening before, slowly and with difficulty mounted the hill. Her clothes were saturated with the rain, and clung to her form as the violent wind caught her and sent her staggering along. Her bonnet was out of shape and beaten down around her ears, and her dark hair was matted on her forehead. Her face was haggard, and her eyes were large and full of a strange gleam. She was evidently of Southern birth, for her features had the sculpturesque regularity of the Italian, and her skin, though pallid and bloodless, was still deep in tone. She hesitated at the garden gate for a while, then opened it, entered, and shut it behind her, the automatic bell tinkling loudly. No one appearing at the door, she opened and shut the gate again to ring the bell. A second and third time she rang in the same way, and without any response from the house. At last, hearing no sound, she crossed the garden, tried the house door, and, finding it unlocked, opened it and went in. Shortly afterwards a frightened cry was heard in the studio, and a moment later the girl came out of the house, her haggard face white with fear. Clutching her hands together with a nervous motion, she hastened down the street. A half-hour later a femme de ménage opened the gate, passed through the garden, and tried her key in the door. Finding it unlocked, she simply said, “Perhaps he’s gone out,” and went into the kitchen and began to prepare breakfast. Before the water boiled the gate opened sharply, and three persons entered; first, the martial figure of a sergent de ville; second, a tall, blond young man in a brown velveteen coat and waistcoat and light trousers; and, lastly, the girl, still trembling and panting. The sergent carefully locked the gate on the inside, taking the key with him, and, followed by the young man, entered the house, paused in the kitchen for a few rapid words with the femme de ménage, and then went up into the studio. The girl crouched down upon the stone step by the gate and hid her face.

The studio was of irregular shape, having curious projections and corners, and one third of the ceiling lower than the rest. The alcove formed by this drop in the ceiling was about the size of an ordinary bedchamber. The drawn curtain of the large side window shut out so much of the dim daylight that the whole studio was in twilight. In the farther corner of the deep alcove was a low divan, filling the recess between a quaint staircase which led into the attic and the wall opposite the window. This divan served as a bed, and on it, half covered with the bedclothes, lay a man, stretched on his back, with his face turned towards the window. The left arm hung over the edge of the divan, and the hand, turned inertly under the wrist, rested on the floor. There was the unmistakable pallor of death on the face, visible even in the uncertain gloom. The sergent quickly lowered the curtain, letting in a flood of cold, gray light. Then great blood-stains were seen on the pillow, and on the neck and shoulders of the shirt. Beside the bed stood, like a grim guard of the dead body, the rigid and angular figure of a manikin dressed in Turkish costume. Between the manikin and the window lay on the floor a large flint-lock pistol. Near the window stood an easel, with a large canvas turned away from the light.