The Alchemy of Murder (24 page)

“There are two and a half million people in Paris,” I interject, “but up to now, the contagion has only appeared in a few areas. What would happen if a quick acting lethal and contagious microbe got loose in the city?”

“The same thing would happen that happened last time.”

“Last time!” The surprise in my voice has everyone looking at me and I feel a little foolish … no, a lot foolish. I have no idea what they are talking about.

Pasteur’s eyes twinkle and he gives me a kind smile. “The Black Plague was caused by a microbe, one that we have not yet even seen, although I’m certain that we will some day when microscopes are improved. It killed tens of millions in Europe, probably one out of every three people. If it happened today, over twelve million people would die in France alone. Plagues and other epidemics return periodically to attack us, though not as devastating as the one in the Middle Ages.”

He stops and eyes Jules narrowly.

“Monsieur Verne, I hope you have not come here to pick my brain for one of your novels, for I can assure you that the consequences of a widespread microbe attacking the city would be much worse than even your amazing imagination could devise.”

34

After Jules and I leave the Institut, we walk along the street in silence, ignoring the offers for services from passing carriages, both of us in a brown study.

My mind is spinning from the consequences Dr. Pasteur described. There are about forty million people in France, sixty million in the United States. Between the two countries alone, over thirty million people could be killed by a great plague, not to mention tens of millions more throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

“Jules, I’m confused. We went to Pasteur to find out about the microbe, what it can do, and how fast it can kill a human being. And I must say the information we received was quite frightening. But what does this have to do with the slasher’s killings?”

I suspected Dr. Blum was conducting some sort of horrid experiments in his lab, but the death of millions was too much to comprehend.

“From what you have told me, he’s a devil with a link to science—though not the relationship men like Pasteur enjoy. I suspect he’s experimenting on his victims. Perhaps they’re his lab rats.”

“Human laboratory rats …
that’s horrible
 … using human beings as guinea pigs? It certainly fits with the maniac’s lust for dissecting his victims. But why?”

Jules shrugs. “He’s conducting mad experiments on women, satisfying both his sexual perversions and aberrant science.”

“My God, it sounds very much like that. But the man must be truly crazy. People aren’t lab rats.”

“There’s no doubt that a man who cuts up women is insane. But an aberrant mentality can be a strong driving force. What we must determine is his motive. Just because he’s insane doesn’t mean there isn’t a design to his acts. What may be twisted, perverse madness to us is logic and reason to a madman.”

“I’ve pursued a madman with a crazed impulse to slash women. The idea that he could be using women as lab rats is even more repulsive.”

“Think back, where did you first find him? In a shack, set up as a lab, at a mental hospital that really didn’t ask questions when a woman went missing.”

“Yes, Doctor Blum told Josephine he needed her help in a project. But I thought that to be a ruse. But it’s just too crazy.”

“There’s no reason a scientist, if that’s what he is, can’t be as crazy as any other demented man. Can you imagine the harm of someone with scientific brilliance turning to alchemy and the dark side of science? Intelligence is not a gift just for the good. Some of the greatest rulers who have ever lived, men who have swayed over millions or conquered empires, were madmen. Ivan the Terrible, the Borgias, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Richard III, Henry VIII, they were all blood-thirsty mass murderers. Scientists like Doctor Pasteur have saved thousands of lives. Who knows what harm a mad genius can do? There are more virulent killers in a cup of sewer water than all of the armies of the Great Khan. Turn them loose on the world and they would be an invisible army of conquerors.”

“Jules, we are hunting for a man that walks on two feet, not an invisible army of germs. Besides, I came to Paris to find a killer, not to save the world.” But even as I speak the words, headlines flash in my mind:
NELLIE BLY SAVES THE WORLD.

Saving the world would not be such a bad thing. I just pray I’ll live to report it.

35

Jules and I go in separate directions. He’s off to have dinner with his doctor and discuss the fever outbreak in more detail. Initially, I feel slighted that I didn’t get an invitation to the dinner, but I must admit it works nicely for me. I’m not through intriguing for the day.

Upon arriving at Pigalle Hospital, I give the fiacre driver an extra tip to go in and inquire at the reception desk as to the hour Dr. Dubois gets off work. He is told six o’clock. Since I have an hour to wait, I send him on his way, thanking him, and take a brisk walk to burn off nervous energy and clear my head.

When I return I decide to wait in a café-bar across from the hospital, a place where one can stand at the counter and get a cup of
café au lait
. As I sip my drink and try to fit together the pieces of Jules’ insane notion about the slasher and this killer microbe, I get a glimpse of a tall and very large-built man coming out of the hospital. I almost spill my drink. From the height and bulk I am certain this is the same man who was lying in wait for me last night outside my garret.

There can’t be two men in Paris with that physique. He’s wearing a flowing black cape and a hat that a Musketeer would be embarrassed to don. A large golden eagle feather is slanting out of the dark purple velvet band.

Once again, I can’t see the face.

He turns and goes down the street. Curious as to who he is and where he’s going, I leave the café and follow him. I’ve gone no more than a dozen feet when he turns into a building. Hurrying after him, I enter the building, an office establishment with a pharmacy on the first floor.

He’s nowhere in sight.

I ask the pharmacist, “Did a tall,
very
large man wearing a black cape come in here?”

He jerks his head toward a door. “He went to the offices.”

The door he indicates leads into an entryway that has only a stairway leading to the offices above and a door that I presume takes you out to the back of the building. I start to go up the steps and pause—what’s my plan? I can’t go office to office asking for a huge man in a black cape with a crazy hat.

I check the time. Dr. Dubois will be leaving the hospital soon. If I continue this hunt, I will miss him. I go back to the café and wait at the coffee bar, sipping a new
café au lait
and watching the hospital steps. I can’t shake that huge man from my mind. Could he have a connection to Dr. Dubois?

*   *   *

P
ROMPTLY AT SIX
, Dr. Dubois comes down the front steps of the hospital and walks up the boulevard. I follow on foot, giving him a good lead. I’m surprised at the location he leads me to—a circus.

Cirque Fernando, the world’s most famous circus, is not far from the Moulin Rouge. It’s permanently housed in a wood building shaped like a huge circus tent. I’ve passed the building several times during my Montmartre ventures, but never had the time to buy a ticket and enjoy the acts that have the reputation of being the finest in the world.

He doesn’t buy a ticket, but instead joins a large group of people that have formed outside next to a hot air balloon. The balloon is staked beside the main tent. Its passenger basket is big enough to transport four people. I’m familiar with both gas and hot air balloons because I rode in one at a Pittsburgh fair soon after starting my first reporting job.

The ride took us three thousand feet into the air and a fresh breeze swept us miles from Pittsburgh before setting us down in a cornfield. Swinging and bouncing in that balloon basket had been a frightful ride at the time, but in looking back it was an exciting experience. I was positive my editor would commend me for my daring feat, but instead he was annoyed. Called it
unladylike!
An expression I despise. No doubt it was invented by a man who didn’t want a woman playing with his toys.

The circus balloon is a “captive” one—ropes are lashed to its basket so it won’t rise more than fifty feet in the air. From the talk around me I learn the balloon will carry trapeze artists above the crowd where they’ll perform death defying feats designed to motivate people to buy tickets to see more daring acts inside the tent.

The artists tonight are the Flying Lombardos, an Italian brother-sister team. A barker in a red ruffled frock coat, matching top hat and a jet-black beard atop a platform next to the balloon extols the skill and courage of the young trapeze artists.

Dark clouds loom overhead, giving an added touch to the excitement. Jules would enjoy this. Many of his most successful books have dealt with aeronauts, the daring men who defy gravity in balloons to fly like birds.

The daring duo come onto the stage-platform and the audience gives them a thunderous ovation. They’re certainly a handsome pair, about my age with red hair, pale green eyes, and complexions kissed by the sun. I suspect they’re not just brother and sister but twins—with long hair and a padded chest, the brother could well pass for his sister.

As the balloon lurches up, the trapeze artists give a bow to the audience and leap from the platform onto aerial ladders hanging beneath the basket. The two young daredevils have nerves of steel. They swing from one ladder to the other. The young man, hanging from his knees, catches his sister as she leaps like a monkey from her own ladder. We gasp in horror as she slips from his hands—and scream with relief as she catches the ladder’s bottom rung. I am sure all part of the act, but extremely well done.

I spot Dr. Dubois in the crowd. His face is flushed with excitement, but it’s the look of a man who is aroused by more than the vicarious danger. No doubt he’s smitten with the trapeze girl.

Once the balloon exhibition is over, the good doctor heads up Boulevard Clichy with me a safe distance behind him.

Night is falling and people are leaving work, some heading home, while others stop for drinks at the boulevard cafés. Dr. Dubois does the latter and enters a café called the Rat Mort. I sit on a bench nearby, unsure what to do next.

The entrance is guarded by a large woman enthroned on a high bench behind a bar. She’s of some fifty years, whose swelling contours are tightly laced by belts and corsets. She seems to know everyone that enters, including the doctor. I need to figure out a way to get by her and not been seen by Dr. Dubois. I hear someone call her “Laure” and get behind another woman in line to be ushered into the salon proper. Each woman who enters cranes over the saucers on the counter and kisses Laure on the mouth with tender familiarity.
*

What have I gotten myself into? If I want to get in, I’m going to have to kiss this woman on the lips! Never! As I contemplate my fate, the young woman in front of me turns and says, “Quite a bunch of old hags, aren’t they?” She has a common look to her and I peg her as a shop girl.

Smiling, I murmur a listening response. I’m more concerned on how to avoid kissing the woman.

She jerks her head at the café. “I’ve just come by to pick up a meal and a few extra francs. I’m not of that persuasion, if you know what I mean, but these old
poules
like to have young faces to flirt with. It’s better than pulling the devil by the tail.”

To pull the devil by the tail is to live from hand to mouth.

“Come here often?” she asks.

“My first time.”

“Well, let me show you the ropes.”

“That’s very kind of you. I’m Nellie.”

“Rosine.”

Rosine gives Laure, the gatekeeper, a kiss and I flow by with just a nod. She doesn’t mind. The girl behind me is eager to kiss her.

I spot Dr. Dubois approaching a table where two people are already seated. One rises to greet the doctor—it’s the big man that was lying in wait for me outside my apartment building and the one I tried to follow from the hospital. The big man kisses Dr. Dubois on the lips! A long, full kiss. Good Lord, they’re sodomites!

I haven’t read the Krafft-Ebling study Jules mentioned, but I’ve heard it discussed, and I’m not a babe in the woods. I know there are liaisons between men—a medical condition called an “inversion” of sexual feelings—and that a new term, “homosexuality,” is used in the German study. Strict laws are on the books almost everywhere prohibiting such couplings. In many countries the death penalty is applied. But this is bohemian Montmartre where anything goes.

The other person at Dr. Dubois’ table is a woman. She never gets up. I am unable to make out her features or age because her back is to me, but the doctor also kisses her on the lips as he sits down.

At another table a young man with short curly hair is keeping a table full of middle-aged women breathlessly attentive to his slightest caprice. Further observation reveals that when the young man laughs, his bosom swells. The man is really a woman! “Boston marriages” is what the boys in the newsroom call liaisons between women.