Philip had never before visited the House of Wax. In prison he had heard from Marie Grosholtz herself that she expected soon to inherit the property and the business from Dr. Curtius. It stood on a broad street that must be briskly busy in the daytime.
A prominent signboard, and now just above that a painted banner, faced the street, each declaring that this place was the Salon de Cire.
The sun was not yet quite up when Radcliffe arrived, but every minute more people were stirring in the streets, and soon traffic would be heavy. Not wishing to be conspicuous, he paused outside the first side door he came to in the big building and uncertainly experimented, half-willing himself to pass through the narrow crevice. He was not really surprised to find himself unable to pass through knife-edge cracks beside doors, or melt his body into mist. But maybe, he thought, this whole structure counted as a dwelling.
In keeping with a growing sense that things were being made easy for him this morning, his way somehow smoothed, Philip found a door toward the rear of the main building standing slightly ajar, as though someone had forgotten to close it.
Listening, he could hear faint snores from open windows in the upper stories, where he thought there must be living quarters.
He entered through the door he had found open and quietly pulled it shut behind him. He was standing in a dim, drab corridor, more closed doors on either side. The first one he tried showed him a broom closet. The second, a kind of storeroom, very much larger.
Led by his instincts, and a growing curiosity, he went in.
Working his way silently into the large storeroom, Radcliffe moved among the silent and unmoving shapes of lifeless kings and queens, prelates and murderers, admirals and generals.
The first bright glow of the morning's daylight caught his eye, entering the room through a high window. Looking where that light fell upon a set of shelves, Philip Radcliffe came face to face with his own severed, lifeless head.
When the world had righted itself again, he approached the shelf and helped himself to another, closer look. He had needed only a second to realize that this must be the model made by Marie Grosholtz. Now he could appreciate her artistry.
There was the white bandage, stuck on amid the short, dark hair which was indistinguishable from his own hair… because, Radcliffe realized with sudden insight, raising a hand to his scalp, it was his own, trimmed from his head in his prison cell by Marie herself on the day when she had made her plaster cast.
Other details besides the bandage distinguished his simulacrum from all the others present in the room. The glassy eyes were half open, the coloring a muddy pallor. Shading on cheeks and chin suggested the growth of a few days' beard.
With an effort he put out a hand and seized the thing by its—no, by his own hair—and tilted it. The raw neck-surface now exposed was mottled red, and from it protruded narrow tubes of rubber, their ends stained brightly in the color of fresh blood.
Radcliffe was still pondering his discovery, when some subtle sound, a change in atmosphere, informed him that he was not alone.
He turned to confront a figure, which was much more than a mere image, though it was standing as motionless as the surrounding shapes of wax and wood and cloth.
Monsieur Legrand, smiling faintly, bowed to his young friend in silent greeting.
Radcliffe felt a sudden surge of anger, born of the memory of terror and despair that could never be forgotten. "So, the sentence has been carried out, has it?" he blurted. "Perhaps you didn't notice. I've been beheaded!" The young man spoke through his teeth in a strained voice.
Legrand, blinking, seemed utterly taken aback. At last, his own anger stirred, he got out: "What is this idiocy?"
The young man took half a step toward him. "Have you forgotten that I was taken to the guillotine?… My head has been…" Radcliffe's hands flew through a sequence of shaky and elaborate gestures. Meanwhile he continued to glare at Legrand, as if daring him to confirm or disprove his claim. "The gypsy told me. She told me what you were going to do! To change me into a—a—" He struggled and failed to name the object of his scorn, but it was plain from his tone that the idea now aroused his disgust.
* * *
Upset at what seemed to me a profound lack of gratitude, I glared back at him without sympathy, but rather with a full measure of contempt. "I shall tell you what has happened to your head: It has been filled with brandy and with nonsense!" After venting my annoyance in a string of oaths in antique languages, I seized him by the shirt-front and shook him—still rather gently.
"You have not been decapitated. Nor have you yet been honored with induction into the illustrious ranks of the nosferatu—though I fear," I added as I peered into his eyes, "that Constantia may have brought you rather closer to that goal than I intended. Yes, I see. Never mind, now I begin to understand. Where is she, by the way?" And I glared around angrily in search of my sometimes deranged assistant.
"How in hell should I know?" Radcliffe stared at me. Then his voice began to break, with the relief of strain. "But I remember—the scaffold—"
When I thought about it, the way my client must have perceived the process of his rescue, I had to admit to myself that he really had been under a tremendous strain, that all the details of my plan had not been executed to perfection, and that he was perhaps entitled to some consideration on that account. I launched into a hasty explanation of the key points of the seeming miracle:
"You remember that you stumbled and fell, even as you stepped up onto the platform?"
"I… yes." His hands were trembling now, and he was looking for a place to sit down.
"You fell because you were tripped. You tumbled into one of the long baskets, which was practically concealed from the onlookers behind another basket whose lid stood open."
Radcliffe, who had found a stool, was listening, open-mouthed.
"The body that was lifted out of the basket, slammed on the plank, and bound in place, then shoved into the machine, was not yours. It was one of these!" And my open hand thumped one of the anonymous dummies standing nearby. To which this"—a long forefinger stabbed at the ghastly head on its low shelf—"had been attached."
At the museum, Marie and Melanie had done all the work on Radcliffe's head with their own hands, pouring the molten wax into the plaster mold Marie had brought back from the prison. Then, knowing that the young man's life depended on their skill, they had painstakingly attached some of Radcliffe's own hair, inserted the glass eyes, and administered the final touches with shaping tools and paint. None of the other workers in the shop had questioned Marie's orders or concerned themselves with her behavior. They were perfectly willing to take orders from the woman who was about to inherit—dare I say it?—the whole ball of wax.
In the museum storeroom the young American was beginning to weep—tears were somewhat more common then—with the relief of strain. "But I felt someone pulling on my hair—lifting my head—"
"You are confused," I explained in a soothing voice. "That was a little earlier, when I tripped you and threw you into the basket."
"You!"
The intricate performance on the scaffold of course had required the secret cooperation of the whole crew of executioners who happened to be present on the platform.
"But there were only two of us, as you undoubtedly remember." I smiled modestly, proud of what I still considered a well-nigh perfect stratagem.