Show 4 11 0 ila C AMPA THE watchmaker OF MONTREUIL Blons monsieur leur pel pal was not a popular man in montreuil Mont Alon reull treuil ills ilia neighbors talked about him every day and shook their heads gloomily when they did so BO even the children hushed bushed their chatter when he be went by and it Is related to this day by the old inhabitants that the dogs showed their teeth and growled at the sight eight ot at him ilia habits and appearance were all against him for one thing pet pel would havo have no with his neighbors further ther than to mend their watches and clocks ile ho seemed to hate all mankind it if the grocer or the notary bade him good morning pals answer would be a wolfish snarl and the grocer or the notary would mutter something about the evil eye if ever a man had an evil face that man was pel pal ills his countenance was long and ran down to a point his noso nose was hooked and two little red flery fiery eyes glared with changeless hostility upon all around him his ears cars were large und and stuck out from his head like sails and his bla complexion was of the waxy bloodless hue of a corpse ilia his business was but his passion was chemistry and all his spare hours were spent in his house which presented a forbidding appearance ile ho had boarded up the lower windows and the doors always were barred and locked ile ho had a furnace in the house and often strange lights of various colors and diabolical suggestion glea gleamed nied through the chinks chink in the window boards and passersby passers by could hear bear the wheezing of bellows and the roaring of flames at times pel pal nover never left his house for days together I 1 and then the fire always was roaring at other times he would ap piear on tho the streets in sober black garments his hie chest covered with ribbons and and decorations which he had bad made himself then he would insist that IF w pit pel glared at her with his wicked eyes and told hr her she was wa reading her own death warrant he was a professor of the sorbonne and nd that his chemical discoveries had startled the world A strange man was kon monsieur pel pei so strange that he was bent to a lunatic asylum once and remained there for a year or two after which experience he resumed his and hla his chemical expert experiments it was thirty odd years ago that a woman named elise doehmer con seated to accept it a situation as housekeeper in the pel pal establishment this was just after the watchmakers second wife ancher and her mother had bad made a sudden and mysterious exit from the house the second wife and her mother we were r a wretchedly III when this happened and they remained lu fu the neighborhood only long enough to re cuper aAi sufficiently to travel thy were not communicative too the most they would say was waa that they thanked god they had bad got away from that house alive this circumstance indrea increased sed the un tin popularity of pel pal what was going on in his house that two women talk that way the friends of ellse elise boehmer tried to persuade her not to take the job it would be tar far better for her to work herself to death as a charwoman than to bo be associated in any way with a mun man who certainly was in league wi with t h the powers of darkness dut but edae laughed at such advice sho she had bad a mind of hor her own the mystery of the pel pal home attracted her moreover she was ti it big strong woman and the watchmaker was thin and frail and it if ho he attempted any funny business she would show him what was which ellse elise had been thrifty all the days daya ut of tier ter life and had a neat little package of francs put away for the rainy day no sooner had she aho begun working tor for pel pei than he began borrowing her money lie he was engaged in an ex pediment perl peri ment which would make him rich and everything she loaned him aou would id be repaid ft a hundredfold after ma making k several loans loana sho she concluded that the security was too shadowy and she refused to loosen up any more pel pal glared at her with his wicked red eyes and told her that she was read ing her own death warrant for many hours after this rel furnace fire raged furiously black smoke belched from his chimney in a steady stream and at night a rod red glare streamed from the chinks in the window boarding it happened that a young man of tho the neighborhood confessed to curiosity as lif his chief ven weakness kness and his curiosity overcome overcame his bis fear to such an extent that he got a ladder and quietly placed it against pals boarded window then ho he climbed up and had bad a good view over the top of the boards of the interior of the house the neighbors waited at it a distance marveling at the boldness ot of the young man and praying that he might return alive lie he did ire he came back to them rind and told them in a sobbing whisper that ho he had seen more than ho he expected to see pel pal was stoking hla his furnace furiously and anon throwing strange fuel into it the young man was sure that this fuel was fragments of a human body moreover there were prints of hands on the wall and those prints looked as aa though they might be in blood nothing was done until morning and then the officers went to tho the house pals fire had gone out and there was a heap of white ashes in the furnace far naco but there was plenty of evidence that a great crime had been committed and that ellse elise doehmer had been destroyed pel pal was taken to jail where he told one lie after another trying to explain the wom ans disappearance then there appeared at the police station a woman who said that she had called at pals house to see ellse elise doehmer boehmer and hafl had found her alone and in convulsions ellse elise evidently was dying and the woman hurried away and kept what she had seen to herself so great was her tear fear of tho the watchmaker it was then suspected that pel pal had poisoned ellse elise and after her death dismembered the body and burned it this proved to be the case and the enormity of the crime has given the red eyed watchmaker it a conspicuous place in the chronicle of bloody deeds while france was simmering with excitement over this grotesque crime further revelations increased that excitement cit ement somebody remembered that various women who had been so unfortunate as to become associated with pel pal had died or disappeared suddenly and mysteriously and it was recalled that pet pel often had boasted of the discovery of a poison which left no traces ilia his first wife bail bad died some years before and the doctor had bad credited her death to the eating of poisonous mushrooms investigation showed that she had died of poison this was bad enough but worse was waa to follow another doctor remembered that lie ho had treated pals mother tor for a similar complaint and she had died the mothers body was disinterred ang and experts decided that she had died of 0 poison it was soon made evident that the inhuman wretch had killed hla his own mother to get possession ot of tho little property she owned which he could not touch while sho she lived then it was rem remembered emberd that two girls who had gono gone to work for pel pal in 1872 1972 and 1873 bad disappeared and were seen no more after a short service with him there could bo be no doubt that they had bad met tho the fate ol of elise boehmer noc or something similar but no great effort was mado made to trac tho the facts in these cases rel pel was tried at tho the melun assizes and a distinguished french author who was there wrote of the prisoner those thone eyes never looked straight at anyone that shriveled mummy face surely never smiled that impenetrable mask had bad had no youth the murderer was convicted but we was only sentenced to transportation tor for life probably because of grave doubts as t his bis sanity |