Death of a Dandy

Raoul--where was he? Clerks and sub-clerks, permanent secretaries and under secretaries in the Ministry of Agriculture debated the question with quips sharpened by a vague anxiety. Raoul La Chapelle was popular, the manager of a department. Now for over a week he had not been to the office, nor had he telephoned or written to say where he was. Ever since the night of a feee when, expected to dinner, he had failed to appear, Raoul La Chapelle had been lost as completely as if he were dead. At last the Minister of Agriculture himself sent three men to Raoul's rooms. And there, sure enough, was Raoul.

He had on a white wig. His green stockings, oddly swollen, protruded from the pantaloons of a pierrot suit, and his face, painted half red, half white above his lace ruff, under a hat tipped with a pompon, leered dreadfully into the black polished depths of a cheval-glass. Beside him lay an overturned stool. A rope, strung through pulleys, connected his neck with the ceiling.

Suicide ? It seemed so, but who could imagine a man like Raoul taking his own life. . . . Murder? That seemed more likely, said friends of his who, like most young Frenchmen, had read the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. But the police said no to both hypotheses. What had happened was quite simple, they said. Raoul La Chapelle had dressed for the feete, had climbed up on the stool to see himself full length in the glass. Standing so, he had taken hold of the grips, connected to elastic cords, on which he did his daily exercises. He was a great one for physical culture, was he not? Well, and then he slipped off the stool, and the rope had caught in the pulley, and the grips, crossed in front of his neck in the mummery of some exercise, had locked fast, keeping him from the fete.