Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Read online

  “I have announced in the leading journals that a handsome reward will be given to a driver of any public conveyance who drove a fare to No. 40, Post Office, about ten o’clock on the morning of the 24th of October. Information to be addressed to ‘M. R.,’ at the office of the ‘Epoque’; but no answer has resulted. The man may have walked; but, as he was most likely in a hurry, there was a chance that he might have gone in a cab. Who, I keep asking myself night and day, is the man who so strongly resembles Monsieur Robert Darzac, and who is also known to have bought the cane which has fallen into Larsan’s hands?

  “The most serious fact is that Monsieur Darzac was, at the very same time that his double presented himself at the Post Office, scheduled for a lecture at the Sorbonne. He had not delivered that lecture, and one of his friends took his place. When I questioned him as to how he had employeed the time, he told me that he had gone for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne. What do you think of a professor who, instead of giving his lecture, obtains a substitute to go for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne? When Frederic Larsan asked him for information on this point, he quietly replied that it was no business of his how he spent his time in Paris. On which Fred swore aloud that he would find out, without anybody’s help.

  “All this seems to fit in with Fred’s hypothesis, namely, that Monsieur Stangerson allowed the murderer to escape in order to avoid a scandal. The hypothesis is further substantiated by the fact that Darzac was in The Yellow Room and was permitted to get away. That hypothesis I believe to be a false one. — Larsan is being misled by it, though that would not displease me, did it not affect an innocent person. Now does that hypothesis really mislead Frederic Larsan? That is the question — that is the question.”

  “Perhaps he is right,” I cried, interrupting Rouletabille. “Are you sure that Monsieur Darzac is innocent? — It seems to me that these are extraordinary coincidences—”

  “Coincidences,” replied my friend, “are the worst enemies to truth.”

  “What does the examining magistrate think now of the matter?”

  “Monsieur de Marquet hesitates to accuse Monsieur Darzac, in the absence of absolute proofs. Not only would he have public opinion wholly against him, to say nothing of the Sorbonne, but Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson. She adores Monsieur Robert Darzac. Indistinctly as she saw the murderer, it would be hard to make the public believe that she could not have recognised him, if Darzac had been the criminal. No doubt The Yellow Room was very dimly lit; but a night-light, however small, gives some light. Here, my boy, is how things stood when, three days, or rather three nights ago, an extraordinarily strange incident occurred.”

  CHAPTER XIV. “I Expect the Assassin This Evening”

  “I MUST TAKE you,” said Rouletabille, “so as to enable you to understand, to the various scenes. I myself believe that I have discovered what everybody else is searching for, namely, how the murderer escaped from The Yellow Room, without any accomplice, and without Mademoiselle Stangerson having had anything to do with it. But so long as I am not sure of the real murderer, I cannot state the theory on which I am working. I can only say that I believe it to be correct and, in any case, a quite natural and simple one. As to what happened in this place three nights ago, I must say it kept me wondering for a whole day and a night. It passes all belief. The theory I have formed from the incident is so absurd that I would rather matters remained as yet unexplained.”

  Saying which the young reporter invited me to go and make the tour of the chateau with him. The only sound to be heard was the crunching of the dead leaves beneath our feet. The silence was so intense that one might have thought the chateau had been abandoned. The old stones, the stagnant water of the ditch surrounding the donjon, the bleak ground strewn with the dead leaves, the dark, skeleton-like outlines of the trees, all contributed to give to the desolate place, now filled with its awful mystery, a most funereal aspect. As we passed round the donjon, we met the Green Man, the forest-keeper, who did not greet us, but walked by as if we had not existed. He was looking just as I had formerly seen him through the window of the Donjon Inn. He had still his fowling-piece slung at his back, his pipe was in his mouth, and his eye-glasses on his nose.

  “An odd kind of fish!” Rouletabille said to me, in a low tone.

  “Have you spoken to him?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I could get nothing out of him. His only answers are grunts and shrugs of the shoulders. He generally lives on the first floor of the donjon, a big room that once served for an oratory. He lives like a bear, never goes out without his gun, and is only pleasant with the girls. The women, for twelve miles round, are all setting their caps for him. For the present, he is paying attention to Madame Mathieu, whose husband is keeping a lynx eye upon her in consequence.”

  After passing the donjon, which is situated at the extreme end of the left wing, we went to the back of the chateau. Rouletabille, pointing to a window which I recognised as the only one belonging to Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment, said to me:

  “If you had been here, two nights ago, you would have seen your humble servant at the top of a ladder, about to enter the chateau by that window.”

  As I expressed some surprise at this piece of nocturnal gymnastics, he begged me to notice carefully the exterior disposition of the chateau. We then went back into the building.

  “I must now show you the first floor of the chateau, where I am living,” said my friend.

  To enable the reader the better to understand the disposition of these parts of the dwelling, I annex a plan of the first floor of the right wing, drawn by Rouletabille the day after the extraordinary phenomenon occurred, the details of which I am about to relate.

  boudoir

  4

  | | | | | |

  | | Mlle. | | Mlle. | | Mr.

  Lumber |Strangerson’s Strangerson’s| |Strangerson’s

  | Room | Sitting | | Bed Room | | Room

  | | Room | | |stair-case |

  | | |bath|anteroom| |

  | | ||| | |

  |

  2 —— — Right Gallery Right Wing —— —— 3 Right Gallery

  Left Wing

  |

  |Roulet- | W G |

  |tabille’s | I A | Right Wing Left Wing

  | Room N L of the

  | | D L | Chateau

  Frederic | I E |

  |Larsan’s N R

  | Room | G Y |

  | |

  | | 1 |

  . 5 .

  . 6 .

  . .

  . . .

  Rouletabille motioned me to follow him up a magnificent flight of stairs ending in a landing on the first floor. From this landing one could pass to the right or left wing of the chateau by a gallery opening from it. This gallery, high and wide, extended along the whole length of the building and was lit from the front of the chateau facing the north. The rooms, the windows of which looked to the south, opened out of the gallery. Professor Stangerson inhabited the left wing of the building. Mademoiselle Stangerson had her apartment in the right wing.

  We entered the gallery to the right. A narrow carpet, laid on the waxed oaken floor, which shone like glass, deadened the sound of our footsteps. Rouletabille asked me, in a low tone, to walk carefully, as we were passing the door of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment. This consisted of a bed-room, an ante-room, a small bath-room, a boudoir, and a drawing-room. One could pass from one to another of these rooms without having to go by way of the gallery. The gallery continued straight to the western end of the building, where it was lit by a high window (window 2 on the plan). At about two-thirds of its length this gallery, at a right angle, joined another gallery following the course of the right wing.

  The better to follow this narrative, we shall call the gallery leading from the stairs to the eastern window, the “right” gallery and the gallery quitting it at a right angle, the “off-turning” gallery (winding gallery in the plan). It was at the meeting point of the two galleries that Rou
letabille had his chamber, adjoining that of Frederic Larsan, the door of each opening on to the “off-turning” gallery, while the doors of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment opened into the “right” gallery. (See the plan.)

  Rouletabille opened the door of his room and after we had passed in, carefully drew the bolt. I had not had time to glance round the place in which he had been installed, when he uttered a cry of surprise and pointed to a pair of eye-glasses on a side-table.

  “What are these doing here?” he asked.

  I should have been puzzled to answer him.

  “I wonder,” he said, “I wonder if this is what I have been searching for. I wonder if these are the eye-glasses from the presbytery!”

  He seized them eagerly, his fingers caressing the glass. Then looking at me, with an expression of terror on his face, he murmured, “Oh! — Oh!”

  He repeated the exclamation again and again, as if his thoughts had suddenly turned his brain.

  He rose and, putting his hand on my shoulder, laughed like one demented as he said:

  “Those glasses will drive me silly! Mathematically speaking the thing is possible; but humanly speaking it is impossible — or afterwards — or afterwards—”

  Two light knocks struck the door. Rouletabille opened it. A figure entered. I recognised the concierge, whom I had seen when she was being taken to the pavilion for examination. I was surprised, thinking she was still under lock and key. This woman said in a very low tone:

  “In the grove of the parquet.”

  Rouletabille replied: “Thanks.” — The woman then left. He again turned to me, his look haggard, after having carefully refastened the door, muttering some incomprehensible phrases.

  “If the thing is mathematically possible, why should it not be humanly! — And if it is humanly possible, the matter is simply awful.” I interrupted him in his soliloquy:

  “Have they set the concierges at liberty, then?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, “I had them liberated, I needed people I could trust. The woman is thoroughly devoted to me, and her husband would lay down his life for me.”

  “Oho!” I said, “when will he have occasion to do it?”

  “This evening, — for this evening I expect the murderer.”

  “You expect the murderer this evening? Then you know him?”

  “I shall know him; but I should be mad to affirm, categorically, at this moment that I do know him. The mathematical idea I have of the murderer gives results so frightful, so monstrous, that I hope it is still possible that I am mistaken. I hope so, with all my heart!”

  “Five minutes ago, you did not know the murderer; how can you say that you expect him this evening?”

  “Because I know that he must come.”

  Rouletabille very slowly filled his pipe and lit it. That meant an interesting story. At that moment we heard some one walking in the gallery and passing before our door. Rouletabille listened. The sound of the footstep died away in the distance.

  “Is Frederic Larsan in his room?” I asked, pointing to the partition.

  “No,” my friend answered. “He went to Paris this morning, — still on the scent of Darzac, who also left for Paris. That matter will turn out badly. I expect that Monsieur Darzac will be arrested in the course of the next week. The worst of it is that everything seems to be in league against him, — circumstances, things, people. Not an hour passes without bringing some new evidence against him. The examining magistrate is overwhelmed by it — and blind.”

  “Frederic Larsan, however, is not a novice,” I said.

  “I thought so,” said Rouletabille, with a slightly contemptuous turn of his lips, “I fancied he was a much abler man. I had, indeed, a great admiration for him, before I got to know his method of working. It’s deplorable. He owes his reputation solely to his ability; but he lacks reasoning power, — the mathematics of his ideas are very poor.”

  I looked closely at Rouletabille and could not help smiling, on hearing this boy of eighteen talking of a man who had proved to the world that he was the finest police sleuth in Europe.

  “You smile,” he said? “you are wrong! I swear I will outwit him — and in a striking way! But I must make haste about it, for he has an enormous start on me — given him by Monsieur Robert Darzac, who is this evening going to increase it still more. Think of it! — every time the murderer comes to the chateau, Monsieur Darzac, by a strange fatality, absents himself and refuses to give any account of how he employs his time.”

  “Every time the assassin comes to the chateau!” I cried. “Has he returned then — ?”

  “Yes, during that famous night when the strange phenomenon occurred.”

  I was now going to learn about the astonishing phenomenon to which Rouletabille had made allusion half an hour earlier without giving me any explanation of it. But I had learned never to press Rouletabille in his narratives. He spoke when the fancy took him and when he judged it to be right. He was less concerned about my curiosity than he was for making a complete summing up for himself of any important matter in which he was interested.

  At last, in short rapid phrases, he acquainted me with things which plunged me into a state bordering on complete bewilderment. Indeed, the results of that still unknown science known as hypnotism, for example, were not more inexplicable than the disappearance of the “matter” of the murderer at the moment when four persons were within touch of him. I speak of hypnotism as I would of electricity, for of the nature of both we are ignorant and we know little of their laws. I cite these examples because, at the time, the case appeared to me to be only explicable by the inexplicable, — that is to say, by an event outside of known natural laws. And yet, if I had had Rouletabille’s brain, I should, like him, have had a presentiment of the natural explanation; for the most curious thing about all the mysteries of the Glandier case was the natural manner in which he explained them.

  I have among the papers that were sent me by the young man, after the affair was over, a note-book of his, in which a complete account is given of the phenomenon of the disappearance of the “matter” of the assassin, and the thoughts to which it gave rise in the mind of my young friend. It is preferable, I think, to give the reader this account, rather than continue to reproduce my conversation with Rouletabille; for I should be afraid, in a history of this nature, to add a word that was not in accordance with the strictest truth.

  CHAPTER XV. The Trap

  (EXTRACT FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF JOSEPH ROULETABILLE)

  “Last night — the night between the 29th and 30th of October—” wrote Joseph Rouletabille, “I woke up towards one o’clock in the morning. Was it sleeplessness, or noise without? — The cry of the Bete du Bon Dieu rang out with sinister loudness from the end of the park. I rose and opened the window. Cold wind and rain; opaque darkness; silence. I reclosed my window. Again the sound of the cat’s weird cry in the distance. I partly dressed in haste. The weather was too bad for even a cat to be turned out in it. What did it mean, then — that imitating of the mewing of Mother Angenoux’ cat so near the chateau? I seized a good-sized stick, the only weapon I had, and, without making any noise, opened the door.

  “The gallery into which I went was well lit by a lamp with a reflector. I felt a keen current of air and, on turning, found the window open, at the extreme end of the gallery, which I call the ‘off-turning’ gallery, to distinguish it from the ‘right’ gallery, on to which the apartment of Mademoiselle Stangerson opened. These two galleries cross each other at right angles. Who had left that window open? Or, who had come to open it? I went to the window and leaned out. Five feet below me there was a sort of terrace over the semi-circular projection of a room on the ground-floor. One could, if one wanted, jump from the window on to the terrace, and allow oneself to drop from it into the court of the chateau. Whoever had entered by this road had, evidently, not had a key to the vestibule door. But why should I be thinking of my previous night’s attempt with the ladder? — Because of the
open window — left open, perhaps, by the negligence of a servant? I reclosed it, smiling at the ease with which I built a drama on the mere suggestion of an open window.

  “Again the cry of the Bete du Bon Dieu! — and then silence. The rain ceased to beat on the window. All in the chateau slept. I walked with infinite precaution on the carpet of the gallery. On reaching the corner of the ‘right’ gallery, I peered round it cautiously. There was another lamp there with a reflector which quite lit up the several objects in it, — three chairs and some pictures hanging on the wall. What was I doing there? Perfect silence reigned throughout. Everything was sunk in repose. What was the instinct that urged me towards Mademoiselle Stangerson’s chamber? Why did a voice within me cry: ‘Go on, to the chamber of Mademoiselle Stangerson!’ I cast my eyes down upon the carpet on which I was treading and saw that my steps were being directed towards Mademoiselle Stangerson’s chamber by the marks of steps that had already been made there. Yes, on the carpet were traces of footsteps stained with mud leading to the chamber of Mademoiselle Stangerson. Horror! Horror! — I recognised in those footprints the impression of the neat boots of the murderer! He had come, then, from without in this wretched night. If you could descend from the gallery by way of the window, by means of the terrace, then you could get into the chateau by the same means.