Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 6

  “Ah! This is the window by which the murderer escaped!” said Rouletabille.

  “So they keep on saying, monsieur, so they keep on saying! But if he had gone off that way, we should have been sure to have seen him. We are not blind, neither Monsieur Stangerson nor me, nor the concierges who are in prison. Why have they not put me in prison, too, on account of my revolver?”

  Rouletabille had already opened the window and was examining the shutters.

  “Were these closed at the time of the crime?”

  “And fastened with the iron catch inside,” said Daddy Jacques, “and I am quite sure that the murderer did not get out that way.”

  “Are there any blood stains?”

  “Yes, on the stones outside; but blood of what?”

  “Ah!” said Rouletabille, “there are footmarks visible on the path — the ground was very moist. I will look into that presently.”

  “Nonsense!” interrupted Daddy Jacques; “the murderer did not go that way.”

  “Which way did he go, then?”

  “How do I know?”

  Rouletabille looked at everything, smelled everything. He went down on his knees and rapidly examined every one of the paving tiles. Daddy Jacques went on:

  “Ah! — you can’t find anything, monsieur. Nothing has been found. And now it is all dirty; too many persons have tramped over it. They wouldn’t let me wash it, but on the day of the crime I had washed the floor thoroughly, and if the murderer had crossed it with his hobnailed boots, I should not have failed to see where he had been; he has left marks enough in Mademoiselle’s chamber.”

  Rouletabille rose.

  “When was the last time you washed these tiles?” he asked, and he fixed on Daddy Jacques a most searching look.

  “Why — as I told you — on the day of the crime, towards half-past five — while Mademoiselle and her father were taking a little walk before dinner, here in this room: they had dined in the laboratory. The next day, the examining magistrate came and saw all the marks there were on the floor as plainly as if they had been made with ink on white paper. Well, neither in the laboratory nor in the vestibule, which were both as clean as a new pin, were there any traces of a man’s footmarks. Since they have been found near this window outside, he must have made his way through the ceiling of “The Yellow Room” into the attic, then cut his way through the roof and dropped to the ground outside the vestibule window. But — there’s no hole, neither in the ceiling of “The Yellow Room” nor in the roof of my attic — that’s absolutely certain! So you see we know nothing — nothing! And nothing will ever be known! It’s a mystery of the Devil’s own making.”

  Rouletabille went down upon his knees again almost in front of a small lavatory at the back of the vestibule. In that position he remained for about a minute.

  “Well?” I asked him when he got up.

  “Oh! nothing very important, — a drop of blood,” he replied, turning towards Daddy Jacques as he spoke. “While you were washing the laboratory and this vestibule, was the vestibule window open?” he asked.

  “No, Monsieur, it was closed; but after I had done washing the floor, I lit some charcoal for Monsieur in the laboratory furnace, and, as I lit it with old newspapers, it smoked, so I opened both the windows in the laboratory and this one, to make a current of air; then I shut those in the laboratory and left this one open when I went out. When I returned to the pavilion, this window had been closed and Monsieur and Mademoiselle were already at work in the laboratory.”

  “Monsieur or Mademoiselle Stangerson had, no doubt, shut it?”

  “No doubt.”

  “You did not ask them?”

  After a close scrutiny of the little lavatory and of the staircase leading up to the attic, Rouletabille — to whom we seemed no longer to exist — entered the laboratory. I followed him. It was, I confess, in a state of great excitement. Robert Darzac lost none of my friend’s movements. As for me, my eyes were drawn at once to the door of “The Yellow Room”. It was closed and, as I immediately saw, partially shattered and out of commission.

  My friend, who went about his work methodically, silently studied the room in which we were. It was large and well-lighted. Two big windows — almost bays — were protected by strong iron bars and looked out upon a wide extent of country. Through an opening in the forest, they commanded a wonderful view through the length of the valley and across the plain to the large town which could be clearly seen in fair weather. To-day, however, a mist hung over the ground — and blood in that room!

  The whole of one side of the laboratory was taken up with a large chimney, crucibles, ovens, and such implements as are needed for chemical experiments; tables, loaded with phials, papers, reports, an electrical machine, — an apparatus, as Monsieur Darzac informed me, employeed by Professor Stangerson to demonstrate the Dissociation of Matter under the action of solar light — and other scientific implements.

  Along the walls were cabinets, plain or glass-fronted, through which were visible microscopes, special photographic apparatus, and a large quantity of crystals.

  Rouletabille, who was ferreting in the chimney, put his fingers into one of the crucibles. Suddenly he drew himself up, and held up a piece of half-consumed paper in his hand. He stepped up to where we were talking by one of the windows.

  “Keep that for us, Monsieur Darzac,” he said.

  I bent over the piece of scorched paper which Monsieur Darzac took from the hand of Rouletabille, and read distinctly the only words that remained legible:

  “Presbytery — lost nothing — charm, nor the gar — its brightness.”

  Twice since the morning these same meaningless words had struck me, and, for the second time, I saw that they produced on the Sorbonne professor the same paralysing effect. Monsieur Darzac’s first anxiety showed itself when he turned his eyes in the direction of Daddy Jacques. But, occupied as he was at another window, he had seen nothing. Then tremblingly opening his pocket-book he put the piece of paper into it, sighing: “My God!”

  During this time, Rouletabille had mounted into the opening of the fire-grate — that is to say, he had got upon the bricks of a furnace — and was attentively examining the chimney, which grew narrower towards the top, the outlet from it being closed with sheets of iron, fastened into the brickwork, through which passed three small chimneys.

  “Impossible to get out that way,” he said, jumping back into the laboratory. “Besides, even if he had tried to do it, he would have brought all that ironwork down to the ground. No, no; it is not on that side we have to search.”

  Rouletabille next examined the furniture and opened the doors of the cabinet. Then he came to the windows, through which he declared no one could possibly have passed. At the second window he found Daddy Jacques in contemplation.

  “Well, Daddy Jacques,” he said, “what are you looking at?”

  “That policeman who is always going round and round the lake. Another of those fellows who think they can see better than anybody else!”

  “You don’t know Frederic Larsan, Daddy Jacques, or you wouldn’t speak of him in that way,” said Rouletabille in a melancholy tone. “If there is anyone who will find the murderer, it will be he.” And Rouletabille heaved a deep sigh.

  “Before they find him, they will have to learn how they lost him,” said Daddy Jacques, stolidly.

  At length we reached the door of “The Yellow Room” itself.

  “There is the door behind which some terrible scene took place,” said Rouletabille, with a solemnity which, under any other circumstances, would have been comical.

  CHAPTER VII. In Which Rouletabille Sets Out on an Expedition Under the Bed

  ROULETABILLE HAVING PUSHED open the door of “The Yellow Room” paused on the threshold saying, with an emotion which I only later understood, “Ah, the perfume of the lady in black!”

  The chamber was dark. Daddy Jacques was about to open the blinds when Rouletabille stopped him.

  “Did not t
he tragedy take place in complete darkness?” he asked.

  “No, young man, I don’t think so. Mademoiselle always had a nightlight on her table, and I lit it every evening before she went to bed. I was a sort of chambermaid, you must understand, when the evening came. The real chambermaid did not come here much before the morning. Mademoiselle worked late — far into the night.”

  “Where did the table with the night-light stand, — far from the bed?”

  “Some way from the bed.”

  “Can you light the burner now?”

  “The lamp is broken and the oil that was in it was spilled when the table was upset. All the rest of the things in the room remain just as they were. I have only to open the blinds for you to see.”

  “Wait.”

  Rouletabille went back into the laboratory, closed the shutters of the two windows and the door of the vestibule.

  When we were in complete darkness, he lit a wax vesta, and asked Daddy Jacques to move to the middle of the chamber with it to the place where the night-light was burning that night.

  Daddy Jacques who was in his stockings — he usually left his sabots in the vestibule — entered “The Yellow Room” with his bit of a vesta. We vaguely distinguished objects overthrown on the floor, a bed in one corner, and, in front of us, to the left, the gleam of a looking-glass hanging on the wall, near to the bed.

  “That will do! — you may now open the blinds,” said Rouletabille.

  “Don’t come any further,” Daddy Jacques begged, “you may make marks with your boots, and nothing must be deranged; it’s an idea of the magistrate’s — though he has nothing more to do here.”

  And he pushed open the shutter. The pale daylight entered from without, throwing a sinister light on the saffron-coloured walls. The floor — for though the laboratory and the vestibule were tiled, “The Yellow Room” had a flooring of wood — was covered with a single yellow mat which was large enough to cover nearly the whole room, under the bed and under the dressing-table — the only piece of furniture that remained upright. The centre round table, the night-table and two chairs had been overturned. These did not prevent a large stain of blood being visible on the mat, made, as Daddy Jacques informed us, by the blood which had flowed from the wound on Mademoiselle Stangerson’s forehead. Besides these stains, drops of blood had fallen in all directions, in line with the visible traces of the footsteps — large and black — of the murderer. Everything led to the presumption that these drops of blood had fallen from the wound of the man who had, for a moment, placed his red hand on the wall. There were other traces of the same hand on the wall, but much less distinct.

  “See! — see this blood on the wall!” I could not help exclaiming. “The man who pressed his hand so heavily upon it in the darkness must certainly have thought that he was pushing at a door! That’s why he pressed on it so hard, leaving on the yellow paper the terrible evidence. I don’t think there are many hands in the world of that sort. It is big and strong and the fingers are nearly all one as long as the other! The thumb is wanting and we have only the mark of the palm; but if we follow the trace of the hand,” I continued, “we see that, after leaving its imprint on the wall, the touch sought the door, found it, and then felt for the lock—”

  “No doubt,” interrupted Rouletabille, chuckling,— “only there is no blood, either on the lock or on the bolt!”

  “What does that prove?” I rejoined with a good sense of which I was proud; “he might have opened the lock with his left hand, which would have been quite natural, his right hand being wounded.”

  “He didn’t open it at all!” Daddy Jacques again exclaimed. “We are not fools; and there were four of us when we burst open the door!”

  “What a queer hand! — Look what a queer hand it is!” I said.

  “It is a very natural hand,” said Rouletabille, “of which the shape has been deformed by its having slipped on the wall. The man dried his hand on the wall. He must be a man about five feet eight in height.”

  “How do you come at that?”

  “By the height of the marks on the wall.”

  My friend next occupied himself with the mark of the bullet in the wall. It was a round hole.

  “This ball was fired straight, not from above, and consequently, not from below.”

  Rouletabille went back to the door and carefully examined the lock and the bolt, satisfying himself that the door had certainly been burst open from the outside, and, further, that the key had been found in the lock on the inside of the chamber. He finally satisfied himself that with the key in the lock, the door could not possibly be opened from without with another key. Having made sure of all these details, he let fall these words: “That’s better!” — Then sitting down on the ground, he hastily took off his boots and, in his socks, went into the room.

  The first thing he did was to examine minutely the overturned furniture. We watched him in silence.

  “Young fellow, you are giving yourself a great deal of trouble,” said Daddy Jacques ironically.

  Rouletabille raised his head and said:

  “You have spoken the simple truth, Daddy Jacques; your mistress did not have her hair in bands that evening. I was a donkey to have believed she did.”

  Then, with the suppleness of a serpent, he slipped under the bed. Presently we heard him ask:

  “At what time, Monsieur Jacques, did Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson arrive at the laboratory?”

  “At six o’clock.”

  The voice of Rouletabille continued:

  “Yes, — he’s been under here, — that’s certain; in fact, there was no where else where he could have hidden himself. Here, too, are the marks of his hobnails. When you entered — all four of you — did you look under the bed?”

  “At once, — we drew it right out of its place—”

  “And between the mattresses?”

  “There was only one on the bed, and on that Mademoiselle was placed; and Monsieur Stangerson and the concierge immediately carried it into the laboratory. Under the mattress there was nothing but the metal netting, which could not conceal anything or anybody. Remember, monsieur, that there were four of us and we couldn’t fail to see everything — the chamber is so small and scantily furnished, and all was locked behind in the pavilion.”

  I ventured on a hypothesis:

  “Perhaps he got away with the mattress — in the mattress! — Anything is possible, in the face of such a mystery! In their distress of mind Monsieur Stangerson and the concierge may not have noticed they were bearing a double weight; especially if the concierge were an accomplice! I throw out this hypothesis for what it is worth, but it explains many things, — and particularly the fact that neither the laboratory nor the vestibule bear any traces of the footmarks found in the room. If, in carrying Mademoiselle on the mattress from the laboratory of the chateau, they rested for a moment, there might have been an opportunity for the man in it to escape.

  “And then?” asked Rouletabille, deliberately laughing under the bed.

  I felt rather vexed and replied:

  “I don’t know, — but anything appears possible” —

  “The examining magistrate had the same idea, monsieur,” said Daddy Jacques, “and he carefully examined the mattress. He was obliged to laugh at the idea, monsieur, as your friend is doing now, — for whoever heard of a mattress having a double bottom?”

  I was myself obliged to laugh, on seeing that what I had said was absurd; but in an affair like this one hardly knows where an absurdity begins or ends.

  My friend alone seemed able to talk intelligently. He called out from under the bed.

  “The mat here has been moved out of place, — who did it?”

  “We did, monsieur,” explained Daddy Jacques. “When we could not find the assassin, we asked ourselves whether there was not some hole in the floor—”

  “There is not,” replied Rouletabille. “Is there a cellar?”

  “No, there’s no cellar. But that has
not stopped our searching, and has not prevented the examining magistrate and his Registrar from studying the floor plank by plank, as if there had been a cellar under it.”

  The reporter then reappeared. His eyes were sparkling and his nostrils quivered. He remained on his hands and knees. He could not be better likened than to an admirable sporting dog on the scent of some unusual game. And, indeed, he was scenting the steps of a man, — the man whom he has sworn to report to his master, the manager of the “Epoque.” It must not be forgotten that Rouletabille was first and last a journalist.

  Thus, on his hands and knees, he made his way to the four corners of the room, so to speak, sniffing and going round everything — everything that we could see, which was not much, and everything that we could not see, which must have been infinite.

  The toilette table was a simple table standing on four legs; there was nothing about it by which it could possibly be changed into a temporary hiding-place. There was not a closet or cupboard. Mademoiselle Stangerson kept her wardrobe at the chateau.

  Rouletabille literally passed his nose and hands along the walls, constructed of solid brickwork. When he had finished with the walls, and passed his agile fingers over every portion of the yellow paper covering them, he reached to the ceiling, which he was able to touch by mounting on a chair placed on the toilette table, and by moving this ingeniously constructed stage from place to place he examined every foot of it. When he had finished his scrutiny of the ceiling, where he carefully examined the hole made by the second bullet, he approached the window, and, once more, examined the iron bars and blinds, all of which were solid and intact. At last, he gave a grunt of satisfaction and declared “Now I am at ease!”

  “Well, — do you believe that the poor dear young lady was shut up when she was being murdered — when she cried out for help?” wailed Daddy Jacques.

  “Yes,” said the young reporter, drying his forehead, ““The Yellow Room” was as tightly shut as an iron safe.”

  “That,” I said, “is why this mystery is the most surprising I know. Edgar Allan Poe, in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ invented nothing like it. The place of that crime was sufficiently closed to prevent the escape of a man; but there was that window through which the monkey, the perpetrator of the murder, could slip away! But here, there can be no question of an opening of any sort. The door was fastened, and through the window blinds, secure as they were, not even a fly could enter or get out.”