Le mystère de la chambre jaune. English Read online

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

  Rouletabille having pushed open the door of The Yellow Room paused onthe 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 whenRouletabille stopped him.

  "Did not the tragedy take place in complete darkness?" he asked.

  "No, young man, I don't think so. Mademoiselle always had a nightlighton her table, and I lit it every evening before she went to bed. I wasa sort of chambermaid, you must understand, when the evening came. Thereal chambermaid did not come here much before the morning. Mademoiselleworked 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 thetable was upset. All the rest of the things in the room remain just asthey were. I have only to open the blinds for you to see."

  "Wait."

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

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

  Daddy Jacques who was in his stockings--he usually left his sabotsin the vestibule--entered The Yellow Room with his bit of a vesta. Wevaguely distinguished objects overthrown on the floor, a bed in onecorner, and, in front of us, to the left, the gleam of a looking-glasshanging 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 markswith your boots, and nothing must be deranged; it's an idea of themagistrate'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--forthough the laboratory and the vestibule were tiled, The Yellow Room hada flooring of wood--was covered with a single yellow mat which waslarge enough to cover nearly the whole room, under the bed and under thedressing-table--the only piece of furniture that remained upright. Thecentre 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 fromthe wound on Mademoiselle Stangerson's forehead. Besides these stains,drops of blood had fallen in all directions, in line with the visibletraces of the footsteps--large and black--of the murderer. Everythingled to the presumption that these drops of blood had fallen from thewound 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 lessdistinct.

  "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 mustcertainly have thought that he was pushing at a door! That's whyhe pressed on it so hard, leaving on the yellow paper the terribleevidence. 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 theother! The thumb is wanting and we have only the mark of the palm; butif we follow the trace of the hand," I continued, "we see that, afterleaving 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 noblood, either on the lock or on the bolt!"

  "What does that prove?" I rejoined with a good sense of which I wasproud; "he might have opened the lock with his left hand, which wouldhave been quite natural, his right hand being wounded."

  "He didn't open it at all!" Daddy Jacques again exclaimed. "We are notfools; 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 hasbeen deformed by its having slipped on the wall. The man dried his handon 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, notfrom below."

  Rouletabille went back to the door and carefully examined the lock andthe bolt, satisfying himself that the door had certainly been burst openfrom the outside, and, further, that the key had been found in the lockon the inside of the chamber. He finally satisfied himself that with thekey in the lock, the door could not possibly be opened from without withanother key. Having made sure of all these details, he let fall thesewords: "That's better!"--Then sitting down on the ground, he hastilytook 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," saidDaddy Jacques ironically.

  Rouletabille raised his head and said:

  "You have spoken the simple truth, Daddy Jacques; your mistress did nothave her hair in bands that evening. I was a donkey to have believed shedid."

  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 MademoiselleStangerson 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 nowhere else where he could have hidden himself. Here, too, are the marksof his hobnails. When you entered--all four of you--did you look underthe 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; andMonsieur Stangerson and the concierge immediately carried it into thelaboratory. Under the mattress there was nothing but the metal netting,which could not conceal anything or anybody. Remember, monsieur, thatthere were four of us and we couldn't fail to see everything--thechamber is so small and scantily furnished, and all was locked behind inthe pavilion."

  I ventured on a hypothesis:

  "Perhaps he got away with the mattress--in the mattress!--Anythingis possible, in the face of such a mystery! In their distress of mindMonsieur Stangerson and the concierge may not have noticed they werebearing a double weight; especially if the concierge were an accomplice!I throw out this hypothesis for what it is worth, but it explains manythings,--and particularly the fact that neither the laboratory nor thevestibule bear any traces of the footmarks found in the room. If,in carrying Mademoiselle on the mattress from the laboratory of thechateau, they rested for a moment, there might have been an opportunityfor 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 DaddyJacques, "and he carefully examined the mattress. He was obliged tolaugh at the idea, monsieur, as your friend is doing now,--for whoeverheard of a mattress having a double bottom?"

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

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

  "The mat here has been moved out of place,--who did it?"

  "We did, monsieur," explained Daddy Jacques. "When we could not findthe assassin, we asked ourselves whether there was not some hole in thefloor--"

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

/>   "No, there's no cellar. But that has not stopped our searching, and hasnot prevented the examining magistrate and his Registrar from studyingthe floor plank by plank, as if there had been a cellar under it."

  The reporter then reappeared. His eyes were sparkling and his nostrilsquivered. He remained on his hands and knees. He could not be betterlikened than to an admirable sporting dog on the scent of some unusualgame. And, indeed, he was scenting the steps of a man,--the man whom hehas sworn to report to his master, the manager of the "Epoque." It mustnot 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 theroom, so to speak, sniffing and going round everything--everything thatwe 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 wasnothing about it by which it could possibly be changed into a temporaryhiding-place. There was not a closet or cupboard. MademoiselleStangerson 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, andpassed his agile fingers over every portion of the yellow paper coveringthem, he reached to the ceiling, which he was able to touch by mountingon a chair placed on the toilette table, and by moving this ingeniouslyconstructed stage from place to place he examined every foot of it. Whenhe had finished his scrutiny of the ceiling, where he carefully examinedthe hole made by the second bullet, he approached the window, and, oncemore, examined the iron bars and blinds, all of which were solid andintact. At last, he gave a grunt of satisfaction and declared "Now I amat ease!"

  "Well,--do you believe that the poor dear young lady was shut up whenshe was being murdered--when she cried out for help?" wailed DaddyJacques.

  "Yes," said the young reporter, drying his forehead, "The Yellow Roomwas 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 nothinglike it. The place of that crime was sufficiently closed to prevent theescape of a man; but there was that window through which the monkey, theperpetrator of the murder, could slip away! But here, there can be noquestion of an opening of any sort. The door was fastened, and throughthe window blinds, secure as they were, not even a fly could enter orget out."

  "True, true," assented Rouletabille as he kept on drying his forehead,which seemed to be perspiring less from his recent bodily exertion thanfrom his mental agitation. "Indeed, it's a great, a beautiful, and avery curious mystery."

  "The Bete du bon Dieu," muttered Daddy Jacques, "the Bete du bon Dieuherself, if she had committed the crime, could not have escaped. Listen!Do you hear it? Hush!"

  Daddy Jacques made us a sign to keep quiet and, stretching his armtowards the wall nearest the forest, listened to something which wecould not hear.

  "It's answering," he said at length. "I must kill it. It is too wicked,but it's the Bete du bon Dieu, and, every night, it goes to pray on thetomb of Sainte-Genevieve and nobody dares to touch her, for fear thatMother Angenoux should cast an evil spell on them."

  "How big is the Bete du bon Dieu?"

  "Nearly as big as a small retriever,--a monster, I tell you. Ah!--I haveasked myself more than once whether it was not her that took our poorMademoiselle by the throat with her claws. But the Bete du bon Dieu doesnot wear hobnailed boots, nor fire revolvers, nor has she a hand likethat!" exclaimed Daddy Jacques, again pointing out to us the red markon the wall. "Besides, we should have seen her as well as we would haveseen a man--"

  "Evidently," I said. "Before we had seen this Yellow Room, I had alsoasked myself whether the cat of Mother Angenoux--"

  "You also!" cried Rouletabille.

  "Didn't you?" I asked.

  "Not for a moment. After reading the article in the 'Matin,' I knewthat a cat had nothing to do with the matter. But I swear now thata frightful tragedy has been enacted here. You say nothing about theBasque cap, or the handkerchief, found here, Daddy Jacques?"

  "Of course, the magistrate has taken them," the old man answered,hesitatingly.

  "I haven't seen either the handkerchief or the cap, yet I can tell youhow they are made," the reporter said to him gravely.

  "Oh, you are very clever," said Daddy Jacques, coughing and embarrassed.

  "The handkerchief is a large one, blue with red stripes and the cap isan old Basque cap, like the one you are wearing now."

  "You are a wizard!" said Daddy Jacques, trying to laugh and not quitesucceeding. "How do you know that the handkerchief is blue with redstripes?"

  "Because, if it had not been blue with red stripes, it would not havebeen found at all."

  Without giving any further attention to Daddy Jacques, my friend took apiece of paper from his pocket, and taking out a pair of scissors, bentover the footprints. Placing the paper over one of them he began to cut.In a short time he had made a perfect pattern which he handed to me,begging me not to lose it.

  He then returned to the window and, pointing to the figure of FredericLarsan, who had not quitted the side of the lake, asked Daddy Jacqueswhether the detective had, like himself, been working in The YellowRoom?

  "No," replied Robert Darzac, who, since Rouletabille had handed him thepiece of scorched paper, had not uttered a word, "He pretends that hedoes not need to examine The Yellow Room. He says that the murderermade his escape from it in quite a natural way, and that he will, thisevening, explain how he did it."

  As he listened to what Monsieur Darzac had to say, Rouletabille turnedpale.

  "Has Frederic Larsan found out the truth, which I can only guess at?" hemurmured. "He is very clever--very clever--and I admire him. But whatwe have to do to-day is something more than the work of a policeman,something quite different from the teachings of experience. We have totake hold of our reason by the right end."

  The reporter rushed into the open air, agitated by the thought thatthe great and famous Fred might anticipate him in the solution of theproblem of The Yellow Room.

  I managed to reach him on the threshold of the pavilion. "Calm yourself,my dear fellow," I said. "Aren't you satisfied?"

  "Yes," he confessed to me, with a deep sigh. "I am quite satisfied. Ihave discovered many things."

  "Moral or material?"

  "Several moral,--one material. This, for example."

  And rapidly he drew from his waistcoat pocket a piece of paper in whichhe had placed a light-coloured hair from a woman's head.