The Mystery of the Yellow Room Read online

"I have been very ill, very nearly dying," said the old woman. "If

  ever you should have any scraps for the Bete du Bon Dieu--?"

  And she entered, followed by a cat, larger than any I had ever

  believed could exist. The beast looked at us and gave so hopeless

  a miau that I shuddered. I had never heard so lugubrious a cry.

  As if drawn by the cat's cry a man followed the old woman in. It

  was the Green Man. He saluted by raising his hand to his cap and

  seated himself at a table near to ours.

  "A glass of cider, Daddy Mathieu," he said.

  As the Green Man entered, Daddy Mathieu had started violently; but

  visibly mastering himself he said:

  "I've no more cider; I served the last bottles to these gentlemen."

  "Then give me a glass of white wine," said the Green Man, without

  showing the least surprise.

  "I've no more white wine--no more anything," said Daddy Mathieu,

  surlily.

  "How is Madame Mathieu?"

  "Quite well, thank you."

  So the young Woman with the large, tender eyes, whom we had just

  seen, was the wife of this repugnant and brutal rustic, whose

  jealousy seemed to emphasise his physical ugliness.

  Slamming the door behind him, the innkeeper left the room. Mother

  Angenoux was still standing, leaning on her stick, the cat at her

  feet.

  "You've been ill, Mother Angenoux?--Is that why we have not seen

  you for the last week?" asked the Green Man.

  "Yes, Monsieur keeper. I have been able to get up but three times,

  to go to pray to Sainte-Genevieve, our good patroness, and the rest

  of the time I have been lying on my bed. There was no one to care

  for me but the Bete du bon Dieu!"

  "Did she not leave you?"

  "Neither by day nor by night."

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "As I am of Paradise."

  "Then how was it, Madame Angenoux, that all through the night of

  the murder nothing but the cry of the Bete du bon Dieu was heard?"

  Mother Angenoux planted herself in front of the forest-keeper and

  struck the floor with her stick.

  "I don't know anything about it," she said. "But shall I tell you

  something? There are no two cats in the world that cry like that.

  Well, on the night of the murder I also heard the cry of the Bete

  du bon Dieu outside; and yet she was on my knees, and did not mew

  once, I swear. I crossed myself when I heard that, as if I had

  heard the devil."

  I looked at the keeper when he put the last question, and I am much

  mistaken if I did not detect an evil smile on his lips. At that

  moment, the noise of loud quarrelling reached us. We even thought

  we heard a dull sound of blows, as if some one was being beaten.

  The Green Man quickly rose and hurried to the door by the side of

  the fireplace; but it was opened by the landlord who appeared, and

  said to the keeper:

  "Don't alarm yourself, Monsieur--it is my wife; she has the

  toothache." And he laughed. "Here, Mother Angenoux, here are some

  scraps for your cat."

  He held out a packet to the old woman, who took it eagerly and

  went out by the door, closely followed by her cat.

  "Then you won't serve me?" asked the Green Man.

  Daddy Mathieu's face was placid and no longer retained its

  expression of hatred.

  "I've nothing for you--nothing for you. Take yourself off."

  The Green Man quietly refilled his pipe, lit it, bowed to us, and

  went out. No sooner was he over the threshold than Daddy Mathieu

  slammed the door after him and, turning towards us, with eyes

  bloodshot, and frothing at the mouth, he hissed to us, shaking his

  clenched fist at the door he had just shut on the man he evidently

  hated:

  "I don't know who you are who tell me 'We shall have to eat red

  meat--now'; but if it will interest you to know it--that man is

  the murderer!"

  With which words Daddy Mathieu immediately left us. Rouletabille

  returned towards the fireplace and said:

  "Now we'll grill our steak. How do you like the cider?--It's a

  little tart, but I like it."

  We saw no more of Daddy Mathieu that day, and absolute silence

  reigned in the inn when we left it, after placing five francs on

  the table in payment for our feast.

  Rouletabille at once set off on a three mile walk round Professor

  Stangerson's estate. He halted for some ten minutes at the corner

  of a narrow road black with soot, near to some charcoal-burners'

  huts in the forest of Sainte-Genevieve, which touches on the road

  from Epinay to Corbeil, to tell me that the murderer had certainly

  passed that way, before entering the grounds and concealing himself

  in the little clump of trees.

  "You don't think, then, that the keeper knows anything of it?" I

  asked.

  "We shall see that, later," he replied. "For the present I'm not

  interested in what the landlord said about the man. The landlord

  hates him. I didn't take you to breakfast at the Donjon Inn for

  the sake of the Green Man."

  Then Rouletabille, with great precaution glided, followed by me,

  towards the little building which, standing near the park gate,

  served for the home of the concierges, who had been arrested that

  morning. With the skill of an acrobat, he got into the lodge by

  an upper window which had been left open, and returned ten minutes

  later. He said only, "Ah!"--a word which, in his mouth, signified

  many things.

  We were about to take the road leading to the chateau, when a

  considerable stir at the park gate attracted our attention. A

  carriage had arrived and some people had come from the chateau to

  meet it. Rouletabille pointed out to me a gentleman who descended

  from it.

  "That's the Chief of the Surete" he said. "Now we shall see what

  Frederic Larsan has up his sleeve, and whether he is so much

  cleverer than anybody else."

  The carriage of the Chief of the Surete was followed by three other

  vehicles containing reporters, who were also desirous of entering

  the park. But two gendarmes stationed at the gate had evidently

  received orders to refuse admission to anybody. The Chief of the

  Surete calmed their impatience by undertaking to furnish to the

  press, that evening, all the information he could give that would

  not interfere with the judicial inquiry.

  CHAPTER XI

  In Which Frederic Larsan Explains How the Murderer Was Able to Get

  Out of The Yellow Room

  Among the mass of papers, legal documents, memoirs, and extracts

  from newspapers, which I have collected, relating to the mystery

  of The Yellow Room, there is one very interesting piece; it is a

  detail of the famous examination which took place that afternoon,

  in the laboratory of Professor Stangerson, before the Chief of the

  Surete. This narrative is from the pen of Monsieur Maleine, the

  Registrar, who, like the examining magistrate, had spent some of

  his leisure time in the pursuit of literature. The piece was to

  have made part of a book which, however, has never been published,

>   and which was to have been entitled: "My Examinations." It was

  given to me by the Registrar himself, some time after the

  astonishing denouement to this case, and is unique in judicial

  chronicles.

  Here it is. It is not a mere dry transcription of questions and

  answers, because the Registrar often intersperses his story with

  his own personal comments.

  THE REGISTRAR'S NARRATIVE

  The examining magistrate and I (the writer relates) found ourselves

  in The Yellow Room in the company of the builder who had constructed

  the pavilion after Professor Stangerson's designs. He had a workman

  with him. Monsieur de Marquet had had the walls laid entirely bare;

  that is to say, he had had them stripped of the paper which had

  decorated them. Blows with a pick, here and there, satisfied us of

  the absence of any sort of opening. The floor and the ceiling were

  thoroughly sounded. We found nothing. There was nothing to be

  found. Monsieur de Marquet appeared to be delighted and never

  ceased repeating:

  "What a case! What a case! We shall never know, you'll see, how

  the murderer was able to get out of this room!"

  Then suddenly, with a radiant face, he called to the officer in

  charge of the gendarmes.

  "Go to the chateau," he said, "and request Monsieur Stangerson and

  Monsieur Robert Darzac to come to me in the laboratory, also Daddy

  Jacques; and let your men bring here the two concierges."

  Five minutes later all were assembled in the laboratory. The Chief

  of the Surete, who had arrived at the Glandier, joined us at that

  moment. I was seated at Monsieur Stangerson's desk ready for work,

  when Monsieur de Marquet made us the following little speech--as

  original as it was unexpected:

  "With your permission, gentlemen--as examinations lead to nothing

  --we will, for once, abandon the old system of interrogation. I

  will not have you brought before me one by one, but we will all

  remain here as we are,--Monsieur Stangerson, Monsieur Robert Darzac,

  Daddy Jacques and the two concierges, the Chief of the Surete, the

  Registrar, and myself. We shall all be on the same footing. The

  concierges may, for the moment, forget that they have been arrested.

  We are going to confer together. We are on the spot where the crime

  was committed. We have nothing else to discuss but the crime. So

  let us discuss it freely--intelligently or otherwise, so long as

  we speak just what is in our minds. There need be no formality or

  method since this won't help us in any way."

  Then, passing before me, he said in a low voice:

  "What do you think of that, eh? What a scene! Could you have

  thought of that? I'll make a little piece out of it for the

  Vaudeville." And he rubbed his hands with glee.

  I turned my eyes on Monsieur Stangerson. The hope he had received

  from the doctor's latest reports, which stated that Mademoiselle

  Stangerson might recover from her wounds, had not been able to efface

  from his noble features the marks of the great sorrow that was upon

  him. He had believed his daughter to be dead, and he was still

  broken by that belief. His clear, soft, blue eyes expressed infinite

  sorrow. I had had occasion, many times, to see Monsieur Stangerson

  at public ceremonies, and from the first had been struck by his

  countenance, which seemed as pure as that of a child--the dreamy

  gaze with the sublime and mystical expression of the inventor and

  thinker.

  On those occasions his daughter was always to be seen either

  following him or by his side; for they never quitted each other, it

  was said, and had shared the same labours for many years. The young

  lady, who was then five and thirty, though she looked no more than

  thirty, had devoted herself entirely to science. She still won

  admiration for her imperial beauty which had remained intact, without

  a wrinkle, withstanding time and love. Who would have dreamed that

  I should one day be seated by her pillow with my papers, and that I

  should see her, on the point of death, painfully recounting to us

  the most monstrous and most mysterious crime I have heard of in my

  career? Who would have thought that I should be, that afternoon,

  listening to the despairing father vainly trying to explain how his

  daughter's assailant had been able to escape from him? Why bury

  ourselves with our work in obscure retreats in the depths of woods,

  if it may not protect us against those dangerous threats to life

  which meet us in the busy cities?

  "Now, Monsieur Stangerson," said Monsieur de Marquet, with somewhat

  of an important air, "place yourself exactly where you were when

  Mademoiselle Stangerson left you to go to her chamber."

  Monsieur Stangerson rose and, standing at a certain distance from

  the door of The Yellow Room, said, in an even voice and without the

  least trace of emphasis--a voice which I can only describe as a

  dead voice:

  "I was here. About eleven o'clock, after I had made a brief chemical

  experiment at the furnaces of the laboratory, needing all the space

  behind me, I had my desk moved here by Daddy Jacques, who spent the

  evening in cleaning some of my apparatus. My daughter had been

  working at the same desk with me. When it was her time to leave

  she rose, kissed me, and bade Daddy Jacques goodnight. She had to

  pass behind my desk and the door to enter her chamber, and she could

  do this only with some difficulty. That is to say, I was very near

  the place where the crime occurred later."

  "And the desk?" I asked, obeying, in thus mixing myself in the

  conversation, the express orders of my chief, "as soon as you heard

  the cry of 'murder' followed by the revolver shots, what became of

  the desk?"

  Daddy Jacques answered.

  "We pushed it back against the wall, here--close to where it is at

  the present moment-so as to be able to get at the door at once."

  I followed up my reasoning, to which, however, I attached but little

  importance, regarding it as only a weak hypothesis, with another

  question.

  "Might not a man in the room, the desk being so near to the door,

  by stooping and slipping under the desk, have left it unobserved?"

  "You are forgetting," interrupted Monsieur Stangerson wearily, "that

  my daughter had locked and bolted her door, that the door had

  remained fastened, that we vainly tried to force it open when we

  heard the noise, and that we were at the door while the struggle

  between the murderer and my poor child was going on--immediately

  after we heard her stifled cries as she was being held by the fingers

  that have left their red mark upon her throat. Rapid as the attack

  was, we were no less rapid in our endeavors to get into the room

  where the tragedy was taking place."

  I rose from my seat and once more examined the door with the greatest

  care. Then I returned to my place with a despairing gesture.

  "If the lower panel of the door," I said, "could be removed without

  the whole door being necessari
ly opened, the problem would be solved.

  But, unfortunately, that last hypothesis is untenable after an

  examination of the door--it's of oak, solid and massive. You can

  see that quite plainly, in spite of the injury done in the attempt

  to burst it open."

  "Ah!" cried Daddy Jacques, "it is an old and solid door that was

  brought from the chateau--they don't make such doors now. We had

  to use this bar of iron to get it open, all four of us--for the

  concierge, brave woman she is, helped us. It pains me to find them

  both in prison now."

  Daddy Jacques had no sooner uttered these words of pity and

  protestation than tears and lamentations broke out from the

  concierges. I never saw two accused people crying more bitterly.

  I was extremely disgusted. Even if they were innocent, I could

  not understand how they could behave like that in the face of

  misfortune. A dignified bearing at such times is better than tears

  and groans, which, most often, are feigned.

  "Now then, enough of that sniveling," cried Monsieur de Marquet;

  "and, in your interest, tell us what you were doing under the windows

  of the pavilion at the time your mistress was being attacked; for

  you were close to the pavilion when Daddy Jacques met you."

  "We were coming to help!" they whined.

  "If we could only lay hands on the murderer, he'd never taste bread

  again!" the woman gurgled between her sobs.

  As before we were unable to get two connecting thoughts out of them.

  They persisted in their denials and swore, by heaven and all the

  saints, that they were in bed when they heard the sound of the

  revolver shot.

  "It was not one, but two shots that were fired!--You see, you are

  lying. If you had heard one, you would have heard the other."

  "Mon Dieu! Monsieur--it was the second shot we heard. We were

  asleep when the first shot was fired."

  "Two shots were fired," said Daddy Jacques. "I am certain that all

  the cartridges were in my revolver. We found afterward that two

  had been exploded, and we heard two shots behind the door. Was not

  that so, Monsieur Stangerson?"

  "Yes," replied the Professor, "there were two shots, one dull, and

  the other sharp and ringing."

  "Why do you persist in lying?" cried Monsieur de Marquet, turning

  to the concierges. "Do you think the police are the fools you are?

  Everything points to the fact that you were out of doors and near

  the pavilion at the time of the tragedy. What were you doing there?

  So far as I am concerned," he said, turning to Monsieur Stangerson,

  "I can only explain the escape of the murderer on the assumption of

  help from these two accomplices. As soon as the door was forced

  open, and while you, Monsieur Stangerson, were occupied with your

  unfortunate child, the concierge and his wife facilitated the flight

  of the murderer, who, screening himself behind them, reached the

  window in the vestibule, and sprang out of it into the park. The

  concierge closed the window after him and fastened the blinds, which

  certainly could not have closed and fastened of themselves. That

  is the conclusion I have arrived at. If anyone here has any other

  idea, let him state it."

  Monsieur Stangerson intervened:

  "What you say was impossible. I do not believe either in the guilt

  or in the connivance of my concierges, though I cannot understand

  what they were doing in the park at that late hour of the night.

  I say it was impossible, because Madame Bernier held the lamp and

  did not move from the threshold of the room; because I, as soon as

  the door was forced open, threw myself on my knees beside my

  daughter, and no one could have left or entered the room by the

  door, without passing over her body and forcing his way by me!

  Daddy Jacques and the concierge had but to cast a glance round the