GOTHIC CRIME MYSTERIES: The Phantom of the Opera, The Secret of the Night, The Mystery of the Yellow Room,The Man with the Black Feather & Balaoo. Gaston Leroux

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 15. The Trap

       Table of Contents

      (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 СКАЧАТЬ