The Mystery of the Yellow Room
familiar with the house. At what hour exactly he entered, whether in
the afternoon or in the evening, I cannot say. One familiar with the
proceedings and persons of this pavilion could choose his own time for
entering The Yellow Room.”
“He could not have entered it if anybody had been in the laboratory,”
said Monsieur de Marquet.
“How do we know that?” replied Larsan. “There was the dinner in the
laboratory, the coming and going of the servants in attendance. There
was a chemical experiment being carried on between ten and eleven
o’clock, with Monsieur Stangerson, his daughter, and Daddy Jacques
engaged at the furnace in a corner of the high chimney. Who can say
that the murderer—an intimate!—a friend!—did not take advantage of that
moment to slip into The Yellow Room, after having taken off his boots
in the lavatory?”
“It is very improbable,” said Monsieur Stangerson.
“Doubtless—but it is not impossible. I assert nothing. As to the escape
from the pavilion—that’s another thing, the most natural thing in the
world.”
For a moment Frédéric Larsan paused,—a moment that appeared to us a
very long time. The eagerness with which we awaited what he was going
to tell us may be imagined.
“I have not been in The Yellow Room,” he continued, “but I take it for
granted that you have satisfied yourselves that he could have left
the room only by way of the door; it is by the door, then, that the
murderer made his way out. At what time? At the moment when it was most
easy for him to do so; at the moment when it became most explainable—so
completely explainable that there can be no other explanation. Let
us go over the _moments_ which followed after the crime had been
committed. There was the first moment, when Monsieur Stangerson and
Daddy Jacques were close to the door, ready to bar the way. There was
the second moment, during which Daddy Jacques was absent and Monsieur
Stangerson was left alone before the door. There was a third moment,
when Monsieur Stangerson was joined by the concierge. There was a
fourth moment, during which Monsieur Stangerson, the concierge and his
wife and Daddy Jacques were before the door. There was a fifth moment,
during which the door was burst open and The Yellow Room entered. The
moment at which the flight is explainable is the very moment when there
was the least number of persons before the door. There was one moment
when there was but one person,—Monsieur Stangerson. Unless a complicity
of silence on the part of Daddy Jacques is admitted—in which I do not
believe—the door was opened in the presence of Monsieur Stangerson
alone and the man escaped.
“Here we must admit that Monsieur Stangerson had powerful reasons for
not arresting, or not causing the arrest of the murderer, since he
allowed him to reach the window in the vestibule and closed it after
him!—That done, Mademoiselle Stangerson, though horribly wounded, had
still strength enough, and no doubt in obedience to the entreaties
of her father, to refasten the door of her chamber, with both the
bolt and the lock, before sinking on the floor. We do not know who
committed the crime; we do not know of what wretch Monsieur and
Mademoiselle Stangerson are the victims, but there is no doubt that
_they_ both know! The secret must be a terrible one, for the father had
not hesitated to leave his daughter to die behind the door which she
had shut upon herself,—terrible for him to have allowed the assassin
to escape. For there is no other way in the world to explain the
murderer’s flight from The Yellow Room!”
The silence which followed this dramatic and lucid explanation was
appalling. We all of us felt grieved for the illustrious professor,
so driven into a corner by the pitiless logic of Frédéric Larsan, so
forced to confess the whole truth of his martyrdom or to keep silent,
and thus make a yet more terrible admission. The man himself, a
veritable statue of sorrow, raised his hand with a gesture so solemn
that we bowed our heads to it as before something sacred. He then
pronounced these words, in a voice so loud that it seemed to exhaust
him:—
“I swear by the head of my suffering child that I never for an instant
left the door of her chamber after hearing her cries for help; that
that door was not opened while I was alone in the laboratory; and that,
finally, when we entered The Yellow Room, my three domestics and I, the
murderer was no longer there! I swear I do not know the murderer!”
Must I say it,—in spite of the solemnity of Monsieur Stangerson’s
words, we did not believe in his denial? Frédéric Larsan had shown us
the truth and it was not so easily given up.
Monsieur de Marquet announced that the conversation was at an end,
and as we were about to leave the laboratory, Joseph Rouletabille
approached Monsieur Stangerson, took him by the hand with the greatest
respect, and I heard him say:—
“_I_ believe you, Monsieur.”
I here close the citation which I have thought it my duty to make from
Monsieur Maleine’s narrative. I need not tell the reader that all that
passed in the laboratory was immediately and faithfully reported to me
by Rouletabille.
Chapter XII
Frédéric Larsan’s Cane
It was not till six o’clock that I left the château, taking with me the
article hastily written by my friend in the little sitting-room which
Monsieur Robert Darzac had placed at our disposal. The reporter was
to sleep at the château, taking advantage of the to me inexplicable
hospitality offered him by Monsieur Robert Darzac, to whom Monsieur
Stangerson, in that sad time, left the care of all his domestic
affairs. Nevertheless he insisted on accompanying me to the station at
Epinay. In crossing the park, he said to me:—
“Frédéric is really very clever and has not belied his reputation.
Do you know how he came to find Daddy Jacques’s boots?—Near the spot
where we noticed the traces of the neat boots and the disappearance
of the rough ones, there was a square hole, freshly made in the moist
ground, where a stone had evidently been removed. Larsan searched for
that stone without finding it, and at once imagined that it had been
used by the murderer with which to sink the boots in the lake. Fred’s
calculation was an excellent one, as the success of his search proves.
That escaped me; but my mind was turned in another direction by the
large number of false indications of his track which the murderer left,
and by the measure of the black foot-marks corresponding with that of
Daddy Jacques’s boots, which I had established without his suspecting
it, on the floor of The Yellow Room. All which was a proof, in my eyes,
that the murderer had sought to turn suspicion on to the old servant.
Up to that point, Larsan and I are in accord; but no further. It is
going to be a terrible matter; for I tell you he is working on wrong
lines, and I—I, must fight him with _nothing_!”
I was surprised at the profoundly grave accent with which my young
friend pronounced the last words.
He repeated:
“Yes—terrible!—terrible! For it is fighting with nothing, when you have
only an idea to fight with.”
At that moment we passed by the back of the château. Night had come. A
window on the first floor was partly open. A feeble light came from it
as well as some sounds which drew our attention. We approached until
we had reached the side of a door that was situated just under the
window. Rouletabille, in a low tone, made me understand, that this was
the window of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s chamber. The sounds which had
attracted our attention ceased, then were renewed for a moment, and
then we heard stifled sobs. We were only able to catch these words,
which reached us distinctly: “My poor Robert!”—Rouletabille whispered
in my ear:—
“If we only knew what was being said in that chamber, my inquiry would
soon be finished.”
He looked about him. The darkness of the evening enveloped us; we could
not see much beyond the narrow path bordered by trees, which ran behind
the château. The sobs had ceased.
“If we can’t hear we may at least try to see,” said Rouletabille.
And, making a sign to me to deaden the sound of my steps, he led me
across the path to the trunk of a tall beech tree, the white bole of
which was visible in the darkness. This tree grew exactly in front of
the window in which we were so much interested, its lower branches
being on a level with the first floor of the château. From the
height of those branches one might certainly see what was passing in
Mademoiselle Stangerson’s chamber. Evidently that was what Rouletabille
thought, for, enjoining me to remain hidden, he clasped the trunk with
his vigorous arms and climbed up. I soon lost sight of him amid the
branches, and then followed a deep silence.
In front of me, the open window remained lighted, and I saw no shadow
move across it. I listened, and presently from above me these words
reached my ears:—
“After you!”
“After you, pray!”
Somebody was overhead, speaking,—exchanging courtesies. What was my
astonishment to see on the slippery column of the tree two human forms
appear and quietly slip down to the ground. Rouletabille had mounted
alone, and had returned with another.
“Good evening, Monsieur Sainclair!”
It was Frédéric Larsan. The detective had already occupied the post
of observation when my young friend had thought to reach it alone.
Neither noticed my astonishment. I explained that to myself by the fact
that they must have been witnesses of some tender and despairing scene
between Mademoiselle Stangerson, lying in her bed, and Monsieur Darzac
on his knees by her pillow. I guessed that each had drawn different
conclusions from what they had seen. It was easy to see that the scene
had strongly impressed Rouletabille in favour of Monsieur Robert
Darzac; while, to Larsan, it showed nothing but consummate hypocrisy,
acted with finished art by Mademoiselle Stangerson’s fiancé.
As we reached the park gate, Larsan stopped us.
“My cane!” he cried. “I left it near the tree.”
He left us, saying he would rejoin us presently.
“Have you noticed Frédéric Larsan’s cane?” asked the young reporter,
as soon as we were alone. “It is quite a new one, which I have never
seen him use before. He seems to take great care of it—it never leaves
him. One would think he was afraid it might fall into the hands of
strangers. I never saw it before to-day. Where did he find it? It isn’t
natural that a man who had never before used a walking-stick should,
the day after the Glandier crime, never move a step without one. On the
day of our arrival at the château, as soon as he saw us, he put his
watch in his pocket and picked up his cane from the ground—a proceeding
to which I was perhaps wrong not to attach some importance.”
We were now out of the park. Rouletabille had dropped into silence. His
thoughts were certainly still occupied with Frédéric Larsan’s new cane.
I had proof of that when, as we came near to Epinay, he said:—
“Frédéric Larsan arrived at the Glandier before me; he began his
inquiry before me; he has had time to find out things about which I
know nothing. Where did he find that cane?” Then he added: “It is
probable that his suspicion—more than that, his reasoning—has led him
to lay his hand on something tangible. Has this cane anything to do
with it? Where the deuce could he have found it?”
As I had to wait twenty minutes for the train at Epinay, we entered a
cabaret. Almost immediately the door opened and Frédéric Larsan made
his appearance, brandishing his famous cane.
“I found it!” he said laughingly.
The three of us seated ourselves at a table. Rouletabille never took
his eyes off the cane; he was so absorbed that he did not notice a sign
Larsan made to a railway employé, a young man with a chin decorated