The Mystery of the Yellow Room
a tone at once mocking and despairing, and was followed by a burst of
such nervous laughter that I think her words will never cease to sound
in my ears. But another phrase was uttered by Monsieur Robert Darzac:
‘Must I commit a crime, then, to win you?’ He was in an extraordinarily
agitated state. He took the hand of Mademoiselle Stangerson and held it
for a long time to his lips, and I thought, from the movement of his
shoulders, that he was crying. Then they went away.
“When I returned to the great gallery,” continued Rouletabille, “I saw
no more of Monsieur Robert Darzac, and I was not to see him again until
after the tragedy at the Glandier. Mademoiselle was near Mr. Rance, who
was talking with much animation, his eyes, during the conversation,
glowing with a singular brightness. Mademoiselle Stangerson, I thought,
was not even listening to what he was saying, her face expressing
perfect indifference. His face was the red face of a drunkard. When
Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson left, he went to the bar and
remained there. I joined him, and rendered him some little service
in the midst of the pressing crowd. He thanked me and told me he was
returning to America three days later, that is to say, on the 26th (the
day after the crime). I talked with him about Philadelphia; he told me
he had lived there for five-and-twenty years, and that it was there he
had met the illustrious Professor Stangerson and his daughter. He drank
a great deal of champagne, and when I left him he was very nearly drunk.
“Such were my experiences on that evening, and I leave you to imagine
what effect the news of the attempted murder of Mademoiselle Stangerson
produced on me,—with what force those words pronounced by Monsieur
Robert Darzac, ‘Must I commit a crime, then, to win you?’ recurred to
me. It was not this phrase, however, that I repeated to him, when we
met here at Glandier. The sentence of the presbytery and the bright
garden sufficed to open the gate of the château. If you ask me if I
believe now that Monsieur Darzac is the murderer, I must say I do not.
I do not think I ever quite thought that. At the time I could not
really think seriously of anything. I had so little evidence to go on.
But I needed to have at once the proof that he had not been wounded in
the hand.
“When we were alone together, I told him how I had chanced to overhear
a part of his conversation with Mademoiselle Stangerson in the garden
of the Élysée; and when I repeated to him the words, ‘Must I commit a
crime, then, to win you?’ he was greatly troubled, though much less so
than he had been by hearing me repeat the phrase about the presbytery.
What threw him into a state of real consternation was to learn from
me that the day on which he had gone to meet Mademoiselle Stangerson
at the Élysée, was the very day on which she had gone to the Post
Office for the letter. It was that letter, perhaps, which ended with
the words: ‘The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor the
garden its brightness.’ My surmise was confirmed by my finding, if you
remember, in the ashes of the laboratory, the fragment of paper dated
October the 23rd. The letter had been written and withdrawn from the
Post Office on the same day.
“There can be no doubt that, on returning from the Élysée that night,
Mademoiselle Stangerson had tried to destroy that compromising paper.
It was in vain that Monsieur Darzac denied that that letter had
anything whatever to do with the crime. I told him that in an affair so
filled with mystery as this, he had no right to hide this letter; that
I was persuaded it was of considerable importance; that the desperate
tone in which Mademoiselle Stangerson had pronounced the prophetic
phrase,—that his own tears, and the threat of a crime which he had
professed after the letter was read—all these facts tended to leave no
room for me to doubt. Monsieur Darzac became more and more agitated,
and I determined to take advantage of the effect I had produced on him.
‘You were on the point of being married, Monsieur,’ I said negligently
and without looking at him, ‘and suddenly your marriage becomes
impossible because of the writer of that letter; because as soon as
his letter was read, you spoke of the necessity for a crime to win
Mademoiselle Stangerson. Therefore there is someone between you and
her—someone who is preventing your marriage with her—someone who has
attempted to kill her, so that she should not be able to marry!’ And I
concluded with these words: ‘Now, monsieur, you have only to tell me in
confidence the name of the murderer!’—The words I had uttered must have
struck him ominously, for when I turned my eyes on him, I saw that his
face was haggard, the perspiration standing on his forehead, and terror
showing in his eyes.
“‘Monsieur,’ he said to me, ‘I am going to ask of you something which
may appear insane, but in exchange for which I place my life in your
hands. You must not tell the magistrates of what you saw and heard in
the garden of the Élysée,—neither to them nor to anybody. I swear to
you, that I am innocent, and I know, I feel, that you believe me; but
I would rather be taken for the guilty man than see justice go astray
on that phrase, “The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor
the garden its brightness.” The judges must know nothing about that
phrase. All this matter is in your hands. Monsieur, I leave it there;
but forget the evening at the Élysée. A hundred other roads are open to
you in your search for the criminal. I will open them for you myself. I
will help you. Will you take up your quarters here?—You may remain here
to do as you please.—Eat—sleep here—watch my actions—the actions of all
here. You shall be master of the Glandier, Monsieur; but forget the
evening at the Élysée.’”
Rouletabille here paused to take breath. I now understood what had
appeared so unexplainable in the demeanour of Monsieur Robert Darzac
towards my friend, and the facility with which the young reporter had
been able to instal himself on the scene of the crime. My curiosity
could not fail to be excited by all I had heard. I asked Rouletabille
to satisfy it still further. What had happened at the Glandier during
the past week?—Had he not told me that there were surface indications
against Monsieur Darzac much more terrible than that of the cane found
by Larsan?
“Everything seems to be pointing against him,” replied my friend, “and
the situation is becoming exceedingly grave. Monsieur Darzac appears
not to mind it much; but in that he is wrong. I was interested only in
the health of Mademoiselle Stangerson, which was daily improving, when
something occurred that is even more mysterious than—than the mystery
of The Yellow Room!”
“Impossible!” I cried, “What could be more mysterious than _that_?”
“Let us first go back to Monsieur Robert Darzac,” said Rouletabille,
calming me. “I have said that everything seems to be pointing against
him. The marks of the neat boots found by Frédéric Larsan appear to be
really the footprints of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s fiancé. The marks
made by the bicycle may have been made by _his_ bicycle. He had usually
left it at the château; why did he take it to Paris on that particular
occasion? Was it because he was not going to return again to the
château? Was it because, owing to the breaking off of his marriage, his
relations with the Stangersons were to cease? All who are interested in
the matter affirm that those relations were to continue unchanged.
“Frédéric Larsan, however, believes that all intercourse was at an end.
From the day when Monsieur Darzac accompanied Mademoiselle Stangerson
to the Grands Magasins de la Louvre until the day after the crime, he
had not been at the Glandier. Remember that Mademoiselle Stangerson
lost her reticule containing the key with the brass head while she
was in his company. From that day to the evening at the Élysée, the
Sorbonne professor and Mademoiselle Stangerson did not see one another;
but they may have written to each other. Mademoiselle Stangerson went
to the Post Office to get a letter, which Larsan says was written by
Robert Darzac; for knowing nothing of what had passed at the Élysée,
Larsan believes that it was Monsieur Darzac himself who stole the
reticule with the key, with the design of forcing her consent, by
getting possession of the precious papers of her father—papers which he
would have restored to him on condition that the marriage engagement
was to be fulfilled.
“All that would have been a very doubtful and almost absurd hypothesis,
as Larsan admitted to me, but for another and much graver circumstance.
In the first place here is something which I have not been able to
explain—Monsieur Darzac had himself, on the 24th, gone to the Post
Office to ask for the letter which Mademoiselle had called for and
received on the previous evening. The description of the man who made
application tallies in every respect with the appearance of Monsieur
Darzac, who, in answer to the questions put to him by the examining
magistrate, denies that he went to the Post Office. Now even admitting
that the letter was written by him—which I do not believe—he knew that
Mademoiselle Stangerson had received it, since he had seen it in her
hands in the garden at the Élysée. It could not have been he, then,
who had gone to the Post Office, the day after the 24th, to ask for a
letter which he knew was no longer there.
“To me it appears clear that somebody, strongly resembling him, stole
Mademoiselle Stangerson’s reticule and in that letter, had demanded of
her something which she had not sent him. He must have been surprised
at the failure of his demand, hence his application at the Post Office,
to learn whether his letter had been delivered to the person to whom
it had been addressed. Finding that it had been claimed, he had become
furious. What had he demanded? Nobody but Mademoiselle Stangerson
knows. Then, on the day following, it is reported that she had been
murdered during the night, and, the next day, I discovered that the
Professor had, at the same time, been robbed by means of the key
referred to in the poste restante letter. It would seem, then, that
the man who went to the Post Office to inquire for the letter must
have been the murderer. All these arguments Larsan applies as against
Monsieur Darzac. You may be sure that the examining magistrate, Larsan,
and myself, have done our best to get from the Post Office precise
details relative to the singular personage who applied there on the
24th of October. But nothing has been learned. We don’t know where he
came from—or where he went. Beyond the description which makes him
resemble Monsieur Darzac, we know nothing.
“I have announced in the leading journals that a handsome reward will
be given to a driver of any public conveyance who drove a fare to
No. 40, Post Office, about ten o’clock on the morning of the 24th of
October. Information to be addressed to ‘M. R.,’ at the office of the
‘Epoque’; but no answer has resulted. The man may have walked; but, as
he was most likely in a hurry, there was a chance that he might have
gone in a cab. Who, I keep asking myself night and day, is the man who
so strongly resembles Monsieur Robert Darzac, and who is also known to
have bought the cane which has fallen into Larsan’s hands.
“The most serious fact is that Monsieur Darzac was, at the very same
time that his double presented himself at the Post Office, down for a
lecture at the Sorbonne. He had not delivered that lecture, and one
of his friends took his place. When I questioned him as to how he had
employed the time, he told me that he had gone for a stroll in the Bois
de Boulogne. What do you think of a professor who, instead of giving