The Mystery of the Yellow Room
his lecture, obtains a substitute to go for a stroll in the Bois de
Boulogne? When Frédéric Larsan asked him for information on this point,
he quietly replied that it was no business of his how he spent his time
in Paris. On which Fred swore aloud that he would find out, without
anybody’s help.
“All this seems to fit in with Fred’s hypothesis, namely, that Monsieur
Stangerson allowed the murderer to escape in order to avoid a scandal.
The hypothesis is further substantiated by the fact that Darzac was
in The Yellow Room and was permitted to get away. That hypothesis I
believe to be a false one.—Larsan is being misled by it, though that
would not displease me, did it not affect an innocent person. Now
does that hypothesis _really_ mislead Frédéric Larsan? That is the
question—that is the question.”
“Perhaps he is right,” I cried, interrupting Rouletabille. “Are you
sure that Monsieur Darzac is innocent?—It seems to me that these are
extraordinary coincidences—”
“Coincidences,” replied my friend, “are the worst enemies to truth.”
“What does the examining magistrate think now of the matter?”
“Monsieur de Marquet hesitates to accuse Monsieur Darzac, in the
absence of absolute proofs. Not only would he have public opinion
wholly against him, to say nothing of the Sorbonne, but Monsieur
and Mademoiselle Stangerson. She adores Monsieur Robert Darzac.
Indistinctly as she saw the murderer, it would be hard to make the
public believe that she could not have recognised him, if Darzac had
been the criminal. No doubt The Yellow Room was very dimly lit; but
a night-light, however small, gives some light. Here, my boy, is
how things stood when, three days, or rather three nights ago, an
extraordinarily strange incident occurred.”
Chapter XIV
“I Expect the Assassin this Evening”
“I must take you,” said Rouletabille, “so as to enable you to
understand, to the various scenes. I myself believe that I have
discovered what everybody else is searching for, namely, how the
murderer escaped from The Yellow Room, without any accomplice, and
without Mademoiselle Stangerson having had anything to do with it.
But so long as I am not sure of the real murderer, I cannot state
the theory on which I am working. I can only say that I believe it
to be correct and, in any case, a quite natural and simple one. As
to what happened in this place three nights ago, I must say it kept
me wondering for a whole day and a night. It passes all belief. The
theory I have formed from the incident is so absurd that I would rather
matters remained as yet unexplained.”
Saying which the young reporter invited me to go and make the tour of
the château with him. The only sound to be heard was the crunching of
the dead leaves beneath our feet. The silence was so intense that one
might have thought the château had been abandoned. The old stones, the
stagnant water of the ditch surrounding the donjon, the bleak ground
strewn with the dead leaves, the dark, skeleton-like outlines of the
trees, all contributed to give to the desolate place, now filled with
its awful mystery, an aspect the most funereal. As we passed round the
donjon, we met the Green Man, the forest-keeper, who did not greet us,
but walked by as if we had not existed. He was looking just as I had
formerly seen him through the window of the Donjon Inn. He had still
his fowling-piece slung at his back, his pipe was in his mouth, and his
eye-glasses on his nose.
“An odd kind of fish!” Rouletabille said to me, in a low tone.
“Have you spoken to him?” I asked.
“Yes, but I could get nothing out of him. His only answers are grunts
and shrugs of the shoulders. He generally lives on the first floor of
the donjon,—a big room that once served for an oratory. He lives like
a bear, never goes out without his gun, and is only pleasant with the
girls. The women, for twelve miles round, are all setting their caps at
him. For the present, he is paying attention to Madame Mathieu, whose
husband is keeping a lynx eye upon her in consequence.”
After passing the donjon, which is situated at the extreme end of
the left wing, we went to the back of the château. Rouletabille,
pointing to a window which I recognised as the only one belonging to
Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment, said to me:—
“If you had been here, two nights ago, you would have seen your humble
servant at the top of a ladder, about to enter the château by that
window.”
As I expressed some surprise at this piece of nocturnal gymnastics, he
begged me to notice carefully the exterior disposition of the château.
We then went back into the building.
“I must now show you the first floor of the château, where I am
living,” said my friend.
To enable the reader the better to understand the disposition of these
parts of the dwelling, I annex a plan of the first floor of the right
wing, drawn by Rouletabille the day after the extraordinary phenomenon
occurred, the details of which I am about to relate.
1. Position where Rouletabille placed Frédéric Larsan.
2. Position where Rouletabille placed Daddy Jacques.
3. Position where Rouletabille placed Monsieur Stangerson.
4. Window by which Rouletabille entered.
5. Window found open by Rouletabille when he left the room. He
re-closed it. All the other doors and windows were shut.
6. Terrace surmounting a projecting room on the ground-floor.
Rouletabille motioned me to follow him up a magnificent flight of
stairs ending in a landing on the first floor. From this landing one
could pass to the right or left wing of the château by a gallery
opening from it. This gallery, high and wide, extended along the whole
length of the building and was lit from the front of the château facing
the north. The rooms, the windows of which looked to the south, opened
out of the gallery. Professor Stangerson inhabited the left wing of the
building. Mademoiselle Stangerson had her apartment in the right wing.
We entered the gallery to the right. A narrow carpet, laid on the
waxed oaken floor, which shone like glass, deadened the sound of our
footsteps. Rouletabille asked me, in a low tone, to walk carefully, as
we were passing the door of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment. This
consisted of a bed-room, an ante-room, a small bath-room, a boudoir,
and a drawing-room. One could pass from one to another of these rooms
without having to go by way of the gallery. The gallery continued
straight to the western end of the building, where it was lit by a high
window (window 2 on the plan). At about two-thirds of its length this
gallery, at a right angle, joined another gallery following the course
of the right wing.
The better to follow this narrative, we shall call the gallery leading
from the stairs to the eastern window, the “right” gallery and the
gallery quitting it at a right angle, the “off-turning” gallery
(winding gallery in the plan). It was at the meeting point of the two
galleries that Rouletabille had his chamber, adjoining that of Frédéric
Larsan, the door of each opening on to the “off-turning” gallery,
while the doors of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment opened into the
“right” gallery. (See the Plan.)
Rouletabille opened the door of his room and after we had passed in,
carefully drew the bolt. I had not had time to glance round the place
in which he had been installed, when he uttered a cry of surprise and
pointed to a pair of eye-glasses on a side-table.
“What are these doing here?” he asked.
I should have been puzzled to answer him.
“I wonder,” he said, “I wonder if this is what I have been searching
for. I wonder if these are the eye-glasses from the presbytery!”
He seized them eagerly, his fingers caressing the glass. Then looking
at me, with an expression of terror on his face, he murmured, “Oh!—Oh!”
He repeated the exclamation again and again, as if his thoughts had
suddenly turned his brain.
He 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 Frédéric 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.”
“Frédéric 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-hound in Europe.