The Mystery of the Yellow Room
a fugitive from France, tried to hide himself. Monsieur Stangerson
did not know of his identity with Ballmeyer; he learned that the man
was simply undesirable for his daughter. He not only refused to give
his consent to the marriage but denied him admission into the house.
Mathilde Stangerson, however, had fallen in love. To her Jean Roussel
was everything that her love painted him. She was indignant at her
father’s attitude, and did not conceal her feelings. Her father sent
her to stay with an aunt in Cincinnati. There she was joined by Jean
Roussel and, in spite of the reverence she felt for her father, ran
away with him to get married.
They went to Louisville and lived there for some time. One morning,
however, a knock came at the door of the house in which they were and
the police entered to arrest Jean Roussel. It was then that Mathilde
Stangerson, or Roussel, learned that her husband was no other than the
notorious Ballmeyer!
The young woman in her despair tried to commit suicide. She failed in
this, and was forced to rejoin her aunt at Cincinnati. The old lady was
overjoyed to see her again. She had been anxiously searching for her
and had not dared to tell Monsieur Stangerson of her disappearance.
Mathilde swore her to secrecy, so that her father should not know she
had been away. A month later, Mademoiselle Stangerson returned to her
father, repentant, her heart dead within her, hoping only one thing:
that she would never again see her husband, the horrible Ballmeyer.
A report was spread, a few weeks later, that he was dead, and she
now determined to atone for her disobedience by a life of labour and
devotion for her father. And she kept her word.
All this she had confessed to Robert Darzac, and, believing Ballmeyer
dead, had given herself to the joy of a union with him. But fate
had resuscitated Jean Roussel—the Ballmeyer of her youth. He had
taken steps to let her know that he would never allow her to marry
Darzac—that he still loved her.
Mademoiselle Stangerson never for one moment hesitated to confide
in Monsieur Darzac. She showed him the letter in which Jean Roussel
asked her to recall the first hours of their union in their beautiful
and charming Louisville home. “The presbytery has lost nothing of its
charm, nor the garden its brightness,” he had written. The scoundrel
pretended to be rich and claimed the right of taking her back to
Louisville. She had told Darzac that if her father should know of her
dishonour, she would kill herself. Monsieur Darzac had sworn to silence
her persecutor, even if he had to kill him. He was outwitted and would
have succumbed had it not been for the genius of Rouletabille.
Mademoiselle Stangerson was herself helpless in the hands of such
a villain. She had tried to kill him when he had first threatened
and then attacked her in The Yellow Room. She had, unfortunately,
failed, and felt herself condemned to be for ever at the mercy of this
unscrupulous wretch who was continually demanding her presence at
clandestine interviews. When he sent her the letter through the Post
Office, asking her to meet him, she had refused. The result of her
refusal was the tragedy of The Yellow Room. The second time he wrote
asking for a meeting, the letter reaching her in her sick chamber,
she had avoided him by sleeping with her women. In that letter the
scoundrel had warned her that, since she was too ill to come to him, he
would come to her, and that he would be in her chamber at a particular
hour on a particular night. Knowing that she had everything to fear
from Ballmeyer, she had left her chamber on that night. It was then
that the incident of the “inexplicable gallery” occurred.
The third time she had determined to keep the appointment. He asked
for it in the letter he had written in her own room, on the night of
the incident in the gallery, which he left on her desk. In that letter
he threatened to burn her father’s papers if she did not meet him.
It was to rescue these papers that she made up her mind to see him.
She did not for one moment doubt that the wretch would carry out his
threat if she persisted in avoiding him, and in that case the labours
of her father’s lifetime would be for ever lost. Since the meeting was
thus inevitable, she resolved to see her husband and appeal to his
better nature. It was for this interview that she had prepared herself
on the night the keeper was killed. They did meet, and what passed
between them may be imagined. He insisted that she renounce Darzac.
She, on her part, affirmed her love for him. He stabbed her in his
anger, determined to convict Darzac of the crime. As Larsan he could
do it, and had so managed things that Darzac could never explain how
he had employed the time of his absence from the château. Ballmeyer’s
precautions were most cunningly taken.
Larsan had threatened Darzac as he had threatened Mathilde—with the
same weapon, and the same threats. He wrote Darzac urgent letters,
declaring himself ready to deliver up the letters that had passed
between him and his wife, and to leave them for ever, if he would pay
him his price. He asked Darzac to meet him for the purpose of arranging
the matter, appointing the time when Larsan would be with Mademoiselle
Stangerson. When Darzac went to Epinay, expecting to find Ballmeyer or
Larsan there, he was met by an accomplice of Larsan’s, and kept waiting
until such time as the “coincidence” could be established.
It was all done with Machiavellian cunning; but Ballmeyer had reckoned
without Joseph Rouletabille.
* * * * *
Now that the Mystery of The Yellow Room has been cleared up, this
is not the time to tell of Rouletabille’s adventures in America.
Knowing the young reporter as we do, we can understand with what
acumen he had traced, step by step, the story of Mathilde Stangerson
and Jean Roussel. At Philadelphia he had quickly informed himself as
to Arthur William Rance. There he learned of Rance’s act of devotion
and the reward he thought himself entitled to for it. A rumour of his
marriage with Mademoiselle Stangerson had once found its way into the
drawing-rooms of Philadelphia. He also learned of Rance’s continued
attentions to her and his importunities for her hand. He had taken to
drink, he had said, to drown his grief at his unrequited love. It can
now be understood why Rouletabille had shown so marked a coolness of
demeanour towards Rance when they met in the witnesses’ room, on the
day of the trial.
The strange Roussel-Stangerson mystery had now been laid bare. Who
was this Jean Roussel? Rouletabille had traced him from Philadelphia
to Cincinnati. In Cincinnati he became acquainted with the old aunt,
and had found means to open her mouth. The story of Ballmeyer’s arrest
threw the right light on the whole story. He visited the “presbytery”—a
small and pretty dwelling in the old colonial style—which had, indeed,
“lost nothing of its charm.” Then, abandoning his pursuit of traces of
Mademoiselle Stangerson, he took up those of Ballmeyer. He followed
them from prison to prison, from crime to crime. Finally, as he was
about leaving for Europe, he learned in New York that Ballmeyer had,
five years before, embarked for France with some valuable papers
belonging to a merchant of New Orleans whom he had murdered.
And yet the whole of this mystery has not been revealed. Mademoiselle
Stangerson had a child, by her husband,—a son. The infant was born in
the old aunt’s house. No one knew of it, so well had the aunt managed
to conceal the event.
What became of that son?—That is another story which, so far, I am not
permitted to relate.
* * * * *
About two months after these events, I came upon Rouletabille sitting
on a bench in the Palais de Justice, looking very depressed.
“What’s the matter, old man?” I asked. “You are looking very downcast.
How are your friends getting on?”
“Apart from you,” he said, “I have no friends.”
“I hope that Monsieur Darzac—”
“No doubt.”
“And Mademoiselle Stangerson—How is she?”
“Better—much better.”
“Then you ought not to be sad.”
“I am sad,” he said, “because I am thinking of the perfume of the lady
in black—”
“The perfume of the lady in black!—I have heard you often refer to it.
Tell me why it troubles you.”
“Perhaps—some day; some day,” said Rouletabille.
And he heaved a profound sigh.
[Transcriber’s Notes: This transcription follows the text of the first
edition published by Brentano’s in 1908. Archaic and inconsistent
spellings and punctuation have generally been left unchanged. However,
the following alterations have been made to correct what are believed
to be unambiguous errors in the text.
* Fourteen occurrences of invalid or misleading punctuation (twelve of
which involved errors in placement or type of quotation marks) have
been corrected.
* Two occurrences of paragraphs ending without punctuation have been
corrected.
* The original text contained the misspelled words “uttereed”,
“villanies”, and “hmself”; these have all been corrected.
* The original text also contained the following misspellings specific
to non-English names and phrases:
* two occurrences of “Bête Du Bon Dieu”,
* two occurrences of “Monsieur Marquet”,
* two occurrences of “Frédérick Larsan”,
* three occurrences of “Rue Oberskampf”,
* four occurrences of “Mâitre”, and
* thirteen occurrences of “Elysée”.
These have all been corrected.
* The phrase “is if we were” has been corrected to “as if we were”, in
Chapter XVII.
* The original text has no heading for Chapter XVII, despite being
part of the same continuous excerpt as Chapters XVI and XVIII. This
absence has been corrected.]