The Mystery of the Yellow Room
“Nonsense!” interrupted Daddy Jacques; “the murderer did not go that
way.”
“Which way did he go, then?”
“How do I know?”
Rouletabille looked at everything, smelled everything. He went down on
his knees and rapidly examined every one of the paving tiles. Daddy
Jacques went on:—
“Ah!—you can’t find anything, monsieur. Nothing has been found. And now
it is all dirty; too many persons have tramped over it. They wouldn’t
let me wash it, but on the day of the crime I had washed the floor
thoroughly, and if the murderer had crossed it with his hobnailed
boots, I should not have failed to see where he had been; he has left
marks enough in Mademoiselle’s chamber.”
Rouletabille rose.
“When was the last time you washed these tiles?” he asked, and he fixed
on Daddy Jacques a most searching look.
“Why—as I told you—on the day of the crime, towards half-past
five—while Mademoiselle and her father were taking a little walk before
dinner, here in this room; they had dined in the laboratory. The next
day, the examining magistrate came and saw all the marks there were on
the floor as plainly as if they had been made with ink on white paper.
Well, neither in the laboratory nor in the vestibule, which were both
as clean as a new pin, were there any traces of a man’s footmarks.
Since they have been found near this window outside, he must have made
his way through the ceiling of The Yellow Room into the attic, then
cut his way through the roof and dropped to the ground outside the
vestibule window. But—there’s no hole, neither in the ceiling of The
Yellow Room nor in the roof of my attic—that’s absolutely certain! So
you see we know nothing—nothing! And nothing will ever be known! It’s a
mystery of the devil’s own making.”
Rouletabille went down upon his knees again almost in front of a small
lavatory at the back of the vestibule. In that position he remained for
about a minute.
“Well?” I asked him when he got up.
“Oh! nothing very important,—a drop of blood,” he replied, turning
towards Daddy Jacques as he spoke. “While you were washing the
laboratory and this vestibule, was the vestibule window open?” he asked.
“No, Monsieur, it was closed; but after I had done washing the floor,
I lit some charcoal for Monsieur in the laboratory furnace, and, as I
lit it with old newspapers, it smoked, so I opened both the windows
in the laboratory and this one, to make a current of air; then I shut
those in the laboratory and left this one open when I went out. When I
returned to the pavilion, this window had been closed and Monsieur and
Mademoiselle were already at work in the laboratory.”
“Monsieur or Mademoiselle Stangerson had, no doubt, shut it?”
“No doubt.”
“You did not ask them?”
“No.”
After a close scrutiny of the little lavatory and of the staircase
leading up to the attic, Rouletabille—to whom we seemed no longer to
exist—entered the laboratory. I followed him. It was, I confess, in
a state of great excitement. Robert Darzac lost none of my friend’s
movements. As for me, my eyes were drawn at once to the door of The
Yellow Room. It was closed and, as I immediately saw, partially
shattered and out of commission.
My friend, who went about his work methodically, silently studied
the room in which we were. It was large and well-lighted. Two big
windows—almost bays—were protected by strong iron bars and looked
out upon a wide extent of country. Through an opening in the forest,
they commanded a wonderful view through the length of the valley and
across the plain to the large town which could be clearly seen in fair
weather. To-day, however, a mist hung over the ground—and blood in that
room!
The whole of one side of the laboratory was taken up with a large
chimney, crucibles, ovens, and such implements as are needed for
chemical experiments; tables, loaded with phials, papers, reports,
an electrical machine,—an apparatus, as Monsieur Darzac informed me,
employed by Professor Stangerson to demonstrate the Dissociation of
Matter under the action of solar light—and other scientific implements.
Along the walls were cabinets, plain or glass-fronted, through which
were visible microscopes, special photographic apparatus, and a large
quantity of crystals.
Rouletabille, who was ferreting in the chimney, put his fingers into
one of the crucibles. Suddenly he drew himself up, and held up a piece
of half-consumed paper in his hand. He stepped up to where we were
talking by one of the windows.
“Keep that for us, Monsieur Darzac,” he said.
I bent over the piece of scorched paper which Monsieur Darzac took
from the hand of Rouletabille, and read distinctly the only words that
remained legible:—
“Presbytery—lost nothing—charm, nor the gar—its brightness.”
Twice since the morning these same meaningless words had struck me,
and, for the second time, I saw that they produced on the Sorbonne
professor the same paralysing effect. Monsieur Darzac’s first anxiety
showed itself when he turned his eyes in the direction of Daddy
Jacques. But, occupied as he was at another window, he had seen
nothing. Then tremblingly opening his pocket-book he put the piece of
paper into it, sighing: “My God!”
During this time, Rouletabille had mounted into the opening of the
fire-grate—that is to say, he had got upon the bricks of a furnace—and
was attentively examining the chimney, which grew narrower towards the
top, the outlet from it being closed with sheets of iron, fastened into
the brickwork, through which passed three small chimneys.
“Impossible to get out that way,” he said, jumping back into the
laboratory. “Besides, even if he _had_ tried to do it, he would have
brought all that ironwork down to the ground. No, no; it is not on that
side we have to search.”
Rouletabille next examined the furniture and opened the doors of the
cabinet. Then he came to the windows, through which he declared no one
could possibly have passed. At the second window he found Daddy Jacques
in contemplation.
“Well, Daddy Jacques,” he said, “what are you looking at?”
“That policeman who is always going round and round the lake. Another
of those fellows who think they can see better than anybody else!”
“You don’t know Frédéric Larsan, Daddy Jacques, or you wouldn’t speak
of him in that way,” said Rouletabille in a melancholy tone. “If there
is anyone who will find the murderer, it will be he.” And Rouletabille
heaved a deep sigh.
“Before they find him, they will have to learn how they lost him,” said
Daddy Jacques, stolidly.
At length we reached the door of The Yellow Room itself.
“There is the door behind which some terrible scene took place,” said
Rouletabille, with a solemnity which, under any other circumstances,
would have been comical.
Chapter VII
In Which Rouletabille Sets out on an Expedition under the Bed
Rouletabille having pushed open the door of The Yellow Room paused on
the threshold saying, with an emotion which I only later understood,
“Ah, the perfume of the lady in black!”
The chamber was dark. Daddy Jacques was about to open the blinds when
Rouletabille stopped him.
“Did not the tragedy take place in complete darkness?” he asked.
“No, young man, I don’t think so. Mademoiselle always had a night-light
on her table, and I lit it every evening before she went to bed. I
was a sort of chambermaid, you must understand, when the evening
came. The real chambermaid did not come here much before the morning.
Mademoiselle worked late—far into the night.”
“Where did the table with the night-light stand,—far from the bed?”
“Some way from the bed.”
“Can you light the burner now?”
“The lamp is broken and the oil that was in it was spilled when the
table was upset. All the rest of the things in the room remain just as
they were. I have only to open the blinds for you to see.”
“Wait.”
Rouletabille went back into the laboratory, closed the shutters of the
two windows and the door of the vestibule. When we were in complete
darkness, he lit a wax vesta, and asked Daddy Jacques to move to the
middle of the chamber with it to the place where the night-light was
burning that night.
Daddy Jacques who was in his stockings—he usually left his sabots in
the vestibule—entered The Yellow Room with his bit of a vesta. We
vaguely distinguished objects overthrown on the floor, a bed in one
corner, and, in front of us, to the left, the gleam of a looking-glass
hanging on the wall, near to the bed.
“That will do!—you may now open the blinds,” said Rouletabille.
“Don’t come any further,” Daddy Jacques begged, “you may make marks
with your boots, and nothing must be deranged; it’s an idea of the
magistrate’s—though he has nothing more to do here.”
And he pushed open the shutter. The pale daylight entered from without,
throwing a sinister light on the saffron-coloured walls. The floor—for
though the laboratory and the vestibule were tiled, The Yellow Room had
a flooring of wood—was covered with a single yellow mat which was large
enough to cover nearly the whole room, under the bed and under the
dressing-table—the only piece of furniture that remained upright. The
centre round table, the night-table and two chairs had been overturned.
These did not prevent a large stain of blood being visible on the mat,
made, as Daddy Jacques informed us, by the blood which had flowed from
the wound on Mademoiselle Stangerson’s forehead. Besides these stains,
drops of blood had fallen in all directions, in line with the visible
traces of the footsteps—large and black—of the murderer. Everything led
to the presumption that these drops of blood had fallen from the wound
of the man who had, for a moment, placed his red hand on the wall.
There were other traces of the same hand on the wall, but much less
distinct.
“See!—see this blood on the wall!” I could not help exclaiming. “The
man who pressed his hand so heavily upon it in the darkness must
certainly have thought that he was pushing at a door! That’s why
he pressed on it so hard, leaving on the yellow paper the terrible
evidence. I don’t think there are many hands in the world of that sort.
It is big and strong and the fingers are nearly all one as long as the
other! The thumb is wanting and we have only the mark of the palm; but
if we follow the trace of the hand,” I continued, “we see that, after
leaving its imprint on the wall, the _touch_ sought the door, found it,
and then felt for the lock—”
“No doubt,” interrupted Rouletabille, chuckling,—“only there is no
blood, either on the lock or on the bolt!”
“What does that prove?” I rejoined with a good sense of which I was
proud; “he might have opened the lock with his left hand, which would
have been quite natural, his right hand being wounded.”
“He didn’t open it at all!” Daddy Jacques again exclaimed. “We are not
fools; and there were four of us when we burst open the door!”
“What a queer hand!—Look what a queer hand it is!” I said.
“It is a very natural hand,” said Rouletabille, “of which the shape has
been deformed by its having slipped on the wall. The man dried his hand
on the wall. He must be a man about five feet eight in height.”
“How do you come at that?”
“By the height of the marks on the wall.”
My friend next occupied himself with the mark of the bullet in the
wall. It was a round hole.
“This ball was fired straight, not from above, and consequently, not
from below.”
Rouletabille went back to the door and carefully examined the lock and
the bolt, satisfying himself that the door had certainly been burst
open from the outside, and, further, that the key had been found in the
lock on the inside of the chamber. He finally satisfied himself that
with the key in the lock, the door could not possibly be opened from