The Phantom of the Opera
theater. I remember finding him, one evening, snoring in his little
recess, with his snuff-box beside him."
"Is that long ago?" asked M. Mifroid, carefully wiping his eye-glasses.
"No, not so very long ago ... Wait a bit! ... It was the night ... of
course, yes ... It was the night when Carlotta--you know, Mr.
Commissary--gave her famous 'co-ack'!"
"Really? The night when Carlotta gave her famous 'co-ack'?"
And M. Mifroid, replacing his gleaming glasses on his nose, fixed the
stage-manager with a contemplative stare.
"So Mauclair takes snuff, does he?" he asked carelessly.
"'Yes, Mr. Commissary ... Look, there is his snuff-box on that little
shelf ... Oh! he's a great snuff-taker!"
"So am I," said Mifroid and put the snuff-box in his pocket.
Raoul and the Persian, themselves unobserved, watched the removal of
the three bodies by a number of scene-shifters, who were followed by
the commissary and all the people with him. Their steps were heard for
a few minutes on the stage above. When they were alone the Persian
made a sign to Raoul to stand up. Raoul did so; but, as he did not
lift his hand in front of his eyes, ready to fire, the Persian told him
to resume that attitude and to continue it, whatever happened.
"But it tires the hand unnecessarily," whispered Raoul. "If I do fire,
I shan't be sure of my aim."
"Then shift your pistol to the other hand," said the Persian.
"I can't shoot with my left hand."
Thereupon, the Persian made this queer reply, which was certainly not
calculated to throw light into the young man's flurried brain:
"It's not a question of shooting with the right hand or the left; it's
a question of holding one of your hands as though you were going to
pull the trigger of a pistol with your arm bent. As for the pistol
itself, when all is said, you can put that in your pocket!" And he
added, "Let this be clearly understood, or I will answer for nothing.
It is a matter of life and death. And now, silence and follow me!"
The cellars of the Opera are enormous and they are five in number.
Raoul followed the Persian and wondered what he would have done without
his companion in that extraordinary labyrinth. They went down to the
third cellar; and their progress was still lit by some distant lamp.
The lower they went, the more precautions the Persian seemed to take.
He kept on turning to Raoul to see if he was holding his arm properly,
showing him how he himself carried his hand as if always ready to fire,
though the pistol was in his pocket.
Suddenly, a loud voice made them stop. Some one above them shouted:
"All the door-shutters on the stage! The commissary of police wants
them!"
Steps were heard and shadows glided through the darkness. The Persian
drew Raoul behind a set piece. They saw passing before and above them
old men bent by age and the past burden of opera-scenery. Some could
hardly drag themselves along; others, from habit, with stooping bodies
and outstretched hands, looked for doors to shut.
They were the door-shutters, the old, worn-out scene-shifters, on whom
a charitable management had taken pity, giving them the job of shutting
doors above and below the stage. They went about incessantly, from top
to bottom of the building, shutting the doors; and they were also
called "The draft-expellers," at least at that time, for I have little
doubt that by now they are all dead. Drafts are very bad for the
voice, wherever they may come from.[1]
The two men might have stumbled over them, waking them up and provoking
a request for explanations. For the moment, M. Mifroid's inquiry saved
them from any such unpleasant encounters.
The Persian and Raoul welcomed this incident, which relieved them of
inconvenient witnesses, for some of those door-shutters, having nothing
else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera, from
idleness or necessity, and spent the night there.
But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades
now came down by the same way by which the door-shutters had gone up.
Each of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about,
above, below and all around, as though looking for something or
somebody.
"Hang it!" muttered the Persian. "I don't know what they are looking
for, but they might easily find us ... Let us get away, quick! ...
Your hand up, sir, ready to fire! ... Bend your arm ... more ... that's
it! ... Hand at the level of your eye, as though you were fighting a
duel and waiting for the word to fire! Oh, leave your pistol in your
pocket. Quick, come along, down-stairs. Level of your eye! Question
of life or death! ... Here, this way, these stairs!" They reached the
fifth cellar. "Oh, what a duel, sir, what a duel!"
Once in the fifth cellar, the Persian drew breath. He seemed to enjoy
a rather greater sense of security than he had displayed when they both
stopped in the third; but he never altered the attitude of his hand.
And Raoul, remembering the Persian's observation--"I know these pistols
can be relied upon"--was more and more astonished, wondering why any
one should be so gratified at being able to rely upon a pistol which he
did not intend to use!
But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul to stay
where he was, he ran up a few steps of the staircase which they had
just left and then returned.
"How stupid of us!" he whispered. "We shall soon have seen the end of
those men with their lanterns. It is the firemen going their
rounds."[2]
The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up
the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture.
Something moved in the darkness before them.
"Flat on your stomach!" whispered the Persian.
The two men lay flat on the floor.
They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light,
just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near
enough to touch them.
They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could
distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which
shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat ...
It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving
a kick into a corner.
"Whew!" said the Persian. "We've had a narrow escape; that shade knows
me and has twice taken me to the managers' office."
"Is it some one belonging to the theater police?" asked Raoul.
"It's some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian, without
giving any further explanation.[3]
"It's not ... he?"
"He? ... If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow
eyes! That is more or less our safeguard to-night. But he may come
from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our
hands as though about to fire, at the level of our eyes, in front!"
The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in
sight ... a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes!
Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no
body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a
flame shaped as a man's face.
"Oh," said the Persian, between his teeth. "I have never seen this
before! ... Pampin was not mad, after all: he had seen it! ... What
can that flame be? It is not HE, but he may have sent it! ... Take
care! ... Take care! Your hand at the level of your eyes, in Heaven's
name, at the level of your eyes! ... know most of his tricks ... but
not this one ... Come, let us run ... it is safer. Hand at the level
of your eyes!"
And they fled down the long passage that opened before them.
After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they
stopped.
"He doesn't often come this way," said the Persian. "This side has
nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the
house on the lake ... But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels
... although I promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in
his business again!"
So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they
again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed
them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it
seemed to be nearer to them.
At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they
could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed
to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though
thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly
unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the
chalk that grates on the blackboard.
They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining
on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round
and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a
hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when
the moon is quite red, bright red.
How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man's
height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did
it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And
what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with
it?
The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves
against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that
incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more
intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound, for the sound was
certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the
darkness, under the fiery face.
And the fiery face came on ... with its noise ... came level with them!
...
And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand
on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant.
They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little
hurried waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high
tide, little night-waves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head
that was like a moon. And the little waves passed between their legs,
climbing up their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could
no longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could
they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes: their
hands went down to their legs to push back the waves, which were full
of little legs and nails and claws and teeth.
Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the
fireman. But the head of fire turned round in answer to their cries,
and spoke to them:
"Don't move! Don't move! ... Whatever you do, don't come after me!
... I am the rat-catcher! ... Let me pass, with my rats! ..."
And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the
passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the
rat-catcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare
the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself,
lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark
space in front of him. And he jumped along, dragging with him the
waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds.
Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling.
"I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the
rat-catcher," said the Persian. "But he never told me that he looked
like that ... and it's funny that I should never have met him before
... Of course, Erik never comes to this part!"
"Are we very far from the lake, sir?" asked Raoul. "When shall we get
there? ... Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake! ... When we
are at the lake, we will call out! ... Christine will hear us! ... And