The Phantom of the Opera
written ... wait till you hear the KYRIE..."
He beat time with his heels on the planks of the boat and sang:
"KYRIE! ... KYRIE! ... KYRIE ELEISON! ... Wait till you hear, wait till
you hear that mass."
"Look here," I said. "I shall believe you if I see Christine Daae come
out of the house on the lake and go back to it of her own accord."
"And you won't meddle any more in my affairs?"
"No."
"Very well, you shall see that to-night. Come to the masked ball.
Christine and I will go and have a look round. Then you can hide in
the lumber-room and you shall see Christine, who will have gone to her
dressing-room, delighted to come back by the Communists' road... And,
now, be off, for I must go and do some shopping!"
To my intense astonishment, things happened as he had announced.
Christine Daae left the house on the lake and returned to it several
times, without, apparently, being forced to do so. It was very
difficult for me to clear my mind of Erik. However, I resolved to be
extremely prudent, and did not make the mistake of returning to the
shore of the lake, or of going by the Communists' road. But the idea
of the secret entrance in the third cellar haunted me, and I repeatedly
went and waited for hours behind a scene from the Roi de Lahore, which
had been left there for some reason or other. At last my patience was
rewarded. One day, I saw the monster come toward me, on his knees. I
was certain that he could not see me. He passed between the scene
behind which I stood and a set piece, went to the wall and pressed on a
spring that moved a stone and afforded him an ingress. He passed
through this, and the stone closed behind him.
I waited for at least thirty minutes and then pressed the spring in my
turn. Everything happened as with Erik. But I was careful not to go
through the hole myself, for I knew that Erik was inside. On the other
hand, the idea that I might be caught by Erik suddenly made me think of
the death of Joseph Buquet. I did not wish to jeopardize the
advantages of so great a discovery which might be useful to many
people, "to a goodly number of the human race," in Erik's words; and I
left the cellars of the Opera after carefully replacing the stone.
I continued to be greatly interested in the relations between Erik and
Christine Daae, not from any morbid curiosity, but because of the
terrible thought which obsessed my mind that Erik was capable of
anything, if he once discovered that he was not loved for his own sake,
as he imagined. I continued to wander, very cautiously, about the
Opera and soon learned the truth about the monster's dreary love-affair.
He filled Christine's mind, through the terror with which he inspired
her, but the dear child's heart belonged wholly to the Vicomte Raoul de
Chagny. While they played about, like an innocent engaged couple, on
the upper floors of the Opera, to avoid the monster, they little
suspected that some one was watching over them. I was prepared to do
anything: to kill the monster, if necessary, and explain to the police
afterward. But Erik did not show himself; and I felt none the more
comfortable for that.
I must explain my whole plan. I thought that the monster, being driven
from his house by jealousy, would thus enable me to enter it, without
danger, through the passage in the third cellar. It was important, for
everybody's sake, that I should know exactly what was inside. One day,
tired of waiting for an opportunity, I moved the stone and at once
heard an astounding music: the monster was working at his Don Juan
Triumphant, with every door in his house wide open. I knew that this
was the work of his life. I was careful not to stir and remained
prudently in my dark hole.
He stopped playing, for a moment, and began walking about his place,
like a madman. And he said aloud, at the top of his voice:
"It must be finished FIRST! Quite finished!"
This speech was not calculated to reassure me and, when the music
recommenced, I closed the stone very softly.
On the day of the abduction of Christine Daae, I did not come to the
theater until rather late in the evening, trembling lest I should hear
bad news. I had spent a horrible day, for, after reading in a morning
paper the announcement of a forthcoming marriage between Christine and
the Vicomte de Chagny, I wondered whether, after all, I should not do
better to denounce the monster. But reason returned to me, and I was
persuaded that this action could only precipitate a possible
catastrophe.
When, my cab set me down before the Opera, I was really almost
astonished to see it still standing! But I am something of a fatalist,
like all good Orientals, and I entered ready, for anything.
Christine Daae's abduction in the Prison Act, which naturally surprised
everybody, found me prepared. I was quite certain that she had been
juggled away by Erik, that prince of conjurers. And I thought
positively that this was the end of Christine and perhaps of everybody,
so much so that I thought of advising all these people who were staying
on at the theater to make good their escape. I felt, however, that
they would be sure to look upon me as mad and I refrained.
On the other hand, I resolved to act without further delay, as far as I
was concerned. The chances were in my favor that Erik, at that moment,
was thinking only of his captive. This was the moment to enter his
house through the third cellar; and I resolved to take with me that
poor little desperate viscount, who, at the first suggestion, accepted,
with an amount of confidence in myself that touched me profoundly. I
had sent my servant for my pistols. I gave one to the viscount and
advised him to hold himself ready to fire, for, after all, Erik might
be waiting for us behind the wall. We were to go by the Communists'
road and through the trap-door.
Seeing my pistols, the little viscount asked me if we were going to
fight a duel. I said:
"Yes; and what a duel!" But, of course, I had no time to explain
anything to him. The little viscount is a brave fellow, but he knew
hardly anything about his adversary; and it was so much the better. My
great fear was that he was already somewhere near us, preparing the
Punjab lasso. No one knows better than he how to throw the Punjab
lasso, for he is the king of stranglers even as he is the prince of
conjurors. When he had finished making the little sultana laugh, at
the time of the "rosy hours of Mazenderan," she herself used to ask him
to amuse her by giving her a thrill. It was then that he introduced
the sport of the Punjab lasso.
He had lived in India and acquired an incredible skill in the art of
strangulation. He would make them lock him into a courtyard to which
they brought a warrior--usually, a man condemned to death--armed with a
long pike and broadsword. Erik had only his lasso; and it was always
just when the warrior thought that he was going to fell Erik with a
tremendous blow that we heard the lasso whistle through the air. With
a turn of the wrist, Erik tightened the noose round his adversary's
neck and, in this fashion, dragged him before the little sultana and
her women, who sat looking from a window and applauding. The little
sultana herself learned to wield the Punjab lasso and killed several of
her women and even of the friends who visited her. But I prefer to
drop this terrible subject of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. I have
mentioned it only to explain why, on arriving with the Vicomte de
Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, I was bound to protect my companion
against the ever-threatening danger of death by strangling. My pistols
could serve no purpose, for Erik was not likely to show himself; but
Erik could always strangle us. I had no time to explain all this to
the viscount; besides, there was nothing to be gained by complicating
the position. I simply told M. de Chagny to keep his hand at the level
of his eyes, with the arm bent, as though waiting for the command to
fire. With his victim in this attitude, it is impossible even for the
most expert strangler to throw the lasso with advantage. It catches
you not only round the neck, but also round the arm or hand. This
enables you easily to unloose the lasso, which then becomes harmless.
After avoiding the commissary of police, a number of door-shutters and
the firemen, after meeting the rat-catcher and passing the man in the
felt hat unperceived, the viscount and I arrived without obstacle in
the third cellar, between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de
Lahore. I worked the stone, and we jumped into the house which Erik
had built himself in the double case of the foundation-walls of the
Opera. And this was the easiest thing in the world for him to do,
because Erik was one of the chief contractors under Philippe Garnier,
the architect of the Opera, and continued to work by himself when the
works were officially suspended, during the war, the siege of Paris and
the Commune.
I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his
house. I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan.
From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into
a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was
overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trap-doors the monster was
responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds. He hit upon
astonishing inventions. Of these, the most curious, horrible and
dangerous was the so-called torture-chamber. Except in special cases,
when the little sultana amused herself by inflicting suffering upon
some unoffending citizen, no one was let into it but wretches condemned
to death. And, even then, when these had "had enough," they were
always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or
bowstring, left for their use at the foot of an iron tree.
My alarm, therefore, was great when I saw that the room into which M.
le Vicomte de Chagny and I had dropped was an exact copy of the
torture-chamber of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. At our feet, I found
the Punjab lasso which I had been dreading all the evening. I was
convinced that this rope had already done duty for Joseph Buquet, who,
like myself, must have caught Erik one evening working the stone in the
third cellar. He probably tried it in his turn, fell into the
torture-chamber and only left it hanged. I can well imagine Erik
dragging the body, in order to get rid of it, to the scene from the Roi
de Lahore, and hanging it there as an example, or to increase the
superstitious terror that was to help him in guarding the approaches to
his lair! Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab
lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut, and which might have
set an examining magistrate thinking. This explains the disappearance
of the rope.
And now I discovered the lasso, at our feet, in the torture-chamber!
... I am no coward, but a cold sweat covered my forehead as I moved
the little red disk of my lantern over the walls.
M. de Chagny noticed it and asked:
"What is the matter, sir?"
I made him a violent sign to be silent.
[1] An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end of
July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate chief De Tham was tracked,
together with his men, by our soldiers; and how all of them succeeded
in escaping, thanks to this trick of the reeds.
[2] DAROGA is Persian for chief of police.
[3] The Persian might easily have admitted that Erik's fate also
interested himself, for he was well aware that, if the government of
Teheran had learned that Erik was still alive, it would have been all
up with the modest pension of the erstwhile daroga. It is only fair,
however, to add that the Persian had a noble and generous heart; and I