The Mystery of the Yellow Room

“I seized hold of the ladder, and we returned to the back of the chateau to see if the window of the chamber was still half-open. The blind was drawn but did not join and allowed a bright stream of light to escape and fall upon the path at our feet. I planted the ladder under the window. I am almost sure that I made no noise; and while Daddy Jacques remained at the foot of the ladder, I mounted it, very quietly, my stout stick in my hand. I held my breath and lifted my feet with the greatest care. Suddenly a heavy cloud discharged itself at that moment in a fresh downpour of rain.

“At the same instant the sinister cry of the Bete du bon Dieu arrested me in my ascent. It seemed to me to have come from close by me—only a few yards away. Was the cry a signal?—Had some accomplice of the man seen me on the ladder!—Would the cry bring the man to the window?—Perhaps! Ah, there he was at the window! I felt his head above me. I heard the sound of his breath! I could not look up towards him; the least movement of my head, and—I might be lost. Would he see me?—Would he peer into the darkness? No; he went away. He had seen nothing. I felt, rather than heard, him moving on tip-toe in the room; and I mounted a few steps higher. My head reached to the level of the window-sill; my forehead rose above it; my eyes looked between the opening in the blinds—and I saw—A man seated at Mademoiselle Stangerson’s little desk, writing. His back was turned toward me. A candle was lit before him, and he bent over the flame, the light from it projecting shapeless shadows. I saw nothing but a monstrous, stooping back.

“Mademoiselle Stangerson herself was not there!—Her bed had not been lain on! Where, then, was she sleeping that night? Doubtless in the side-room with her women. Perhaps this was but a guess. I must content myself with the joy of finding the man alone. I must be calm to prepare my trap.

“But who, then, is this man writing there before my eyes, seated at the desk, as if he were in his own home? If there had not been that ladder under the window; if there had not been those footprints on the carpet in the gallery; if there had not been that open window, I might have been led to think that this man had a right to be there, and that he was there as a matter of course and for reasons about which as yet I knew nothing. But there was no doubt that this mysterious unknown was the man of The Yellow Room,—the man to whose murderous assault Mademoiselle Stangerson—without denouncing him—had had to submit. If I could but see his face! Surprise and capture him!

“If I spring into the room at this moment, he will escape by the right-hand door opening into the boudoir,—or crossing the drawing-room, he will reach the gallery and I shall lose him. I have him now and in five minutes more he’ll be safer than if I had him in a cage.—What is he doing there, alone in Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room?—What is he writing? I descend and place the ladder on the ground. Daddy Jacques follows me. We re-enter the chateau. I send Daddy Jacques to wake Monsieur Stangerson, and instruct him to await my coming in Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room and to say nothing definite to him before my arrival. I will go and awaken Frederic Larsan. It’s a bore to have to do it, for I should have liked to work alone and to have carried off all the honors of this affair myself, right under the very nose of the sleeping detective. But Daddy Jacques and Monsieur Stangerson are old men, and I am not yet fully developed. I might not be strong enough. Larsan is used to wrestling and putting on the handcuffs. He opened his eyes swollen with sleep, ready to send me flying, without in the least believing in my reporter’s fancies. I had to assure him that the man was there!

“‘That’s strange!’ he said; ‘I thought I left him this afternoon in Paris.’

“He dressed himself in haste and armed himself with a revolver. We stole quietly into the gallery.

“‘Where is he?’ Larsan asked.

“‘In Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room.

“‘And—Mademoiselle Stangerson?’

“‘She is not in there.’

“‘Let’s go in.’

“‘Don’t go there! On the least alarm the man will escape. He has four ways by which to do it—the door, the window, the boudoir, or the room in which the women are sleeping.’

“‘I’ll draw him from below.’

“‘And if you fail?—If you only succeed in wounding him—he’ll escape again, without reckoning that he is certainly armed. No, let me direct the expedition, and I’ll answer for everything.’

“‘As you like,’ he replied, with fairly good grace.

“Then, after satisfying myself that all the windows of the two galleries were thoroughly secure, I placed Frederic Larsan at the end of the ‘off-turning’ gallery, before the window which I had found open and had reclosed.

“‘Under no consideration,’ I said to him, ‘must you stir from this post till I call you. The chances are even that the man, when he is pursued, will return to this window and try to save himself that way; for it is by that way he came in and made a way ready for his flight. You have a dangerous post.’

“‘What will be yours?’ asked Fred.

“‘I shall spring into the room and knock him over for you.’

“‘Take my revolver,’ said Fred, ‘and I’ll take your stick.’

“‘Thanks,’ I said; ‘You are a brave man.’

“I accepted his offer. I was going to be alone with the man in the room writing and was really thankful to have the weapon.

“I left Fred, having posted him at the window (No. 5 on the plan), and, with the greatest precaution, went towards Monsieur Stangerson’s apartment in the left wing of the chateau. I found him with Daddy Jacques, who had faithfully obeyed my directions, confining himself to asking his master to dress as quickly as possible. In a few words I explained to Monsieur Stangerson what was passing. He armed himself with a revolver, followed me, and we were all three speedily in the gallery. Since I had seen the murderer seated at the desk ten minutes had elapsed. Monsieur Stangerson wished to spring upon the assassin at once and kill him. I made him understand that, above all, he must not, in his desire to kill him, miss him.

“When I had sworn to him that his daughter was not in the room, and in no danger, he conquered his impatience and left me to direct the operations. I told them that they must come to me the moment I called to them, or when I fired my revolver. I then sent Daddy Jacques to place himself before the window at the end of the ‘right’ gallery. (No. 2 on my plan.) I chose that position ‘for Daddy Jacques because I believed that the murderer, tracked, on leaving the room, would run through the gallery towards the window which he had left open, and, instantly seeing that it was guarded by Larsan, would pursue his course along the ‘right’ gallery. There he would encounter Daddy Jacques, who would prevent his springing out of the window into the park. Under that window there was a sort of buttress, while all the other windows in the galleries were at such a height from the ground that it was almost impossible to jump from them without breaking one’s neck. All the doors and windows, including those of the lumber-room at the end of the ‘right’ gallery—as I had rapidly assured myself—were strongly secured.

“Having indicated to Daddy Jacques the post he was to occupy, and having seen him take up his position, I placed Monsieur Stangerson on the landing at the head of the stairs not far from the door of his daughter’s ante-room, rather than the boudoir, where the women were, and the door of which must have been locked by Mademoiselle Stangerson herself if, as I thought, she had taken refuge in the boudoir for the purpose of avoiding the murderer who was coming to see her. In any case, he must return to the gallery where my people were awaiting him at every possible exit.

“On coming there, he would see on his left, Monsieur Stangerson; he would turn to the right, towards the ‘off-turning’ gallery—the way he had pre-arranged for flight, where, at the intersection of the two galleries, he would see at once, as I have explained, on his left, Frederic Larsan at the end of the ‘off-turning’ gallery, and in front, Daddy Jacques, at the end of the ‘right’ gallery. Monsieur Stangerson and myself would arrive by way of the back of the chateau.—He is ours!—He can no longer escape us! I was sure of that.

“The plan I had formed seemed to me the best, the surest, and the most simple. It would, no doubt, have been simpler still, if we had been able to place some one directly behind the door of Mademoiselle’s boudoir, which opened out of her bedchamber, and, in that way, had been in a position to besiege the two doors of the room in which the man was. But we could not penetrate the boudoir except by way of the drawing-room, the door of which had been locked on the inside by Mademoiselle Stangerson. But even if I had had the free disposition of the boudoir, I should have held to the plan I had formed; because any other plan of attack would have separated us at the moment of the struggle with the man, while my plan united us all for the attack, at a spot which I had selected with almost mathematical precision,—the intersection of the two galleries.

“Having so placed my people, I again left the chateau, hurried to my ladder, and, replacing it, climbed up, revolver in hand.

“If there be any inclined to smile at my taking so many precautionary measures, I refer them to the mystery of “The Yellow Room”, and to all the proofs we have of the weird cunning of the murderer. Further, if there be some who think my observations needlessly minute at a moment when they ought to be completely held by rapidity of movement and decision of action, I reply that I have wished to report here, at length and completely, all the details of a plan of attack conceived so rapidly that it is only the slowness of my pen that gives an appearance of slowness to the execution. I have wished, by this slowness and precision, to be certain that nothing should be omitted from the conditions under which the strange phenomenon was produced, which, until some natural explanation of it is forthcoming, seems to me to prove, even better than the theories of Professor Stangerson, the Dissociation of Matter—I will even say, the instantaneous Dissociation of Matter.”

CHAPTER XVI. Strange Phenomenon of the Dissociation of Matter

(EXTRACT FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF JOSEPH ROULETABILLE, continued)

“I am again at the window-sill,” continues Rouletabille, “and once more I raise my head above it. Through an opening in the curtains, the arrangement of which has not been changed, I am ready to look, anxious to note the position in which I am going to find the murderer,—whether his back will still be turned towards me!—whether he is still seated at the desk writing! But perhaps—perhaps—he is no longer there!—Yet how could he have fled?—Was I not in possession of his ladder? I force myself to be cool. I raise my head yet higher. I look—he is still there. I see his monstrous back, deformed by the shadow thrown by the candle. He is no longer writing now, and the candle is on the parquet, over which he is bending—a position which serves my purpose.

“I hold my breath. I mount the ladder. I am on the uppermost rung of it, and with my left hand seize hold of the window-sill. In this moment of approaching success, I feel my heart beating wildly. I put my revolver between my teeth. A quick spring, and I shall be on the window-ledge. But—the ladder! I had been obliged to press on it heavily, and my foot had scarcely left it, when I felt it swaying beneath me. It grated on the wall and fell. But, already, my knees were touching the window-sill, and, by a movement quick as lightning, I got on to it.

“But the murderer had been even quicker than I had been. He had heard the grating of the ladder on the wall, and I saw the monstrous back of the man raise itself. I saw his head. Did I really see it?—The candle on the parquet lit up his legs only. Above the height of the table the chamber was in darkness. I saw a man with long hair, a full beard, wild-looking eyes, a pale face, framed in large whiskers,—as well as I could distinguish, and, as I think—red in colour. I did not know the face. That was, in brief, the chief sensation I received from that face in the dim half-light in which I saw it. I did not know it—or, at least, I did not recognise it.

“Now for quick action! It was indeed time for that, for as I was about to place my legs through the window, the man had seen me, had bounded to his feet, had sprung—as I foresaw he would—to the door of the ante-chamber, had time to open it, and fled. But I was already behind him, revolver in hand, shouting ‘Help!’

“Like an arrow I crossed the room, but noticed a letter on the table as I rushed. I almost came up with the man in the ante-room, for he had lost time in opening the door to the gallery. I flew on wings, and in the gallery was but a few feet behind him. He had taken, as I supposed he would, the gallery on his right,—that is to say, the road he had prepared for his flight. ‘Help, Jacques!—help, Larsan!’ I cried. He could not escape us! I raised a shout of joy, of savage victory. The man reached the intersection of the two galleries hardly two seconds before me for the meeting which I had prepared—the fatal shock which must inevitably take place at that spot! We all rushed to the crossing-place—Monsieur Stangerson and I coming from one end of the right gallery, Daddy Jacques coming from the other end of the same gallery, and Frederic Larsan coming from the ‘off-turning’ gallery.

“The man was not there!

“We looked at each other stupidly and with eyes terrified. The man had vanished like a ghost. ‘Where is he—where is he?’ we all asked.

“‘It is impossible he can have escaped!’ I cried, my terror mastered by my anger.

“‘I touched him!’ exclaimed Frederic Larsan.

“‘I felt his breath on my face!’ cried Daddy Jacques.

“‘Where is he?’—where is he?’ we all cried.

“We raced like madmen along the two galleries; we visited doors and windows—they were closed, hermetically closed. They had not been opened. Besides, the opening of a door or window by this man whom we were hunting, without our having perceived it, would have been more inexplicable than his disappearance.

“Where is he?—where is he?—He could not have got away by a door or a window, nor by any other way. He could not have passed through our bodies!

“I confess that, for the moment, I felt ‘done for.’ For the gallery was perfectly lighted, and there was neither trap, nor secret door in the walls, nor any sort of hiding-place. We moved the chairs and lifted the pictures. Nothing!—nothing! We would have looked into a flower-pot, if there had been one to look into!”

When this mystery, thanks to Rouletabille, was naturally explained, by the help alone of his masterful mind, we were able to realise that the murderer had got away neither by a door, a window, nor the stairs—a fact which the judges would not admit.

CHAPTER XVII. The Inexplicable Gallery

“Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared at the door of her ante-room,” continues Rouletabille’s note-book. “We were near her door in the gallery where this incredible phenomenon had taken place. There are moments when one feels as if one’s brain were about to burst. A bullet in the head, a fracture of the skull, the seat of reason shattered—with only these can I compare the sensation which exhausted and left me void of sense.

“Happily, Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared on the threshold of her ante-room. I saw her, and that helped to relieve my chaotic state of mind. I breathed her—I inhaled the perfume of the lady in black, whom I should never see again. I would have given ten years of my life—half my life—to see once more the lady in black! Alas! I no more meet her but from time to time,—and yet!—and yet! how the memory of that perfume—felt by me alone—carries me back to the days of my childhood.² It was this sharp reminder from my beloved perfume, of the lady in black, which made me go to her—dressed wholly in white and so pale—so pale and so beautiful!—on the threshold of the inexplicable gallery. Her beautiful golden hair, gathered into a knot on the back of her neck, left visible the red star on her temple which had so nearly been the cause of her death. When I first got on the right track of the mystery of this case I had imagined that, on the night of the tragedy in “The Yellow Room”, Mademoiselle Stangerson had worn her hair in bands. But then, how could I have imagined otherwise when I had not been in The Yellow Room!

“But now, since the occurrence of the inexplicable gallery, I did not reason at all. I stood there, stupid, before the apparition—so pale and so beautiful—of Mademoiselle Stangerson. She was clad in a dressing-gown of dreamy white. One might have taken her to be a ghost—a lovely phantom. Her father took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, as if he had recovered her after being long lost to him. I dared not question her. He drew her into the room and we followed them,—for we had to know!—The door of the boudoir was open. The terrified faces of the two nurses craned towards us. Mademoiselle Stangerson inquired the meaning of all the disturbance. That she was not in her own room was quite easily explained—quite easily. She had a fancy not to sleep that night in her chamber, but in the boudoir with her nurses, locking the door on them. Since the night of the crime she had experienced feelings of terror, and fears came over her that are easily to be comprehended.

“But who could imagine that on that particular night when he was to come, she would, by a mere chance, determine to shut herself in with her women? Who would think that she would act contrary to her father’s wish to sleep in the drawing-room? Who could believe that the letter which had so recently been on the table in her room would no longer be there? He who could understand all this, would have to assume that Mademoiselle Stangerson knew that the murderer was coming—she could not prevent his coming again—unknown to her father, unknown to all but to Monsieur Robert Darzac. For he must know it now—perhaps he had known it before! Did he remember that phrase in the Elysee garden: ‘Must I commit a crime, then, to win you?’ Against whom the crime, if not against the obstacle, against the murderer? ‘Ah, I would kill him with my own hand!’ And I replied, ‘You have not answered my question.’ That was the very truth. In truth, in truth, Monsieur Darzac knew the murderer so well that—while wishing to kill him himself—he was afraid I should find him. There could be but two reasons why he had assisted me in my investigation. First, because I forced him to do it; and, second, because she would be the better protected.

“I am in the chamber—her room. I look at her, also at the place where the letter had just now been. She has possessed herself of it; it was evidently intended for her—evidently. How she trembles!—Trembles at the strange story her father is telling her, of the presence of the murderer in her chamber, and of the pursuit. But it is plainly to be seen that she is not wholly satisfied by the assurance given her until she had been told that the murderer, by some incomprehensible means, had been able to elude us.

“Then follows a silence. What a silence! We are all there—looking at her—her father, Larsan, Daddy Jacques and I. What were we all thinking of in the silence? After the events of that night, of the mystery of the inexplicable gallery, of the prodigious fact of the presence of the murderer in her room, it seemed to me that all our thoughts might have been translated into the words which were addressed to her. ‘You who know of this mystery, explain it to us, and we shall perhaps be able to save you. How I longed to save her—for herself, and, from the other!—It brought the tears to my eyes.

“She is there, shedding about her the perfume of the lady in black. At last, I see her, in the silence of her chamber. Since the fatal hour of the mystery of “The Yellow Room”, we have hung about this invisible and silent woman to learn what she knows. Our desires, our wish to know must be a torment to her. Who can tell that, should we learn the secret of her mystery, it would not precipitate a tragedy more terrible than that which had already been enacted here? Who can tell if it might not mean her death? Yet it had brought her close to death,—and we still knew nothing. Or, rather, there are some of us who know nothing. But I—if I knew who, I should know all. Who?—Who?—Not knowing who, I must remain silent, out of pity for her. For there is no doubt that she knows how he escaped from “The Yellow Room”, and yet she keeps the secret. When I know who, I will speak to him—to him!”

“She looked at us now—with a far-away look in her eyes—as if we were not in the chamber. Monsieur Stangerson broke the silence. He declared that, henceforth, he would no more absent himself from his daughter’s apartments. She tried to oppose him in vain. He adhered firmly to his purpose. He would install himself there this very night, he said. Solely concerned for the health of his daughter, he reproached her for having left her bed. Then he suddenly began talking to her as if she were a little child. He smiled at her and seemed not to know either what he said or what he did. The illustrious professor had lost his head. Mademoiselle Stangerson in a tone of tender distress said: ‘Father!—father!’ Daddy Jacques blows his nose, and Frederic Larsan himself is obliged to turn away to hide his emotion. For myself, I am able neither to think or feel. I felt an infinite contempt for myself.

“It was the first time that Frederic Larsan, like myself, found himself face to face with Mademoiselle Stangerson since the attack in The Yellow Room. Like me, he had insisted on being allowed to question the unhappy lady; but he had not, any more than had I, been permitted. To him, as to me, the same answer had always been given: Mademoiselle Stangerson was too weak to receive us. The questionings of the examining magistrate had over-fatigued her. It was evidently intended not to give us any assistance in our researches. I was not surprised; but Frederic Larsan had always resented this conduct. It is true that he and I had a totally different theory of the crime.

“I still catch myself repeating from the depths of my heart: ‘Save her!—save her without his speaking!’ Who is he—the murderer? Take him and shut his mouth. But Monsieur Darzac made it clear that in order to shut his mouth he must be killed. Have I the right to kill Mademoiselle Stangerson’s murderer? No, I had not. But let him only give me the chance! Let me find out whether he is really a creature of flesh and blood!—Let me see his dead body, since it cannot be taken alive.

“If I could but make this woman, who does not even look at us, understand! She is absorbed by her fears and by her father’s distress of mind. And I can do nothing to save her. Yes, I will go to work once more and accomplish wonders.

“I move towards her. I would speak to her. I would entreat her to have confidence in me. I would, in a word, make her understand—she alone—that I know how the murderer escaped from “The Yellow Room”—that I have guessed the motives for her secrecy—and that I pity her with all my heart. But by her gestures she begged us to leave her alone, expressing weariness and the need for immediate rest. Monsieur Stangerson asked us to go back to our rooms and thanked us. Frederic Larsan and I bowed to him and, followed by Daddy Jacques, we regained the gallery. I heard Larsan murmur: ‘Strange! strange!’ He made a sign to me to go with him into his room. On the threshold he turned towards Daddy Jacques.

“‘Did you see him distinctly?’ he asked.

“‘Who?’

“‘The man?’

“‘Saw him!—why, he had a big red beard and red hair.’

“‘That’s how he appeared to me,’ I said.

“‘And to me,’ said Larsan.

“The great Fred and I were alone in his chamber, now, to talk over this thing. We talked for an hour, turning the matter over and viewing it from every side. From the questions put by him, from the explanation which he gives me, it is clear to me that—in spite of all our senses—he is persuaded the man disappeared by some secret passage in the chateau known to him alone.

“‘He knows the chateau,’ he said to me; ‘he knows it well.’

“‘He is a rather tall man—well-built,’ I suggested.

“‘He is as tall as he wants to be,’ murmured Fred.

“‘I understand,’ I said; ‘but how do you account for his red hair and beard?’

“‘Too much beard—too much hair—false,’ says Fred.

“‘That’s easily said. You are always thinking of Robert Darzac. You can’t get rid of that idea? I am certain that he is innocent.’

“‘So much the better. I hope so; but everything condemns him. Did you notice the marks on the carpet?—Come and look at them.’

“‘I have seen them; they are the marks of the neat boots, the same as those we saw on the border of the lake.’

“‘Can you deny that they belong to Robert Darzac?’

“‘Of course, one may be mistaken.’

“‘Have you noticed that those footprints only go in one direction?—that there are no return marks? When the man came from the chamber, pursued by all of us, his footsteps left no traces behind them.’

“‘He had, perhaps, been in the chamber for hours. The mud from his boots had dried, and he moved with such rapidity on the points of his toes—We saw him running, but we did not hear his steps.’

“I suddenly put an end to this idle chatter—void of any logic, and made a sign to Larsan to listen.

“‘There—below; some one is shutting a door.’

“I rise; Larsan follows me; we descend to the ground-floor of the chateau. I lead him to the little semi-circular room under the terrace beneath the window of the ‘off-turning’ gallery. I point to the door, now closed, open a short time before, under which a shaft of light is visible.

“‘The forest-keeper!’ says Fred.

“‘Come on!’ I whisper.

“Prepared—I know not why—to believe that the keeper is the guilty man—I go to the door and rap smartly on it. Some might think that we were rather late in thinking of the keeper, since our first business, after having found that the murderer had escaped us in the gallery, ought to have been to search everywhere else,—around the chateau,—in the park—

“Had this criticism been made at the time, we could only have answered that the assassin had disappeared from the gallery in such a way that we thought he was no longer anywhere! He had eluded us when we all had our hands stretched out ready to seize him—when we were almost touching him. We had no longer any ground for hoping that we could clear up the mystery of that night.

“As soon as I rapped at the door it was opened, and the keeper asked us quietly what we wanted. He was undressed and preparing to go to bed. The bed had not yet been disturbed.

“We entered and I affected surprise.

“‘Not gone to bed yet?’

“‘No,’ he replied roughly. ‘I have been making a round of the park and in the woods. I am only just back—and sleepy. Good-night!’

“‘Listen,’ I said. ‘An hour or so ago, there was a ladder close by your window.’

“‘What ladder?—I did not see any ladder. Good-night!’

“And he simply put us out of the room. When we were outside I looked at Larsan. His face was impenetrable.

“‘Well?’ I said.

“‘Well?’ he repeated.

“‘Does that open out any new view to you?’

“There was no mistaking Larsan’s bad temper. On re-entering the chateau, I heard him mutter:

“‘It would be strange—very strange—if I had deceived myself on that point!’

“He seemed to be talking to me rather than to himself. He added: ‘In any case, we shall soon know what to think. The morning will bring light with it.’”