Chapter XIII

“The Presbytery Has Lost Nothing of its Charm, nor the Garden its

Brightness”

A week after the occurrence of the events I have just recounted—on

the 2nd of November, to be exact—I received at my home in Paris the

following telegraphic message: “Come to the Glandier by the earliest

train. Bring revolvers. Friendly greetings. Rouletabille.”

I have already said, I think, that at that period, being a young

barrister with but few briefs, I frequented the Palais de Justice

rather for the purpose of familiarising myself with my professional

duties than for the defence of the widow and orphan. I could,

therefore, feel no surprise at Rouletabille disposing of my time.

Moreover, he knew how keenly interested I was in his journalistic

adventures in general and, above all, in the murder at the Glandier.

I had not heard from him for a week, nor of the progress made with

that mysterious case, except by the innumerable paragraphs in the

newspapers and by the very brief notes of Rouletabille in the “Epoque.”

Those notes had divulged the fact that traces of human blood had

been found on the mutton-bone, as well as fresh traces of the blood

of Mademoiselle Stangerson—the old stains belonged to other crimes,

probably dating years back.

It may be easily imagined that the crime engaged the attention of the

press throughout the world. No crime known had more absorbed the minds

of people. It appeared to me, however, that the judicial inquiry was

making but very little progress; and I should have been very glad, if,

on the receipt of my friend’s invitation to rejoin him at the Glandier,

the despatch had not contained the words, “Bring revolvers.”

That puzzled me greatly. Rouletabille telegraphing for revolvers

meant that there might be occasion to use them. Now, I confess it

without shame, I am not a hero. But here was a friend, evidently in

danger, calling on me to go to his aid. I did not hesitate long; and

after assuring myself that the only revolver I possessed was properly

loaded, I hurried towards the Orleans station. On the way I remembered

that Rouletabille had asked for two revolvers; I therefore entered a

gunsmith’s shop and bought an excellent weapon for my friend.

I had hoped to find him at the station at Epinay; but he was not there.

However, a cab was waiting for me and I was soon at the Glandier.

Nobody was at the gate, and it was only on the threshold of the château

that I met the young man. He saluted me with a friendly gesture and

threw his arms about me, inquiring warmly as to the state of my health.

When we were in the little sitting-room of which I have spoken,

Rouletabille made me sit down.

“It’s going badly,” he said.

“What’s going badly?” I asked.

“Everything.”

He came nearer to me and whispered:

“Frédéric Larsan is working with might and main against Darzac.”

This did not astonish me. I had seen the poor show Mademoiselle

Stangerson’s fiancé had made at the time of the examination of the

footprints. However, I immediately asked:—

“What about that cane?”

“It is still in the hands of Frédéric Larsan. He never lets go of it.”

“But doesn’t it prove the alibi for Monsieur Darzac?”

“Not at all. Gently questioned by me, Darzac denied having, on that

evening, or on any other, purchased a cane at Cassette’s. However,”

said Rouletabille, “I’ll not swear to anything; Monsieur Darzac has

such strange fits of silence that one does not know exactly what to

think of what he says.”

“To Frédéric Larsan this cane must mean a piece of very damaging

evidence. But in what way? The time when it was bought shows it could

not have been in the murderer’s possession.”

“The time doesn’t worry Larsan. He is not obliged to adopt my theory

which assumes that the murderer got into The Yellow Room between five

and six o’clock. But there’s nothing to prevent him assuming that

the murderer got in between ten and eleven o’clock at night? At that

hour Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson, assisted by Daddy Jacques,

were engaged in making an interesting chemical experiment in the part

of the laboratory taken up by the furnaces. Larsan says, unlikely as

that may seem, that the murderer may have slipped behind them. He has

already got the examining magistrate to listen to him. When one looks

closely into it, the reasoning is absurd, seeing that the ‘intimate’—if

there is one—must have known that the professor would shortly leave

the pavilion, and that the ‘friend’ had only to put off operating till

after the professor’s departure. Why should he have risked crossing the

laboratory while the professor was in it? And then, when he had got

into The Yellow Room?—

“There are many points to be cleared up before Larsan’s theory can be

admitted. I sha’n’t waste my time over it, for my theory won’t allow

me to occupy myself with mere imagination. Only, as I am obliged for

the moment to keep silent, and Larsan sometimes talks, he may finish

by coming out openly against Monsieur Darzac,—if I’m not there,”

added the young reporter proudly. “For there are surface evidences

against Darzac, much more convincing than the cane, which remains

incomprehensible to me, all the more so as Larsan does not in the least

hesitate to let Darzac see him with it!—I understand many things in

Larsan’s theory, but I can’t make anything of that cane.”

“Is he still at the château?”

“Yes; he hardly ever quits it!—He sleeps there, as I do, at the request

of Monsieur Stangerson, who has done for him what Monsieur Robert

Darzac has done for me. In spite of the accusation made by Larsan that

Monsieur Stangerson knows who the murderer is he yet affords him every

facility for arriving at the truth,—just as Darzac is doing for me.”

“But you are convinced of Darzac’s innocence?”

“At one time I did believe in the possibility of his guilt. That was

when we arrived here for the first time. The time has come for me to

tell you what has passed between Monsieur Darzac and myself.”

Here Rouletabille interrupted himself and asked me if I had brought the

revolvers. I showed him them. Having examined both, he pronounced them

excellent, and handed them back to me.

“Shall we have any use for them?” I asked.

“No doubt; this evening. We shall pass the night here—if that won’t

tire you?”

“On the contrary,” I said with an expression that made Rouletabille

laugh.

“No, no,” he said, “this is no time for laughing. You remember the

phrase which was the ‘Open sesame’ of this château full of mystery?”

“Yes,” I said, “perfectly,—‘The presbytery has lost nothing of its

charm, nor the garden its brightness.’ It was the phrase which you

found on the half-burned piece of paper amongst the ashes in the

laboratory.”

“Yes; at the bottom of the paper, where the flame had not reached,

was this date: 23rd of October. Remember this date, it is highly

important. I am now going to tell you about that curious phrase. On the

evening before the crime, that is to say, on the 23rd, Monsieur and

Mademoiselle Stangerson were at a reception at the Élysée. I know that,

because I was there on duty, having to interview one of the savants of

the Academy of Philadelphia, who was being fêted there. I had never

before seen either Monsieur or Mademoiselle Stangerson. I was seated in

the room which precedes the Salon des Ambassadeurs, and, tired of being

jostled by so many noble personages, I had fallen into a vague reverie,

when I scented near me the perfume of the lady in black.

“Do you ask me what is the ‘perfume of the lady in black’? It must

suffice you to know that it is a perfume of which I am very fond,

because it was that of a lady who had been very kind to me in my

childhood,—a lady whom I had always seen dressed in black. The lady

who, that evening, was scented with the perfume of the lady in black,

was dressed in white. She was wonderfully beautiful. I could not help

rising and following her. An old man gave her his arm, and, as they

passed, I heard voices say: ‘Professor Stangerson and his daughter.’ It

was in that way I learned who it was I was following.

“They met Monsieur Robert Darzac, whom I knew by sight. Professor

Stangerson, accosted by Mr. Arthur William Rance, one of the American

savants, seated himself in the great gallery, and Monsieur Robert

Darzac led Mademoiselle Stangerson into the conservatory. I followed.

The weather was very mild that evening; the garden doors were open.

Mademoiselle Stangerson threw a fichu shawl over her shoulders and I

plainly saw that it was she who was begging Monsieur Darzac to go with

her into the garden. I continued to follow, interested by the agitation

plainly exhibited by the bearing of Monsieur Darzac. They slowly passed

along the wall abutting on the Avenue Marigny. I took the central

alley, walking parallel with them, and then crossed over for the

purpose of getting nearer to them. The night was dark, and the grass

deadened the sound of my steps. They had stopped under the vacillating

light of a gas jet and appeared to be both bending over a paper held

by Mademoiselle Stangerson, reading something which deeply interested

them. I stopped in the darkness and silence.

“Neither of them saw me, and I distinctly heard Mademoiselle Stangerson

repeat, as she was refolding the paper: ‘The presbytery has lost

nothing of its charm, nor the garden its brightness!’—It was said in

a tone at once mocking and despairing, and was followed by a burst of

such nervous laughter that I think her words will never cease to sound

in my ears. But another phrase was uttered by Monsieur Robert Darzac:

‘Must I commit a crime, then, to win you?’ He was in an extraordinarily

agitated state. He took the hand of Mademoiselle Stangerson and held it

for a long time to his lips, and I thought, from the movement of his

shoulders, that he was crying. Then they went away.

“When I returned to the great gallery,” continued Rouletabille, “I saw

no more of Monsieur Robert Darzac, and I was not to see him again until

after the tragedy at the Glandier. Mademoiselle was near Mr. Rance, who

was talking with much animation, his eyes, during the conversation,

glowing with a singular brightness. Mademoiselle Stangerson, I thought,

was not even listening to what he was saying, her face expressing

perfect indifference. His face was the red face of a drunkard. When

Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson left, he went to the bar and

remained there. I joined him, and rendered him some little service

in the midst of the pressing crowd. He thanked me and told me he was

returning to America three days later, that is to say, on the 26th (the

day after the crime). I talked with him about Philadelphia; he told me

he had lived there for five-and-twenty years, and that it was there he

had met the illustrious Professor Stangerson and his daughter. He drank

a great deal of champagne, and when I left him he was very nearly drunk.

“Such were my experiences on that evening, and I leave you to imagine

what effect the news of the attempted murder of Mademoiselle Stangerson

produced on me,—with what force those words pronounced by Monsieur

Robert Darzac, ‘Must I commit a crime, then, to win you?’ recurred to

me. It was not this phrase, however, that I repeated to him, when we

met here at Glandier. The sentence of the presbytery and the bright

garden sufficed to open the gate of the château. If you ask me if I

believe now that Monsieur Darzac is the murderer, I must say I do not.

I do not think I ever quite thought that. At the time I could not

really think seriously of anything. I had so little evidence to go on.

But I needed to have at once the proof that he had not been wounded in

the hand.

“When we were alone together, I told him how I had chanced to overhear

a part of his conversation with Mademoiselle Stangerson in the garden

of the Élysée; and when I repeated to him the words, ‘Must I commit a

crime, then, to win you?’ he was greatly troubled, though much less so

than he had been by hearing me repeat the phrase about the presbytery.

What threw him into a state of real consternation was to learn from

me that the day on which he had gone to meet Mademoiselle Stangerson

at the Élysée, was the very day on which she had gone to the Post

Office for the letter. It was that letter, perhaps, which ended with

the words: ‘The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor the

garden its brightness.’ My surmise was confirmed by my finding, if you

remember, in the ashes of the laboratory, the fragment of paper dated

October the 23rd. The letter had been written and withdrawn from the

Post Office on the same day.

“There can be no doubt that, on returning from the Élysée that night,

Mademoiselle Stangerson had tried to destroy that compromising paper.

It was in vain that Monsieur Darzac denied that that letter had

anything whatever to do with the crime. I told him that in an affair so

filled with mystery as this, he had no right to hide this letter; that

I was persuaded it was of considerable importance; that the desperate

tone in which Mademoiselle Stangerson had pronounced the prophetic

phrase,—that his own tears, and the threat of a crime which he had

professed after the letter was read—all these facts tended to leave no

room for me to doubt. Monsieur Darzac became more and more agitated,

and I determined to take advantage of the effect I had produced on him.

‘You were on the point of being married, Monsieur,’ I said negligently

and without looking at him, ‘and suddenly your marriage becomes

impossible because of the writer of that letter; because as soon as

his letter was read, you spoke of the necessity for a crime to win

Mademoiselle Stangerson. Therefore there is someone between you and

her—someone who is preventing your marriage with her—someone who has

attempted to kill her, so that she should not be able to marry!’ And I

concluded with these words: ‘Now, monsieur, you have only to tell me in

confidence the name of the murderer!’—The words I had uttered must have

struck him ominously, for when I turned my eyes on him, I saw that his

face was haggard, the perspiration standing on his forehead, and terror

showing in his eyes.

“‘Monsieur,’ he said to me, ‘I am going to ask of you something which

may appear insane, but in exchange for which I place my life in your

hands. You must not tell the magistrates of what you saw and heard in

the garden of the Élysée,—neither to them nor to anybody. I swear to

you, that I am innocent, and I know, I feel, that you believe me; but

I would rather be taken for the guilty man than see justice go astray

on that phrase, “The presbytery has lost nothing of its charm, nor

the garden its brightness.” The judges must know nothing about that

phrase. All this matter is in your hands. Monsieur, I leave it there;

but forget the evening at the Élysée. A hundred other roads are open to

you in your search for the criminal. I will open them for you myself. I

will help you. Will you take up your quarters here?—You may remain here

to do as you please.—Eat—sleep here—watch my actions—the actions of all

here. You shall be master of the Glandier, Monsieur; but forget the

evening at the Élysée.’”

Rouletabille here paused to take breath. I now understood what had

appeared so unexplainable in the demeanour of Monsieur Robert Darzac

towards my friend, and the facility with which the young reporter had

been able to instal himself on the scene of the crime. My curiosity

could not fail to be excited by all I had heard. I asked Rouletabille

to satisfy it still further. What had happened at the Glandier during

the past week?—Had he not told me that there were surface indications

against Monsieur Darzac much more terrible than that of the cane found

by Larsan?

“Everything seems to be pointing against him,” replied my friend, “and

the situation is becoming exceedingly grave. Monsieur Darzac appears

not to mind it much; but in that he is wrong. I was interested only in

the health of Mademoiselle Stangerson, which was daily improving, when

something occurred that is even more mysterious than—than the mystery

of The Yellow Room!”

“Impossible!” I cried, “What could be more mysterious than _that_?”

“Let us first go back to Monsieur Robert Darzac,” said Rouletabille,

calming me. “I have said that everything seems to be pointing against

him. The marks of the neat boots found by Frédéric Larsan appear to be

really the footprints of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s fiancé. The marks

made by the bicycle may have been made by _his_ bicycle. He had usually

left it at the château; why did he take it to Paris on that particular

occasion? Was it because he was not going to return again to the

château? Was it because, owing to the breaking off of his marriage, his

relations with the Stangersons were to cease? All who are interested in

the matter affirm that those relations were to continue unchanged.

“Frédéric Larsan, however, believes that all intercourse was at an end.

From the day when Monsieur Darzac accompanied Mademoiselle Stangerson

to the Grands Magasins de la Louvre until the day after the crime, he

had not been at the Glandier. Remember that Mademoiselle Stangerson

lost her reticule containing the key with the brass head while she

was in his company. From that day to the evening at the Élysée, the

Sorbonne professor and Mademoiselle Stangerson did not see one another;

but they may have written to each other. Mademoiselle Stangerson went

to the Post Office to get a letter, which Larsan says was written by

Robert Darzac; for knowing nothing of what had passed at the Élysée,

Larsan believes that it was Monsieur Darzac himself who stole the

reticule with the key, with the design of forcing her consent, by

getting possession of the precious papers of her father—papers which he

would have restored to him on condition that the marriage engagement

was to be fulfilled.

“All that would have been a very doubtful and almost absurd hypothesis,

as Larsan admitted to me, but for another and much graver circumstance.

In the first place here is something which I have not been able to

explain—Monsieur Darzac had himself, on the 24th, gone to the Post

Office to ask for the letter which Mademoiselle had called for and

received on the previous evening. The description of the man who made

application tallies in every respect with the appearance of Monsieur

Darzac, who, in answer to the questions put to him by the examining

magistrate, denies that he went to the Post Office. Now even admitting

that the letter was written by him—which I do not believe—he knew that

Mademoiselle Stangerson had received it, since he had seen it in her

hands in the garden at the Élysée. It could not have been he, then,

who had gone to the Post Office, the day after the 24th, to ask for a

letter which he knew was no longer there.

“To me it appears clear that somebody, strongly resembling him, stole

Mademoiselle Stangerson’s reticule and in that letter, had demanded of

her something which she had not sent him. He must have been surprised

at the failure of his demand, hence his application at the Post Office,

to learn whether his letter had been delivered to the person to whom

it had been addressed. Finding that it had been claimed, he had become

furious. What had he demanded? Nobody but Mademoiselle Stangerson

knows. Then, on the day following, it is reported that she had been

murdered during the night, and, the next day, I discovered that the

Professor had, at the same time, been robbed by means of the key

referred to in the poste restante letter. It would seem, then, that

the man who went to the Post Office to inquire for the letter must

have been the murderer. All these arguments Larsan applies as against

Monsieur Darzac. You may be sure that the examining magistrate, Larsan,

and myself, have done our best to get from the Post Office precise

details relative to the singular personage who applied there on the

24th of October. But nothing has been learned. We don’t know where he

came from—or where he went. Beyond the description which makes him

resemble Monsieur Darzac, we know nothing.

“I have announced in the leading journals that a handsome reward will

be given to a driver of any public conveyance who drove a fare to

No. 40, Post Office, about ten o’clock on the morning of the 24th of

October. Information to be addressed to ‘M. R.,’ at the office of the

‘Epoque’; but no answer has resulted. The man may have walked; but, as

he was most likely in a hurry, there was a chance that he might have

gone in a cab. Who, I keep asking myself night and day, is the man who

so strongly resembles Monsieur Robert Darzac, and who is also known to

have bought the cane which has fallen into Larsan’s hands.

“The most serious fact is that Monsieur Darzac was, at the very same

time that his double presented himself at the Post Office, down for a

lecture at the Sorbonne. He had not delivered that lecture, and one

of his friends took his place. When I questioned him as to how he had

employed the time, he told me that he had gone for a stroll in the Bois

de Boulogne. What do you think of a professor who, instead of giving

his lecture, obtains a substitute to go for a stroll in the Bois de

Boulogne? When Frédéric Larsan asked him for information on this point,

he quietly replied that it was no business of his how he spent his time

in Paris. On which Fred swore aloud that he would find out, without

anybody’s help.

“All this seems to fit in with Fred’s hypothesis, namely, that Monsieur

Stangerson allowed the murderer to escape in order to avoid a scandal.

The hypothesis is further substantiated by the fact that Darzac was

in The Yellow Room and was permitted to get away. That hypothesis I

believe to be a false one.—Larsan is being misled by it, though that

would not displease me, did it not affect an innocent person. Now

does that hypothesis _really_ mislead Frédéric Larsan? That is the

question—that is the question.”

“Perhaps he is right,” I cried, interrupting Rouletabille. “Are you

sure that Monsieur Darzac is innocent?—It seems to me that these are

extraordinary coincidences—”

“Coincidences,” replied my friend, “are the worst enemies to truth.”

“What does the examining magistrate think now of the matter?”

“Monsieur de Marquet hesitates to accuse Monsieur Darzac, in the

absence of absolute proofs. Not only would he have public opinion

wholly against him, to say nothing of the Sorbonne, but Monsieur

and Mademoiselle Stangerson. She adores Monsieur Robert Darzac.

Indistinctly as she saw the murderer, it would be hard to make the

public believe that she could not have recognised him, if Darzac had

been the criminal. No doubt The Yellow Room was very dimly lit; but

a night-light, however small, gives some light. Here, my boy, is

how things stood when, three days, or rather three nights ago, an

extraordinarily strange incident occurred.”