Chapter XIV
“I Expect the Assassin this Evening”
“I must take you,” said Rouletabille, “so as to enable you to
understand, to the various scenes. I myself believe that I have
discovered what everybody else is searching for, namely, how the
murderer escaped from The Yellow Room, without any accomplice, and
without Mademoiselle Stangerson having had anything to do with it.
But so long as I am not sure of the real murderer, I cannot state
the theory on which I am working. I can only say that I believe it
to be correct and, in any case, a quite natural and simple one. As
to what happened in this place three nights ago, I must say it kept
me wondering for a whole day and a night. It passes all belief. The
theory I have formed from the incident is so absurd that I would rather
matters remained as yet unexplained.”
Saying which the young reporter invited me to go and make the tour of
the château with him. The only sound to be heard was the crunching of
the dead leaves beneath our feet. The silence was so intense that one
might have thought the château had been abandoned. The old stones, the
stagnant water of the ditch surrounding the donjon, the bleak ground
strewn with the dead leaves, the dark, skeleton-like outlines of the
trees, all contributed to give to the desolate place, now filled with
its awful mystery, an aspect the most funereal. As we passed round the
donjon, we met the Green Man, the forest-keeper, who did not greet us,
but walked by as if we had not existed. He was looking just as I had
formerly seen him through the window of the Donjon Inn. He had still
his fowling-piece slung at his back, his pipe was in his mouth, and his
eye-glasses on his nose.
“An odd kind of fish!” Rouletabille said to me, in a low tone.
“Have you spoken to him?” I asked.
“Yes, but I could get nothing out of him. His only answers are grunts
and shrugs of the shoulders. He generally lives on the first floor of
the donjon,—a big room that once served for an oratory. He lives like
a bear, never goes out without his gun, and is only pleasant with the
girls. The women, for twelve miles round, are all setting their caps at
him. For the present, he is paying attention to Madame Mathieu, whose
husband is keeping a lynx eye upon her in consequence.”
After passing the donjon, which is situated at the extreme end of
the left wing, we went to the back of the château. Rouletabille,
pointing to a window which I recognised as the only one belonging to
Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment, said to me:—
“If you had been here, two nights ago, you would have seen your humble
servant at the top of a ladder, about to enter the château by that
window.”
As I expressed some surprise at this piece of nocturnal gymnastics, he
begged me to notice carefully the exterior disposition of the château.
We then went back into the building.
“I must now show you the first floor of the château, where I am
living,” said my friend.
To enable the reader the better to understand the disposition of these
parts of the dwelling, I annex a plan of the first floor of the right
wing, drawn by Rouletabille the day after the extraordinary phenomenon
occurred, the details of which I am about to relate.
[Illustration: A plan of the upper floor of the château, showing the
right wing. A large hallway, labelled “Right Gallery,” runs east-west
through the wing, and has doors to the lumber room and Mademoiselle
Stangerson’s rooms. Branching off south from the right gallery is a
hallway labelled “Winding Gallery,” which has doors to Rouletabille’s
room and Frédéric Larsan’s room. A dot at the southern end of the
winding gallery is labelled “1”. The right gallery has a dot labelled
“2” on the west end, and a dot labelled “3” where the right wing meets
the stairs to the ground floor. There is a dot labelled “4” just
outside of a window of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom. The window at
the south end of the winding gallery is labelled “5”. Just outside this
window is a semi-circular area labelled “6”.]
1. Position where Rouletabille placed Frédéric Larsan.
2. Position where Rouletabille placed Daddy Jacques.
3. Position where Rouletabille placed Monsieur Stangerson.
4. Window by which Rouletabille entered.
5. Window found open by Rouletabille when he left the room. He
re-closed it. All the other doors and windows were shut.
6. Terrace surmounting a projecting room on the ground-floor.
Rouletabille motioned me to follow him up a magnificent flight of
stairs ending in a landing on the first floor. From this landing one
could pass to the right or left wing of the château by a gallery
opening from it. This gallery, high and wide, extended along the whole
length of the building and was lit from the front of the château facing
the north. The rooms, the windows of which looked to the south, opened
out of the gallery. Professor Stangerson inhabited the left wing of the
building. Mademoiselle Stangerson had her apartment in the right wing.
We entered the gallery to the right. A narrow carpet, laid on the
waxed oaken floor, which shone like glass, deadened the sound of our
footsteps. Rouletabille asked me, in a low tone, to walk carefully, as
we were passing the door of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment. This
consisted of a bed-room, an ante-room, a small bath-room, a boudoir,
and a drawing-room. One could pass from one to another of these rooms
without having to go by way of the gallery. The gallery continued
straight to the western end of the building, where it was lit by a high
window (window 2 on the plan). At about two-thirds of its length this
gallery, at a right angle, joined another gallery following the course
of the right wing.
The better to follow this narrative, we shall call the gallery leading
from the stairs to the eastern window, the “right” gallery and the
gallery quitting it at a right angle, the “off-turning” gallery
(winding gallery in the plan). It was at the meeting point of the two
galleries that Rouletabille had his chamber, adjoining that of Frédéric
Larsan, the door of each opening on to the “off-turning” gallery,
while the doors of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment opened into the
“right” gallery. (See the Plan.)
Rouletabille opened the door of his room and after we had passed in,
carefully drew the bolt. I had not had time to glance round the place
in which he had been installed, when he uttered a cry of surprise and
pointed to a pair of eye-glasses on a side-table.
“What are these doing here?” he asked.
I should have been puzzled to answer him.
“I wonder,” he said, “I wonder if this is what I have been searching
for. I wonder if these are the eye-glasses from the presbytery!”
He seized them eagerly, his fingers caressing the glass. Then looking
at me, with an expression of terror on his face, he murmured, “Oh!—Oh!”
He repeated the exclamation again and again, as if his thoughts had
suddenly turned his brain.
He rose and, putting his hand on my shoulder, laughed like one demented
as he said:
“Those glasses will drive me silly! Mathematically speaking the thing
is possible; but humanly speaking it is impossible—or afterwards—or
afterwards—”
Two light knocks struck the door. Rouletabille opened it. A figure
entered. I recognised the concierge, whom I had seen when she was being
taken to the pavilion for examination. I was surprised, thinking she
was still under lock and key. This woman said in a very low tone:—
“In the grove of the _parquet_.”
Rouletabille replied: “Thanks.”—The woman then left. He again turned
to me, his look haggard, after having carefully refastened the door,
muttering some incomprehensible phrases.
“If the thing is mathematically possible, why should it not be
humanly!—And if it is humanly possible, the matter is simply awful.”
I interrupted him in his soliloquy:—
“Have they set the concierges at liberty, then?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “I had them liberated. I needed people I could
trust. The woman is thoroughly devoted to me, and her husband would lay
down his life for me.”
“Oho!” I said, “when will he have occasion to do it?”
“This evening,—for this evening I expect the murderer.”
“You expect the murderer this evening? Then you know him?”
“I _shall_ know him; but I should be mad to affirm, categorically, at
this moment that I do know him. The mathematical idea I have of the
murderer gives results so frightful, so monstrous, that I hope it is
still possible that I am mistaken. I hope so, with all my heart!”
“Five minutes ago, you did not know the murderer; how can you say that
you expect him this evening?”
“Because I know that he must come.”
Rouletabille very slowly filled his pipe and lit it. That meant an
interesting story. At that moment we heard some one walking in the
gallery and passing before our door. Rouletabille listened. The sound
of the footstep died away in the distance.
“Is Frédéric Larsan in his room?” I asked, pointing to the partition.
“No,” my friend answered. “He went to Paris this morning,—still on the
scent of Darzac, who also left for Paris. That matter will turn out
badly. I expect that Monsieur Darzac will be arrested in the course of
the next week. The worst of it is that everything seems to be in league
against him,—circumstances, things, people. Not an hour passes without
bringing some new evidence against him. The examining magistrate is
overwhelmed by it—and blind.”
“Frédéric Larsan, however, is not a novice,” I said.
“I thought so,” said Rouletabille, with a slightly contemptuous turn of
his lips, “I fancied he was a much abler man. I had, indeed, a great
admiration for him, before I got to know his method of working. It’s
deplorable. He owes his reputation solely to his ability; but he lacks
reasoning power,—the mathematics of his ideas are very poor.”
I looked closely at Rouletabille and could not help smiling, on hearing
this boy of eighteen talking of a man who had proved to the world that
he was the finest police sleuth-hound in Europe.
“You smile,” he said; “you are wrong! I swear I will outwit him—and in
a striking way! But I must make haste about it, for he has an enormous
start of me—given him by Monsieur Robert Darzac, who is this evening
going to increase it still more. Think of it!—every time the murderer
comes to the château, Monsieur Darzac, by a strange fatality, absents
himself and refuses to give any account of how he employs his time.”
“Every time the assassin comes to the château!” I cried. “Has he
returned then—?”
“Yes, during that famous night when the strange phenomenon occurred.”
I was now going to learn about the astonishing phenomenon to which
Rouletabille had made allusion half an hour earlier without giving me
any explanation of it. But I had learned never to press Rouletabille
in his narratives. He spoke when the fancy took him and when he judged
it to be right. He was less concerned about my curiosity than he was
for making a complete summing up for himself of any important matter in
which he was interested.
At last, in short rapid phrases, he acquainted me with things which
plunged me into a state bordering on complete bewilderment. Indeed, the
results of that still unknown science known as hypnotism, for example,
were not more inexplicable than the disappearance of the matter of the
murderer at the moment when four persons were within touch of him. I
speak of hypnotism as I would of electricity, for of the nature of both
we are ignorant and we know little of their laws. I cite these examples
because, at the time, the case appeared to me to be only explicable
by the inexplicable,—that is to say, by an event outside of known
natural laws. And yet, if I had had Rouletabille’s brain, I should,
like him, have had a presentiment of the natural explanation; for the
most curious thing about all the mysteries of the Glandier case was the
natural manner in which he explained them.
I have among the papers that were sent me by the young man, after
the affair was over, a note-book of his, in which a complete account
is given of the phenomenon of the disappearance of the “matter” of
the assassin, and the thoughts to which it gave rise in the mind
of my young friend. It is preferable, I think, to give the reader
this account, rather than continue to reproduce my conversation with
Rouletabille; for I should be afraid, in a history of this nature, to
add a word that was not in accordance with the strictest truth.