Chapter III

“A Man Has Passed like a Shadow through the Blinds”

Half an hour later Rouletabille and I were on the platform of the

Orleans station, awaiting the departure of the train which was to take

us to Epinay-sur-Orge.

On the platform we found Monsieur de Marquet and his Registrar, who

represented the Judicial Court of Corbeil. Monsieur de Marquet had

spent the night in Paris, assisting in the final rehearsal, at the

Scala, of a little play of which he was the unknown author, signing

himself simply “Castigat Ridendo.”

Monsieur Marquet was beginning to be a “noble old gentleman.” Generally

he was extremely polite and full of gay humour, and in all his life had

had but one passion,—that of dramatic art. Throughout his magisterial

career he was interested solely in cases capable of furnishing him with

something in the nature of a drama. Though he might very well have

aspired to the highest judicial positions, he had never really worked

for anything but to win a success at the romantic Porte-Saint-Martin,

or at the sombre Odéon.

Because of the mystery which shrouded it, the case of “The Yellow

Room” was certain to fascinate so theatrical a mind. It interested him

enormously, and he threw himself into it, less as a magistrate eager

to know the truth, than as an amateur of dramatic embroglios, tending

wholly to mystery and intrigue, who dreads nothing so much as the

explanatory final act.

So that, at the moment of meeting him, I heard Monsieur de Marquet say

to the Registrar with a sigh:—

“I hope, my dear Monsieur Maleine, this builder with his pickaxe will

not destroy so fine a mystery.”

“Have no fear,” replied Monsieur Maleine, “his pickaxe may demolish the

pavilion, perhaps, but it will leave our case intact. I have sounded

the walls and examined the ceiling and floor and I know all about it. I

am not to be deceived.”

Having thus reassured his chief, Monsieur Maleine, with a discreet

movement of the head, drew Monsieur de Marquet’s attention to us.

The face of that gentleman clouded, and, as he saw Rouletabille

approaching, hat in hand, he sprang into one of the empty carriages

saying, half aloud to his Registrar, as he did so, “Above all, no

journalists!”

Monsieur Maleine replied in the same tone, “I understand!” and then

tried to prevent Rouletabille from entering the same compartment with

the examining magistrate.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,—this compartment is reserved.”

“I am a journalist, Monsieur, engaged on the ‘Epoque,’” said my young

friend with a great show of gesture and politeness, “and I have a word

or two to say to Monsieur de Marquet.”

“Monsieur is very much engaged with the inquiry he has in hand.”

“Ah! his inquiry, pray believe me, is absolutely a matter of

indifference to me. I am no scavenger of odds and ends,” he went on,

with infinite contempt in his lower lip, “I am a theatrical reporter;

and this evening I shall have to give a little account of the play at

the Scala.”

“Get in, sir, please,” said the Registrar.

Rouletabille was already in the compartment. I went in after him and

seated myself by his side. The Registrar followed and closed the

carriage-door.

Monsieur de Marquet looked at him.

“Ah, sir,” Rouletabille began, “You must not be angry with Monsieur de

Maleine. It is not with Monsieur de Marquet that I desire to have the

honour of speaking, but with Monsieur ‘Castigat Ridendo.’ Permit me to

congratulate you—personally, as well as the writer for the ‘Epoque.’”

And Rouletabille, having first introduced me, introduced himself.

Monsieur de Marquet, with a nervous gesture, caressed his beard into

a point, and explained to Rouletabille, in a few words, that he was

too modest an author to desire that the veil of his pseudonym should

be publicly raised, and that he hoped the enthusiasm of the journalist

for the dramatist’s work would not lead him to tell the public that

Monsieur “Castigat Ridendo” and the examining magistrate of Corbeil

were one and the same person.

“The work of the dramatic author may interfere,” he said, after a

slight hesitation, “with that of the magistrate, especially in a

province where one’s labours are little more than routine.”

“Oh, you may rely on my discretion!” cried Rouletabille.

The train was in motion.

“We have started!” said the examining magistrate, surprised at seeing

us still in the carriage.

“Yes, Monsieur,—truth has started,” said Rouletabille, smiling

amiably,—“on its way to the Château du Glandier. A fine case, Monsieur

de Marquet,—a fine case!”

“An obscure—incredible, unfathomable, inexplicable affair—and there is

only one thing _I_ fear, Monsieur Rouletabille,—that the journalists

will be trying to explain it.”

My friend felt this a rap on his knuckles.

“Yes,” he said simply, “that is to be feared. They meddle in

everything. As for my interest, monsieur, I only referred to it by mere

chance,—the mere chance of finding myself in the same train with you,

and in the same compartment of the same carriage.”

“Where are you going, then?” asked Monsieur de Marquet.

“To the Château du Glandier,” replied Rouletabille, without turning.

“You’ll not get in, Monsieur Rouletabille!”

“Will you prevent me?” said my friend, already prepared to fight.

“Not I!—I like the press and journalists too well to be in any way

disagreeable to them; but Monsieur Stangerson has given orders for his

door to be closed against everybody, and it is well guarded. Not a

journalist was able to pass through the gate of the Glandier yesterday.”

Monsieur de Marquet compressed his lips and seemed ready to relapse

into obstinate silence. He only relaxed a little when Rouletabille no

longer left him in ignorance of the fact that we were going to the

Glandier for the purpose of shaking hands with an “old and intimate

friend,” Monsieur Robert Darzac—a man whom Rouletabille had perhaps

seen once in his life.

“Poor Robert!” continued the young reporter, “this dreadful affair may

be his death,—he is so deeply in love with Mademoiselle Stangerson.”

“His sufferings are truly painful to witness,” escaped like a regret

from the lips of Monsieur de Marquet.

“But it is to be hoped that Mademoiselle Stangerson’s life will be

saved.”

“Let us hope so. Her father told me yesterday that, if she does not

recover, it will not be long before he joins her in the grave. What an

incalculable loss to science his death would be!”

“The wound on her temple is serious, is it not?”

“Evidently; but, by a wonderful chance, it has not proved mortal. The

blow was given with great force.”

“Then it was not with the revolver she was wounded,” said Rouletabille,

glancing at me in triumph.

Monsieur de Marquet appeared greatly embarrassed.

“I didn’t say anything—I don’t want to say anything—I will not say

anything,” he said. And he turned towards his Registrar as if he no

longer knew us.

But Rouletabille was not to be so easily shaken off. He moved nearer to

the examining magistrate and, drawing a copy of the “Matin” from his

pocket, he showed it to him and said:—

“There is one thing, Monsieur, which I may enquire of you without

committing an indiscretion. You have, of course, seen the account given

in the ‘Matin’? It is absurd, is it not?”

“Not in the slightest, Monsieur.”

“What! The Yellow Room has but one barred window—the bars of which have

not been moved—and only one door, which had to be broken open—and the

assassin was not found!”

“That’s so, monsieur,—that’s so. That’s how the matter stands.”

Rouletabille said no more but plunged into thought. A quarter of an

hour thus passed.

Coming back to himself again he said, addressing the magistrate:—

“How did Mademoiselle Stangerson wear her hair on that evening?”

“I don’t know,” replied Monsieur de Marquet.

“That’s a very important point,” said Rouletabille. “Her hair was done

up in bands, wasn’t it? I feel sure that on that evening, the evening

of the crime, she had her hair arranged in bands.”

“Then you are mistaken, Monsieur Rouletabille,” replied the magistrate;

“Mademoiselle Stangerson that evening had her hair drawn up in a knot

on the top of her head,—her usual way of arranging it—her forehead

completely uncovered. I can assure you, for we have carefully examined

the wound. There was no blood on the hair, and the arrangement of it

has not been disturbed since the crime was committed.”

“You are sure! You are sure that, on the night of the crime, she had

not her hair in bands?”

“Quite sure,” the magistrate continued, smiling, “because I remember

the Doctor saying to me, while he was examining the wound, ‘It is a

great pity Mademoiselle Stangerson was in the habit of drawing her

hair back from her forehead. If she had worn it in bands, the blow she

received on the temple would have been weakened.’ It seems strange to

me that you should attach so much importance to this point.”

“Oh! if she had not her hair in bands, I give it up,” said

Rouletabille, with a despairing gesture.

“And was the wound on her temple a bad one?” he asked presently.

“Terrible.”

“With what weapon was it made?”

“That is a secret of the investigation.”

“Have you found the weapon—whatever it was?”

The magistrate did not answer.

“And the wound in the throat?”

Here the examining magistrate readily confirmed the decision of the

doctor that, if the murderer had pressed her throat a few seconds

longer, Mademoiselle Stangerson would have died of strangulation.

“The affair as reported in the ‘Matin,’” said Rouletabille eagerly,

“seems to me more and more inexplicable. Can you tell me, Monsieur, how

many openings there are in the pavilion? I mean doors and windows.”

“There are five,” replied Monsieur de Marquet, after having coughed

once or twice, but no longer resisting the desire he felt to talk of

the whole of the incredible mystery of the affair he was investigating.

“There are five, of which the door of the vestibule is the only

entrance to the pavilion,—a door always automatically closed, which

cannot be opened, either from the outer or inside, except with the two

special keys which are never out of the possession of either Daddy

Jacques or Monsieur Stangerson. Mademoiselle Stangerson had no need for

one, since Daddy Jacques lodged in the pavilion and because, during

the daytime, she never left her father. When they, all four, rushed

into The Yellow Room, after breaking open the door of the laboratory,

the door in the vestibule remained closed as usual and, of the two

keys for opening it, Daddy Jacques had one in his pocket, and Monsieur

Stangerson the other. As to the windows of the pavilion, there are

four; the one window of The Yellow Room and those of the laboratory

looking out on to the country; the window in the vestibule looking into

the park.”

“It is by that window that he escaped from the pavilion!” cried

Rouletabille.

“How do you know that?” demanded Monsieur de Marquet, fixing a strange

look on my young friend.

“We’ll see later how he got away from The Yellow Room,” replied

Rouletabille, “but he must have left the pavilion by the vestibule

window.”

“Once more,—how do you know that?”

“How? Oh, the thing is simple enough! As soon as he found he could not

escape by the door of the pavilion his only way out was by the window

in the vestibule, unless he could pass through a grated window. The

window of The Yellow Room is secured by iron bars, because it looks

out upon the open country; the two windows of the laboratory have to

be protected in like manner for the same reason. As the murderer got

away, I conceive that he found a window that was not barred,—that of

the vestibule, which opens on to the park,—that is to say, into the

interior of the estate. There’s not much magic in all that.”

“Yes,” said Monsieur de Marquet, “but what you have not guessed is

that this single window in the vestibule, though it has no iron bars,

has solid iron blinds. Now these iron blinds have remained fastened

by their iron latch; and yet we have proof that the murderer made his

escape from the pavilion by _that_ window! Traces of blood on the

inside wall and on the blinds as well as on the floor, and footmarks,

of which I have taken the measurements, attest the fact that the

murderer made his escape that way. But then, how did he do it, seeing

that the blinds remained fastened on the inside? He passed through

them like a shadow. But what is more bewildering than all is that

it is impossible to form any idea as to how the murderer got out of

The Yellow Room, or how he got across the laboratory to reach the

vestibule! Ah, yes, Monsieur Rouletabille, it is altogether as you

said, a fine case, the key to which will not be discovered for a long

time, I hope.”

“You hope, Monsieur?”

Monsieur de Marquet corrected himself.

“I do not hope so,—I think so.”

“Could that window have been closed and refastened after the flight of

the assassin?” asked Rouletabille.

“That is what occurred to me for a moment; but it would imply an

accomplice or accomplices,—and I don’t see—”

After a short silence he added:—

“Ah—if Mademoiselle Stangerson were only well enough to-day to allow of

her being questioned!”

Rouletabille following up his thought, asked:—

“And the attic?—There must be some opening to that?”

“Yes; there is a window, or rather skylight, in it, which, as it looks

out towards the country, Monsieur Stangerson has had barred, like the

rest of the windows. These bars, as in the other windows, have remained

intact, and the blinds, which naturally open inwards, have not been

unfastened. For the rest, we have not discovered anything to lead us to

suspect that the murderer had passed through the attic.”

“It seems clear to you, then, Monsieur, that the murderer

escaped—nobody knows how—by the window in the vestibule?”

“Everything goes to prove it.”

“I think so, too,” confessed Rouletabille gravely.

After a brief silence, he continued:—

“If you have not found any traces of the murderer in the attic, such as

the dirty footmarks similar to those on the floor of The Yellow Room,

you must come to the conclusion that it was not he who stole Daddy

Jacques’s revolver.”

“There are no footmarks in the attic other than those of Daddy Jacques

himself,” said the magistrate with a significant turn of his head.

Then, after an apparent decision, he added: “Daddy Jacques was with

Monsieur Stangerson in the laboratory—and it was lucky for him he was.”

“Then what part did his revolver play in the tragedy?—It seems very

clear that this weapon did less harm to Mademoiselle Stangerson than it

did to the murderer.”

The magistrate made no reply to this question, which doubtless

embarrassed him. “Monsieur Stangerson,” he said, “tells us that the two

bullets have been found in The Yellow Room, one embedded in the wall

stained with the impression of a red hand—a man’s large hand—and the

other in the ceiling.”

“Oh! oh! in the ceiling!” muttered Rouletabille. “In the ceiling!

That’s very curious!—In the ceiling!”

He puffed awhile in silence at his pipe, enveloping himself in the

smoke. When we reached Savigny-sur-Orge, I had to tap him on the

shoulder to arouse him from his dream and come out on to the platform

of the station.

There the magistrate and his Registrar bowed to us, and, by rapidly

getting into a cab that was awaiting them, made us understand that they

had seen enough of us.

“How long will it take to walk to the Château du Glandier?”

Rouletabille asked one of the railway porters.

“An hour and a half or an hour and three quarters—easy walking,” the

man replied.

Rouletabille looked up at the sky and, no doubt, finding its appearance

satisfactory, took my arm and said:—

“Come on!—I need a walk.”

“Are things getting less entangled?” I asked.

“Not a bit of it!” he said, “more entangled than ever! It’s true, I

have an idea—”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you what it is just at present—it’s an idea involving the

life or death of two persons at least.”

“Do you think there were accomplices?”

“I don’t think it—”

We fell into silence. Presently he went on:—

“It was a bit of luck, our falling in with that examining magistrate

and his Registrar, eh? What did I tell you about that revolver?”

His head was bent down, he had his hands in his pockets, and he was

whistling. After a while I heard him murmur:—

“Poor woman!”

“Is it Mademoiselle Stangerson you are pitying?”

“Yes; she’s a noble woman and worthy of being pitied!—a woman of a

great, a very great character—I imagine—I imagine.”

“You know her then?”

“Not at all. I have never seen her but once.”

“Why, then, do you say that she is a woman of great character?”

“Because she bravely faced the murderer; because she courageously

defended herself—and, above all, because of the bullet in the ceiling.”

I looked at Rouletabille and inwardly wondered whether he was not

mocking me, or whether he had not suddenly gone out of his senses. But

I saw that he had never been less inclined to laugh, and the brightness

of his keenly intelligent eyes assured me that he retained all his

reason. Then, too, I was used to his broken way of talking, which only

left me puzzled as to his meaning, till, with a very few clear, rapidly

uttered words, he would make the drift of his ideas clear to me, and I

saw that what he had previously said, and which had appeared to me void

of meaning, was so thoroughly logical that I could not understand how

it was I had not understood him sooner.