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 chateau 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:
"Frederic Larsan is working with might and main against Darzac."
This did not astonish me. I had seen the poor show Mademoiselle
Stangerson's fiance 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 Frederic 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 Frederic 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 that
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 chateau?"
"Yes; he hardly ever leaves 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 chateau 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
Elysee. I know that, because I was there on duty, having to
interview one of the savants of the Academy of Philadelphia, who
was being feted 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 for 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 chateau. 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 Elysee; 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 Elysee, 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 Elysee 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 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 Elysee,--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
Elysee. 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 Elysee.'"
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 install 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 Frederic Larsan
appear to be really the footprints of Mademoiselle Stangerson's
fiance. The marks made by the bicycle may have been made by his
bicycle. He had usually left it at the chateau; why did he take
it to Paris on that particular occasion? Was it because he was
not going to return again to the chateau? 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.
"Frederic Larsan, however, believes that all relations were 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 Elysee, 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 Elysee, 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 Elysee. 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 attacked 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, scheduled
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 Frederic 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 Frederic 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."
