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 chateau 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 chateau 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, a most funereal
aspect. 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 for 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 chateau. 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 chateau
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
chateau. We then went back into the building.
"I must now show you the first floor of the chateau, 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.
***
boudoir
___ ____ ___________ _______\___ ________4________ _______ _________ __
| | | | | |
| | Mlle. | | Mlle. |___ ___ ___| Mr.
Lumber |Strangerson's Strangerson's|___ ___ ___|Strangerson's
| Room | Sitting | | Bed Room |___ ___ ___| Room
| | Room | |__ __ _____|stair-case |
| | |bath|anteroom| |
|_____ ______|____ ______|___|____|___ ___| |______ _____
|
2 ------ Right Gallery Right Wing--------- 3 Right Gallery
Left Wing
|_________ _____ _________ ______ _______ __ __ __ _________ _____
|Roulet- | W G |
|tabille's | I A | Right Wing Left Wing
| Room N L of the
|_________ | D L | Chateau
Frederic | I E |
|Larsan's N R
| Room | G Y |
| |
|____ ____ | _1_ |
. 5 .
. 6 .
. .
. . .
***
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 chateau 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
chateau 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 Frederic 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 Frederic 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."
"Frederic 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 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 on 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 chateau, 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 chateau!" 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.
