The Mystery of the Yellow Room
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Gaston Leroux >> The Mystery of the Yellow Room
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17 The Mystery of the Yellow Room
by Gaston Leroux
CHAPTER I
In Which We Begin Not to Understand
It is not without a certain emotion that I begin to recount here
the extraordinary adventures of Joseph Rouletabille. Down to the
present time he had so firmly opposed my doing it that I had come
to despair of ever publishing the most curious of police stories
of the past fifteen years. I had even imagined that the public
would never know the whole truth of the prodigious case known as
that of The Yellow Room, out of which grew so many mysterious,
cruel, and sensational dramas, with which my friend was so closely
mixed up, if, propos of a recent nomination of the illustrious
Stangerson to the grade of grandcross of the Legion of Honour, an
evening journal--in an article, miserable for its ignorance, or
audacious for its perfidy--had not resuscitated a terrible
adventure of which Joseph Rouletabille had told me he wished to be
for ever forgotten.
The Yellow Room! Who now remembers this affair which caused so
much ink to flow fifteen years ago? Events are so quickly
forgotten in Paris. Has not the very name of the Nayves trial and
the tragic history of the death of little Menaldo passed out of
mind? And yet the public attention was so deeply interested in the
details of the trial that the occurrence of a ministerial crisis
was completely unnoticed at the time. Now The Yellow Room trial,
which, preceded that of the Nayves by some years, made far more
noise. The entire world hung for months over this obscure problem
--the most obscure, it seems to me, that has ever challenged the
perspicacity of our police or taxed the conscience of our judges.
The solution of the problem baffled everybody who tried to find it.
It was like a dramatic rebus with which old Europe and new America
alike became fascinated. That is, in truth--I am permitted to say,
because there cannot be any author's vanity in all this, since I
do nothing more than transcribe facts on which an exceptional
documentation enables me to throw a new light--that is because,
in truth, I do not know that, in the domain of reality or
imagination, one can discover or recall to mind anything comparable,
in its mystery, with the natural mystery of The Yellow Room.
That which nobody could find out, Joseph Rouletabille, aged eighteen,
then a reporter engaged on a leading journal, succeeded in
discovering. But when, at the Assize Court, he brought in the key
to the whole case, he did not tell the whole truth. He only allowed
so much of it to appear as sufficed to ensure the acquittal of an
innocent man. The reasons which he had for his reticence no longer
exist. Better still, the time has come for my friend to speak out
fully. You are going to know all; and, without further preamble,
I am going to place before your eyes the problem of The Yellow
Room as it was placed before the eyes of the entire world on the
day following the enactment of the drama at the Chateau du Glandier.
On the 25th of October, 1892, the following note appeared in the
latest edition of the "Temps":
"A frightful crime has been committed at the Glandier, on the border
of the forest of Sainte-Genevieve, above Epinay-sur-Orge, at the
house of Professor Stangerson. On that night, while the master was
working in his laboratory, an attempt was made to assassinate
Mademoiselle Stangerson, who was sleeping in a chamber adjoining
this laboratory. The doctors do not answer for the life of Mdlle.
Stangerson."
The impression made on Paris by this news may be easily imagined.
Already, at that time, the learned world was deeply interested in
the labours of Professor Stangerson and his daughter. These labours
--the first that were attempted in radiography--served to open
the way for Monsieur and Madame Curie to the discovery of radium.
It was expected the Professor would shortly read to the Academy of
Sciences a sensational paper on his new theory,--the Dissociation
of Matter,--a theory destined to overthrow from its base the whole
of official science, which based itself on the principle of the
Conservation of Energy. On the following day, the newspapers were
full of the tragedy. The "Matin," among others, published the
following article, entitled: "A Supernatural Crime":
"These are the only details," wrote the anonymous writer in the
"Matin"--"we have been able to obtain concerning the crime of the
Chateau du Glandier. The state of despair in which Professor
Stangerson is plunged, and the impossibility of getting any
information from the lips of the victim, have rendered our
investigations and those of justice so difficult that, at present,
we cannot form the least idea of what has passed in The Yellow Room
in which Mdlle. Stangerson, in her night-dress, was found lying on
the floor in the agonies of death. We have, at least, been able
to interview Daddy Jacques--as he is called in the country--a
old servant in the Stangerson family. Daddy Jacques entered The
Room at the same time as the Professor. This chamber adjoins the
laboratory. Laboratory and Yellow Room are in a pavilion at the
end of the park, about three hundred metres (a thousand feet) from
the chateau.
"'It was half-past twelve at night,' this honest old man told us,
'and I was in the laboratory, where Monsieur Stangerson was still
working, when the thing happened. I had been cleaning and putting
instruments in order all the evening and was waiting for Monsieur
Stangerson to go to bed. Mademoiselle Stangerson had worked with
her father up to midnight; when the twelve strokes of midnight had
sounded by the cuckoo-clock in the laboratory, she rose, kissed
Monsieur Stangerson and bade him good-night. To me she said "bon
soir, Daddy Jacques" as she passed into The Yellow Room. We heard
her lock the door and shoot the bolt, so that I could not help
laughing, and said to Monsieur: "There's Mademoiselle double-locking
herself in,--she must be afraid of the 'Bete du bon Dieu!'"
Monsieur did not even hear me, he was so deeply absorbed in what he
was doing. Just then we heard the distant miawing of a cat. "Is
that going to keep us awake all night?" I said to myself; for I
must tell you, Monsieur, that, to the end of October, I live in an
attic of the pavilion over The Yellow Room, so that Mademoiselle
should not be left alone through the night in the lonely park. It
was the fancy of Mademoiselle to spend the fine weather in the
pavilion; no doubt, she found it more cheerful than the chateau and,
for the four years it had been built, she had never failed to take
up her lodging there in the spring. With the return of winter,
Mademoiselle returns to the chateau, for there is no fireplace in
The Yellow Room.
"'We were staying in the pavilion, then--Monsieur Stangerson and
me. We made no noise. He was seated at his desk. As for me, I
was sitting on a chair, having finished my work and, looking at him,
I said to myself: "What a man!--what intelligence!--what
knowledge!" I attach importance to the fact that we made no noise;
for, because of that, the assassin certainly thought that we had
left the place. And, suddenly, while the cuckoo was sounding the
half after midnight, a desperate clamour broke out in The Yellow
Room. It was the voice of Mademoiselle, crying "Murder!--murder!
--help!" Immediately afterwards revolver shots rang out and there
was a great noise of tables and furniture being thrown to the
ground, as if in the course of a struggle, and again the voice of
Mademoiselle calling, "Murder!--help!--Papa!--Papa!--"
"'You may be sure that we quickly sprang up and that Monsieur
Stangerson and I threw ourselves upon the door. But alas! it
was locked, fast locked, on the inside, by the care of Mademoiselle,
as I have told you, with key and bolt. We tried to force it open,
but it remained firm. Monsieur Stangerson was like a madman, and
truly, it was enough to make him one, for we heard Mademoiselle
still calling "Help!--help!" Monsieur Stangerson showered
terrible blows on the door, and wept with rage and sobbed with
despair and helplessness.
"'It was then that I had an inspiration. "The assassin must have
entered by the window!" I cried;--"I will go to the window!" and
I rushed from the pavilion and ran like one out of his mind.
"'The inspiration was that the window of The Yellow Room looks out
in such a way that the park wall, which abuts on the pavilion,
prevented my at once reaching the window. To get up to it one has
first to go out of the park. I ran towards the gate and, on my way,
met Bernier and his wife, the gate-keepers, who had been attracted
by the pistol reports and by our cries. In a few words I told them
what had happened, and directed the concierge to join Monsieur
Stangerson with all speed, while his wife came with me to open the
park gate. Five minutes later she and I were before the window of
The Yellow Room.
"'The moon was shining brightly and I saw clearly that no one had
touched the window. Not only were the bars that protect it intact,
but the blinds inside of them were drawn, as I had myself drawn
them early in the evening, as I did every day, though Mademoiselle,
knowing that I was tired from the heavy work I had been doing, had
begged me not to trouble myself, but leave her to do it; and they
were just as I had left them, fastened with an iron catch on the
inside. The assassin, therefore, could not have passed either in
or out that way; but neither could I get in.
"'It was unfortunate,--enough to turn one's brain! The door of
the room locked on the inside and the blinds on the only window
also fastened on the inside; and Mademoiselle still calling for
help!--No! she had ceased to call. She was dead, perhaps. But
I still heard her father, in the pavilion, trying to break down
the door.
"'With the concierge I hurried back to the pavilion. The door,
in spite of the furious attempts of Monsieur Stangerson and Bernier
to burst it open, was still holding firm; but at length, it gave
way before our united efforts,--and then what a sight met our eyes!
I should tell you that, behind us, the concierge held the laboratory
lamp--a powerful lamp, that lit the whole chamber.
"'I must also tell you, monsieur, that The Yellow Room is a very
small room. Mademoiselle had furnished it with a fairly large iron
bedstead, a small table, a night-commode; a dressing-table, and two
chairs. By the light of the big lamp we saw all at a glance.
Mademoiselle, in her night-dress, was lying on the floor in the
midst of the greatest disorder. Tables and chairs had been
overthrown, showing that there had been a violent struggle.
Mademoiselle had certainly been dragged from her bed. She was
covered with blood and had terrible marks of finger-nails on her
throat,--the flesh of her neck having been almost torn by the
nails. From a wound on the right temple a stream of blood had run
down and made a little pool on the floor. When Monsieur Stangerson
saw his daughter in that state, he threw himself on his knees beside
her, uttering a cry of despair. He ascertained that she still
breathed. As to us, we searched for the wretch who had tried to
kill our mistress, and I swear to you, monsieur, that, if we had
found him, it would have gone hard with him!
"'But how to explain that he was not there, that he had already
escaped? It passes all imagination!--Nobody under the bed, nobody
behind the furniture!--All that we discovered were traces,
blood-stained marks of a man's large hand on the walls and on the
door; a big handkerchief red with blood, without any initials, an
old cap, and many fresh footmarks of a man on the floor,--footmarks
of a man with large feet whose boot-soles had left a sort of sooty
impression. How had this man got away? How had he vanished? Don't
forget, monsieur, that there is no chimney in The Yellow Room. He
could not have escaped by the door, which is narrow, and on the
threshold of which the concierge stood with the lamp, while her
husband and I searched for him in every corner of the little room,
where it is impossible for anyone to hide himself. The door, which
had been forced open against the wall, could not conceal anything
behind it, as we assured ourselves. By the window, still in every
way secured, no flight had been possible. What then?--I began
to believe in the Devil.
"'But we discovered my revolver on the floor!--Yes, my revolver!
Oh! that brought me back to the reality! The Devil would not have
needed to steal my revolver to kill Mademoiselle. The man who had
been there had first gone up to my attic and taken my revolver from
the drawer where I kept it. We then ascertained, by counting the
cartridges, that the assassin had fired two shots. Ah! it was
fortunate for me that Monsieur Stangerson was in the laboratory
when the affair took place and had seen with his own eyes that I
was there with him; for otherwise, with this business of my revolver,
I don't know where we should have been,--I should now be under lock
and bar. Justice wants no more to send a man to the scaffold!'"
The editor of the "Matin" added to this interview the following
lines:
"We have, without interrupting him, allowed Daddy Jacques to recount
to us roughly all he knows about the crime of The Yellow Room. We
have reproduced it in his own words, only sparing the reader the
continual lamentations with which he garnished his narrative. It is
quite understood, Daddy Jacques, quite understood, that you are very
fond of your masters; and you want them to know it, and never cease
repeating it--especially since the discovery of your revolver. It
is your right, and we see no harm in it. We should have liked to
put some further questions to Daddy Jacques--Jacques--Louis
Moustier--but the inquiry of the examining magistrate, which is
being carried on at the chateau, makes it impossible for us to gain
admission at the Glandier; and, as to the oak wood, it is guarded
by a wide circle of policemen, who are jealously watching all traces
that can lead to the pavilion, and that may perhaps lead to the
discovery of the assassin. "We have also wished to question the
concierges, but they are invisible. Finally, we have waited in a
roadside inn, not far from the gate of the chateau, for the departure
of Monsieur de Marquet, the magistrate of Corbeil. At half-past
five we saw him and his clerk and, before he was able to enter his
carriage, had an opportunity to ask him the following question:
"'Can you, Monsieur de Marquet, give us any information as to this
affair, without inconvenience to the course of your inquiry?'
"'It is impossible for us to do it,' replied Monsieur de Marquet.
'I can only say that it is the strangest affair I have ever known.
The more we think we know something, the further we are from knowing
anything!'
"We asked Monsieur de Marquet to be good enough to explain his last
words; and this is what he said,--the importance of which no one
will fail to recognise:
"'If nothing is added to the material facts so far established, I
fear that the mystery which surrounds the abominable crime of which
Mademoiselle Stangerson has been the victim will never be brought to
light; but it is to be hoped, for the sake of our human reason, that
the examination of the walls, and of the ceiling of The Yellow Room
--an examination which I shall to-morrow intrust to the builder who
constructed the pavilion four years ago--will afford us the proof
that may not discourage us. For the problem is this: we know by
what way the assassin gained admission,--he entered by the door and
hid himself under the bed, awaiting Mademoiselle Stangerson. But
how did he leave? How did he escape? If no trap, no secret door,
no hiding place, no opening of any sort is found; if the examination
of the walls--even to the demolition of the pavilion--does not
reveal any passage practicable--not only for a human being, but for
any being whatsoever--if the ceiling shows no crack, if the floor
hides no underground passage, one must really believe in the Devil,
as Daddy Jacques says!'"
And the anonymous writer in the "Matin" added in this article
--which I have selected as the most interesting of all those that
were published on the subject of this affair--that the examining
magistrate appeared to place a peculiar significance to the last
sentence: "One must really believe in the Devil, as Jacques says."
The article concluded with these lines: "We wanted to know what
Daddy Jacques meant by the cry of the Bete Du Bon Dieu." The
landlord of the Donjon Inn explained to us that it is the
particularly sinister cry which is uttered sometimes at night by
the cat of an old woman,--Mother Angenoux, as she is called in
the country. Mother Angenoux is a sort of saint, who lives in a
hut in the heart of the forest, not far from the grotto of
Sainte-Genevieve.
"The Yellow Room, the Bete Du Bon Dieu, Mother Angenoux, the Devil,
Sainte-Genevieve, Daddy Jacques,--here is a well entangled crime
which the stroke of a pickaxe in the wall may disentangle for us
to-morrow. Let us at least hope that, for the sake of our human
reason, as the examining magistrate says. Meanwhile, it is expected
that Mademoiselle Stangerson--who has not ceased to be delirious
and only pronounces one word distinctly, 'Murderer! Murderer!'
--will not live through the night."
In conclusion, and at a late hour, the same journal announced that
the Chief of the Surete had telegraphed to the famous detective,
Frederic Larsan, who had been sent to London for an affair of
stolen securities, to return immediately to Paris.
CHAPTER II
In Which Joseph Rouktabille Appears for the First Time
I remember as well as if it had occurred yesterday, the entry of
young Rouletabille into my bedroom that morning. It was about
eight o'clock and I was still in bed reading the article in the
"Matin" relative to the Glandier crime.
But, before going further, it is time that I present my friend
to the reader.
I first knew Joseph Rouletabille when he was a young reporter. At
that time I was a beginner at the Bar and often met him in the
corridors of examining magistrates, when I had gone to get a "permit
to communicate" for the prison of Mazas, or for Saint-Lazare. He
had, as they say, "a good nut." He seemed to have taken his head
--round as a bullet--out of a box of marbles, and it is from that,
I think, that his comrades of the press--all determined
billiard-players--had given him that nickname, which was to stick
to him and be made illustrious by him. He was always as red as a
tomato, now gay as a lark, now grave as a judge. How, while still
so young--he was only sixteen and a half years old when I saw him
for the first time--had he already won his way on the press? That
was what everybody who came into contact with him might have asked,
if they had not known his history. At the time of the affair of
the woman cut in pieces in the Rue Oberskampf--another forgotten
story--he had taken to one of the editors of the "Epoque,"--a
paper then rivalling the "Matin" for information,--the left foot,
which was missing from the basket in which the gruesome remains were
discovered. For this left foot the police had been vainly searching
for a week, and young Rouletabille had found it in a drain where
nobody had thought of looking for it. To do that he had dressed
himself as an extra sewer-man, one of a number engaged by the
administration of the city of Paris, owing to an overflow of the
Seine.
When the editor-in-chief was in possession of the precious foot and
informed as to the train of intelligent deductions the boy had been
led to make, he was divided between the admiration he felt for such
detective cunning in a brain of a lad of sixteen years, and delight
at being able to exhibit, in the "morgue window" of his paper, the
left foot of the Rue Oberskampf.
"This foot," he cried, "will make a great headline."
Then, when he had confided the gruesome packet to the medical lawyer
attached to the journal, he asked the lad, who was shortly to become
famous as Rouletabille, what he would expect to earn as a general
reporter on the "Epoque"?
"Two hundred francs a month," the youngster replied modestly, hardly
able to breathe from surprise at the proposal.
"You shall have two hundred and fifty," said the editor-in-chief;
"only you must tell everybody that you have been engaged on the paper
for a month. Let it be quite understood that it was not you but the
'Epoque' that discovered the left foot of the Rue Oberskampf. Here,
my young friend, the man is nothing, the paper everything."
Having said this, he begged the new reporter to retire, but before
the youth had reached the door he called him back to ask his name.
The other replied:
"Joseph Josephine."
"That's not a name," said the editor-in-chief, "but since you will
not be required to sign what you write it is of no consequence."
The boy-faced reporter speedily made himself many friends, for he
was serviceable and gifted with a good humour that enchanted the
most severe-tempered and disarmed the most zealous of his companions.
At the Bar cafe, where the reporters assembled before going to any
of the courts, or to the Prefecture, in search of their news of
crime, he began to win a reputation as an unraveller of intricate
and obscure affairs which found its way to the office of the Chief
of the Surete. When a case was worth the trouble and Rouletabille
--he had already been given his nickname--had been started on the
scent by his editor-in-chief, he often got the better of the most
famous detective.
It was at the Bar cafe that I became intimately acquainted with him.
Criminal lawyers and journalists are not enemies, the former need
advertisement, the latter information. We chatted together, and I
soon warmed towards him. His intelligence was so keen, and so
original!--and he had a quality of thought such as I have never
found in any other person.
Some time after this I was put in charge of the law news of the "Cri
du Boulevard." My entry into journalism could not but strengthen
the ties which united me to Rouletabille. After a while, my new
friend being allowed to carry out an idea of a judicial
correspondence column, which he was allowed to sign "Business," in
the "Epoque," I was often able to furnish him with the legal
information of which he stood in need.
Nearly two years passed in this way, and the better I knew him, the
more I learned to love him; for, in spite of his careless
extravagance, I had discovered in him what was, considering his age,
an extraordinary seriousness of mind. Accustomed as I was to seeing
him gay and, indeed, often too gay, I would many times find him
plunged in the deepest melancholy. I tried then to question him as
to the cause of this change of humour, but each time he laughed and
made me no answer. One day, having questioned him about his parents,
of whom he never spoke, he left me, pretending not to have heard
what I said.
While things were in this state between us, the famous case of The
Yellow Room took place. It was this case which was to rank him as
the leading newspaper reporter, and to obtain for him the reputation
of being the greatest detective in the world. It should not surprise
us to find in the one man the perfection of two such lines of
activity if we remember that the daily press was already beginning
to transform itself and to become what it is to-day--the gazette
of crime.
Morose-minded people may complain of this; for myself I regard it
a matter for congratulation. We can never have too many arms,
public or private, against the criminal. To this some people may
answer that, by continually publishing the details of crimes, the
press ends by encouraging their commission. But then, with some
people we can never do right. Rouletabille, as I have said, entered
my room that morning of the 26th of October, 1892. He was looking
redder than usual, and his eyes were bulging out of his head, as
the phrase is, and altogether he appeared to be in a state of
extreme excitement. He waved the "Matin" with a trembling hand,
and cried:
"Well, my dear Sainclair,--have you read it?"
"The Glandier crime?"
"Yes; The Yellow Room!--What do you think of it?"
"I think that it must have been the Devil or the Bete du Bon Dieu
that committed the crime."
"Be serious!"
"Well, I don't much believe in murderers* who make their escape
through walls of solid brick. I think Daddy Jacques did wrong to
leave behind him the weapon with which the crime was committed and,
as he occupied the attic immediately above Mademoiselle Stangerson's
room, the builder's job ordered by the examining magistrate will
give us the key of the enigma and it will not be long before we
learn by what natural trap, or by what secret door, the old fellow
was able to slip in and out, and return immediately to the laboratory
to Monsieur Stangerson, without his absence being noticed. That, of
course, is only an hypothesis."
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