GOTHIC CRIME MYSTERIES: The Phantom of the Opera, The Secret of the Night, The Mystery of the Yellow Room,The Man with the Black Feather & Balaoo. Gaston Leroux
a bicycle!” cried the reporter.
Here, after looking at the marks of the bicycle, which followed, going and coming, the neat footprints, I thought I might intervene.
“The bicycle explains the disappearance of the murderer’s big foot-prints,” I said. “The murderer, with his rough boots, mounted a bicycle. His accomplice, the wearer of the neat boots, had come to wait for him on the edge of the lake with the bicycle. It might be supposed that the murderer was working for the other.”
“No, no!” replied Rouletabille with a strange smile. “I have expected to find these footmarks from the very beginning. These are not the footmarks of the murderer!”
“Then there were two?”
“No—there was but one, and he had no accomplice.”
“Very good!—Very good!” cried Frederic Larsan.
“Look!” continued the young reporter, showing us the ground where it had been disturbed by big and heavy heels; “the man seated himself there, and took off his hobnailed boots, which he had worn only for the purpose of misleading detection, and then no doubt, taking them away with him, he stood up in his own boots, and quietly and slowly regained the high road, holding his bicycle in his hand, for he could not venture to ride it on this rough path. That accounts for the lightness of the impression made by the wheels along it, in spite of the softness of the ground. If there had been a man on the bicycle, the wheels would have sunk deeply into the soil. No, no; there was but one man there, the murderer on foot.”
“Bravo!—bravo!” cried Fred again, and coming suddenly towards us and, planting himself in front of Monsieur Robert Darzac, he said to him:
“If we had a bicycle here, we might demonstrate the correctness of the young man’s reasoning, Monsieur Robert Darzac. Do you know whether there is one at the chateau?”
“No!” replied Monsieur Darzac. “There is not. I took mine, four days ago, to Paris, the last time I came to the chateau before the crime.”
“That’s a pity!” replied Fred, very coldly. Then, turning to Rouletabille, he said: “If we go on at this rate, we’ll both come to the same conclusion. Have you any idea, as to how the murderer got away from The Yellow Room?”
“Yes,” said my young friend; “I have an idea.”
“So have I,” said Fred, “and it must be the same as yours. There are no two ways of reasoning in this affair. I am waiting for the arrival of my chief before offering any explanation to the examining magistrate.”
“Ah! Is the Chief of the Surete coming?”
“Yes, this afternoon. He is going to summon, before the magistrate, in the laboratory, all those who have played any part in this tragedy. It will be very interesting. It is a pity you won’t be able to be present.”
“I shall be present,” said Rouletabille confidently.
“Really—you are an extraordinary fellow—for your age!” replied the detective in a tone not wholly free from irony. “You’d make a wonderful detective—if you had a little more method—if you didn’t follow your instincts and that bump on your forehead. As I have already several times observed, Monsieur Rouletabille, you reason too much; you do not allow yourself to be guided by what you have seen. What do you say to the handkerchief full of blood, and the red mark of the hand on the wall? You have seen the stain on the wall, but I have only seen the handkerchief.”
“Bah!” cried Rouletabille, “the murderer was wounded in the hand by Mademoiselle Stangerson’s revolver!”
“Ah!—a simply instinctive observation! Take care!—You are becoming too strictly logical, Monsieur Rouletabille; logic will upset you if you use it indiscriminately. You are right, when you say that Mademoiselle Stangerson fired her revolver, but you are wrong when you say that she wounded the murderer in the hand.”
“I am sure of it,” cried Rouletabille.
Fred, imperturbable, interrupted him:
“Defective observation—defective observation!—the examination of the handkerchief, the numberless little round scarlet stains, the impression of drops which I found in the tracks of the footprints, at the moment when they were made on the floor, prove to me that the murderer was not wounded at all. Monsieur Rouletabille, the murderer bled at the nose!”
The great Fred spoke quite seriously. However, I could not refrain from uttering an exclamation.
The reporter looked gravely at Fred, who looked gravely at him. And Fred immediately concluded:
“The man allowed the blood to flow into his hand and handkerchief, and dried his hand on the wall. The fact is highly important,” he added, “because there is no need of his being wounded in the hand for him to be the murderer.”
Rouletabille seemed to be thinking deeply. After a moment he said:
“There is something—a something, Monsieur Frederic Larsan, much graver than the misuse of logic the disposition of mind in some detectives which makes them, in perfect good faith, twist logic to the necessities of their preconceived ideas. You, already, have your idea about the murderer, Monsieur Fred. Don’t deny it; and your theory demands that the murderer should not have been wounded in the hand, otherwise it comes to nothing. And you have searched, and have found something else. It’s dangerous, very dangerous, Monsieur Fred, to go from a preconceived idea to find the proofs to fit it. That method may lead you far astray Beware of judicial error, Monsieur Fred, it will trip you up!”
And laughing a little, in a slightly bantering tone, his hands in his pockets, Rouletabille fixed his cunning eyes on the great Fred.
Frederic Larsan silently contemplated the young reporter who pretended to be as wise as himself. Shrugging his shoulders, he bowed to us and moved quickly away, hitting the stones on his path with his stout cane.
Rouletabille watched his retreat, and then turned toward us, his face joyous and triumphant.
“I shall beat him!” he cried. “I shall beat the great Fred, clever as he is; I shall beat them all!”
And he danced a double shuffle. Suddenly he stopped. My eyes followed his gaze; they were fixed on Monsieur Robert Darzac, who was looking anxiously at the impression left by his feet side by side with the elegant footmarks. There was not a particle of difference between them!
We thought he was about to faint. His eyes, bulging with terror, avoided us, while his right hand, with a spasmodic movement, twitched at the beard that covered his honest, gentle, and now despairing face. At length regaining his self-possession, he bowed to us, and remarking, in a changed voice, that he was obliged to return to the chateau, left us.
“The deuce!” exclaimed Rouletabille.
He, also, appeared to be deeply concerned. From his pocket-book he took a piece of white paper as I had seen him do before, and with his scissors, cut out the shape of the neat bootmarks that were on the ground. Then he fitted the new paper pattern with the one he had previously made—the two were exactly alike. Rising, Rouletabille exclaimed again: “The deuce!” Presently he added: “Yet I believe Monsieur Robert Darzac to be an honest man.” He then led me on the road to the Donjon Inn, which we could see on the highway, by the side of a small clump of trees.
Chapter 10. “We Shall Have to Eat Red Meat—Now”
The Donjon Inn was of no imposing appearance; but I like these buildings with their rafters blackened with age and the smoke of their hearths—these inns of the coaching-days, crumbling erections that will soon exist in the memory only. They belong to the bygone days, they are linked with history. They make us think of the Road, of those days when highwaymen rode.
I saw at once that the