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
footprints, made at the same time, last night. They were made by two persons walking side by side. I followed them from the court towards the oak grove. Larsan joined me. They were the same kind of footprints as were made at the time of the assault in The Yellow Room—one set was from clumsy boots and the other was made by neat ones, except that the big toe of one of the sets was of a different size from the one measured in The Yellow Room incident. I compared the marks with the paper patterns I had previously made.
“Still following the tracks of the prints, Larsan and I passed out of the oak grove and reached the border of the lake. There they turned off to a little path leading to the high road to Epinay where we lost the traces in the newly macadamised highway.
“We went back to the chateau and parted at the courtyard. We met again, however, in Daddy Jacques’s room to which our separate trains of thinking had led us both. We found the old servant in bed. His clothes on the chair were wet through and his boots very muddy. He certainly did not get into that state in helping us to carry the body of the keeper. It was not raining then. Then his face showed extreme fatigue and he looked at us out of terror-stricken eyes.
“On our first questioning him he told us that he had gone to bed immediately after the doctor had arrived. On pressing him, however, for it was evident to us he was not speaking the truth, he confessed that he had been away from the chateau. He explained his absence by saying that he had a headache and went out into the fresh air, but had gone no further than the oak grove. When we then described to him the whole route he had followed, he sat up in bed trembling.
“‘And you were not alone!’ cried Larsan.
“‘Did you see it then?’ gasped Daddy Jacques.
“‘What?’ I asked.
“‘The phantom—the black phantom!’
“Then he told us that for several nights he had seen what he kept calling the black phantom. It came into the park at the stroke of midnight and glided stealthily through the trees; it appeared to him to pass through the trunks of the trees. Twice he had seen it from his window, by the light of the moon and had risen and followed the strange apparition. The night before last he had almost overtaken it; but it had vanished at the corner of the donjon. Last night, however, he had not left the chateau, his mind being disturbed by a presentiment that some new crime would be attempted. Suddenly he saw the black phantom rush out from somewhere in the middle of the court. He followed it to the lake and to the high road to Epinay, where the phantom suddenly disappeared.
“‘Did you see his face?’ demanded Larsan.
“‘No!—I saw nothing but black veils.’
“‘Did you go out after what passed on the gallery?’
“‘I could not!—I was terrified.’
“‘Daddy Jacques,’ I said, in a threatening voice, ‘you did not follow it; you and the phantom walked to Epinay together—arm in arm!’
“‘No!’ he cried, turning his eyes away, ‘I did not. It came on to pour, and—I turned back. I don’t know what became of the black phantom.”
“We left him, and when we were outside I turned to Larsan, looking him full in the face, and put my question suddenly to take him off his guard:
“‘An accomplice?’
“‘How can I tell?’ he replied, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You can’t be sure of anything in a case like this. Twenty-four hours ago I would have sworn that there was no accomplice!’ He left me saying he was off to Epinay.”
“Well, what do you make of it?” I asked Rouletabille, after he had ended his recital. “Personally I am utterly in the dark. I can’t make anything out of it. What do you gather?”
“Everything! Everything!” he exclaimed. “But,” he said abruptly, “let’s find out more about Mademoiselle Stangerson.”
Chapter 24. Rouletabille Knows the Two Halves of the Murderer
Mademoiselle Stangerson had been almost murdered for the second time. Unfortunately, she was in too weak a state to bear the severer injuries of this second attack as well as she had those of the first. She had received three wounds in the breast from the murderer’s knife, and she lay long between life and death. Her strong physique, however, saved her; but though she recovered physically it was found that her mind had been affected. The slightest allusion to the terrible incident sent her into delirium, and the arrest of Robert Darzac which followed on the day following the tragic death of the keeper seemed to sink her fine intelligence into complete melancholia.
Robert Darzac arrived at the chateau towards half-past nine. I saw him hurrying through the park, his hair and clothes in disorder and his face a deadly white. Rouletabille and I were looking out of a window in the gallery. He saw us, and gave a despairing cry: “I’m too late!”
Rouletabille answered: “She lives!”
A minute later Darzac had gone into Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room and, through the door, we could hear his heart-rending sobs.
“There’s a fate about this place!” groaned Rouletabille. “Some infernal gods must be watching over the misfortunes of this family!—If I had not been drugged, I should have saved Mademoiselle Stangerson. I should have silenced him forever. And the keeper would not have been killed!”
Monsieur Darzac came in to speak with us. His distress was terrible. Rouletabille told him everything: his preparations for Mademoiselle Stangerson’s safety; his plans for either capturing or for disposing of the assailant for ever; and how he would have succeeded had it not been for the drugging.
“If only you had trusted me!” said the young man, in a low tone. “If you had but begged Mademoiselle Stangerson to confide in me!—But, then, everybody here distrusts everybody else, the daughter distrusts her father, and even her lover. While you ask me to protect her she is doing all she can to frustrate me. That was why I came on the scene too late!”
At Monsieur Robert Darzac’s request Rouletabille described the whole scene. Leaning on the wall, to prevent himself from falling, he had made his way to Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room, while we were running after the supposed murderer. The ante-room door was open and when he entered he found Mademoiselle Stangerson lying partly thrown over the desk. Her dressing-gown was dyed with the blood flowing from her bosom. Still under the influence of the drug, he felt he was walking in a horrible nightmare.
He went back to the gallery automatically, opened a window, shouted his order to fire, and then returned to the room. He crossed the deserted boudoir, entered the drawing-room, and tried to rouse Monsieur Stangerson who was lying on a sofa. Monsieur Stangerson rose stupidly and let himself be drawn by Rouletabille into the room where, on seeing his daughter’s body, he uttered a heart-rending cry. Both united their feeble strength and carried her to her bed.
On his way to join us Rouletabille passed by the desk. On the floor, near it, he saw a large packet. He knelt down and, finding the wrapper loose, he examined it, and made out an enormous quantity of papers and photographs. On one of the papers he read: “New differential electroscopic condenser. Fundamental properties of substance intermediary between ponderable matter and imponderable ether.” Strange irony of fate that the professor’s precious papers should be restored to him at the very time when an attempt was being made to deprive him of his daughter’s life! What are papers worth to him now?
The morning following that awful night saw Monsieur de Marquet once more at the chateau, with his Registrar and gendarmes. Of course we were all questioned. Rouletabille and I had already agreed on what to say. I kept back any information as to my being in the dark closet and said nothing about the drugging. We did not wish to suggest in any way that Mademoiselle Stangerson had been expecting her nocturnal visitor. The poor woman might, perhaps, never recover, and it was none of