“Yet you have your pay of them, your thousand francs a day, your thirty pieces of silver.”
Holmes’s thin lips formed a bitter smile. “You take their money as well. It has made you rich.”
“Not that of the de Chagnys–never!”
Holmes sighed. “Let us not argue about trifles. I have longed to meet you since I first set foot in this theater, and the more I have discovered about you, the more curious I have grown.”
The Phantom’s laughter was cold. “Well, are you satisfied?”
“It is too early to tell. I shall let you know as soon as my opinion has formed.”
“You have a sense of the comical, do you?”
“Yes. It is, no doubt, the best response to the tragic aspect of life. If we could not laugh, the pain might destroy us.”
The Phantom drew back, then he and Holmes again stared at each other. “Perhaps there is more to you than I suspected.”
Holmes gave one of his rare smiles where warmth prevailed over the ironic. “I hope so. I know there is a very great deal to you indeed. Your musical talent is phenomenal, your playing the best I have ever heard in the course of many years listening all across Europe.”
“You know all that from hearing ‘The Resurrection of Lazarus’? Perhaps that imposing setting, the Breton cemetery at midnight, had something to do with it.”
Holmes shook his head. “Not at all. Your intonation was perfect, your command of the instrument total. Your violin had a familiar timbre. I suspect that it came from the same workshop as my own, that of master Antonio Stradivari in the early eighteenth century.”
Erik was silent for a few seconds. “I have underestimated you. This makes things more... complicated.”
“How so?”
The Phantom lowered his gaze, staring down below at the stage. “This is a war now. To the death. They would destroy me utterly, and the Viscount has taken...” A sudden swell of grief, quite unexpected, twisted that beautiful voice, and he looked away.
“I do not mean to be cruel,” Holmes said. “I know there is no other pain like that which you feel, no other sadness which cuts quite so deep. Yet...”
“This is not some mere, silly infatuation from afar. I have watched Christine through the mirror for weeks, drinking in her beauty even as I worked with her. I have seen her laugh and smile, heard her voice, her song. She is so beautiful, so terribly, utterly beautiful: the way she holds her hand, her palm so pink; the curve of her lips; the white expanse of her throat. Could any man, even a monster, withstand such beauty? You–you who have just met her–what can you know of it? You know nothing!” Rage swelled the dark figure, his arms spreading outward, the long fingers opening up.
“I know because I, too, have felt the same desperate love for a woman.”
The two men regarded each other, and I felt stupid and rather shallow. I had fluttered about from woman to woman, always keeping my heart in reserve, always holding back. Even now when Michelle offered me her love, I rationalized, I equivocated, I found excuses. Perhaps I had never suffered as these two had, but I had never loved in the same way either. I had never, until recently, gone past the flirtatious stage; always I had fled before things became too serious. My cousin was the famed misogynist, yet he understood women and the human heart far better than I.
“It could not have been the same–you do not understand.”
“I understand only too well. I also know the dangers of considering oneself unknowable, alien to all other men. You are not such a monster or phantom. You are only a man, as I am a man or as Henry is. We are all the same weak, pathetic creatures, and our only hope lies in trying to comprehend one another.”
“You dare say that to me!” Erik screamed. “To me!”
“Yes, and I also dare to tell you that she is unworthy of you. She is only a child. There are other, better women.”
The Phantom began to laugh, weakly at first, but then with more and more gusto. His laughter had the same power, the same cutting edge, as his voice. The sound rose into the darkness, echoing throughout the vast edifice about us. If any persons were below on the stage, they would hear it. Involuntarily my lips drew back into a smile, but there was nothing amusing in his laughter.
“Other men are not Erik–they do not have faces like this!” He wrenched away his mask, hurling it from him. The harsh gaslight emphasized the pallor of his death’s head. The Red Death had prepared me, as had my work as a physician, but I still could not keep from drawing in my breath through clenched teeth. Sherlock, on the other hand, did not move a muscle. He stared at that hideous face as if it were absolutely unremarkable, as if the majority of mankind looked no worse. Dimly we heard the sound of the mask shattering on the floor below.
I tried to regain some of my physician’s detachment and to render an accurate diagnosis. Something had eaten away his nose as leprosy might, and his skin had a clammy, sickly white appearance. Part of his upper lip was gone, so that the protruding teeth showed, and one cheekbone was higher than another. Four dark marks, scabs of dried blood, scored each cheek, and I remembered Christine telling how he had dug her nails into his flesh.
“Most unfortunate,” Holmes said. He raised his right hand, tore the bulbous putty off his nose, threw it aside, then pointed at his nose. “This proboscis is hardly attractive either. Sometimes I wonder if I, too, might be better off without it!”
“How dare you!” the Phantom exclaimed, but then a laugh slipped from his twisted, maimed mouth, and soon he was laughing again, tears coming from his eyes. At last he whispered, “It is not the same.”
“Why will you not let me be your friend?” Sherlock said.
“I can have no friends–I am the Phantom, the Ghost of the Opera, and you would do well to remember it! If you side with my enemies you will leave me no choice–I shall destroy you as well!”
“Why? For telling the truth? Christine and the Viscount are not worthy of your revenge. Leave them be. She will punish him far worse than you ever could.”
The Phantom swayed, one hand shot out and gripped the rail. “She kissed him. Their lips touched. He will undress her and hold her white, beautiful body. He will kiss her bosom, her throat, her shoulders, and possess her utterly. He will have her.” His voice broke, and Holmes took half a step back, his own face shaken.
“He will not have her!” I cried. “It is not the same. It will be her flesh only and nothing more, nothing that matters. It will bring them no closer.”
“Silence!” The Phantom raised his right hand while the other gripped the rail. “I have warned you! Stay out of my way or I shall destroy you along with my other enemies, along with those silly fools. I, Erik, le Fantôme de l’Opéra, have spoken!”
What happened next went so quickly and was so unexpected that Holmes and I only watched like dumb children. The Phantom leapt over the rail, hurling himself out into the darkness.
“No!” Holmes cried.
I shuddered and turned away, but Holmes grabbed my arm. “Good Lord–look, Henry–look!”
I opened my eyes, then seized the rail with both hands. Several of the ropes out past us swayed, and below was the Phantom climbing down a rope, hand under hand, his black cape swirled about him, a dark stain against the pale brown of the stage floor. The vertigo overwhelmed me; I closed my eyes and clenched the metal pipe of the rail as hard as I could.
“How can he?” I murmured. “Perhaps he is not human after all.”
“Do not be foolish, Henry. He is quite human, although completely unafraid of heights. I wonder if he ever did a turn as a sailor. See how quickly and skillfully he moves. If not human, he is an orangutan or other ape, not a specter. Blast it! Damnation!”
I opened my eyes, taking care not to look down. “What is wrong?” “Everything–everything! How shall I ever track him through this cosmos of his? The lower part is a labyrinth that would baffle Theseus; this upper a jungle he can traverse like some monkey. He knows every corner; he has an uncanny strength and intell
igence! His is a genius greater than my own.”
“No,” I said.
“Yes! This is hopeless.”
“You told him yourself that you are both men, mortal men.”
“I could perhaps trap him or destroy him, but I cannot and shall not! He is a far better man than... Damnation, Henry–it is hopeless, hopeless. I should go back to London and leave his wretched Opera to him. He is its spirit, its soul, and I imagined I could best him, he who was involved in every phase of its design and construction, he who has dwelt here for fifteen long years. Blast it, Henry, it is hopeless.”
Ten
Holmes left the Opera that night in a funk, while I was simply exhausted. Running up and down staircases and being frightened half out of my mind was quite fatiguing, and I slept a good ten hours. My dreams were troubled, but nothing could have awakened me that night.
When I went to see Holmes the next morning, it was immediately apparent that he had not slept a wink. He sat deep in thought before the fireplace, still wearing the clothes from the night before. We had changed out of our workmen’s garb before leaving the Opera; otherwise, we would never have made it past the front lobby of the Grand Hôtel.
When I urged Sherlock to join me for breakfast, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “I must think. Go see Paris and do not bother me.”
Restraining my tongue, I left abruptly. Although it was rather warm outside, the rain from the night before had continued. I spent the day wandering the Louvre and doing some thinking of my own. My vacillations toward Michelle now seemed childish to me, and I wondered if my concern about her previous suitors and her virginity was not really a manifestation of fear. With Michelle, I had neither the advantage of my worldly, male experience nor the excuse of her innocence. If our relationship floundered, I could not blame her inexperience or her failings (I knew her to be the most passionate of women); I could only blame myself. This explained the ambivalence I had felt toward her, an ambivalence my cousin could not comprehend.
Michelle was beautiful, intelligent, and full of life; why would any reasonable man not want her as his wife? Only one uncertain about love and the married state could reject such a woman, one who did not know his own heart, one who secretly feared such a woman.
I thought of the fervor of her kisses and of her touch, and my longing for her became an ache in my throat. No longer able to bear the naked nymphs all about me in bronze or marble, or the voluptuous nudes on canvas, I fled the Louvre and paced the streets of Paris, umbrella in hand. When it grew dark I returned to the hotel.
I knocked on Sherlock’s door. “Are you there?”
“Yes, and still thinking.”
“Will you not join me for dinner?”
“No.”
“Stubborn fool,” I muttered.
In my current mood, eating alone in a splendid restaurant was a form of self-torture. I was angry with myself and my cousin, and of course I longed for Michelle’s company. I had rather too much to drink and went to bed early.
The next morning I knocked on Sherlock’s door again and received another hostile reception. I stalked away and wondered if I should simply pack up and leave. I could be in London–with Michelle–before nightfall. The familiar ache returned, and I cursed. I could not abandon my cousin, not now. I would wait at least until Sunday, until after Faust. Not knowing what to do with myself, I took the familiar way to the Opera. Whom should I first see but Christine and the Viscount, arm in arm! Close by lurked the Persian and a small man in a dark suit. The Viscount said he wished to speak with my cousin, and I told him, truthfully enough, that I had not seen him that day. Christine hung upon the Viscount’s arm, smiling radiantly, but her green eyes were curiously vacant, even fearful.
I returned to the hotel in the afternoon and spent two hours trying to write Michelle a letter. Not surprisingly, I found myself proposing marriage. However, I tore up letter after letter because my efforts seemed banal, or worse yet, they reminded me of something the Viscount had said to Christine Daaé! I had never been much for sweet talk, but the Viscount had ruined certain words and phrases for me forever. When I at last gave up in disgust, it was around seven and almost dark.
With a sigh, I rose and went again to Sherlock’s door. When I knocked, he said, “Go away, Henry. I...”
Raining blows upon the wood, I roared, “Open this door at once!” in a voice which frightened an elderly couple walking down the hallway. The old woman murmured, “Quelles bêtes, ces anglaises,” and in truth, I felt like a savage.
Holmes opened the door. He was pale, his eyes bloodshot and angry, and his long face appeared even thinner, his nose even larger. Two days’ worth of beard left a dark shadow across the lower half of his face. “Come in if you must.”
“You look terrible,” I said. The air was thick with tobacco smoke. “You have not eaten or slept for two days, I suppose. You have not even changed your clothes. This is disgusting–and quite simply childish. You will do no one any good by making yourself ill.”
“I shall be the judge of that. I know what is best for me. Eating or sleeping are annoying distractions which cloud the brain.”
“That is sheer nonsense,” I said warmly.
“Henry, I will not be lectured to like a small boy.”
“Nor will I. You asked me to come to Paris as your companion on this case. For two days you have not even spoken to me. Perhaps I should leave.”
“Perhaps you should.”
We stared at one another, and his face grew even paler. “Very well,” I said. I whirled about and grasped the doorknob.
“Wait!”
I turned. He walked over to the chair by the fire, collapsed into it, and raised his feet, placing them on the ottoman. At that point the silence between us was healthy, forcing each of us to reflect upon the situation and his own shortcomings. At last Sherlock placed the fingertips of his right hand against his forehead. “You are right, Henry. Perhaps I am being childish. My mind does seem to be in something of a fog. Two days have been wasted. I am absolutely baffled.”
“You need to sleep and eat. Why not join me for dinner? Sometimes the mind works best when not pushed too hard; in the midst of some diversion, the answer may come to you unsought for. You have struggled long enough.”
“Yes. Sit down for a moment.” I sat at the other chair near the fire. A large piece of coal did not flame, but glowed, throwing off great heat. “What am I to do with our poor Phantom? Perhaps you and I should leave Paris, but he undoubtedly plans to abduct Christine Daaé. I do think she would be better off underground with Erik than she would be married to the Viscount.”
Sarcasm had crept into his voice, and I smiled. “I agree. By the way, I saw the Persian hanging about the Opera again.”
“Hovering over our two lovebirds, no doubt. Did you also happen to notice a small, slight man of a pale, mottled complexion with a pencil-thin mustache? He would have been wearing a dark morning suit and a gray bowler.”
“Why, yes. The man has something of the air of a ferret about him.”
“Damnation. Another dismal turn of events. That is Mifroid of the Paris police. Anyway, Christine, the Viscount, or someone else might be hurt in the process of her abduction. Erik does not seem a bad man; yet he has killed at least two people, Joseph Buquet and the woman under the chandelier.”
“He did, however, try to warn the audience. The voice said, ‘She is singing to bring down the chandelier.’ If not for that, several score people would have been killed or injured.”
He sighed. “Yes, yes, Henry, that is quite true, but he is upset now and unbalanced. Conceivably he could go berserk and kill many innocent people. This time there may be no warning.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. “I wonder what he will do.”
“Nor does he have the right to force himself upon Christine Daaé. She must be allowed to make her own choice, foolish as it may be. Yet I cannot bring myself to harm Erik. He could conceivably be captured, but that would sure
ly destroy him. If only I could meet with him, talk to him, but the Opera is his maze, his lair. I shall never find him there.”
“Oh, come now,” I said. “You have already found his house.”
“Little good that does. Forcing an entry would require hours and demolish it in the process.” He slumped forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and stared at the red glow of the coal. “Meanwhile he would vanish into the Opera. He probably has another dwelling there, perhaps several. He could elude a small army for years. You would have to tear down the edifice layer by layer, peel it open like an onion, to find him.”
“Yet you will do it, I know. You shall find him.”
“No, no. It is hopeless, as I said. Two days of thought have only convinced me of the fact. My initial appraisal was correct.”
“Sooner or later you will sniff him out.”
Holmes shook his head, opened his mouth, then underwent a strange transformation. His jaw went slack; his mouth dropped open; his two fists simultaneously struck his knees. “Yes!” he cried. He leapt to his feet, walked about his chair and mine in a half circle. “Just the thing, the very thing.” I watched warily, wondering whether his long fast and wakefulness had made him delirious. At last he gave me one of the most unrestrained smiles I had ever seen. “You have done it, Henry! By God, you have.”
“What have I done?”
“Made me see the way out.” He went to the desk, took a piece of paper, dipped the pen in the ink, then wrote furiously.
“Does this mean we can go eat dinner now? I am quite famished.”
“Yes, of course, but this note must go to the telegraph office at once. In this case I can rely upon Watson. He will do it for old time’s sake.”
“Do what?”
“Contact that individual who will help us, as you so cleverly put it, to sniff out the Phantom in his lair. You will meet my master in this business, Henry, one who possesses a greater nose for crime than I.”
The Angel of the Opera Page 20
