Rouletabille and the Mystery of the Yellow Room

by Gaston Leroux

  Meanwhile, Rouletabille had climbed up inside the fireplace. Perched on top of the furnace, he was attentively examining the chimney flue, which grew narrower, ending in a conduit sealed by an iron grate fastened into the brickwork, and subdivided into three small pipes, each about 6 inches in diameter.

  “Totally impossible to get out that way,” my friend said, jumping back into the laboratory. “Besides, even if our perpetrator had tried to do it, he would have had to tear out all that metalwork. No, this is definitely a dead end.”

  Rouletabille then examined the furniture and opened the doors of all the cabinets. After that, he looked at the windows, an obstacle which he finally pronounced “unconquerable and unconquered.” At the second window, he found Père Jacques absorbed in silent contemplation.

  “Well, Père Jacques,” my friend said, “what are you looking at?”

  “I’m looking at that policeman who’s always circling the pond outside. He isn’t going to be any smarter than all the other smarties!”

  “You don’t know Frederic Larsan, Père Jacques, or else you wouldn’t be saying that about him,” said Rouletabille, shaking his head in mock sadness. “If anyone can find who attacked Mademoiselle Stangerson, it is he.”

  Then, he heaved a deep sigh.

  “Before they can find him, they’ve got to discover how they lost him in the first place,” said Père Jacques, stubbornly.

  At last, we reached the door to the Yellow Room.

  “And there is the door behind which a terrible thing took place,” said Rouletabille, with a solemnity which, under any other circumstances, would have been comical.

  Chapter Seven

  In Which Rouletabille Launches

  an Investigation Beneath the Bed

  Rouletabille, having pushed open the door to the Yellow Room, paused on the threshold, and said with an emotion which I only understood much later:

  “Ah… The perfume of the lady in black!”

  The chamber was dark. Père Jacques was about to open the shutters when Rouletabille stopped him.

  “Didn’t the tragedy take place in complete darkness?” he inquired.

  “No, young man, I don’t think so,” replied Père Jacques. “Mademoiselle always insisted on having a lamp on her night stand and I lit it every evening before she went to bed. I’m like a chambermaid to her, you see. The real chambermaid only comes in the mornings, and Mademoiselle often works late—far into the night.”

  “Where was the night stand? Far from the bed?”

  “Some way, yes.”

  “Can you light the lamp now?”

  “Well, the lamp is broken and the oil was spilled when the night stand was kicked over. But everything else in the room is just the way it was. Let me open the shutters and you’ll see for yourself.”

  “Wait!”

  Rouletabille went back into the laboratory, closed the two shutters and the door of the vestibule. When we were in total darkness, he lit a candle, gave it to Père Jacques and asked him to go and stand in the very same spot where the lamp had been burning that night.

  Père Jacques, who was wearing slippers—he had left his clogs in the vestibule—entered the Yellow Room with the candle. Under the small, flickering light, we saw various objects lying on the floor, a bed in a corner, and, in front of us, to our left, the reflection of a mirror hanging on the wall, near the bed. It took only a glance to inventory the contents of the room.

  “That will do!” said Rouletabille. “You may open the shutters now.”

  “Please, don’t go in,” begged Père Jacques. “You might leave marks with your boots, and nothing must be disturbed. That’s what the Magistrate said, alhough I can’t imagine what more business he’s got here.”

  The old man pushed the shutters open. Pale daylight entered from outside, casting sinister shadows on the saffron-colored wallpaper. Unlike the floors of the laboratory and the vestibule, which were tiled, the Yellow Room had a parquet floor, entirely covered by a single piece of yellow carpet, including under the bed and the dressing-table—the only piece of furniture that remained upright. A small round table, the night stand and two chairs had been overturned. They didn’t prevent us from observing a large blood stain on the carpet, which Père Jacques informed us was from the wound on Mademoiselle Stangerson’s forehead. Other, smaller blood stains were visible, parallel to the large, black footprints left by the perpetrator. One might have assumed that these drops of blood had fallen from the wound of the man who had left his blood-stained handprint on the wall. There were other bloody handprints on the wall, but much less distinct. There was no doubt that that single, clearly defined handprint belonged to a robust man.

  “See! See the blood on the wall!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “That man, lost in the dark, must have thought that he was pushing the door! That’s why he pressed so hard, leaving that terrible clue on the yellow wallpaper. I don’t think there are many hands like that around. It’s large, strong and all the fingers are nearly the same length! The thumb is missing; we only have the palm; but if we follow the trail, we see that, after pressing against the wall, the man felt for the door, found it, and then felt for the lock…”

  “No doubt,” interrupted Rouletabille, chuckling, “except that there is no blood on the lock or on the bolt!”

  “What does that prove?” I replied, with the common sense of which I was proud. “The perpetrator might have opened the lock with his left hand, which would have been only natural, since he’d just been wounded in his right hand.”

  “I told you, no one opened the door!” Père Jacques shouted. “We’re not blind! The door remained locked all the time, and there were four of us here when we smashed it open!”

  “It’s a funny-looking hand nevertheless,” I continued. “Look at it!”

  “It’s a very natural-looking hand,” said Rouletabille. “The handprint has been elongated by the slippage of the hand on the wall. What you see here is the trace left by a man who wiped his bloody hand off on the wallpaper. That man must be about five feet eight.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “By the height of the handprint on the wall.”

  My friend next occupied himself with the hole in the wall left by the bullet. It was a small, round hole.

  “This bullet was fired straight,” said Rouletabille. “Not from above, not from below.”

  And my friend drew our attention to the fact that the hole was located a few inches lower than the handprint.

  Rouletabille went back to the door and carefully examined the lock and the bolt, satisfying himself that the door had been broken open from the outside, and that both the lock and the bolt were still shut on the inside of the shattered door. The two latches, their screws ripped from the wall, still hung on the side of the door, with the bolts still inside them.

  The young reporter examined the lock and the bolt carefully, looked at both sides of the door again, and assured himself that it couldn’t possibly have been opened from the outside. He also verified that they key had been found still in the lock, on the inside. He finally satisfied himself that, with the key in the lock inside, the door couldn’t be opened with another key from outside. Then, having made sure that there was no automatic shutting mechanism, and that the door was just what it appeared to be: a simple, ordinary door, with one lock and a sturdy bolt, which had both been locked, he said:

  “Very good!”

  Then, sitting down on the ground, he hastily took off his boots and entered the Yellow Room in his socks. The first thing he did was to minutely examine the overturned furniture. We watched him in silence.

  “Young man, you seem to be going to a lot of trouble,” said Père Jacques ironically.

  Rouletabille raised his head and said:

  “You were right, Père Jacques. Mademoiselle Stangerson didn’t have her hair in plaits that night. I was an ass to have ever thought she did.”

  Then, with the agility of a snake, he crept under the bed.

/>   “I think that’s where the murderer must have certainly been hiding,” said Père Jacques. “He must have been there at 10 p.m. when I went in to close the shutters and light the night light, since neither the Professor, nor Mademoiselle, nor I, left the laboratory until that dastardly attack.”

  Presently we heard Rouletabille ask:

  “Père Jacques, at what time did the Professor and Mademoiselle Stangerson arrive at the laboratory?”

  “At 6 p.m.”

  The voice of Rouletabille continued:

  “Yes, he’s been under here, that’s certain… In fact, there’s nowhere else where he could have been hiding… When you came in—the four of you—did you look under the bed?”

  “At once! We even overturned the bed.”

  “And between the mattresses?”

  “There was only one mattress on the bed, and we placed Mademoiselle upon it. Then, the Professor and Monsieur Bernier immediately carried her into the laboratory. There was nothing under it but the metal bed frame, which could not conceal anything or anyone. Remember, Monsieur, that there were four of us and we couldn’t fail to notice everything. The room is so small and so scantily furnished, and the pavilion was locked…”

  I ventured a hypothesis:

  “Perhaps he got away with the mattress—inside it even! Anything is possible in the face of such a mystery! In their distress, Professor Stangerson and Monsieur Bernier may not have noticed that they were carrying the weight of two people—especially if the caretaker was part of the plot! I throw out this hypothesis for what it’s worth, but it would explain many things, particularly the fact that neither the laboratory nor the vestibule bear any traces of the footprints found inside the Yellow Room. If, in transporting Mademoiselle Stangerson on the mattress from the pavilion to the Chateau, the Professor and Bernier rested for a moment, there might have been an opportunity for our man to escape.”

  “Surely you must be joking!” said Rouletabille, laughing from under the bed.

  I felt rather vexed and replied:

  “Well, I don’t know, of course, but anything seems possible…”

  “The Investigating Magistrate had the same idea, Monsieur,” said Père Jacques, “and he carefully examined the mattress. Finally, he was forced to laugh at the idea, just as your friend is doing right now, for whoever heard of a mattress with a double bottom? Besides, if a man had been hiding inside, we would have seen him!”

  I was obliged to laugh, too, realizing that my theory was absurd after all; but, in an affair like this, one hardly knows where an absurdity begins or ends.

  Only Rouletabille seemed able to speak sensibly. He called out from under the bed.

  “This carpet has been moved. Who did that?”

  “We did, Monsieur,” explained Père Jacques. “When we couldn’t find any trace of the villain, we asked ourselves if there wasn’t a hole in the floor…”

  “There isn’t,” replied Rouletabille. “Is there a cellar?”

  “No, there’s no cellar. But that hasn’t stopped the Investigating Magistrate and his clerk from examining the entire floor, one slat of wood at a time, as if there had been a cellar under it.”

  The reporter reappeared. His eyes were shining and his nose quivered. He looked like a hound dog back from a successful hunt… He remained on his hands and knees. I couldn’t help thinking that there was no better comparison than that of a sporting dog on the scent of some unusual quarry. And, indeed, he was hunting for a man, the prey he had sworn to bring back to his master, the editor-in-chief of L’Epoque. Don’t forget that Rouletabille was, first and foremost, a journalist.

  Thus, on his hands and knees, he made his way around the room, sniffing and examining everything—everything that we could see, which wasn’t much, and, more importantly, everything that we obviously could not see, which must have been a lot.

  The dressing-table was a simple table, standing on four legs. It would have been impossible to hide under it. There was no dresser, because Mademoiselle Stangerson kept her clothes at the Chateau.

  Rouletabille passed his nose and hands over the walls, which were made of solid bricks. When he finished with the walls, having explored every inch of the saffron-colored wallpaper, he turned to the ceiling, which he was able to examine by placing a chair on top of the dressing-table, and moving that impromptu ladder from one end of the room to the other. He checked every square inch of it, including the hole made by the second bullet. After that, he approached the window, and, once again, tested the iron bars and the shutters, all of which were solid and intact. At last, he gave a grunt of satisfaction and declared:

  “Now, I’m done!”

  “Well, do you believe that our poor dear Mademoiselle was locked up well and good, when she was attacked by that miscreant, and called out for help?” asked Père Jacques.

  “Yes,” said the young reporter, mopping the sweat off his forehead. “The Yellow Room was as tightly shut as a safe.”

  “That’s why this mystery is the most intriguing that I’ve ever come across,” I said. “In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, even Edgar Allan Poe didn’t offer us such a puzzle. There, the scene of the crime was sufficiently closed to prevent the flight of a man, but there was a small window through which an ape could escape!10 But here, there can be no question of an opening of any kind. The door was bolted, the window and the shutters were shut—not even a fly could have gotten in or out.”

  “True, true,” acquiesced Rouletabille as he mopped his forehead, which seemed to be perspiring less from his recent efforts than from his mental agitation. “Indeed, it’s a great, beautiful, and very strange mystery.”

  “Even if the Holy Beast itself had attacked Mademoiselle,” muttered Père Jacques, “it couldn’t have escaped. Listen! Do you hear it? Hush!”

  Père Jacques waved at us to be quiet and, stretching his arm towards the wall nearest to the forest, he appeared to be listening to something we couldn’t hear.

  “It’s gone,” he finally said. “I should kill it. It’s too wicked, but it’s the Holy Beast, after all. Every night, it goes and prays on the tomb of Sainte Genevieve No one would dare harm it, less Mère Angenoux cast an evil spell on them.”

  “How big is the Holy Beast?”

  “Nearly as big as a large basset hound. It’s a monster, I tell you. Ah! I’ve asked myself more than once if it was not that which attacked our poor Mademoiselle, ripping her throat with its claws. But the Holy Beast doesn’t wear boots, doesn’t use guns—and wouldn’t leave behind a handprint like that!” exclaimed Père Jacques, pointing at the bloody mark on the wall. “Besides, we would have seen it, just the same as a man, and it would certainly have been trapped inside the Yellow Room and the pavilion…”

  “Obviously,” I said. “Before we had a chance to inspect the Yellow Room, I confess that I’d also asked myself if, maybe, Mère Angenoux’s cat might not have been…”

  “Not you too!” cried Rouletabille.

  “Why? Didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Not for a moment. After reading the article in Le Matin, I knew that no animals were involved in this matter. But now, I know that some frightful tragedy did happen here. By the way, you didn’t say anything about the béret and the handkerchief that were found here, Père Jacques.”

  “Well, the Magistrate took them,” the old man answered, hesitatingly.

  “I haven’t seen either of them, but I think I can tell you what they were made of,” Rouletabille said gravely.

  “You’re a clever lad, aren’t you?” said Père Jacques, coughing and looking a bit embarrassed.

  “The handkerchief is rather large, blue with red stripes. The béret is a traditional basque béret, just like the one you’re wearing now.”

  “You’re a wizard!” said Père Jacques, trying to laugh but not quite succeeding. “How do you know that the handkerchief is blue with red stripes?”

  “Because if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been found here.”

  Without
paying any further attention to Père Jacques, Rouletabille then took a piece of paper and a small pair of scissors from his pocket, and, bending over the footprints, he placed the paper over one of them and began to cut. In a short time, he had made a perfect pattern which he handed to me, begging me not to lose it.

  He then returned to the window and, pointing to the figure of Frederic Larsan, who walking in the woods outside near the pond, he asked Père Jacques if the detective had examined the Yellow Room too.

  “No,” replied Robert Darzac, who, since Rouletabille had handed him the piece of charred paper, had not uttered a word. “He claims that he doesn’t need to examine the Yellow Room. He says that the murderer made his escape quite naturally, and that tonight, he will explain how he did it.”

  As he listened to Darzac, Rouletabille turned pale—which was quite unusual.

  “Has Larsan found out the truth, which I’m only guessing at?” he murmured. “He’s clever, very clever—and I admire him. But what’s required here is more than the work of a policeman… better than what experience teaches us… It is a matter of pure logic! And by that, I mean just as logical as God Himself was when he ordered that 2 + 2 = 4! ONE MUST GRAB LOGIC BY THE RIGHT END, AS IF IT WERE A STICK!”

  The reporter rushed outside, devastated at the idea that “Frederic the Great” might beat him to the solution of the Mystery of the Yellow Room.

  I managed to catch him on the threshold of the pavilion.

  “Calm yourself, my dear fellow,” I said. “Aren’t you satisfied with what you found?”

  “Yes,” he confessed to me, with a deep sigh. “I am quite satisfied. I have discovered many things.”

  “Psychological or physical?”

  “Several psychological, one physical. This, for example...”

  And he quickly pulled from his pocket a piece of paper which he must have stored there during his investigation under the bed, and which contained a woman’s blond hair.

  Chapter Eight