I left Larsan at the window (No. 1 spot on the plan) and, with the greatest precaution, walked towards Professor Stangerson’s apartment in the left wing of the Chateau. I found him with Père Jacques, who had faithfully followed my directions, confining himself to asking his master to dress as quickly as possible.
In a few words, I explained the situation to the Professor. He armed himself with a revolver and followed me and Père Jacques back into the corridor. Since I had first seen the perpetrator seated at the desk, barely ten minutes had gone by. Professor Stangerson wished to spring upon the man and kill him there and then. I made him understand that, if he did that, he might not only not shoot him dead, but also miss him alive.
When I had sworn to him that his daughter was not in the room, and therefore not in danger, he relented and let me direct the operations. I told the two men that they must come to me as soon as I called to them, or when I fired my revolver. I then sent Père Jacques to stand before the window at the end of the right wing corridor (No. 2 spot on my plan). I had chosen that position for the old man because I thought that the perpetrator, once the chase began, would run towards the window he had left open, but seeing that it was guarded by Larsan, would then continue his flight along the right-wing corridor. There, he would come across Père Jacques, who would prevent him from using that window to jump into the grounds below. I believed the perpetrator was familiar with the premises of Glandier, and therefore, must have known that, under that window, was a kind of buttress. Jumping from any of the other windows in the corridors was impossible, at least without risking breaking one’s neck, because they were too high, and were above ditches. All the doors and windows, including those of the large walk-in closet at the end of the right-wing corridor, were securely fastened, as I had rapidly assured myself.
Having shown Père Jacques his post, and having seen him take up his position, I placed Professor Stangerson on the landing at the head of the stairs. My plan was that, as soon as I would spring onto the perpetrator, he would attempt to flee through the anteroom, rather than the boudoir, where the women were, the door of which must have been locked by Mademoiselle Stangerson herself if, as I thought, she had taken refuge there in order to avoid the perpetrator who had come to see her. In any event, he would find himself in the corridor, where people were waiting for him at every possible exit.
Upon leaving Mademoiselle Stangerson’s apartment, on his left, he would see the Professor. He would turn right, towards the corner corridor—the way he had come and planned to leave—but there, at the intersection of the two corridors, he would see Larsan on his left, at the end of the corner corridor, Père Jacques in front of him, at the end of the right-wing corridor. The Professor and I would then catch up with him, and he would be captured! This time, he would not, could not escape!
This plan seemed to me the best, the safest, and the simplest. It would, no doubt, have been easier still if we could have placed someone directly behind the door of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s boudoir, which opened into her bedroom. It might have seemed to make more sense to block the only two doors leading into the bedroom where our man was: that of the boudoir, and that of the anteroom. But we could only get into the boudoir by going through the sitting room, the door of which had been locked on the inside by Mademoiselle Stangerson. Thus, that plan, which might have appealed to the simpler mind of an ordinary policeman, was in this instance impractical. But even if I had had free access to the boudoir, I still would have stuck to my original plan, because any other mode of attack would have separated us during the struggle with our man, while my plan gathered us all for the attack at the very spot which I had selected with almost mathematical precision: the intersection of the two corridors.
Having thus placed my three helpers, I went out again, rushed to the ladder, and, replacing it against the wall, climbed up, revolver in hand, towards the window of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom.
If some people might be inclined to smile at my taking so many precautionary measures, I can only refer them to the earlier Mystery of the Yellow Room, which provided plenty of evidence of the perpetrator’s devilish cunning. Also, if some people find my observations needlessly detailed, when they believe that priority should be given to rapidity of movement, quick decisions and action, I will say that I only wished to report here, at length and completely, all the details of a plan of attack that was conceived very rapidly. It is only the slowness of my pen that gives an appearance of delay in its execution.
I have wished, by this slowness and precision, to be certain to omit nothing from the conditions under which the strange and extraordinary incident occurred, an incident which, until a natural explanation was found, seemed to me to validate Professor Stangerson’s theories on the Dissociation of Matter—I would even add, the instantaneous Dissociation of Matter.
Chapter Sixteen
The Strange and Extraordinary Incident of
the Dissociation of Matter
Excerpts from Joseph Rouletabille’s notebook (con’td.):
I found myself back at the windowsill, and again about to raise my head above it. Through the opening in the curtains, the disposition of which had remained the same, I was anxiously ready to take note of the position in which I expected to find the perpetrator. Would his back still be turned toward me? Would he still be seated at the desk writing? Perhaps he might no longer be there! But how could he have fled? Hadn’t I taken away his ladder? I forced myself to be calm. I raised my head a little higher. I looked inside. He was still there! I saw his monstrous back, distorted by the shadows thrown by the candle. He was no longer writing, but bending over the candle, now on the floor. That position served my purpose.
I held my breath. I climbed up the ladder. I now stood on its uppermost rung. My left hand grabbed the windowsill. In this moment of approaching success, I felt my heart beating wildly. I put the gun between my teeth. Now my right hand grabbed the windowsill too. If I pulled myself up, after a quick jump, I would be standing on the window ledge. But what about the ladder? I was right to be concerned, because I was forced to lean on it a little too heavily, and as soon as my foot left it, I felt it sway beneath me. It scraped against the wall and fell down to the ground. But, my knees were already touching the windowsill and, with matchless speed, I managed to stand on the ledge.
However, the perpetrator had been even quicker than me. He had heard the scraping sound made by the ladder against the wall. I saw his monstrous back turn around. He stood up. Briefly, I saw his face—or thought I did. The candle on the floor only lit his legs. Above the height of the table, the room was only darkness and shadows. I thought I’d seen a man with long hair, a full beard, wild eyes, a pale face, framed in large whiskers. Their color, as much as I could see color during that dark second, was red. Or so it seemed… Or so I believed… I didn’t know that face. That was, in short, the brief impression I received from a face seen briefly in the dim half-light. I didn’t know it—or, at least, I didn’t recognize it!
Now was the time to act quickly! I had to be like the wind! The storm! The lightning! But alas, alas! It took a minimum of a few gestures to extricate oneself from the position in which I stood… As I was about to drop through the window, the man leaped to his feet and rushed toward the door of the anteroom, just as I had foreseen. He had time to open it and flee. But I was already behind him, revolver in hand, shouting “Help!”
I crossed the room like an arrow, noticing a letter on the table as I rushed past. I almost caught up with the perpetrator in the anteroom because it’d taken him almost a minute to open the door onto the corridor. I nearly had him, but he slammed the door in my face. I had wings. I found myself in the corridor barely three meters behind him. The perpetrator had turned right, as I had supposed he would, following the path he had prepared for his escape.
“Help, Père Jacques! Larsan!” I cried.
He couldn’t escape! I let out a shout of joy, of savage victory… The man reached the intersection of the t
wo corridors barely two seconds ahead of me. Then, the encounter which I had planned, the fateful confrontation that was inevitably to take place at that very spot, happened! We all met at the intersection of the right-wing and the corner corridors: Professor Stangerson and I, coming from one end of the right-wing corridor, Père Jacques from its opposite end, and Larsan from the corner corridor. We almost bumped into each other.
But the perpetrator was not there!
We looked at each other stupidly, with terror in our eyes, because of the unreality of the scene. The perpetrator was not there!
“Where is he? Where is he?” we all asked.
“It’s impossible for him to have gotten away!” I shouted, my anger being then more powerful than my fear.
“I touched him!” exclaimed Larsan.
“He was there! I felt his breath on my face!” cried Père Jacques.
“We all saw him! I almost touched him too!” said Professor Stangerson.
“Where is he? Where is he?” we all cried.
We raced like madmen along the two corridors. We checked all the doors and windows—they were closed, hermetically closed. They hadn’t been opened since we had found them all fastened. Besides, the opening of a door or window by the man whom we were hunting, without us noticing anything, would have been even more inexplicable than his disappearance.
Where was he? Where was he? He couldn’t have escaped through a door or a window, nor by any other way. He could not have passed through our bodies!14
I confess that, at that moment, I felt utterly annihilated. The two corridors were well lit; there were no trapdoors, no secret door in the walls, nor any kind of hiding-place. We moved the chairs and lifted the pictures. Nothing! Nothing! We would have looked into flower pots, if there had been any in which to look!
Chapter Seventeen
The Unfathomable Corridor
Excerpts from Joseph Rouletabille’s notebook (con’td.):
Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared from her anteroom. By then, we were standing near her door in the corridor where the strange and extraordinary incident had just taken place. There are moments when one feels as if one’s brain is about to burst. A bullet in the head, a fracture of the skull, and the seat of reason is shattered, one’s mind murdered. I can only compare the sensations I felt, which left me exhausted and devoid of thought, with those. I had just experienced the end of everything rational; I no longer thought like a man. The destruction of my physical sight wouldn’t have been worse than that of my intellectual vision, which I had just experienced like a hammer’s blow to the skull!
Fortunately, Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared. I saw her, and that helped to calm my chaotic state of mind. I breathed her scent, again I inhaled the perfume of the lady in black… That dear, dear lady in black, whom I would never see again. My God, I would have gladly given ten years of my life—more than half of it—to see her again! Alas! Nowaday, I only encountered—and very rarely at that!—her perfume, the same scent that I had just inhaled, and which, to me alone, evoked the parlor of my schooldays, back when I was young.15 It was this sharp reminder of my youth, that beloved perfume of the lady in black, which made me step toward Mademoiselle Stangerson. She stood there, dressed entirely in white, so pale and so beautiful, on the threshold of that unfathomable corridor. Her beautiful golden hair, gathered in a bun at the back of her neck, left visible the red scar on her temple which had so nearly been the cause of her death.
When I first grabbed what I called the right end of logic in this case, I had thought that, on the night of the tragedy in the Yellow Room, Mademoiselle Stangerson had worn her hair in plaits. But how could I have thought otherwise when I hadn’t yet seen the Yellow Room!
But since the strange and extraordinary incident of the unfathomable corridor, I had stopped thinking at all! I could only stand there, dumb, before the apparition, so pale and so beautiful, of Mademoiselle Stangerson. She was, as I said, clad in a dressing-gown of dreamy white. One might have taken her for a ghost, a lovely phantom. Her father took her in his arms and kissed her with great relief, as if he was finding her again after having lost her once more. He dared not ask her any questions. He took her into her bedroom and we followed, because we had to know the truth!
The connecting door to the boudoir was now open. The terrified eyes of the two nurses stared at us. Mademoiselle Stangerson inquired about the meaning of such a great disturbance. The reason why she hadn’t been in her room was quite simple indeed—or so she made it sound. She said she’d had a fancy not to sleep in her bedroom that night, but in her boudoir with her nurses, locking themselves in as usual. Since the attack in the Yellow Room, Mademoiselle Stangerson often experienced feelings of terror and sudden fears… It all sounded quite understandable, didn’t it?
But, who could claim to understand why, on that particular night, when the perpetrator was sure to return, Mademoiselle Stangerson decided, apparently by mere chance, to lock herself in the boudoir with her nurses? Who could understand why she would ignore her father’s wish to spend the night in her sitting room, since she felt so afraid? Who could understand why the letter written by the perpetrator, which I’d seen earlier lying on top of the desk in her bedroom, was no longer there?
Someone who could understand all this would have to conclude that Mademoiselle Stangerson knew that her attacker would be returning. She couldn’t stop him. She couldn’t alert anyone because his identity had to remain hidden from everyone—except Monsieur Darzac. The Sorbonne Professor must know the perpetrator’s identity, I thought. Perhaps he even knew it when I talked to him! What was it that he had said in the gardens of the Elysée? “Must I then commit a crime to win you?” A crime against whom, if not the man who stood between them and happiness, a crime against the perpetrator?
When I asked Darzac: “Do you want me to find out who the attacker was?” he had replied: “Oh! I’d like to kill that man with my own hands!” to which I had said: “I believe you, but you haven’t answered my question.” That was the very essence of truth! Darzac knew who the perpetrator was, but while he wished to kill him, he was also afraid that I should find out who he was! There were two reasons why he offered to help me in my investigation. One was because I forced him to do so; two was so he could better protect his fiancée.
I stood in Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom. I looked at her, then at the place where the letter had been earlier. It was obvious that she had taken it; that the letter was clearly intended for her… It was all too evident… How the poor woman trembled! She was terrified by the story her father was telling her of the presence of the strange man in her room, and of the pursuit which had ensued. But I could plainly see that she truly felt safe only when she heard that the perpetrator, by some incomprehensible means, had once again escaped.
After that, there was a long silence. And what a silence it was! We all stood there, looking at Mademoiselle Stangerson: her father, Larsan, Père Jacques and I. What thoughts were brewing during that silence? After the events of that night, the mystery of the unfathomable corridor, the astonishing fact of the presence of the perpetrator in her bedroom, it seemed to me that our thoughts, from the unformed notions agitating Père Jacques to the more sophisticated ideas inside Professor Stangerson’s head, could all be boiled down in a simple request to Mademoiselle Stangerson: “You, who know the answer to this mystery, please explain it to us, and then we might be able to save you.” Oh! How I longed to save her, from herself and that mysterious man! So much misery so poorly hidden brought tears to my eyes.
But she only stood there, wearing the perfume of the lady in black. At last, I thought, I’m seeing her in her bedroom, where she has refused to see me so far, where she has remained obdurately silent… Since that fateful hour in the Yellow Room, we have all circled around this mysterious, silent woman, trying desperately to find out what she knows. Our desires, our desperate curiosity, must be one more torment for her. Who knows if, by learning her secret, we might not precipitate a tra
gedy even more terrible than that which she had already endured? Who knows if it might not mean her death? She had come close to dying once already, and yet we knew nothing. Or, rather, most of us knew nothing… For there was Darzac, who knew something… If only I knew the “who,” I would know everything. Who? Who? But not knowing that, I had no choice but to remain silent for her own sake. I had no doubt that she knew how HE had escaped from the Yellow Room, and yet she remained silent… Why should I speak anyway? When I know who the “who” is then I will speak—to him!
Mademoiselle Stangerson gazed at us now, with a far-away look in her eyes, as if we were not even in the room. The Professor broke the silence. He declared that, from now on, he wouldn’t leave his daughter’s apartments. She tried to convince him otherwise, but failed. He would brook no objections. He would stay here this very night, he said. Then, concerned for his daughter’s health, he reproached her for having left her bed too soon. He suddenly began talking to her as if she were a small child. He smiled and seemed not to know what he said or what he did. The illustrious Professor Stangerson was in danger of appearing to be senile. He repeated the same meaningless words of affection, indicating his state of mental distress. But our own mental state wasn’t much better, to tell the truth…
“Father… Father, please, stop…” Mademoiselle Stangerson said in a tone of great sorrow.
Père Jacques blew his nose. Even Larsan felt obliged to turn away to hide his emotions. As for me, I was exhausted. I was unable to think or reason. I felt utterly depressed, even disgusted with myself.
It was the first time that Larsan, like me, had met Mademoiselle Stangerson since her attack in the Yellow Room. Like me, he had insisted on being allowed to question the unfortunate woman but he hadn’t had any more luck than I. The same answer had always been given to us both: Mademoiselle Stangerson was too weak to see us. The Investigating Magistrate’s interview had exhausted her. I was convinced that this was done purposefully to hamper our investigations. Larsan had been surpriserd by such lack of cooperation. I hadn’t been. But it’s true that he and I had very different conceptions of the crime…
Rouletabille and the Mystery of the Yellow Room Page 15
