Rouletabille and the Mystery of the Yellow Room

by Gaston Leroux

  It certainly wasn’t by helping us carrying the body of the gamekeeper from the courtyard to the vestibule, or going to the kitchen to fetch a lantern, that he had gotten them in such a state. Besides, it hadn’t been raining then. His face showed extreme fatigue and he looked at us with fearful eyes.

  “Upon questioning, he first told us that he had gone to bed straight after the doctor had arrived. (We had the butler go out and fetch a doctor after finding the body the night before.) After proving to him that he was lying, he finally confessed that he had gone out and left the estate. When we asked him why, he explained that he had had a headache and had gone out looking for fresh air, but he claimed he hadn’t gone further than the oak grove. When we then described the trail we had just followed, almost as if we’d been walking by his side, he sat up in bed trembling.

  “ ‘You weren’t alone!’ accused Larsan.

  “ ‘Did you see him?’ gasped Père Jacques.

  “ ‘Who?’ I asked.

  “ ‘The dark phantom!’

  “And Père Jacques began telling us that, for several nights already, he had seen something ,or someone, whom he called the dark phantom, walking through the grounds at the stroke of midnight, gliding stealthily through the trees—in fact, it seemed to the old man that the phantom was literally walking through the trees. Twice, Père Jacques had seen that wraith from his window, by the light of the Moon, and had gotten up to try to catch him. The night before last, he had almost overtaken him, but the phantom had vanished at the corner of the tower. Last night, he had gone out, his mind obsessed by the new crime which he had just witnessed. Suddenly, he’d seen the phantom rush out from the center of the courtyard. He had followed him, carefully at first, then more energetically, through the oak grove and all the way to the pond, but the wraith had vanished on the main road to Epinay.

  “ ‘Did you see his face?’ asked Larsan.

  “ ‘No! I saw nothing but black robes.’

  “ ‘And after what had happened in the corridor upstairs, you didn’t think to try to grab him?’

  “ ‘No! I was too terrified. I had barely enough strength to follow him’

  “ ‘Père Jacques,’ I said in a threatening voice, ‘you didn’t follow him, as you just said. You and the phantom were going together, virtually arm in arm! You must have gone on the main road with him.’

  “ ‘No!’ he cried, ‘I didn’t. It began to pour and I turned back. I don’t know what became of the phantom.’

  “But as he said this, he refused to look me in the eye.

  “So we left the old man. When we were outside, I turned to Larsan.

  “ ‘Is he an accomplice?’ I asked, looking at his eyes, trying to divine what he really thought

  “ ‘How can I tell?’ the detective replied, raising his arms in disbelief. ‘You can’t be sure of anything in a case like this. Twenty-four hours ago, I would have sworn that there were no accomplices!’

  “He left me, saying he was off to Epinay.”

  Rouletabille had finished his story.

  “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

  “Personally, I’m utterly confused. I can’t make head or tails out of it. But obviously, you do. What do you know?”

  “Everything!” he exclaimed. “Everything!”

  I had never seen him happier. He got up and pulled my hand forcefully.

  “Can you explain it to me then?” I said.

  “Not yet. First, let’s find out how Mademoiselle Stangerson is feeling,” he said abruptly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rouletabille Knows the Two Halves

  of the Perpetrator

  Mademoiselle Stangerson had almost been murdered a second time. Unfortunately, this latest attempt on her life had been much worse than the first. The perpetrator had had time to stab her three times in the chest during that tragic night. As a result, she spent a long time lingering between life and death. When finally her will to live proved the strongest, and we had good reasons to hope that she would escape her grim fate, we found out that, even though she had recovered physically from her wounds, her mental condition had been seriously damaged. The least mention of the dreadful attack sent her into fits of delirium, and the arrest of Robert Darzac, which took place at Glandier on the day after the gamekeeper’s tragic death, only seemed to sink her further into a deep depressive state.

  Darzac arrived at the chateau around 9:30 a.m. I saw him running through the courtyard, his hair and clothes in disarray, his boots covered in mud, his face deadly pale. Rouletabille and I were looking out of a window in the upstairs corridor. He saw us and gave a despairing cry:

  “Am I too late?”

  “No! She still lives!” Rouletabille shouted.

  A minute later, Darzac had gone into Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom and, through the door, we heard his heart-rending sobs.

  “There’s a curse attached to this place!” growled Rouletabille. “Some demons from Hell must be causing the misfortunes of this family! If I hadn’t been drugged, I could have saved Mademoiselle Stangerson. I could have silenced her enemy forever, and the gamekeeper wouldn’t have lost his life!”

  Darzac came out to speak with us. He was in tears. Rouletabille told him everything: his preparations for Mademoiselle Stangerson’s safety; his plans for disposing of her assailant forever if only he had seen his face; and how he would have succeeded had it not been for him being drugged.

  “If only you had trusted me!” said the young man, in a tone of reproach. “If only you had begged Mademoiselle Stangerson to confide in me! But, then, everybody here distrusts everybody else: the daughter distrusts her father, the fiancée her lover... While you were asking me to protect her from her attacker, she was doing everything in her power to facilitate her own murder! That’s why I arrived too late, still half awake, groggy, dragging myself to her bedroom where she lay in a pool of blood!”

  At 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 bedroom, while we were running after the perpetrator through the vestibule and the courtyard. The anteroom door was open. When he entered the bedroom, he found Mademoiselle Stangerson lying unconscious over the desk, her dressing-gown red with the blood flowing from her chest. Still under the influence of the drug, the young reporter felt he had just fallen prey to a horrible nightmare.

  Mindlessly, he returned to the corridor, opened a window, and shouted his order to fire. Then, he went back to Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room. He crossed the deserted boudoir, entered the sitting room, and tried to rouse Professor Stangerson who was lying on a sofa. He woke him up just as I had awakened him earlier. The Professor got up and, still dazed, let Rouletabille drag him up to the bedroom where, upon seeing his daughter’s body, he uttered a heart-rending cry. Now fully awake, the Professor helped Rouletabille and, despite their feeble strength, the two men managed to carry Mademoiselle Stangerson to her bed.

  Once that was done, Rouletabille’s first thought was to join us, so eager he was to know the face of the perpetrator. But as he walked by the desk, he noticed a bulky package on the floor. What was it doing there? he asked himself. He quickly knelt down and untied its string. Inside was an enormous quantity of papers and photographs. One was marked: “New differential electroscopic condenser.” Another: “Fundamental properties of the intermediate substance between tangible matter and intangible aether.” Rouletabille pondered at the mysterious irony of fate that had returned the Professor’s precious scientific documents just as an attempt had been made to kill his daughter! As a matter of fact, the Professor was so grief-stricken that he found no joy in such restitution, and ended up burning most of the papers in the fireplace the next day!

  The morning following that awful night, the Investigating Magistrate, Monsieur de Marquet, his clerk and the gendarmes, returned to the Chateau. Of course, we were all questioned thoroughly, except for Mademoiselle Stangerson
who was nearly comatose. Rouletabille and I had already agreed on what we would say. I withheld any information about my being in the closet and said nothing about the drugging. In short, we didn’t say anything that might have led the Magistrate to find out that we were anticipating some kind of attack, or that Mademoiselle Stangerson was, in fact, expecting her nocturnal attacker. The poor woman might, perhaps, pay with her life for the secret which bound her to her would-be murderer, and we wouldn’t have wished to render her sacrifice useless.

  Arthur Rance told everybody, in a manner so natural that it astonished me, that he had last seen the gamekeeper around 11 p.m. that fateful night. The man had come to his room to pick up a package that he was to take to Saint-Michel station early the next morning, and they had spent some time chatting about game and poachers. Mr. Rance had, indeed, intended to leave Glandier that morning and, according to his habit, planned to walk to Saint-Michel station. Not wanting to be burdened with excess luggage, he had asked the gamekeeper to take a package there for him. It was that parcel I had seen him carry when he had left Mr. Rance’s room the night before.

  At least, I thought so when Professor Stangerson confirmed what Mr. Rance had just said, adding that he had not asked him to dine with them because the American had already said his good-byes to his daughter and him at about 5 p.m. Mr. Rance was feeling midly indisposed and, instead, had ordered tea to be served in his room.

  The caretaker, Monsieur Bernier, testified as instructed by Rouletabille. He said that the gamekeeper had requested his assistance that night to go after some poachers. (Clearly, the dead gamekeeper wasn’t in a position to contradict his testimony.) They had been supposed to meet at a spot near the oak grove, but when the gamekeeper failed to show up, he, Bernier, had gone looking for him. He was almost at the tower, having taken a short-cut through a small door that led directly into the courtyard, when he saw a figure running swiftly from the opposite direction, towards the right wing of the Chateau. Then, he heard gunshots from behind the man, and saw Rouletabille at one of the gallery windows. Rouletabille saw him too, and recognized him. He heard the young reporter call out to him to fire, and he had done so. He believed that he had hit the man, possibly even killed him, until Rouletabille had undressed the body and shown that the man had died from a knife wound. He had not the faintest idea about what might have happened. If the body they had found wasn’t that of the man who had been running and whom he had shot, when, then, was that other body? In the confined area where they were, all gathered looking at a body, there was no room for any other body, dead or alive.

  Thus spoke Monsieur Bernier. But when the Investigating Magistrate reminded him that the spot where the body was found was very dark, and that he himself had not been able to recognize the gamekeeper until after he had been carried away to the vestibule, the caretaker replied that, even if they had missed the other body, dead or alive, they would have at least stepped on it, so narrow was the place where they stood. With five people standing there, it was impossible for another body to have escaped their notice. The only door that opened into that courtyard was that of the gamekeeper’s oval room, but it was locked, and its key was found in the man’s pocket.

  However, as Bernier’s testimony, no matter how impeccably logical it had been, led unerringly to the conclusion that a man had been shot to death with a knife, the Investigating Magistrate refused to take it into account. Instead, it became clear to us later that he was convinced that, somehow, we had missed the man we were chasing and had come upon the gamekeeper’s body by accident, in a matter wholly unrelated to the present affair.

  To Monsieur de Marquet, the murder of the gamekeeper belonged to another murder investigation, and he sought to prove it without further delay. It probably fitted with some of the conclusions he had already arrived at with respect to the gamekeeper’s personality, his scandalous life and numerous affairs, including with the wife of Père Mathieu, the landlord of the Auberge du Donjon. The various death threats issued by Mathieu toward the gamekeeper had been widely reported. So, at about 1 p.m., despite his rheumatism, his whining and the loud protests of his wife, Père Mathieu was arrested and taken into custody. No evidence was found against him at the inn, but new threats against the gamekeeper’s life, which he had uttered only the day before, and which had been reported by some carters, condemned him more than if the police had found the bloody murder weapon under his bed.

  We were all stunned by the many incomprehensible and dreadful facts uncovered by the investigation so far when, to add to our surprise, Frederic Larsan returned to the Chateau. He had left Glandier soon after talking to the Magistrate, and was now back, with one of the railway employees.

  At that moment, Mr. Rance and I were in the vestibule arguing about Père Mathieu’s guilt or innocence. Rouletabille stood apart, seemingly lost in his thoughts and paying no attention at all to our conversation. The Investigating Magistrate and his clerk were in the green sitting room, where Darzac had taken us when we had first arrived at Glandier. Père Jacques, summoned by the Magistrate, had just walked into the sitting room. Monsieur Darzac was upstairs, in Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom, with her father and the doctors. As Frederic Larsan entered the vestibule with the railway employee, Rouletabille and I recognized the man at once by his small blond beard.

  “That’s the station employee from Epinay-sur-Orge,” I said, looking at Larsan.

  “You’re correct, that’s him indeed,” the detective replied, smiling.

  Larsan asked the gendarme stationed at the door of the sitting room to announce him to the Investigating Magistrate. At once, Père Jacques was asked to leave and Larsan went in with the employee. Some ten minutes went by during which Rouletabille seemed extremely impatient. The door of the sitting room opened at last and we heard the Magistrate calling to the gendarme who entered. Presently, he came out, went upstairs, but returned quickly. Entering into the sitting room, but leaving the door open, the gendarme said:

  “Monsieur Darzac refuses to come down, Monsieur!”

  “What do you mean, he refuses to come down?” cried Monsieur de Marquet.

  “He says he can’t leave Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedside in her present state.”

  “Very well,” said Monsieur de Marquet. “Then we’ll go to him.”

  Monsieur de Marquet and the gendarme mounted the stairs. He made a sign to Larsan and the railroad employee to follow. Rouletabille and I went along too.

  Upon reaching the door of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom, Monsieur de Marquet knocked. A chambermaid appeared. It was Sylvie, with her blond hair all in disorder and consternation showing on her face.

  “Is Professor Stangerson within?” asked the Magistrate.

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “Tell him that I wish to speak to him.”

  Sylvie went to fetch the Professor. He came out. He had been crying. He inspired great pity.

  “What do you want?” he asked the Magistrate. “Can’t I be left in peace in such a tragic moment, Monsieur?”

  “Professor,” said the Magistrate, “I absolutely have to talk to Monsieur Darzac at once. Could you persuade him to come out? Otherwise, I shall be compelled to cross this threshold and arrest him with all the force of the Law behind me.”

  The Professor made no reply. He looked at the Magistrate, the gendarme, and all of us like a victim looking at his torturers. Then, he went back inside.

  Almost immediately, Monsieur Darzac came out. He was very pale and distraught. But when his eyes fell on the railway employee, standing behind Larsan, his features sagged, his eyes went wild and he couldn’t repress a groan.

  We all grasped the meaning of his painful realization. We couldn’t help but let out a sigh of compassion for that tragic figure. We knew that what was about to happen would decide Monsieur Darzac’s fate. Larsan’s face alone was beaming, showing the joy of a hunting dog that has at last gotten its prey.

  Monsieur de Marquet, pointing to the railway employee, ask
ed Monsieur Darzac:

  “Do you recognize this man, Monsieur?”

  “I do,” said Darzac, in a tone which he vainly tried to make firm. “He works at the railway station at Epinay-sur-Orge.”

  “This young man,” continued Monsieur de Marquet, “says that he saw you get off the train at Epinay…”

  “Last night,” said Monsieur Darzac, interrupting, “at 10:30 p.m. That’s correct.”

  A silence followed.

  “Monsieur Darzac,” the Magistrate went on in a tone of deep emotion, “what were you doing last night in Epinay, a few miles away from the place where Mademoiselle Stangerson was being assaulted?”

  Darzac remained silent. He didn’t lower his head, but just closed his eyes, either to hide his pain, or because he was afraid we might read some part of his terrible secret in them.

  “Monsieur Darzac,” insisted Monsieur de Marquet, “can you tell me what you did in Epinay last night?”

  Darzac opened his eyes. He seemed to have recovered his self-control.

  “I cannot, Monsieur.”

  “Think, Monsieur! For, if you persist in your strange refusal, I shall be under the painful necessity of placing you into custody.”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “Then, you leave me no choice. Monsieur Robert Darzac, in the name of the law, you are under arrest!”

  No sooner had the Investigating Magistrate uttered those words that I saw Rouletabille move quickly towards Darzac. He was almost certainly going to say something, but Darzac, with a sharp gesture, ordered him to remain silent. As the gendarme approached his prisoner, we heard a despairing cry from the bedroom:

  “Robert! Robert!”

  We recognized Mademoiselle Stangerson’s voice and the sheer pain in it made us all shudder. Larsan himself turned pale. Darzac, in response to her cry, rushed back into the bedroom.

  The Magistrate, the gendarme, and Larsan followed him. Rouletabille and I remained on the threshold. We witnessed a heart-wrenching scene. Mademoiselle Stangerson, her face deathly pale, had risen on her bed, despite the efforts of the two doctors and her father who had tried to restrain her. She was holding out her trembling arms towards Darzac, whom Larsan and the gendarme had grabbed. Her eyes were wide open and she saw—worse, she understood—what was happening. Her mouth seemed to form a word, a single word which expired on her lips and which nobody heard… Then, she collapsed and fell back unconscious.