Rouletabille and the Mystery of the Yellow Room

by Gaston Leroux

  “As for me, when I sent Père Jacques take his place at the end of the right wing corridor, I naturally thought that Larsan was still occupying his at the end of the corner corridor. It didn’t occur to Père Jacques, walking to his post, to look to see whether Larsan was there or not. He was preoccupied with executing my instructions faithfully. And it didn’t occur to me to ask him to check!

  “So, what then could have been the compelling reason forcing Larsan to return to Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom for a second time? I guessed that it had to be some kind of evidence of his earlier presence which he had left there by mistake. What could it have been? And had he successfully recovered it during his second trip? Then, I remembered the candle on the floor and the perpetrator bent over, as if he were looking for something he’d just lost. I asked Madame Bernier, who was accustomed to cleaning the room, to search it thoroughly for me, and she found a pair of spectacles—this very pair, Monsieur!”

  And Rouletabille pulled the pair of spectacles, which I’d seen him study before, from his bag.

  “When I saw these spectacles,” he continued, “at first, I was aghast. I had never seen Larsan wearing any spectacles before. If he didn’t wear any, it was because he didn’t have to. So why would he have worn spectacles at a time when every minute counted? What did these spectacles mean? How could I fit them into my circle of logic? Then, I noticed they were farsighted spectacles and I asked myself: ‘What if Larsan is farsighted?’ I had never seen him writing or reading. He might, then, be farsighted. Certainly, his colleagues at the Sûreté would have known if that was the case… So if the spectacles were Larsan’s, they could be identified… To find Larsan’s very own spectacles in Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom after the mystery of the unfathomable corridor would be damning… So that explained Larsan’s return! I know now that Larsan-Ballmeyer is indeed farsighted and that these spectacles did belong to him.

  “You now understand, Monsieur, the basis of my system,” continued Rouletabille. “I’m not asking material clues to tell me the truth; I’m only asking them to not contradict the truth already shown to me by the right end of logic.

  “In order to be totally certain of Larsan’s guilt—because, let’s face it, accusing someone like Frederic the Great required some exceptional proof—I made one mistake. I wished to see his face. I was punished for this. You might say that the right end of logic took revenge on me because it had shown me the truth in the matter of the unfathomable corridor, and yet I had stopped leaning on it, reliably, definitively and trustingly. Had I refrained from seeking that additional evidence, the second, terrible attack on Mademoiselle Stangerson might have been prevented…”

  Rouletabille paused here and blew his nose, obviously moved.

  “But,” asked the President, “why should Larsan go to Mademoiselle Stangerson’s bedroom, at all? Why should he twice attempt to murder her?”

  “Because he loved her passionately, Monsieur.”

  “I suppose that’s a motive…”

  “That’s the only motive, Monsieur. He was madly, insanely in love with her, and because of that, and… other things… he was capable of committing any crime.”

  “Did Mademoiselle Stangerson know this?”

  “Yes, she did, Monsieur. But she was, of course, ignorant of the fact that the man who was pursuing her was Frederic Larsan of the Sûreté, otherwise, obviously, he wouldn’t have been allowed to stay at the Chateau. In fact, I noticed that, when we were all in her room after the incident of the unfathomable corridor, he kept himself in the shadow, his head bent down. He was probably looking for the lost spectacles. Mademoiselle Stangerson was stalked and persecuted by Larsan under another name which we don’t know, but which she evidently did.”

  “Monsieur Darzac,” asked the President, “did Mademoiselle Stangerson tell you anything about this? Why did she never speak of this to anyone? This might have helped the police to find the perpetrator. And if you’re innocent, to spare you the pain of being arrested.”

  “Mademoiselle Stangerson told me nothing,” replied Darzac.

  “Does what this young man say seem likely to you?” the President asked.

  “Mademoiselle Stangerson has told me nothing,” Darzac repeated stolidly.

  “How do you explain that, on the night of the murder of the gamekeeper,” the President asked, turning to Rouletabille again, “the perpetrator brought back the papers he had stolen from Professor Stangerson? How do you explain how he gained entrance into Mademoiselle Stangerson’s locked bedroom?”

  “The last question is easily answered, Monsieur,” replied the young reporter. “For a man like Larsan-Ballmeyer, making a set of duplicate keys would have been easy. As to the documents, I think Larsan hadn’t intended to steal them at first. He had been closely watching Mademoiselle Stangerson, wanting only to prevent her marriage to Monsieur Darzac. One day, he followed the two of them into the Grands Magasins du Louvre. There, he stole her handbag, or perhaps grabbed it after she left it behind somewhere. In it was a key with a brass head. He didn’t learn of its importance until he saw the advertisement placed in the newspaper by Mademoiselle Stangerson. He then wrote to her in care of the Poste Restante, as instructed. He probably asked her to meet him, informing her of the fact that he was the same man who’d been pursuing her. He received no reply. So, he went to the Post Office and ascertained that his letter had, indeed, been collected. But he went disguised as Monsieur Darzac, because he had already decided to attack Mademoiselle Stangerson, no matter the consequences, and he planned that Monsieur Darzac, her fiancé, his hated rival whom he sought to destroy, would be the man accused of his crimes.

  “I said no matter the consequences, because I don’t believe that Larsan was, at that stage, clearly determined to murder Mademoiselle Stangerson. But whatever he might do, he would make sure that Monsieur Darzac would be blamed for it! Larsan was very nearly the same height as Monsieur Darzac and had almost the same sized feet. It wasn’t difficult, after taking an impression of Monsieur Darzac’s footprints, to have similar boots made for himself. Again, such tricks were child’s play for someone like Ballmeyer.

  “So, having receiving no reply to his letter, no offer of rendezvous being forthcoming, Larsan, furious, determined that, since Mademoiselle Stangerson would not come to him, he would go to her. He still had the brass headed key in his possession. His plan had long been formed. He had carefully researched Chateau Glandier and its pavilion. One afternoon, while Professor Stangerson and his daughter were out for a stroll, while Père Jacques was away, he entered the pavilion by the vestibule window.

  “Being alone, and in no hurry, he began examining the furniture. One of the pieces, resembling a safe, had a small keyhole. That interested him! He had the brass headed key on him, and, associating the two, he tried it in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must have been very valuable to have been stored away in a safe, and for that key to be so important. Perhaps the thought of blackmail occurred to him as a useful possibility in helping him crush Mademoiselle Stangerson’s resistance? So he quickly made a parcel of the papers and took it to the lavatory next to the vestibule. Between that day and the night of the murder of the gamekeeper, Larsan had plenty of time to find out what those papers contained. He realized that he could do nothing with them, and further, they were compromising if found in his possession. So that night, he took them back to the Chateau. Perhaps he hoped that, by returning the papers which represented 20 years of hard, pioneering work, he might find some gratitude from Mademoiselle Stangerson? Everything is possible with a mind as twisted as his. But whatever his reasons, he took the papers back and was glad to be rid of them.”

  Rouletabille coughed. It was obvious to me that he was embarrassed. He had arrived at a point in his story where he had to withhold his knowledge of Larsan’s true motive for his frightful attacks on Mademoiselle Stangerson. The explanations he had given to the Court were a trifle too simplistic to satisfy everyone, and th
e President would certainly have remarked on it if Rouletabille, smart as a fox, hadn’t immediately said:

  “And now, we come to the explanation of the Mystery of the Yellow Room!”

  There was a movement of the chairs in the courtroom, a general agitation and an energetic whispering of “Hush!” showing that the public’s curiosity had reached its peak.

  “It seems to me, Monsieur Rouletabille,” said the President, “that the Mystery of the Yellow Room was explained by Frederic Larsan, except of course that, according to your theory, he misled us as to the true identity of the perpetrator by substituting himself with Monsieur Darzac. It’s obvious that the door of the Yellow Room was open when Professor Stangerson was alone, and that he allowed the man who was coming out of his daughter’s room to leave without arresting him, perhaps at her entreaty to avoid a scandal.”

  “No, Monsieur,” protested the young man. “You appear to have forgotten that, stunned by her attack, Mademoiselle Stangerson was in no condition to make such an entreaty, nor could she have locked herself back in her room. You must also remember that Professor Stangerson has sworn on his daughter’s head that the door remained closed at all times.”

  “But, Monsieur Rouletabille,” said the President, “that is the only way we can explain the mystery. The Yellow Room was as closely shut as a safe. It was impossible for the perpetrator to make his escape through natural means or otherwise. When the room was broken into, he wasn’t there! Therefore, he must have escaped.”

  “Not necessarily, Monsieur.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was no need for him to escape, if he wasn’t there in the first place!”

  The public became agitated.

  “Not there?”

  “Since he couldn’t have been there, it obviously means that he wasn’t. One must always grasp logic by the right end, Monsieur!”

  “But… what about all the evidence of his presence?” asked the President.

  “That, Monsieur, is precisely the wrong end of logic! The right end tells us this: from the time Mademoiselle Stangerson locked herself in the Yellow Room to the time its door was broken open, it was impossible for the perpetrator to escape from that room. Since we can’t find him there, it means that he wasn’t there during that time.”

  “But what about all the clues?”

  “Again, Monsieur, they’re the type of material clues which cause judicial mistakes, because they tell you whatever you want them to say! They have led us astray. One must first use logic to reason out a solution, and then see if the clues fit within that circle of logic. In this case, we begin with a very small circle: The perpetrator wasn’t inside the Yellow Room when it was locked. Why did everyone conclude that he had been? Because he left traces of his passage inside the room? But he could have left these traces before! Nay! He must have left these traces before! Logic dictates it! Let us look into the matter of these clues in light of what we now know, and see if they contradict the notion of the perpetrator being in the Yellow Room before Mademoiselle Stangerson locked herself in, in front of her father and Père Jacques.

  “After the publication of the article in Le Matin and my conversation with the Investigating Magistrate in the train from Paris to Epinay-sur-Orge, I became certain that the Yellow Room had been hermetically sealed, and that consequently, the perpetrator had escaped before Mademoiselle Stangerson had gone into the room at midnight.

  “Then, all the material clues seemed to argue against such a theory. After all, Mademoiselle Stangerson couldn’t have assaulted herself, and the evidence ruled out a suicide attempt. If her would-be murderer had come into the Yellow Room before, how was it possible then for Mademoiselle Stangerson to be attacked after? Or maybe it only seemed that way… It was necessary for me to reconstruct the attack in two stages, each clearly separated from the other by several hours. The first stage was when someone genuinely tried to kill Mademoiselle Stangerson who, for some reason, then hid that attempt; the second stage was when she was alone in the Yellow Room and, probably waking up from a nightmare, screamed and caused the people outside the room, her father and Père Jacques, to believe that she was being murdered within!

  “At the time, I hadn’t yet visited the Yellow Room. I asked myself what the marks left by her attacker on Mademoiselle Stangerson were. There were two: signs of strangulation and a wound from a hard blow to the temple. The signs of strangulation didn’t bother me much. If they’d been made before, Mademoiselle Stangerson could have easily concealed them under a collar, a scarf or any similar article of apparel. Because you understand that, from the moment I assumed that there were two separate incidents in this affair, I also had to assume that Mademoiselle Stangerson had taken steps to hide all the visible clues left by the attack during the first one! She obviously had compelling reasons to do so, since she had told her father nothing, and told the Investigating Magistrate that the attack, which she could no longer deny, had taken place during the second incident, which was a lie. She was forced to lie, because otherwise her father would have asked her: ‘Why did you keep this a secret? What is the meaning of your silence after such an aggression?’

  “If I could easily explain hiding the signs of strangulation, I couldn’t understand how Mademoiselle Stangerson might have done the same with the blow on her temple. I understood it even less when I learned that a bloody sheep-bone had been found in the Yellow Room. She couldn’t materially hide the fact that she had been struck on the head, and yet, according to my theory, that wound had to have been inflicted during the first incident, since it required the perpetrator’s effective presence. At first, I thought the wound might be less serious than it had been reported—which, as I found out later, was not the case. Then, I supposed that Mademoiselle Stangerson might have hidden it by wearing her hair in plaits.

  “As to the bloody handprint left on the wall of the Yellow Room, it had obviously been made before, during the first incident, when the perpetrator had really been there. All the traces of his presence had naturally been left during that first attempt: the sheep-bone, the sooty footprints, the Basque béret, the handkerchief, the blood on the wall, on the door, and on the floor… If those traces were still all there, it was obviously because Mademoiselle Stangerson, who desired nothing more than to hide the entire affair, hadn’t had time to clear them away.

  “This led me to the conclusion that the first attack must have taken place shortly before the second one. If after the initial attack, after the perpetrator had escaped, Mademoiselle Stangerson, after returning to the laboratory where her father found her pretending to be working, had had the time to go back into the Yellow Room, she would have at least removed the sheep-bone, the beret and the handkerchief which were lying on the floor. But she couldn’t do so because her father was with her all the time, working. So, after the first attack took place, she couldn’t go back to the Yellow Room until midnight. Now we know that Père Jacques did go in the Yellow Room, as he did every night, at 10 p.m., to close the shutters and light the nightlight. At that time, owing to her great distress, Mademoiselle Stangerson, still pretending to work in the laboratory, had forgotten that routine. When she realized that Père Jacques was about to enter the Yellow Room, she immediately begged him not to trouble himself, not to go into the Yellow Room. All this was clearly reported in the article from Le Matin. Père Jacques, however, did go in, but, because of the dim light of the room, saw nothing.

  “I’m sure that Mademoiselle Stangerson must have experienced some terrible anxiety when the old man went into the Yellow Room, but I think she also wasn’t aware that the perpetrator had left so many clues behind. After the first part of the attack, she only had time to hide the traces of the man’s fingers on her neck and to rush back to the laboratory. Had she known that the sheep-bone, the béret, and the handkerchief were still there, she would have thrown them away, or picked them up when she returned to the Yellow Room at midnight. But she, too, didn’t see them when she undressed by the inade
quate glimmer of the nightlight. She went to bed, worn-out by anxiety and terror, the same terror that had made her remain in the laboratory as late as possible.

  “My reasoning thus logically brought me to the second part of the tragedy, when Mademoiselle Stangerson was alone in the Yellow Room, and the perpetrator was long gone. Now, I had to fit the remaining material clues inside my circle of logic. What were they?

  “I had to explain the two gunshots heard during that second incident and Mademoiselle Stangerson’s cries of ‘Murder! Murder! Help!’ What was the right end of logic saying? First, the cries. Since the perpetrator was gone, and Mademoiselle Stangerson was alone in the Yellow Room, then those cries could only result from a nightmare!

  “The witnesses stated that they heard the sounds of furniture being overturned. I suppose… No, I’m logically compelled to assume that Mademoiselle Stangerson fell asleep, still haunted by the terrible attack that she’d experienced earlier in the afternoon. The nightmare made her terror even more vivid… In her dream, she saw the murderer about to spring upon her and she cried: ‘Murder! Murder!’ Her hand wildly looked for the gun she had placed within her reach on the night table by the side of her bed, but instead, she hit the table and overturned it. When it fell, the gun discharged. A bullet struck the ceiling. That bullet always seemed to me to have been the result of an accidental shot. Its very position suggested so, and supported my theory of a nightmare. That’s why I began to feel certain that the real attack had taken place before Mademoiselle Stangerson had retired for the night, and that she had hidden it with her unusual strength of character.

  “So, we have a nightmare, followed by a gunshot… Mademoiselle Stangerson was now awake, but in a terrible state… She tried to get up, but fell to the ground, dragging more furniture down with her. She uttered her final scream, ‘Help!’ before fainting.