reporter; and this evening I shall have to give a little account
of the play at the Scala."
"Get in, sir, please," said the Registrar.
Rouletabille was already in the compartment. I went in after him
and seated myself by his side. The Registrar followed and closed
the carriage door.
Monsieur de Marquet looked at him.
"Ah, sir," Rouletabille began, "You must not be angry with Monsieur
de Maleine. It is not with Monsieur de Marquet that I desire to
have the honour of speaking, but with Monsieur 'Castigat Ridendo.'
Permit me to congratulate you--personally, as well as the writer
for the 'Epoque.'" And Rouletabille, having first introduced me,
introduced himself.
Monsieur de Marquet, with a nervous gesture, caressed his beard into
a point, and explained to Rouletabille, in a few words, that he was
too modest an author to desire that the veil of his pseudonym should
be publicly raised, and that he hoped the enthusiasm of the
journalist for the dramatist's work would not lead him to tell the
public that Monsieur "Castigat Ridendo" and the examining magistrate
of Corbeil were one and the same person.
"The work of the dramatic author may interfere," he said, after a
slight hesitation, "with that of the magistrate, especially in a
province where one's labours are little more than routine."
"Oh, you may rely on my discretion!" cried Rouletabille.
The train was in motion.
"We have started!" said the examining magistrate, surprised at
seeing us still in the carriage.
"Yes, Monsieur,--truth has started," said Rouletabile, smiling
amiably,--"on its way to the Chateau du Glandier. A fine case,
Monsieur de Marquet,--a fine case!"
"An obscure--incredible, unfathomable, inexplicable affair--and
there is only one thing I fear, Monsieur Rouletabille,--that the
journalists will be trying to explain it."
My friend felt this a rap on his knuckles.
"Yes," he said simply, "that is to be feared. They meddle in
everything. As for my interest, monsieur, I only referred to it by
mere chance,--the mere chance of finding myself in the same train
with you, and in the same compartment of the same carriage."
"Where are you going, then?" asked Monsieur de Marquet.
"To the Chateau du Glandier," replied Rouletabille, without turning.
"You'll not get in, Monsieur Rouletabille!"
"Will you prevent me?" said my friend, already prepared to fight.
"Not I!--I like the press and journalists too well to be in any
way disagreeable to them; but Monsieur Stangerson has given orders
for his door to be closed against everybody, and it is well guarded.
Not a journalist was able to pass through the gate of the Glandier
yesterday."
Monsieur de Marquet compressed his lips and seemed ready to relapse
into obstinate silence. He only relaxed a little when Rouletabille
no longer left him in ignorance of the fact that we were going to
the Glandier for the purpose of shaking hands with an "old and
intimate friend," Monsieur Robert Darzac--a man whom Rouletabille
had perhaps seen once in his life.
"Poor Robert!" continued the young reporter, "this dreadful affair
may be his death,--he is so deeply in love with Mademoiselle
Stangerson."
"His sufferings are truly painful to witness," escaped like a regret
from the lips of Monsieur de Marquet.
"But it is to be hoped that Mademoiselle Stangerson's life will be
saved."
"Let us hope so. Her father told me yesterday that, if she does not
recover, it will not be long before he joins her in the grave. What
an incalculable loss to science his death would be!"
"The wound on her temple is serious, is it not?"
"Evidently; but, by a wonderful chance, it has not proved mortal.
The blow was given with great force."
"Then it was not with the revolver she was wounded," said
Rouletabille, glancing at me in triumph.
Monsieur de Marquet appeared greatly embarrassed.
"I didn't say anything--I don't want to say anything--I will not
say anything," he said. And he turned towards his Registrar as if
he no longer knew us.
But Rouletabille was not to be so easily shaken off. He moved
nearer to the examining magistrate and, drawing a copy of the
"Matin" from his pocket, he showed it to him and said:
"There is one thing, Monsieur, which I may enquire of you without
committing an indiscretion. You have, of course, seen the account
given in the 'Matin'? It is absurd, is it not?"
"Not in the slightest, Monsieur."
"What! The Yellow Room has but one barred window--the bars of
which have not been moved--and only one door, which had to be
broken open--and the assassin was not found!"
"That's so, monsieur,--that's so. That's how the matter stands."
Rouletabille said no more but plunged into thought. A quarter of
an hour thus passed.
Coming back to himself again he said, addressing the magistrate:
"How did Mademoiselle Stangerson wear her hair on that evening?"
"I don't know," replied Monsieur de Marquet.
"That's a very important point," said Rouletabille. "Her hair was
done up in bands, wasn't it? I feel sure that on that evening, the
evening of the crime, she had her hair arranged in bands."
"Then you are mistaken, Monsieur Rouletabille," replied the
magistrate; "Mademoiselle Stangerson that evening had her hair drawn
up in a knot on the top of her head,--her usual way of arranging it
--her forehead completely uncovered. I can assure you, for we have
carefully examined the wound. There was no blood on the hair, and
the arrangement of it has not been disturbed since the crime was
committed."
"You are sure! You are sure that, on the night of the crime, she
had not her hair in bands?"
"Quite sure," the magistrate continued, smiling, "because I
remember the Doctor saying to me, while he was examining the wound,
'It is a great pity Mademoiselle Stangerson was in the habit of
drawing her hair back from her forehead. If she had worn it in
bands, the blow she received on the temple would have been weakened.'
It seems strange to me that you should attach so much importance
to this point."
"Oh! if she had not her hair in bands, I give it up," said
Rouletabille, with a despairing gesture.
"And was the wound on her temple a bad one?" he asked presently.
"Terrible."
"With what weapon was it made?"
"That is a secret of the investigation."
"Have you found the weapon--whatever it was?"
The magistrate did not answer.
"And the wound in the throat?"
Here the examining magistrate readily confirmed the decision of the
doctor that, if the murderer had pressed her throat a few seconds
longer, Mademoiselle Stangerson would have died of strangulation.
"The affair as reported in the 'Matin,'" said Rouletabille eagerly,
"seems to me more and more inexplicable. Can you tell me, Monsieur,
how many openings there are in the p
avilion? I mean doors and
windows."
"There are five," replied Monsieur de Marquet, after having coughed
once or twice, but no longer resisting the desire he felt to talk
of the whole of the incredible mystery of the affair he was
investigating. "There are five, of which the door of the vestibule
is the only entrance to the pavilion,--a door always automatically
closed, which cannot be opened, either from the outer or inside,
except with the two special keys which are never out of the
possession of either Daddy Jacques or Monsieur Stangerson.
Mademoiselle Stangerson had no need for one, since Daddy Jacques
lodged in the pavilion and because, during the daytime, she never
left her father. When they, all four, rushed into The Yellow Room,
after breaking open the door of the laboratory, the door in the
vestibule remained closed as usual and, of the two keys for opening
it, Daddy Jacques had one in his pocket, and Monsieur Stangerson
the other. As to the windows of the pavilion, there are four; the
one window of The Yellow Room and those of the laboratory looking
out on to the country; the window in the vestibule looking into
the park."
"It is by that window that he escaped from the pavilion!" cried
Rouletabille.
"How do you know that?" demanded Monsieur de Marquet, fixing a
strange look on my young friend.
"We'll see later how he got away from The Yellow Room," replied
Rouletabille, "but he must have left the pavilion by the vestibule
window."
"Once more,--how do you know that?"
"How? Oh, the thing is simple enough! As soon as he found he could
not escape by the door of the pavilion his only way out was by the
window in the vestibule, unless he could pass through a grated window.
The window of The Yellow Room is secured by iron bars, because it
looks out upon the open country; the two windows of the laboratory
have to be protected in like manner for the same reason. As the
murderer got away, I conceive that he found a window that was not
barred,--that of the vestibule, which opens on to the park,--that
is to say, into the interior of the estate. There's not much magic
in all that."
"Yes," said Monsieur de Marquet, "but what you have not guessed is
that this single window in the vestibule, though it has no iron bars,
has solid iron blinds. Now these iron blinds have remained fastened
by their iron latch; and yet we have proof that the murderer made
his escape from the, pavilion by that window! Traces of blood on
the inside wall and on the blinds as well as on the floor, and
footmarks, of which I have taken the measurements, attest the fact
that the murderer made his escape that way. But then, how did he
do it, seeing that the blinds remained fastened on the inside? He
passed through them like a shadow. But what is more bewildering
than all is that it is impossible to form any idea as to how the
murderer got out of The Yellow Room, or how he got across the
laboratory to reach the vestibule! Ah, yes, Monsieur Rouletabille,
it is altogether as you said, a fine case, the key to which will
not be discovered for a long time, I hope."
"You hope, Monsieur?"
Monsieur de Marquet corrected himself.
"I do not hope so,--I think so."
"Could that window have been closed and refastened after the flight
of the assassin?" asked Rouletabille.
"That is what occurred to me for a moment; but it would imply an
accomplice or accomplices,--and I don't see--"
After a short silence he added:
"Ah--if Mademoiselle Stangerson were only well enough to-day to
be questioned!"
Rouletabille following up his thought, asked:
"And the attic?--There must be some opening to that?"
"Yes; there is a window, or rather skylight, in it, which, as it
looks out towards the country, Monsieur Stangerson has had barred,
like the rest of the windows. These bars, as in the other windows,
have remained intact, and the blinds, which naturally open inwards,
have not been unfastened. For the rest, we have not discovered
anything to lead us to suspect that the murderer had passed through
the attic."
"It seems clear to you, then, Monsieur, that the murderer escaped
--nobody knows how--by the window in the vestibule?"
"Everything goes to prove it."
"I think so, too," confessed Rouletabille gravely.
After a brief silence, he continued:
"If you have not found any traces of the murderer in the attic, such
as the dirty footmarks similar to those on the floor of The Yellow
Room, you must come to the conclusion that it was not he who stole
Daddy Jacques's revolver."
"There are no footmarks in the attic other than those of Daddy
Jacques himself," said the magistrate with a significant turn of his
head. Then, after an apparent decision, he added: "Daddy Jacques
was with Monsieur Stangerson in the laboratory--and it was lucky
for him he was."
"Then what part did his revolver play in the tragedy?--It seems
very clear that this weapon did less harm to Mademoiselle Stangerson
than it did to the murderer."
The magistrate made no reply to this question, which doubtless
embarrassed him. "Monsieur Stangerson," he said, "tells us that the
two bullets have been found in The Yellow Room, one embedded in the
wall stained with the impression of a red hand--a man's large hand
--and the other in the ceiling."
"Oh! oh! in the ceiling!" muttered Rouletabille. "In the ceiling!
That's very curious!--In the ceiling!"
He puffed awhile in silence at his pipe, enveloping himself in the
smoke. When we reached Savigny-sur-Orge, I had to tap him on the
shoulder to arouse him from his dream and come out on to the
platform of the station.
There, the magistrate and his Registrar bowed to us, and by rapidly
getting into a cab that was awaiting them, made us understand that
they had seen enough of us.
"How long will it take to walk to the Chateau du Glandier?"
Rouletabille asked one of the railway porters.
"An hour and a half or an hour and three quarters--easy walking,"
the man replied.
Rouletabille looked up at the sky and, no doubt, finding its
appearance satisfactory, took my arm and said:
"Come on!--I need a walk."
"Are things getting less entangled?" I asked.
"Not a bit of it!" he said, "more entangled than ever! It's true,
I have an idea--"
"What's that?" I asked.
"I can't tell you what it is just at present--it's an idea
involving the life or death of two persons at least."
"Do you think there were accomplices?"
"I don't think it--"
We fell into silence. Presently he went on:
"It was a bit of luck, our falling in with that examining magistrate
and his Registrar, eh? What did I tell you about that revolver?"
His head was bent down, he had his hands in his pockets, and he was
whistling. After a while I heard him murmur:
"Poor woman!"
"Is it Mademoiselle Stangerson you are pitying?"
"Yes; she's a noble woman and worthy of being pitied!--a woman of
a great, a very great character--I imagine--I imagine."
"You know her then?"
"Not at all. I have never seen her."
"Why, then, do you say that she is a woman of great character?"
"Because she bravely faced the murderer; because she courageously
defended herself--and, above all, because of the bullet in the
ceiling."
I looked at Rouletabille and inwardly wondered whether he was not
mocking me, or whether he had not suddenly gone out of his senses.
But I saw that he had never been less inclined to laugh, and the
brightness of his keenly intelligent eyes assured me that he
retained all his reason. Then, too, I was used to his broken way
of talking, which only left me puzzled as to his meaning, till,
with a very few clear, rapidly uttered words, he would make the
drift of his ideas clear to me, and I saw that what he had
previously said, and which had appeared to me void of meaning, was
so thoroughly logical that I could not understand how it was I had
not understood him sooner.
CHAPTER IV
"In the Bosom of Wild Nature"
The Chateau du Glandier is one of the oldest chateaux in the Ile de
France, where so many building remains of the feudal period are
still standing. Built originally in the heart of the forest, in the
reign of Philip le Bel, it now could be seen a few hundred yards
from the road leading from the village of Sainte-Genevieve to
Monthery. A mass of inharmonious structures, it is dominated by a
donjon. When the visitor has mounted the crumbling steps of this
ancient donjon, he reaches a little plateau where, in the seventeenth
century, Georges Philibert de Sequigny, Lord of the Glandier,
Maisons-Neuves and other places, built the existing town in an
abominably rococo style of architecture.
It was in this place, seemingly belonging entirely to the past, that
Professor Stangerson and his daughter installed themselves to lay
the foundations for the science of the future. Its solitude, in
the depths of woods, was what, more than all, had pleased them.
They would have none to witness their labours and intrude on their
hopes, but the aged stones and grand old oaks. The Glandier
--ancient Glandierum--was so called from the quantity of glands
(acorns) which, in all times, had been gathered in that
neighbourhood. This land, of present mournful interest, had fallen
back, owing to the negligence or abandonment of its owners, into
the wild character of primitive nature. The buildings alone, which
were hidden there, had preserved traces of their strange
metamorphoses. Every age had left on them its imprint; a bit of
architecture with which was bound up the remembrance of some terrible
event, some bloody adventure. Such was the chateau in which science
had taken refuge--a place seemingly designed to be the theatre of
mysteries, terror, and death.
Having explained so far, I cannot refrain from making one further
reflection. If I have lingered a little over this description of
the Glandier, it is not because I have reached the right moment for
creating the necessary atmosphere for the unfolding of the tragedy
before the eyes of the reader. Indeed, in all this matter, my
first care will be to be as simple as is possible. I have no
ambition to be an author. An author is always something of a
romancer, and God knows, the mystery of The Yellow Room is quite
full enough of real tragic horror to require no aid from literary
effects. I am, and only desire to be, a faithful "reporter." My