he turned towards the dark closet, and then I saw who he was. He
was the forest-keeper, the Green Man. He was wearing the same
costume that he had worn when I first saw him on the road in front
of the Donjon Inn. There was no doubt about his being the keeper.
As the cry of the Bete du Bon Dieu came for the third time, he put
down the package and went to the second window, counting from the
dark closet. I dared not risk making any movement, fearing I might
betray my presence.
Arriving at the window, he peered out on to the park. The night
was now light, the moon showing at intervals. The Green Man raised
his arms twice, making signs which I did not understand; then,
leaving the window, he again took up his package and moved along
the gallery towards the landing-place.
Rouletabille had instructed me to undo the curtain-cord when I saw
anything. Was Rouletabille expecting this? It was not my business
to question. All I had to do was obey instructions. I unfastened
the window-cord; my heart beating the while as if it would burst.
The man reached the landing-place, but, to my utter surprise--I
had expected to see him continue to pass along the gallery--I saw
him descend the stairs leading to the vestibule.
What was I to do? I looked stupidly at the heavy curtain which had
shut the light from the window. The signal had been given, and I
did not see Rouletabille appear at the corner of the off-turning
gallery. Nobody appeared. I was exceedingly perplexed. Half an
hour passed, an age to me. What was I to do now, even if I saw
something? The signal once given I could not give it a second time.
To venture into the gallery might upset all Rouletabille's plans.
After all, I had nothing to reproach myself for, and if something
had happened that my friend had not expected he could only blame
himself. Unable to be of any further assistance to him by means
of a signal, I left the dark closet and, still in my socks, made
my way to the "off-turning" gallery.
There was no one there. I went to the door of Rouletabille's room
and listened. I could hear nothing. I knocked gently. There was
no answer. I turned the door-handle and the door opened. I entered.
Rouletabille lay extended at full length on the floor.
CHAPTER XXII
The Incredible Body
I bent in great anxiety over the body of the reporter and had the
joy to find that he was deeply sleeping, the same unhealthy sleep
that I had seen fall upon Frederic Larsan. He had succumbed to the
influence of the same drug that had been mixed with our food. How
was it then, that I, also, had not been overcome by it? I reflected
that the drug must have been put into our wine; because that would
explain my condition. I never drink when eating. Naturally
inclined to obesity, I am restricted to a dry diet. I shook
Rouletabille, but could not succeed in waking him. This, no doubt,
was the work of Mademoiselle Stangerson.
She had certainly thought it necessary to guard herself against this
young man as well as her father. I recalled that the steward, in
serving us, had recommended an excellent Chablis which, no doubt,
had come from the professor's table.
More-than a quarter of an hour passed. I resolved, under the
pressing circumstances, to resort to extreme measures. I threw a
pitcher of cold water over Rouletabille's head. He opened his eyes.
I beat his face, and raised him up. I felt him stiffen in my arms
and heard him murmur: "Go on, go on; but don't make any noise." I
pinched him and shook him until he was able to stand up. We were
saved!
"They sent me to sleep," he said. "Ah! I passed an awful quarter
of an hour before giving way. But it is over now. Don't leave me."
He had no sooner uttered those words than we were thrilled by a
frightful cry that rang through the chateau,--a veritable death cry.
"Malheur!" roared Rouletabille; "we shall be too late!"
He tried to rush to the door, but he was too dazed, and fell against
the wall. I was already in the gallery, revolver in hand, rushing
like a madman towards Mademoiselle Stangerson's room. The moment I
arrived at the intersection of the "off-turning" gallery and the
"right" gallery, I saw a figure leaving her apartment, which, in a
few strides had reached the landing-place.
I was not master of myself. I fired. The report from the revolver
made a deafening noise; but the man continued his flight down the
stairs. I ran behind him, shouting: "Stop!--stop! or I will kill
you!" As I rushed after him down the stairs, I came face to face
with Arthur Rance coming from the left wing of the chateau, yelling:
"What is it? What is it?" We arrived almost at the same time at
the foot of the staircase. The window of the vestibule was open.
We distinctly saw the form of a man running away. Instinctively we
fired our revolvers in his direction. He was not more than ten
paces in front of us; he staggered and we thought he was going to
fall. We had sprung out of the window, but the man dashed off with
renewed vigour. I was in my socks, and the American was barefooted.
There being no hope of overtaking him, we fired our last cartridges
at him. But he still kept on running, going along the right side
of the court towards the end of the right wing of the chateau, which
had no other outlet than the door of the little chamber occupied by
the forest-keeper. The man, though he was evidently wounded by our
bullets, was now twenty yards ahead of us. Suddenly, behind us,
and above our heads, a window in the gallery opened and we heard
the voice of Rouletabille crying out desperately:
"Fire, Bernier!--Fire!"
At that moment the clear moonlight night was further lit by a broad
flash. By its light we saw Daddy Bernier with his gun on the
threshold of the donjon door.
He had taken good aim. The shadow fell. But as it had reached the
end of the right wing of the chateau, it fell on the other side of
the angle of the building; that is to say, we saw it about to fall,
but not the actual sinking to the ground. Bernier, Arthur Rance
and myself reached the other side twenty seconds later. The shadow
was lying dead at our feet.
Aroused from his lethargy by the cries and reports, Larsan opened
the window of his chamber and called out to us. Rouletabille, quite
awake now, joined us at the same moment, and I cried out to him:
"He is dead!--is dead!"
"So much the better," he said. "Take him into the vestibule of the
chateau." Then as if on second thought, he said: "No!--no! Let us
put him in his own room."
Rouletabille knocked at the door. Nobody answered. Naturally, this
did not surprise me.
"He is evidently not there, otherwise he would have come out," said
the reporter. "Let us carry him to the vestibule then."
Since reaching the dead shadow, a thick cloud had covered the moon
and darkened the night, so that we were unable to make out the
r /> features. Daddy Jacques, who had now joined us, helped us to carry
the body into the vestibule, where we laid it down on the lower step
of the stairs. On the way, I had felt my hands wet from the warm
blood flowing from the wounds.
Daddy Jacques flew to the kitchen and returned with a lantern. He
held it close to the face of the dead shadow, and we recognised the
keeper, the man called by the landlord of the Donjon Inn the Green
Man, whom, an hour earlier, I had seen come out of Arthur Rance's
chamber carrying a parcel. But what I had seen I could only tell
Rouletabille later, when we were alone.
Rouletabille and Frederic Larsan experienced a cruel disappointment
at the result of the night's adventure. They could only look in
consternation and stupefaction at the body of the Green Man.
Daddy Jacques showed a stupidly sorrowful face and with silly
lamentations kept repeating that we were mistaken--the keeper could
not be the assailant. We were obliged to compel him to be quiet.
He could not have shown greater grief had the body been that of his
own son. I noticed, while all the rest of us were more or less
undressed and barefooted, that he was fully clothed.
Rouletabille had not left the body. Kneeling on the flagstones by
the light of Daddy Jacques's lantern he removed the clothes from
the body and laid bare its breast. Then snatching the lantern from
Daddy Jacques, he held it over the corpse and saw a gaping wound.
Rising suddenly he exclaimed in a voice filled with savage irony:
"The man you believe to have been shot was killed by the stab of a
knife in his heart!"
I thought Rouletabille had gone mad; but, bending over the body, I
quickly satisfied myself that Rouletabille was right. Not a sign
of a bullet anywhere--the wound, evidently made by a sharp blade,
had penetrated the heart.
CHAPTER XXIII
The Double Scent
I had hardly recovered from the surprise into which this new
discovery had plunged me, when Rouletabille touched me on the
shoulder and asked me to follow him into his room.
"What are we going to do there?"
"To think the matter over."
I confess I was in no condition for doing much thinking, nor could
I understand how Rouletabille could so control himself as to be
able calmly to sit down for reflection when he must have known that
Mademoiselle Stangerson was at that moment almost on the point of
death. But his self-control was more than I could explain. Closing
the door of his room, he motioned me to a chair and, seating himself
before me, took out his pipe. We sat there for some time in silence
and then I fell asleep.
When I awoke it was daylight. It was eight o'clock by my watch.
Rouletabille was no longer in the room. I rose to go out when the
door opened and my friend re-entered. He had evidently lost no time.
"How about Mademoiselle Stangerson?" I asked him.
"Her condition, though very alarming, is not desperate."
"When did you leave this room?"
"Towards dawn."
"I guess you have been hard at work?"
"Rather!"
"Have you found out anything?"
"Two sets of footprints!"
"Do they explain anything?"
"Yes."
"Have they anything to do with the mystery of the keeper's body?"
"Yes; the mystery is no longer a mystery. This morning, walking
round the chateau, I found two distinct sets of footprints, made at
the same time, last night. They were made by two persons walking
side by side. I followed them from the court towards the oak grove.
Larsan joined me. They were the same kind of footprints as were
made at the time of the assault in The Yellow Room--one set was
from clumsy boots and the other was made by neat ones, except that
the big toe of one of the sets was of a different size from the one
measured in The Yellow Room incident. I compared the marks with
the paper patterns I had previously made.
"Still following the tracks of the prints, Larsan and I passed out
of the oak grove and reached the border of the lake. There they
turned off to a little path leading to the high road to Epinay where
we lost the traces in the newly macadamised highway.
"We went back to the chateau and parted at the courtyard. We met
again, however, in Daddy Jacques's room to which our separate trains
of thinking had led us both. We found the old servant in bed. His
clothes on the chair were wet through and his boots very muddy. He
certainly did not get into that state in helping us to carry the
body of the keeper. It was not raining then. Then his face showed
extreme fatigue and he looked at us out of terror-stricken eyes.
"On our first questioning him he told us that he had gone to bed
immediately after the doctor had arrived. On pressing him, however,
for it was evident to us he was not speaking the truth, he confessed
that he had been away from the chateau. He explained his absence
by saying that he had a headache and went out into the fresh air,
but had gone no further than the oak grove. When we then described
to him the whole route he had followed, he sat up in bed trembling.
"'And you were not alone!' cried Larsan.
"'Did you see it then?' gasped Daddy Jacques.
"'What?' I asked.
"'The phantom--the black phantom!'
"Then he told us that for several nights he had seen what he kept
calling the black phantom. It came into the park at the stroke of
midnight and glided stealthily through the trees; it appeared to
him to pass through the trunks of the trees. Twice he had seen
it from his window, by the light of the moon and had risen and
followed the strange apparition. The night before last he had
almost overtaken it; but it had vanished at the corner of the
donjon. Last night, however, he had not left the chateau, his
mind being disturbed by a presentiment that some new crime would
be attempted. Suddenly he saw the black phantom rush out from
somewhere in the middle of the court. He followed it to the lake
and to the high road to Epinay, where the phantom suddenly
disappeared.
"'Did you see his face?' demanded Larsan.
"'No!--I saw nothing but black veils.'
"'Did you go out after what passed on the gallery?'
"'I could not!--I was terrified.'
"'Daddy Jacques,' I said, in a threatening voice, 'you did not follow
it; you and the phantom walked to Epinay together--arm in arm!'
"'No!' he cried, turning his eyes away, 'I did not. It came on to
pour, and--I turned back. I don't know what became of the black
phantom."
"We left him, and when we were outside I turned to Larsan, looking
him full in the face, and put my question suddenly to take him off
his guard:
"'An accomplice?'
"'How can I tell?' he replied, shrugging his shoulders. 'You can't
be sure of anything in a case like this. Twenty-four hours ago I
would have sworn that there was no accomplice!' He left me saying
&nb
sp; he was off to Epinay."
"Well, what do you make of it?" I asked Rouletabille, after he had
ended his recital. "Personally I am utterly in the dark. I can't
make anything out of it. What do you gather?"
"Everything! Everything!" he exclaimed. "But," he said abruptly,
"let's find out more about Mademoiselle Stangerson."
CHAPTER XXIV
Rouletabille Knows the Two Halves of the Murderer
Mademoiselle Stangerson had been almost murdered for the second
time. Unfortunately, she was in too weak a state to bear the
severer injuries of this second attack as well as she had those of
the first. She had received three wounds in the breast from the
murderer's knife, and she lay long between life and death. Her
strong physique, however, saved her; but though she recovered
physically it was found that her mind had been affected. The
slightest allusion to the terrible incident sent her into delirium,
and the arrest of Robert Darzac which followed on the day following
the tragic death of the keeper seemed to sink her fine intelligence
into complete melancholia.
Robert Darzac arrived at the chateau towards half-past nine. I saw
him hurrying through the park, his hair and clothes in disorder and
his face a deadly white. Rouletabille and I were looking out of a
window in the gallery. He saw us, and gave a despairing cry: "I'm
too late!"
Rouletabille answered: "She lives!"
A minute later Darzac had gone into Mademoiselle Stangerson's room
and, through the door, we could hear his heart-rending sobs.
"There's a fate about this place!" groaned Rouletabille. "Some
infernal gods must be watching over the misfortunes of this family!
--If I had not been drugged, I should have saved Mademoiselle
Stangerson. I should have silenced him forever. And the keeper
would not have been killed!"
Monsieur Darzac came in to speak with us. His distress was terrible.
Rouletabille told him everything: his preparations for Mademoiselle
Stangerson's safety; his plans for either capturing or for disposing
of the assailant for ever; and how he would have succeeded had it
not been for the drugging.
"If only you had trusted me!" said the young man, in a low tone.
"If you had but begged Mademoiselle Stangerson to confide in me!
--But, then, everybody here distrusts everybody else, the daughter
distrusts her father, and even her lover. While you ask me to
protect her she is doing all she can to frustrate me. That was why
I came on the scene too late!"
At Monsieur Robert 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 room, while we were
running after the supposed murderer. The ante-room door was open
and when he entered he found Mademoiselle Stangerson lying partly
thrown over the desk. Her dressing-gown was dyed with the blood
flowing from her bosom. Still under the influence of the drug, he
felt he was walking in a horrible nightmare.
He went back to the gallery automatically, opened a window, shouted
his order to fire, and then returned to the room. He crossed the
deserted boudoir, entered the drawing-room, and tried to rouse
Monsieur Stangerson who was lying on a sofa. Monsieur Stangerson
rose stupidly and let himself be drawn by Rouletabille into the room
where, on seeing his daughter's body, he uttered a heart-rending cry.
Both united their feeble strength and carried her to her bed.
On his way to join us Rouletabille passed by the desk. On the floor,
near it, he saw a large packet. He knelt down and, finding the