"I have been very ill, very nearly dying," said the old woman. "If
ever you should have any scraps for the Bete du Bon Dieu--?"
And she entered, followed by a cat, larger than any I had ever
believed could exist. The beast looked at us and gave so hopeless
a miau that I shuddered. I had never heard so lugubrious a cry.
As if drawn by the cat's cry a man followed the old woman in. It
was the Green Man. He saluted by raising his hand to his cap and
seated himself at a table near to ours.
"A glass of cider, Daddy Mathieu," he said.
As the Green Man entered, Daddy Mathieu had started violently; but
visibly mastering himself he said:
"I've no more cider; I served the last bottles to these gentlemen."
"Then give me a glass of white wine," said the Green Man, without
showing the least surprise.
"I've no more white wine--no more anything," said Daddy Mathieu,
surlily.
"How is Madame Mathieu?"
"Quite well, thank you."
So the young Woman with the large, tender eyes, whom we had just
seen, was the wife of this repugnant and brutal rustic, whose
jealousy seemed to emphasise his physical ugliness.
Slamming the door behind him, the innkeeper left the room. Mother
Angenoux was still standing, leaning on her stick, the cat at her
feet.
"You've been ill, Mother Angenoux?--Is that why we have not seen
you for the last week?" asked the Green Man.
"Yes, Monsieur keeper. I have been able to get up but three times,
to go to pray to Sainte-Genevieve, our good patroness, and the rest
of the time I have been lying on my bed. There was no one to care
for me but the Bete du bon Dieu!"
"Did she not leave you?"
"Neither by day nor by night."
"Are you sure of that?"
"As I am of Paradise."
"Then how was it, Madame Angenoux, that all through the night of
the murder nothing but the cry of the Bete du bon Dieu was heard?"
Mother Angenoux planted herself in front of the forest-keeper and
struck the floor with her stick.
"I don't know anything about it," she said. "But shall I tell you
something? There are no two cats in the world that cry like that.
Well, on the night of the murder I also heard the cry of the Bete
du bon Dieu outside; and yet she was on my knees, and did not mew
once, I swear. I crossed myself when I heard that, as if I had
heard the devil."
I looked at the keeper when he put the last question, and I am much
mistaken if I did not detect an evil smile on his lips. At that
moment, the noise of loud quarrelling reached us. We even thought
we heard a dull sound of blows, as if some one was being beaten.
The Green Man quickly rose and hurried to the door by the side of
the fireplace; but it was opened by the landlord who appeared, and
said to the keeper:
"Don't alarm yourself, Monsieur--it is my wife; she has the
toothache." And he laughed. "Here, Mother Angenoux, here are some
scraps for your cat."
He held out a packet to the old woman, who took it eagerly and
went out by the door, closely followed by her cat.
"Then you won't serve me?" asked the Green Man.
Daddy Mathieu's face was placid and no longer retained its
expression of hatred.
"I've nothing for you--nothing for you. Take yourself off."
The Green Man quietly refilled his pipe, lit it, bowed to us, and
went out. No sooner was he over the threshold than Daddy Mathieu
slammed the door after him and, turning towards us, with eyes
bloodshot, and frothing at the mouth, he hissed to us, shaking his
clenched fist at the door he had just shut on the man he evidently
hated:
"I don't know who you are who tell me 'We shall have to eat red
meat--now'; but if it will interest you to know it--that man is
the murderer!"
With which words Daddy Mathieu immediately left us. Rouletabille
returned towards the fireplace and said:
"Now we'll grill our steak. How do you like the cider?--It's a
little tart, but I like it."
We saw no more of Daddy Mathieu that day, and absolute silence
reigned in the inn when we left it, after placing five francs on
the table in payment for our feast.
Rouletabille at once set off on a three mile walk round Professor
Stangerson's estate. He halted for some ten minutes at the corner
of a narrow road black with soot, near to some charcoal-burners'
huts in the forest of Sainte-Genevieve, which touches on the road
from Epinay to Corbeil, to tell me that the murderer had certainly
passed that way, before entering the grounds and concealing himself
in the little clump of trees.
"You don't think, then, that the keeper knows anything of it?" I
asked.
"We shall see that, later," he replied. "For the present I'm not
interested in what the landlord said about the man. The landlord
hates him. I didn't take you to breakfast at the Donjon Inn for
the sake of the Green Man."
Then Rouletabille, with great precaution glided, followed by me,
towards the little building which, standing near the park gate,
served for the home of the concierges, who had been arrested that
morning. With the skill of an acrobat, he got into the lodge by
an upper window which had been left open, and returned ten minutes
later. He said only, "Ah!"--a word which, in his mouth, signified
many things.
We were about to take the road leading to the chateau, when a
considerable stir at the park gate attracted our attention. A
carriage had arrived and some people had come from the chateau to
meet it. Rouletabille pointed out to me a gentleman who descended
from it.
"That's the Chief of the Surete" he said. "Now we shall see what
Frederic Larsan has up his sleeve, and whether he is so much
cleverer than anybody else."
The carriage of the Chief of the Surete was followed by three other
vehicles containing reporters, who were also desirous of entering
the park. But two gendarmes stationed at the gate had evidently
received orders to refuse admission to anybody. The Chief of the
Surete calmed their impatience by undertaking to furnish to the
press, that evening, all the information he could give that would
not interfere with the judicial inquiry.
CHAPTER XI
In Which Frederic Larsan Explains How the Murderer Was Able to Get
Out of The Yellow Room
Among the mass of papers, legal documents, memoirs, and extracts
from newspapers, which I have collected, relating to the mystery
of The Yellow Room, there is one very interesting piece; it is a
detail of the famous examination which took place that afternoon,
in the laboratory of Professor Stangerson, before the Chief of the
Surete. This narrative is from the pen of Monsieur Maleine, the
Registrar, who, like the examining magistrate, had spent some of
his leisure time in the pursuit of literature. The piece was to
have made part of a book which, however, has never been published,
> and which was to have been entitled: "My Examinations." It was
given to me by the Registrar himself, some time after the
astonishing denouement to this case, and is unique in judicial
chronicles.
Here it is. It is not a mere dry transcription of questions and
answers, because the Registrar often intersperses his story with
his own personal comments.
THE REGISTRAR'S NARRATIVE
The examining magistrate and I (the writer relates) found ourselves
in The Yellow Room in the company of the builder who had constructed
the pavilion after Professor Stangerson's designs. He had a workman
with him. Monsieur de Marquet had had the walls laid entirely bare;
that is to say, he had had them stripped of the paper which had
decorated them. Blows with a pick, here and there, satisfied us of
the absence of any sort of opening. The floor and the ceiling were
thoroughly sounded. We found nothing. There was nothing to be
found. Monsieur de Marquet appeared to be delighted and never
ceased repeating:
"What a case! What a case! We shall never know, you'll see, how
the murderer was able to get out of this room!"
Then suddenly, with a radiant face, he called to the officer in
charge of the gendarmes.
"Go to the chateau," he said, "and request Monsieur Stangerson and
Monsieur Robert Darzac to come to me in the laboratory, also Daddy
Jacques; and let your men bring here the two concierges."
Five minutes later all were assembled in the laboratory. The Chief
of the Surete, who had arrived at the Glandier, joined us at that
moment. I was seated at Monsieur Stangerson's desk ready for work,
when Monsieur de Marquet made us the following little speech--as
original as it was unexpected:
"With your permission, gentlemen--as examinations lead to nothing
--we will, for once, abandon the old system of interrogation. I
will not have you brought before me one by one, but we will all
remain here as we are,--Monsieur Stangerson, Monsieur Robert Darzac,
Daddy Jacques and the two concierges, the Chief of the Surete, the
Registrar, and myself. We shall all be on the same footing. The
concierges may, for the moment, forget that they have been arrested.
We are going to confer together. We are on the spot where the crime
was committed. We have nothing else to discuss but the crime. So
let us discuss it freely--intelligently or otherwise, so long as
we speak just what is in our minds. There need be no formality or
method since this won't help us in any way."
Then, passing before me, he said in a low voice:
"What do you think of that, eh? What a scene! Could you have
thought of that? I'll make a little piece out of it for the
Vaudeville." And he rubbed his hands with glee.
I turned my eyes on Monsieur Stangerson. The hope he had received
from the doctor's latest reports, which stated that Mademoiselle
Stangerson might recover from her wounds, had not been able to efface
from his noble features the marks of the great sorrow that was upon
him. He had believed his daughter to be dead, and he was still
broken by that belief. His clear, soft, blue eyes expressed infinite
sorrow. I had had occasion, many times, to see Monsieur Stangerson
at public ceremonies, and from the first had been struck by his
countenance, which seemed as pure as that of a child--the dreamy
gaze with the sublime and mystical expression of the inventor and
thinker.
On those occasions his daughter was always to be seen either
following him or by his side; for they never quitted each other, it
was said, and had shared the same labours for many years. The young
lady, who was then five and thirty, though she looked no more than
thirty, had devoted herself entirely to science. She still won
admiration for her imperial beauty which had remained intact, without
a wrinkle, withstanding time and love. Who would have dreamed that
I should one day be seated by her pillow with my papers, and that I
should see her, on the point of death, painfully recounting to us
the most monstrous and most mysterious crime I have heard of in my
career? Who would have thought that I should be, that afternoon,
listening to the despairing father vainly trying to explain how his
daughter's assailant had been able to escape from him? Why bury
ourselves with our work in obscure retreats in the depths of woods,
if it may not protect us against those dangerous threats to life
which meet us in the busy cities?
"Now, Monsieur Stangerson," said Monsieur de Marquet, with somewhat
of an important air, "place yourself exactly where you were when
Mademoiselle Stangerson left you to go to her chamber."
Monsieur Stangerson rose and, standing at a certain distance from
the door of The Yellow Room, said, in an even voice and without the
least trace of emphasis--a voice which I can only describe as a
dead voice:
"I was here. About eleven o'clock, after I had made a brief chemical
experiment at the furnaces of the laboratory, needing all the space
behind me, I had my desk moved here by Daddy Jacques, who spent the
evening in cleaning some of my apparatus. My daughter had been
working at the same desk with me. When it was her time to leave
she rose, kissed me, and bade Daddy Jacques goodnight. She had to
pass behind my desk and the door to enter her chamber, and she could
do this only with some difficulty. That is to say, I was very near
the place where the crime occurred later."
"And the desk?" I asked, obeying, in thus mixing myself in the
conversation, the express orders of my chief, "as soon as you heard
the cry of 'murder' followed by the revolver shots, what became of
the desk?"
Daddy Jacques answered.
"We pushed it back against the wall, here--close to where it is at
the present moment-so as to be able to get at the door at once."
I followed up my reasoning, to which, however, I attached but little
importance, regarding it as only a weak hypothesis, with another
question.
"Might not a man in the room, the desk being so near to the door,
by stooping and slipping under the desk, have left it unobserved?"
"You are forgetting," interrupted Monsieur Stangerson wearily, "that
my daughter had locked and bolted her door, that the door had
remained fastened, that we vainly tried to force it open when we
heard the noise, and that we were at the door while the struggle
between the murderer and my poor child was going on--immediately
after we heard her stifled cries as she was being held by the fingers
that have left their red mark upon her throat. Rapid as the attack
was, we were no less rapid in our endeavors to get into the room
where the tragedy was taking place."
I rose from my seat and once more examined the door with the greatest
care. Then I returned to my place with a despairing gesture.
"If the lower panel of the door," I said, "could be removed without
the whole door being necessari
ly opened, the problem would be solved.
But, unfortunately, that last hypothesis is untenable after an
examination of the door--it's of oak, solid and massive. You can
see that quite plainly, in spite of the injury done in the attempt
to burst it open."
"Ah!" cried Daddy Jacques, "it is an old and solid door that was
brought from the chateau--they don't make such doors now. We had
to use this bar of iron to get it open, all four of us--for the
concierge, brave woman she is, helped us. It pains me to find them
both in prison now."
Daddy Jacques had no sooner uttered these words of pity and
protestation than tears and lamentations broke out from the
concierges. I never saw two accused people crying more bitterly.
I was extremely disgusted. Even if they were innocent, I could
not understand how they could behave like that in the face of
misfortune. A dignified bearing at such times is better than tears
and groans, which, most often, are feigned.
"Now then, enough of that sniveling," cried Monsieur de Marquet;
"and, in your interest, tell us what you were doing under the windows
of the pavilion at the time your mistress was being attacked; for
you were close to the pavilion when Daddy Jacques met you."
"We were coming to help!" they whined.
"If we could only lay hands on the murderer, he'd never taste bread
again!" the woman gurgled between her sobs.
As before we were unable to get two connecting thoughts out of them.
They persisted in their denials and swore, by heaven and all the
saints, that they were in bed when they heard the sound of the
revolver shot.
"It was not one, but two shots that were fired!--You see, you are
lying. If you had heard one, you would have heard the other."
"Mon Dieu! Monsieur--it was the second shot we heard. We were
asleep when the first shot was fired."
"Two shots were fired," said Daddy Jacques. "I am certain that all
the cartridges were in my revolver. We found afterward that two
had been exploded, and we heard two shots behind the door. Was not
that so, Monsieur Stangerson?"
"Yes," replied the Professor, "there were two shots, one dull, and
the other sharp and ringing."
"Why do you persist in lying?" cried Monsieur de Marquet, turning
to the concierges. "Do you think the police are the fools you are?
Everything points to the fact that you were out of doors and near
the pavilion at the time of the tragedy. What were you doing there?
So far as I am concerned," he said, turning to Monsieur Stangerson,
"I can only explain the escape of the murderer on the assumption of
help from these two accomplices. As soon as the door was forced
open, and while you, Monsieur Stangerson, were occupied with your
unfortunate child, the concierge and his wife facilitated the flight
of the murderer, who, screening himself behind them, reached the
window in the vestibule, and sprang out of it into the park. The
concierge closed the window after him and fastened the blinds, which
certainly could not have closed and fastened of themselves. That
is the conclusion I have arrived at. If anyone here has any other
idea, let him state it."
Monsieur Stangerson intervened:
"What you say was impossible. I do not believe either in the guilt
or in the connivance of my concierges, though I cannot understand
what they were doing in the park at that late hour of the night.
I say it was impossible, because Madame Bernier held the lamp and
did not move from the threshold of the room; because I, as soon as
the door was forced open, threw myself on my knees beside my
daughter, and no one could have left or entered the room by the
door, without passing over her body and forcing his way by me!
Daddy Jacques and the concierge had but to cast a glance round the