Гастон Леру: The Mystery of the Yellow Room

“And then?” asked Rouletabille, deliberately laughing under the bed.

I felt rather vexed and replied:

“I don’t know,—but anything appears possible”—

“The examining magistrate had the same idea, monsieur,” said Daddy Jacques, “and he carefully examined the mattress. He was obliged to laugh at the idea, monsieur, as your friend is doing now,—for whoever heard of a mattress having a double bottom?”

I was myself obliged to laugh, on seeing that what I had said was absurd; but in an affair like this one hardly knows where an absurdity begins or ends.

My friend alone seemed able to talk intelligently. He called out from under the bed.

“The mat here has been moved out of place,—who did it?”

“We did, monsieur,” explained Daddy Jacques. “When we could not find the assassin, we asked ourselves whether there was not some hole in the floor—”

“There is not,” replied Rouletabille. “Is there a cellar?”

“No, there’s no cellar. But that has not stopped our searching, and has not prevented the examining magistrate and his Registrar from studying the floor plank by plank, as if there had been a cellar under it.”

The reporter then reappeared. His eyes were sparkling and his nostrils quivered. He remained on his hands and knees. He could not be better likened than to an admirable sporting dog on the scent of some unusual game. And, indeed, he was scenting the steps of a man,—the man whom he has sworn to report to his master, the manager of the “Epoque.” It must not be forgotten that Rouletabille was first and last a journalist.

Thus, on his hands and knees, he made his way to the four corners of the room, so to speak, sniffing and going round everything—everything that we could see, which was not much, and everything that we could not see, which must have been infinite.

The toilette table was a simple table standing on four legs; there was nothing about it by which it could possibly be changed into a temporary hiding-place. There was not a closet or cupboard. Mademoiselle Stangerson kept her wardrobe at the chateau.

Rouletabille literally passed his nose and hands along the walls, constructed of solid brickwork. When he had finished with the walls, and passed his agile fingers over every portion of the yellow paper covering them, he reached to the ceiling, which he was able to touch by mounting on a chair placed on the toilette table, and by moving this ingeniously constructed stage from place to place he examined every foot of it. When he had finished his scrutiny of the ceiling, where he carefully examined the hole made by the second bullet, he approached the window, and, once more, examined the iron bars and blinds, all of which were solid and intact. At last, he gave a grunt of satisfaction and declared “Now I am at ease!”

“Well,—do you believe that the poor dear young lady was shut up when she was being murdered—when she cried out for help?” wailed Daddy Jacques.

“Yes,” said the young reporter, drying his forehead, ““The Yellow Room” was as tightly shut as an iron safe.”

“That,” I said, “is why this mystery is the most surprising I know. Edgar Allan Poe, in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ invented nothing like it. The place of that crime was sufficiently closed to prevent the escape of a man; but there was that window through which the monkey, the perpetrator of the murder, could slip away! But here, there can be no question of an opening of any sort. The door was fastened, and through the window blinds, secure as they were, not even a fly could enter or get out.”

“True, true,” assented Rouletabille as he kept on drying his forehead, which seemed to be perspiring less from his recent bodily exertion than from his mental agitation. “Indeed, it’s a great, a beautiful, and a very curious mystery.”

“The Bete du bon Dieu,” muttered Daddy Jacques, “the Bete du bon Dieu herself, if she had committed the crime, could not have escaped. Listen! Do you hear it? Hush!”

Daddy Jacques made us a sign to keep quiet and, stretching his arm towards the wall nearest the forest, listened to something which we could not hear.

“It’s answering,” he said at length. “I must kill it. It is too wicked, but it’s the Bete du bon Dieu, and, every night, it goes to pray on the tomb of Sainte-Genevieve and nobody dares to touch her, for fear that Mother Angenoux should cast an evil spell on them.”

“How big is the Bete du bon Dieu?”

“Nearly as big as a small retriever,—a monster, I tell you. Ah!—I have asked myself more than once whether it was not her that took our poor Mademoiselle by the throat with her claws. But the Bete du bon Dieu does not wear hobnailed boots, nor fire revolvers, nor has she a hand like that!” exclaimed Daddy Jacques, again pointing out to us the red mark on the wall. “Besides, we should have seen her as well as we would have seen a man—”

“Evidently,” I said. “Before we had seen this Yellow Room, I had also asked myself whether the cat of Mother Angenoux—”

“You also!” cried Rouletabille.

“Didn’t you?” I asked.

“Not for a moment. After reading the article in the ‘Matin,’ I knew that a cat had nothing to do with the matter. But I swear now that a frightful tragedy has been enacted here. You say nothing about the Basque cap, or the handkerchief, found here, Daddy Jacques?”

“Of course, the magistrate has taken them,” the old man answered, hesitatingly.

“I haven’t seen either the handkerchief or the cap, yet I can tell you how they are made,” the reporter said to him gravely.

“Oh, you are very clever,” said Daddy Jacques, coughing and embarrassed.

“The handkerchief is a large one, blue with red stripes and the cap is an old Basque cap, like the one you are wearing now.”

“You are a wizard!” said Daddy Jacques, trying to laugh and not quite succeeding. “How do you know that the handkerchief is blue with red stripes?”

“Because, if it had not been blue with red stripes, it would not have been found at all.”

Without giving any further attention to Daddy Jacques, my friend took a piece of paper from his pocket, and taking out a pair of scissors, bent over the footprints. Placing the paper over one of them he began to cut. In a short time he had made a perfect pattern which he handed to me, begging me not to lose it.

He then returned to the window and, pointing to the figure of Frederic Larsan, who had not quitted the side of the lake, asked Daddy Jacques whether the detective had, like himself, been working in “The Yellow Room”?

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Although the original English translation often uses the words “murder” and “murderer,” the reader may substitute “attack” and “attacker” since no murder is actually committed.