GOTHIC CRIME MYSTERIES: The Phantom of the Opera, The Secret of the Night, The Mystery of the Yellow Room,The Man with the Black Feather & Balaoo. Gaston LerouxЧитать онлайн книгу.
to exterior signs left in the track of a crime.
“The method which traces the criminal by means of the tracks of his footsteps is altogether primitive. So many footprints are identical. However, in the disturbed state of my mind, I did go into the deserted court and did look at all the footprints I could find there, seeking for some indication, as a basis for reasoning.
“If I could but find a right starting-point! In despair I seated myself on a stone. For over an hour I busied myself with the common, ordinary work of a policeman. Like the least intelligent of detectives I went on blindly over the traces of footprints which told me just no more than they could.
“I came to the conclusion that I was a fool, lower in the scale of intelligence than even the police of the modern romancer. Novelists build mountains of stupidity out of a footprint on the sand, or from an impression of a hand on the wall. That’s the way innocent men are brought to prison. It might convince an examining magistrate or the head of a detective department, but it’s not proof. You writers forget that what the senses furnish is not proof. If I am taking cognisance of what is offered me by my senses I do so but to bring the results within the circle of my reason. That circle may be the most circumscribed, but if it is, it has this advantage—it holds nothing but the truth! Yes, I swear that I have never used the evidence of the senses but as servants to my reason. I have never permitted them to become my master. They have not made of me that monstrous thing,—worse than a blind man,—a man who sees falsely. And that is why I can triumph over your error and your merely animal intelligence, Frederic Larsan.
“Be of good courage, then, friend Rouletabille; it is impossible that the incident of the inexplicable gallery should be outside the circle of your reason. You know that! Then have faith and take thought with yourself and forget not that you took hold of the right end when you drew that circle in your brain within which to unravel this mysterious play of circumstance.
“To it, once again! Go—back to the gallery. Take your stand on your reason and rest there as Frederic Larsan rests on his cane. You will then soon prove that the great Fred is nothing but a fool.
—30th October. Noon.
JOSEPH ROULETABILLE.”
“I acted as I planned. With head on fire, I retraced my way to the gallery, and without having found anything more than I had seen on the previous night, the right hold I had taken of my reason drew me to something so important that I was obliged to cling to it to save myself from falling.
“Now for the strength and patience to find sensible traces to fit in with my thinking—and these must come within the circle I have drawn between the two bumps on my forehead!
—30th of October. Midnight.”
“JOSEPH ROULETABILLE.”
Chapter 19. Rouletabille Invites Me to Breakfast at the Donjon Inn
It was not until later that Rouletabille sent me the note-book in which he had written at length the story of the phenomenon of the inexplicable gallery. On the day I arrived at the Glandier and joined him in his room, he recounted to me, with the greatest detail, all that I have now related, telling me also how he had spent several hours in Paris where he had learned nothing that could be of any help to him.
The event of the inexplicable gallery had occurred on the night between the 29th and 30th of October, that is to say, three days before my return to the chateau. It was on the 2nd of November, then, that I went back to the Glandier, summoned there by my friend’s telegram, and taking the revolvers with me.
I am now in Rouletabille’s room and he has finished his recital.
While he had been telling me the story I noticed him continually rubbing the glass of the eyeglasses he had found on the side table. From the evident pleasure he was taking in handling them I felt they must be one of those sensible evidences destined to enter what he had called the circle of the right end of his reason. That strange and unique way of his, to express himself in terms wonderfully adequate for his thoughts, no longer surprised me. It was often necessary to know his thought to understand the terms he used; and it was not easy to penetrate into Rouletabille’s thinking.
This lad’s brain was one of the most curious things I have ever observed. Rouletabille went on the even tenor of his way without suspecting the astonishment and even bewilderment he roused in others. I am sure he was not himself in the least conscious of the originality of his genius. He was himself and at ease wherever he happened to be.
When he had finished his recital he asked me what I thought of it. I replied that I was much puzzled by his question. Then he begged me to try, in my turn, to take my reason in hand “by the right end.”
“Very well,” I said. “It seems to me that the point of departure of my reason would be this—there can be no doubt that the murderer you pursued was in the gallery.” I paused.
“After making so good a start, you ought not to stop so soon,” he exclaimed. “Come, make another effort.”
“I’ll try. Since he disappeared from the gallery without passing through any door or window, he must have escaped by some other opening.”
Rouletabille looked at me pityingly, smiled carelessly, and remarked that I was reasoning like a postman, or—like Frederic Larsan.
Rouletabille had alternate fits of admiration and disdain for the great Fred. It all depended as to whether Larsan’s discoveries tallied with Rouletabille’s reasoning or not. When they did he would exclaim: “He is really great!” When they did not he would grunt and mutter, “What an ass!” It was a petty side of the noble character of this strange youth.
We had risen, and he led me into the park. When we reached the court and were making towards the gate, the sound of blinds thrown back against the wall made us turn our heads, and we saw, at a window on the first floor of the chateau, the ruddy and clean shaven face of a person I did not recognise.
“Hullo!” muttered Rouletabille. “Arthur Rance!”—He lowered his head, quickened his pace, and I heard him ask himself between his teeth: “Was he in the chateau that night? What is he doing here?”
We had gone some distance from the chateau when I asked him who this Arthur Rance was, and how he had come to know him. He referred to his story of that morning and I remembered that Mr. Arthur W. Rance was the American from Philadelphia with whom he had had so many drinks at the Elysee reception.
“But was he not to have left France almost immediately?” I asked.
“No doubt; that’s why I am surprised to find him here still, and not only in France, but above all, at the Glandier. He did not arrive this morning; and he did not get here last night. He must have got here before dinner, then. Why didn’t the concierges tell me?”
I reminded my friend, apropos of the concierges, that he had not yet told me what had led him to get them set at liberty.
We were close to their lodge. Monsieur and Madame Bernier saw us coming. A frank smile lit up their happy faces. They seemed to harbour no ill-feeling because of their detention. My young friend asked them at what hour Mr. Arthur Rance had arrived. They answered that they did not know he was at the chateau. He must have come during the evening of the previous night, but they had not had to open the gate for him, because, being a great walker, and not wishing that a carriage should be sent to meet him, he was accustomed to get off at the little hamlet of Saint-Michel, from which he came to the chateau by way of the forest. He reached the park by the grotto of Sainte-Genevieve, over the little gate of which, giving on to the park, he climbed.
As the concierges spoke, I saw Rouletabille’s face cloud over and exhibit disappointment—a disappointment, no doubt, with himself. Evidently he was a little vexed, after having worked so much on the spot, with so minute a study of the people and events at the Glandier, that he had to learn now that Arthur Rance was accustomed to