The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux (thriller books to read TXT) đ
- Author: Gaston Leroux
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âLike an arrow I crossed the room, but noticed a letter on the table as I rushed. I almost came up with the man in the ante-room, for he had lost time in opening the door to the gallery. I flew on wings, and in the gallery was but a few feet behind him. He had taken, as I supposed he would, the gallery on his right,âthat is to say, the road he had prepared for his flight. âHelp, Jacques!âhelp, Larsan!â I cried. He could not escape us! I raised a shout of joy, of savage victory. The man reached the intersection of the two galleries hardly two seconds before me for the meeting which I had preparedâthe fatal shock which must inevitably take place at that spot! We all rushed to the crossing-placeâMonsieur Stangerson and I coming from one end of the right gallery, Daddy Jacques coming from the other end of the same gallery, and Frederic Larsan coming from the âoff-turningâ gallery.
âThe man was not there!
âWe looked at each other stupidly and with eyes terrified. The man had vanished like a ghost. âWhere is heâwhere is he?â we all asked.
ââIt is impossible he can have escaped!â I cried, my terror mastered by my anger.
ââI touched him!â exclaimed Frederic Larsan.
ââI felt his breath on my face!â cried Daddy Jacques.
ââWhere is he?ââwhere is he?â we all cried.
âWe raced like madmen along the two galleries; we visited doors and windowsâthey were closed, hermetically closed. They had not been opened. Besides, the opening of a door or window by this man whom we were hunting, without our having perceived it, would have been more inexplicable than his disappearance.
âWhere is he?âwhere is he?âHe could not have got away by a door or a window, nor by any other way. He could not have passed through our bodies!
âI confess that, for the moment, I felt âdone for.â For the gallery was perfectly lighted, and there was neither trap, nor secret door in the walls, nor any sort of hiding-place. We moved the chairs and lifted the pictures. Nothing!ânothing! We would have looked into a flower-pot, if there had been one to look into!â
When this mystery, thanks to Rouletabille, was naturally explained, by the help alone of his masterful mind, we were able to realise that the murderer had got away neither by a door, a window, nor the stairsâa fact which the judges would not admit.
CHAPTER XVII. The Inexplicable Gallery
âMademoiselle Stangerson appeared at the door of her ante-room,â continues Rouletabilleâs note-book. âWe were near her door in the gallery where this incredible phenomenon had taken place. There are moments when one feels as if oneâs brain were about to burst. A bullet in the head, a fracture of the skull, the seat of reason shatteredâwith only these can I compare the sensation which exhausted and left me void of sense.
âHappily, Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared on the threshold of her ante-room. I saw her, and that helped to relieve my chaotic state of mind. I breathed herâI inhaled the perfume of the lady in black, whom I should never see again. I would have given ten years of my lifeâhalf my lifeâto see once more the lady in black! Alas! I no more meet her but from time to time,âand yet!âand yet! how the memory of that perfumeâfelt by me aloneâcarries me back to the days of my childhood.* It was this sharp reminder from my beloved perfume, of the lady in black, which made me go to herâdressed wholly in white and so paleâso pale and so beautiful!âon the threshold of the inexplicable gallery. Her beautiful golden hair, gathered into a knot on the back of her neck, left visible the red star on her temple which had so nearly been the cause of her death. When I first got on the right track of the mystery of this case I had imagined that, on the night of the tragedy in âThe Yellow Roomâ, Mademoiselle Stangerson had worn her hair in bands. But then, how could I have imagined otherwise when I had not been in The Yellow Room!
* When I wrote these lines, Joseph Rouletabille was eighteen years of age,âand he spoke of his âyouth.â I have kept the text of my friend, but I inform the reader here that the episode of the mystery of âThe Yellow Roomâ has no connection with that of the perfume of the lady in black. It is not my fault if, in the document which I have cited, Rouletabille thought fit to refer to his childhood.âBut now, since the occurrence of the inexplicable gallery, I did not reason at all. I stood there, stupid, before the apparitionâso pale and so beautifulâof Mademoiselle Stangerson. She was clad in a dressing-gown of dreamy white. One might have taken her to be a ghostâa lovely phantom. Her father took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, as if he had recovered her after being long lost to him. I dared not question her. He drew her into the room and we followed them,âfor we had to know!âThe door of the boudoir was open. The terrified faces of the two nurses craned towards us. Mademoiselle Stangerson inquired the meaning of all the disturbance. That she was not in her own room was quite easily explainedâquite easily. She had a fancy not to sleep that night in her chamber, but in the boudoir with her nurses, locking the door on them. Since the night of the crime she had experienced feelings of terror, and fears came over her that are easily to be comprehended.
âBut who could imagine that on that particular night when he was to come, she would, by a mere chance, determine to shut herself in with her women? Who would think that she would act contrary to her fatherâs wish to sleep in the drawing-room? Who could believe that the letter which had so recently been on the table in her room would no longer be there? He who could understand all this, would have to assume that Mademoiselle Stangerson knew that the murderer was comingâshe could not prevent his coming againâunknown to her father, unknown to all but to Monsieur Robert Darzac. For he must know it nowâperhaps he had known it before! Did he remember that phrase in the Elysee garden: âMust I commit a crime, then, to win you?â Against whom the crime, if not against the obstacle, against the murderer? âAh, I would kill him with my own hand!â And I replied, âYou have not answered my question.â That was the very truth. In truth, in truth, Monsieur Darzac knew the murderer so well thatâwhile wishing to kill him himselfâhe was afraid I should find him. There could be but two reasons why he had assisted me in my investigation. First, because I forced him to do it; and, second, because she would be the better protected.
âI am in the chamberâher room. I look at her, also at the place where the letter had just now been. She has possessed herself of it; it was evidently intended for herâevidently. How she trembles!âTrembles at the strange story her father is telling her, of the presence
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