The Phantom of the Opera
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Gaston Leroux >> The Phantom of the Opera
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"I say that these gentlemen have heard of him."
"Gentlemen, it appears that you know the Opera ghost?"
Richard rose, with the remaining hairs of his mustache in his hand.
"No, M. Commissary, no, we do not know him, but we wish that we did,
for this very evening he has robbed us of twenty-thousand francs!"
And Richard turned a terrible look on Moncharmin, which seemed
to say:
"Give me back the twenty-thousand francs, or I'll tell the whole story."
Moncharmin understood what he meant, for, with a distracted gesture,
he said:
"Oh, tell everything and have done with it!"
As for Mifroid, he looked at the managers and at Raoul by turns
and wondered whether he had strayed into a lunatic asylum.
He passed his hand through his hair.
"A ghost," he said, "who, on the same evening, carries off
an opera-singer and steals twenty-thousand francs is a ghost who
must have his hands very full! If you don't mind, we will take
the questions in order. The singer first, the twenty-thousand
francs after. Come, M. de Chagny, let us try to talk seriously.
You believe that Mlle. Christine Daae has been carried off by an
individual called Erik. Do you know this person? Have you seen him?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"In a church yard."
M. Mifroid gave a start, began to scrutinize Raoul again and said:
"Of course!...That's where ghosts usually hang out!...And
what were you doing in that churchyard?"
"Monsieur," said Raoul, "I can quite understand how absurd my replies
must seem to you. But I beg you to believe that I am in full
possession of my faculties. The safety of the person dearest
to me in the world is at stake. I should like to convince you
in a few words, for time is pressing and ever minute is valuable.
Unfortunately, if I do not tell you the strangest story that ever
was from the beginning, you will not believe me. I will tell you all
I know about the Opera ghost, M. Commissary. Alas, I do not know much!..."
"Never mind, go on, go on!" exclaimed Richard and Moncharmin,
suddenly greatly interested.
Unfortunately for their hopes of learning some detail that could put
them on the track of their hoaxer, they were soon compelled to accept
the fact that M. Raoul de Chagny had completely lost his head.
All that story about Perros-Guirec, death's heads and enchanted violins,
could only have taken birth in the disordered brain of a youth
mad with love. It was evident, also, that Mr. Commissary Mifroid
shared their view; and the magistrate would certainly have cut
short the incoherent narrative if circumstances had not taken
it upon themselves to interrupt it.
The door opened and a man entered, curiously dressed in an enormous
frock-coat and a tall hat, at once shabby and shiny, that came down to
his ears. He went up to the commissary and spoke to him in a whisper.
It was doubtless a detective come to deliver an important communication.
During this conversation, M. Mifroid did not take his eyes off Raoul.
At last, addressing him, he said:
"Monsieur, we have talked enough about the ghost. We will
now talk about yourself a little, if you have no objection:
you were to carry off Mlle. Christine Daae to-night?"
"Yes, M. le Commissaire."
"After the performance?"
"Yes, M. le Commissaire."
"All your arrangements were made?"
"Yes, M. le Commissaire."
"The carriage that brought you was to take you both away.
... There were fresh horses in readiness at every stage.
..."
"That is true, M. le Commissaire."
"And nevertheless your carriage is still outside the Rotunda
awaiting your orders, is it not?"
"Yes, M. le Commissaire."
"Did you know that there were three other carriages there,
in addition to yours?"
"I did not pay the least attention."
"They were the carriages of Mlle. Sorelli, which could not find room
in the Cour de I'Administration; of Carlotta; and of your brother,
M. le Comte de Chagny. ..."
"Very likely. ..."
"What is certain is that, though your carriage and Sorelli's
and Carlotta's are still there, by the Rotunda pavement, M. le
Comte de Chagny's carriage is gone."
"This has nothing to say to..."
"I beg your pardon. Was not M. le Comte opposed to your marriage
with Mlle. Daae?"
"That is a matter that only concerns the family."
"You have answered my question: he was opposed to it...and that
was why you were carrying Christine Daae out of your brother's reach.
... Well, M. de Chagny, allow me to inform you that your brother has
been smarter than you! It is he who has carried off Christine Daae!"
"Oh, impossible!" moaned Raoul, pressing his hand to his heart.
"Are you sure?"
"Immediately after the artist's disappearance, which was procured
by means which we have still to ascertain, he flung into his carriage,
which drove right across Paris at a furious pace."
"Across Paris?" asked poor Raoul, in a hoarse voice. "What do you
mean by across Paris?"
"Across Paris and out of Paris...by the Brussels road."
"Oh," cried the young man, "I shall catch them!" And he rushed
out of the office.
"And bring her back to us!" cried the commisary gaily...."Ah,
that's a trick worth two of the Angel of Music's!"
And, turning to his audience, M. Mifroid delivered a little lecture
on police methods.
"I don't know for a moment whether M. le Comte de Chagny has really
carried Christine Daae off or not...but I want to know and I
believe that, at this moment, no one is more anxious to inform us
than his brother....And now he is flying in pursuit of him!
He is my chief auxiliary! This, gentlemen, is the art of the police,
which is believed to be so complicated and which, nevertheless appears
so simple as soon its you see that it consists in getting your work
done by people who have nothing to do with the police."
But M. le Commissaire de Police Mifroid would not have been quite
so satisfied with himself if he had known that the rush of his rapid
emissary was stopped at the entrance to the very first corridor.
A tall figure blocked Raoul's way.
"Where are you going so fast, M. de Chagny?" asked a voice.
Raoul impatiently raised his eyes and recognized the astrakhan cap
of an hour ago. He stopped:
"It's you!" he cried, in a feverish voice. "You, who know Erik's
secrets and don't want me to speak of them. Who are you?"
"You know who I am!...I am the Persian!"
Chapter XIX The Viscount and the Persian
Raoul now remembered that his brother had once shown him that
mysterious person, of whom nothing was known except that he was a Persian
and that he lived in a little old-fashioned flat in the Rue de Rivoli.
The man with the ebony skin, the eyes of jade and the astrakhan
cap bent over Raoul.
"I hope, M. de Chagny," he said, "that you have not betrayed
Erik's secret?"
"And why should I hesitate to betray that monster, sir?"
Raoul rejoined haughtily, trying to shake off the intruder.
"Is he your friend, by any chance?"
"I hope that you said, nothing about Erik, sir, because Erik's
secret is also Christine Daae's and to talk about one is to talk
about the other!"
"Oh, sir," said Raoul, becoming more and more impatient, "you seem
to know about many things that interest me; and yet I have no time
to listen to you!"
"Once more, M. de Chagny, where are you going so fast?"
"Can not you guess? To Christine Daae's assistance. ..."
"Then, sir, stay here, for Christine Daae is here!"
"With Erik?"
"With Erik."
"How do you know?"
"I was at the performance and no one in the world but Erik could
contrive an abduction like that!...Oh," he said, with a deep sigh,
"I recognized the monster's touch!..."
"You know him then?"
The Persian did not reply, but heaved a fresh sigh.
"Sir," said Raoul, "I do not know what your intentions are, but can
you do anything to help me? I mean, to help Christine Daae?"
"I think so, M. de Chagny, and that is why I spoke to you."
"What can you do?"
"Try to take you to her...and to him."
"If you can do me that service, sir, my life is yours!...One
word more: the commissary of police tells me that Christine Daae
has been carried off by my brother, Count Philippe."
"Oh, M. de Chagny, I don't believe a word of it."
"It's not possible, is it?"
"I don't know if it is possible or not; but there are ways and
ways of carrying people off; and M. le Comte Philippe has never,
as far as I know, had anything to do with witchcraft."
"Your arguments are convincing, sir, and I am a fool!...Oh,
let us make haste! I place myself entirely in your hands!...
How should I not believe you, when you are the only one to believe
me...when you are the only one not to smile when Erik's name
is mentioned?"
And the young man impetuously seized the Persian's hands.
They were ice-cold.
"Silence!" said the Persian, stopping and listening to the distant
sounds of the theater. "We must not mention that name here.
Let us say `he' and `him;' then there will be less danger of attracting
his attention."
"Do you think he is near us?"
"It is quite possible, Sir, if he is not, at this moment,
with his victim, IN THE HOUSE ON THE LAKE."
"Ah, so you know that house too?"
"If he is not there, he may be here, in this wall, in this floor,
in this ceiling!...Come!"
And the Persian, asking Raoul to deaden the sound of his footsteps,
led him down passages which Raoul had never seen before, even at the
time when Christine used to take him for walks through that labyrinth.
"If only Darius has come!" said the Persian.
"Who is Darius?"
"Darius? My servant."
They were now in the center of a real deserted square, an immense
apartment ill-lit by a small lamp. The Persian stopped Raoul and,
in the softest of whispers, asked:
"What did you say to the commissary?"
"I said that Christine Daae's abductor was the Angel of Music,
ALIAS the Opera ghost, and that the real name was..."
"Hush!...And did he believe you?"
"No."
"He attached no importance to what you said?"
"No."
"He took you for a bit of a madman?"
"Yes."
"So much the better!" sighed the Persian.
And they continued their road. After going up and down several
staircases which Raoul had never seen before, the two men
found themselves in front of a door which the Persian opened
with a master-key. The Persian and Raoul were both, of course,
in dress-clothes; but, whereas Raoul had a tall hat, the Persian
wore the astrakhan cap which I have already mentioned. It was
an infringement of the rule which insists upon the tall hat behind
the scenes; but in France foreigners are allowed every license:
the Englishman his traveling-cap, the Persian his cap of astrakhan.
"Sir," said the Persian, "your tall hat will be in your way:
you would do well to leave it in the dressing-room."
"What dressing-room?" asked Raoul.
"Christine Daae's."
And the Persian, letting Raoul through the door which he
had just opened, showed him the actress' room opposite.
They were at the end of the passage the whole length of which Raoul
had been accustomed to traverse before knocking at Christine's door.
"How well you know the Opera, sir!"
"Not so well as `he' does!" said the Persian modestly.
And he pushed the young man into Christine's dressing-room,
which was as Raoul had left it a few minutes earlier.
Closing the door, the Persian went to a very thin partition that
separated the dressing-room from a big lumber-room next to it.
He listened and then coughed loudly.
There was a sound of some one stirring in the lumber-room; and, a few
seconds later, a finger tapped at the door.
"Come in," said the Persian.
A man entered, also wearing an astrakhan cap and dressed in a long
overcoat. He bowed and took a richly carved case from under his coat,
put it on the dressing-table, bowed once again and went to the door.
"Did no one see you come in, Darius?"
"No, master."
"Let no one see you go out."
The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared.
The Persian opened the case. It contained a pair of long pistols.
"When Christine Daae was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant
to bring me these pistols. I have had them a long time and they
can be relied upon."
"Do you mean to fight a duel?" asked the young man.
"It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight,"
said the other, examining the priming of his pistols. "And what a duel!"
Handing one of the pistols to Raoul, he added, "In this duel,
we shall be two to one; but you must be prepared for everything,
for we shall be fighting the most terrible adversary that you
can imagine. But you love Christine Daae, do you not?"
"I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not
love her, tell me why I find you ready to risk your life for her!
You must certainly hate Erik!"
"No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him,
he would long ago have ceased doing harm."
"Has he done you harm?"
"I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me."
"I do not understand you. You treat him as a monster, you speak
of his crime, he has done you harm and I find in you the same
inexplicable pity that drove me to despair when I saw it in Christine!"
The Persian did not reply. He fetched a stool and set it
against the wall facing the great mirror that filled the whole
of the wall-space opposite. Then he climbed on the stool and,
with his nose to the wallpaper, seemed to be looking for something.
"Ah," he said, after a long search, "I have it!" And, raising his
finger above his head, he pressed against a corner in the pattern
of the paper. Then he turned round and jumped off the stool:
"In half a minute," he said, "he shall be ON HIS ROAD!" and crossing
the whole of the dressing-room he felt the great mirror.
"No, it is not yielding yet," he muttered.
"Oh, are we going out by the mirror?" asked Raoul. "Like Christine Daae."
"So you knew that Christine Daae went out by that mirror?"
"She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain
of the inner room and I saw her vanish not by the glass, but in
the glass!"
"And what did you do?"
"I thought it was an aberration of my senses, a mad dream.
"Or some new fancy of the ghost's!" chuckled the Persian.
"Ah, M. de Chagny," he continued, still with his hand on the mirror,
"would that we had to do with a ghost! We could then leave our pistols
in their case....Put down your hat, please...there...
and now cover your shirt-front as much as you can with your coat...
as I am doing....Bring the lapels forward...turn up
the collar....We must make ourselves as invisible as possible."
Bearing against the mirror, after a short silence, he said:
"It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press
on the spring from the inside of the room. It is different when you
are behind the wall and can act directly on the counterbalance.
Then the mirror turns at once and is moved with incredible rapidity."
"What counterbalance?" asked Raoul.
"Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on
to its pivot. You surely don't expect it to move of itself,
by enchantment! If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise
an inch or two and then shift an inch or two from left to right.
It will then be on a pivot and will swing round."
"It's not turning!" said Raoul impatiently.
"Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism
has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn't working.
...Unless it is something else," added the Persian, anxiously.
"What?"
"He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked
the whole apparatus."
"Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!"
"I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system."
"It's not turning!...And Christine, sir, Christine?"
The Persian said coldly:
"We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do!...But
he may stop us at the first step!...He commands the walls,
the doors and the trapdoors. In my country, he was known by a name
which means the `trap-door lover.'"
"But why do these walls obey him alone? He did not build them!"
"Yes, sir, that is just what he did!"
Raoul looked at him in amazement; but the Persian made a sign to him
to be silent and pointed to the glass....There was a sort
of shivering reflection. Their image was troubled as in a rippling
sheet of water and then all became stationary again.
"You see, sir, that it is not turning! Let us take another road!"
"To-night, there is no other!" declared the Persian, in a singularly
mournful voice. "And now, look out! And be ready to fire."
He himself raised his pistol opposite the glass. Raoul imitated
his movement. With his free arm, the Persian drew the young man
to his chest and, suddenly, the mirror turned, in a blinding daze
of cross-lights: it turned like one of those revolving doors
which have lately been fixed to the entrances of most restaurants,
it turned, carrying Raoul and the Persian with it and suddenly
hurling them from the full light into the deepest darkness.
Chapter XX In the Cellars of the Opera
"Your hand high, ready to fire!" repeated Raoul's companion quickly.
The wall, behind them, having completed the circle which it
described upon itself, closed again; and the two men stood
motionless for a moment, holding their breath.
At last, the Persian decided to make a movement; and Raoul heard
him slip on his knees and feel for something in the dark with his
groping hands. Suddenly, the darkness was made visible by a small dark
lantern and Raoul instinctively stepped backward as though to escape
the scrutiny of a secret enemy. But he soon perceived that the light
belonged to the Persian, whose movements he was closely observing.
The little red disk was turned in every direction and Raoul
saw that the floor, the walls and the ceiling were all formed
of planking. It must have been the ordinary road taken by Erik
to reach Christine's dressing-room and impose upon her innocence.
And Raoul, remembering the Persian's remark, thought that it had been
mysteriously constructed by the ghost himself. Later, he learned
that Erik had found, all prepared for him, a secret passage,
long known to himself alone and contrived at the time of the Paris
Commune to allow the jailers to convey their prisoners straight
to the dungeons that had been constructed for them in the cellars;
for the Federates had occupied the opera-house immediately after
the eighteenth of March and had made a starting-place right at
the top for their Mongolfier balloons, which carried their incendiary
proclamations to the departmcnts, and a state prison right at the bottom.
The Persian went on his knees and put his lantern on the ground.
He seemed to be working at the floor; and suddenly he turned off
his light. Then Raoul heard a faint click and saw a very pale
luminous square in the floor of the passage. It was as though
a window had opened on the Opera cellars, which were still lit.
Raoul no longer saw the Persian, but he suddenly felt him by his side
and heard him whisper:
"Follow me and do all that I do."
Raoul turned to the luminous aperture. Then he saw the Persian,
who was still on his knees, hang by his hands from the rim of the opening,
with his pistol between his teeth, and slide into the cellar below.
Curiously enough, the viscount had absolute confidence in the Persian,
though he knew nothing about him. His emotion when speaking of the
"monster" struck him as sincere; and, if the Persian had cherished
any sinister designs against him, he would not have armed him with
his own hands. Besides, Raoul must reach Christine at all costs.
He therefore went on his knees also and hung from the trap with both hands.
"Let go!" said a voice.
And he dropped into the arms of the Persian, who told him to lie
down flat, closed the trap-door above him and crouched down beside him.
Raoul tried to ask a question, but the Persian's hand was on his mouth
and he heard a voice which he recognized as that of the commissary
of police.
Raoul and the Persian were completely hidden behind a wooden partition.
Near them, a small staircase led to a little room in which the
commissary appeared to be walking up and down, asking questions.
The faint light was just enough to enable Raoul to distinguish the
shape of things around him. And he could not restrain a dull cry:
there were three corpses there.
The first lay on the narrow landing of the little staircase;
the two others had rolled to the bottom of the staircase.
Raoul could have touched one of the two poor wretches by passing
his fingers through the partition.
"Silence!" whispered the Persian.
He too had seen the bodies and he gave one word in explanation:
"HE!"
The commissary's voice was now heard more distinctly.
He was asking for information about the system of lighting,
which the stage-manager supplied. The commissary therefore
must be in the "organ" or its immediate neighborhood.
Contrary to what one might think, especially in connection with an
opera-house, the "organ" is not a musical instrument. At that time,
electricity was employed only for a very few scenic effects and for
the bells. The immense building and the stage itself were still
lit by gas; hydrogen was used to regulate and modify the lighting
of a scene; and this was done by means of a special apparatus which,
because of the multiplicity of its pipes, was known as the "organ."
A box beside the prompter's box was reserved for the chief gas-man,
who from there gave his orders to his assistants and saw that they
were executed. Mauclair stayed in this box during all the performances.
But now Mauclair was not in his box and his assistants not
in their places.
"Mauclair! Mauclair!"
The stage-manager's voice echoed through the cellars. But Mauclair
did not reply.
I have said that a door opened on a little staircase that led
to the second cellar. The commissary pushed it, but it resisted.
"I say," he said to the stage-manager, "I can't open this door:
is it always so difficult?"
The stage-manager forced it open with his shoulder. He saw that,
at the same time, he was pushing a human body and he could not keep
back an exclamation, for he recognized the body at once:
"Mauclair! Poor devil! He is dead!"
But Mr. Commissary Mifroid, whom nothing surprised, was stooping
over that big body.
"No," he said, "he is dead-drunk, which is not quite the same thing."
"It's the first time, if so," said the stage-manager
"Then some one has given him a narcotic. That is quite possible."
Mifroid went down a few steps and said:
"Look!"
By the light of a little red lantern, at the foot of the stairs,
they saw two other bodies. The stage-manager recognized Mauclair's
assistants. Mifroid went down and listened to their breathing.
"They are sound asleep," he said. "Very curious business!
Some person unknown must have interfered with the gas-man and his
staff...and that person unknown was obviously working on behalf
of the kidnapper....But what a funny idea to kidnap a performer
on the stage!...Send for the doctor of the theater, please."
And Mifroid repeated, "Curious, decidedly curious business!"
Then he turned to the little room, addressing the people whom Raoul
and the Persian were unable to see from where they lay.
"What do you say to all this, gentlemen? You are the only ones
who have not given your views. And yet you must have an opinion
of some sort."
Thereupon, Raoul and the Persian saw the startled faces of the joint
managers appear above the landing--and they heard Moncharmin's
excited voice:
"There are things happening here, Mr. Commissary, which we are
unable to explain."
And the two faces disappeared.
"Thank you for the information, gentlemen," said Mifroid, with a jeer.
But the stage-manager, holding his chin in the hollow of his
right hand, which is the attitude of profound thought, said:
"It is not the first time that Mauclair has fallen asleep in the theater.
I remember finding him, one evening, snoring in his little recess,
with his snuff-box beside him."
"Is that long ago?" asked M. Mifroid, carefully wiping his eye-glasses.
"No, not so very long ago....Wait a bit!...It was the night
... of course, yes...It was the night when Carlotta--you know,
Mr. Commissary--gave her famous `co-ack'!"
"Really? The night when Carlotta gave her famous `co-ack'?"
And M. Mifroid, replacing his gleaming glasses on his nose,
fixed the stage-manager with a contemplative stare.
"So Mauclair takes snuff, does he?" he asked carelessly.
"`Yes, Mr. Commissary....Look, there is his snuff-box
on that little shelf....Oh! he's a great snuff-taker!"
"So am I," said Mifroid and put the snuff-box in his pocket.
Raoul and the Persian, themselves unobserved, watched the removal
of the three bodies by a number of scene-shifters, who were
followed by the commissary and all the people with him.
Their steps Were heard for a few minutes on the stage above.
When they were alone the Persian made a sign to Raoul to stand up.
Raoul did so; but, as he did not lift his hand in front of his eyes,
ready to fire, the Persian told him to resume that attitude and to
continue it, whatever happened.
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