The Phantom of the Opera
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Gaston Leroux >> The Phantom of the Opera
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"But it tires the hand unnecessarily," whispered Raoul. "If I
do fire, I shan't be sure of my aim."
"Then shift your pistol to the other hand," said the Persian.
"I can't shoot with my left hand."
Thereupon, the Persian made this queer reply, which was certainly
not calculated to throw light into the young man's flurried brain:
"It's not a question of shooting with the right hand or the left;
it's a question of holding one of your hands as though you
were going to pull the trigger of a pistol with your arm bent.
As for the pistol itself, when all is said, you can put that in
your pocket!" And he added, "Let this be clearly understood,
or I will answer for nothing. It is a matter of life and death.
And now, silence and follow me!"
The cellars of the Opera are enormous and they are five in number.
Raoul followed the Persian and wondered what he would have done
without his companion in that extraordinary labyrinth. They went
down to the third cellar; and their progress was still lit by some
distant lamp.
The lower they went, the more precautions the Persian seemed to take.
He kept on turning to Raoul to see if he was holding his arm properly,
showing him how he himself carried his hand as if always ready to fire,
though the pistol was in his pocket.
Suddenly, a loud voice made them stop. Some one above them shouted:
"All the door-shutters on the stage! The commissary of police
wants them!"
Steps were heard and shadows glided through the darkness. The Persian
drew Raoul behind a set piece. They saw passing before and above
them old men bent by age and the past burden of opera-scenery.
Some could hardly drag themselves along; others, from habit,
with stooping bodies and outstretched hands, looked for doors to shut.
They were the door-shutters, the old, worn-out scene-shifters, on
whom a charitable management had taken pity, giving them the job
of shutting doors above and below the stage. They went about
incessantly, from top to bottom of the building, shutting the doors;
and they were also called "The draft-expellers," at least at
that time, for I have little doubt that by now they are all dead.
Drafts are very bad for the voice, wherever they may come from.[3]
----
[3] M. Pedro Gailhard has himself told me that he created a few
additional posts as door-shutters for old stage-carpenters whom
he was unwilling to dismiss from the service of the Opera.
The two men might have stumbled over them, waking them up and
provoking a request for explanations. For the moment, M. Mifroid's
inquiry saved them from any such unpleasant encounters.
The Persian and Raoul welcomed this incident, which relieved them
of inconvenient witnesses, for some of those door-shutters, having
nothing else to do or nowhere to lay their heads, stayed at the Opera,
from idleness or necessity, and spent the night there.
But they were not left to enjoy their solitude for long. Other shades
now came down by the same way by which the door-shutters had gone up.
Each of these shades carried a little lantern and moved it about,
above, below and all around, as though looking for something or somebody.
"Hang it!" muttered the Persian. "I don't know what they are
looking for, but they might easily find us....Let us get away,
quick!...Your hand up, sir, ready to fire!...Bend your arm
... more...that's it!...Hand at the level of your eye,
as though you were fighting a duel and waiting for the word
to fire! Oh, leave your pistol in your pocket. Quick, come along,
down-stairs. Level of your eye! Question of life or death!...
Here, this way, these stairs!" They reached the fifth cellar.
"Oh, what a duel, sir, what a duel!"
Once in the fifth cellar, the Persian drew breath. He seemed
to enjoy a rather greater sense of security than he had displayed
when they both stopped in the third; but he never altered the attitude
of his hand. And Raoul, remembering the Persian's observation--"I
know these pistols can be relied upon"--was more and more astonished,
wondering why any one should be so gratified at being able to rely
upon a pistol which he did not intend to use!
But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul
to stay where he was, he ran up a few steps of the staircase
which they had just left and then returned.
"How stupid of us!" he whispered. "We shall soon have seen the end
of those men with their lanterns. It is the firemen going their
rounds."[4]
----
[4] In those days, it was still part of the firemen's duty to watch
over the safety of the Opera house outside the performances;
but this service has since been suppressed. I asked M. Pedro
Gailhard the reason, and he replied:
The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul
up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture.
Something moved in the darkness before them.
"Flat on your stomach!" whispered the Persian.
The two men lay flat on the floor.
They were only just in time. A shade, this time. carrying no light,
just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them,
near enough to touch them.
They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could
distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which
shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat....
It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes
giving a kick into a corner.
"Whew!" said the Persian. "We've had a narrow escape; that shade
knows me and has twice taken me to the managers' office."
"It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter
inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set
fire to the building!"
"Is it some one belonging to the theater police?" asked Raoul.
"It's some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian,
without giving any further explanation.[5]
----
[5] Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching
the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative,
everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal
the course of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly
to understand what the Persian meant by the words, "It is some one
much worse than that!" The reader must try to guess for himself,
for I promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera,
to keep his secret regarding the extremely interesting and useful
personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning
itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense
services to those who, on gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray
away from the stage. I am speaking of state services; and, upon my
word of honor, I can say no more.
"It's not...he?"
"He?...If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his
yellow eyes! That is more or less our safeguard to-night. But he
may come from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not
keep our hands as though about to fire, at the level of our eyes,
in front!"
The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face
came in sight...a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes!
Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no
body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness
like a flame shaped as a man's face.
"Oh," said the Persian, between his teeth. "I have never seen this
before!...Pampin was not mad, after all: he had seen it!...
What can that flame be? It is not HE, but he may have sent it!
...Take care!...Take care! Your hand at the level of your eyes,
in Heaven's name, at the level of your eyes!...know most of his tricks...
but not this one....Come, let us run....it is safer.
Hand at the level of your eyes!"
And they fled down the long passage that opened before them.
After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes,
they stopped.
"He doesn't often come this way," said the Persian. "This side
has nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake
nor to the house on the lake....But perhaps he knows that we
are at his heels...although I promised him to leave him alone
and never to meddle in his business again!"
So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head;
and they again saw the head of fire behind their two heads.
It had followed them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster
than they, for it seemed to be nearer to them.
At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they
could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound
seemed to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise
as though thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard,
the perfectly unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little
stone inside the chalk that grates on the blackboard.
They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on,
gaining on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes
were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large,
with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon,
when the moon is quite red, bright red.
How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness,
at a man's height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently?
And how did it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring,
staring eyes? And what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound
which it brought with it?
The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened
themselves against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen
because of that incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now,
because of the more intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound,
for the sound was certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds
that moved in the darkness, under the fiery face.
And the fiery face came on...with its noise...came level
with them!...
And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair
stand on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand
noises meant. They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow
by innumerable little hurried waves, swifter than the waves
that rush over the sands at high tide, little night-waves foaming
under the moon, under the fiery head that was like a moon.
And the little waves passed between their legs, climbing up
their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could no
longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could
they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes:
their hands went down to their legs to push back the waves,
which were full of little legs and nails and claws and teeth.
Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the fireman.
But the head of fire turned round in answcr to their cries,
and spoke to them:
"Don't move! Don't move!...Whatever you do, don't come after me!
... I am the rat-catcher!...Let me pass, with my rats!..."
And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness,
while the passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change
which the rat-catcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not
to scare the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern
on himself, lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight,
he lit the dark space in front of him. And he jumped along,
dragging with him the waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds.
Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling.
"I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the rat-catcher,"
said the Persian. "But he never told me that he looked like that...
and it's funny that I should never have met him before....
Of course, Erik never comes to this part!"
{two page color illustration}
"Are we very far from the lake, sir?" asked Raoul. "When shall we
get there?...Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake!...
When we are at the lake, we will call out!...Christine will
hear us!...And HE will hear us, too!...And, as you know him,
we shall talk to him!" "Baby!" said the Persian. "We shall never
enter the house on the lake by the lake!...I myself have never
landed on the other bank...the bank on which the house stands.
...You have to cross the lake first...and it is well guarded!
...I fear that more than one of those men--old scene-shifters,
old door-shutters--who have never been seen again were simply tempted
to cross the lake....It is terrible....I myself would have
been nearly killed there...if the monster had not recognized me
in time!...One piece of advice, sir; never go near the lake.
...And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing
under the water, the siren's voice!"
"But then, what are we here for?" asked Raoul, in a transport of fever,
impatience and rage. "If you can do nothing for Christine, at least
let me die for her!" The Persian tried to calm the young man.
"We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me,
which is to enter the house unperceived by the monster."
"And is there any hope of that, sir?"
"Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!"
"And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing
the lake?"
"From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away.
We will go back there now....I will tell you," said the Persian,
with a sudden change in his voice, "I will tell you the exact
place, sir: it is between a set piece and a discarded scene from
ROI DE LAHORE, exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died.
... Come, sir, take courage and follow me! And hold your hand
at the level of your eyes!...But where are we?"
The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous
corridors that crossed each other at right angles.
"We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly
for the waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces."
He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly
when he was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to
protect themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge,
which the men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized
the demons whom Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity.
In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below
the stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom
of the "tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember
that the earth was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay
under the whole of that part of Paris.[6]
----
[6] All the water had to be exhausted, in the building of the Opera.
To give an idea of the amount of water that was pumped up, I can
tell the reader that it represented the area of the courtyard
of the Louvre and a height half as deep again as the towers of
Notre Dame. And nevertheless the engineers had to leave a lake.
sounding on the floor of the upper portions of the theater.
The Persian touched a partition-wall and said:
"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong
to the house on the lake."
He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be
as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls
of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding
the building-operations from remaining in immediate contact
with the walls supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery,
the architect was obliged to build a double case in every direction.
The work of constructing this double case took a whole year.
It was the wall of the first inner case that the Persian struck
when speaking to Raoul of the house on the lake. To any one
understanding the architecture of the edifice, the Persian's
action would seem to indicate that Erik's mysterious house had
been built in the double case, formed of a thick wall constructed
as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a tremendous
layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness.
At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall
and listened eagerly. But he heard nothing...nothing
... except distant steps.
The Persian darkened his lantern again.
"Look out!" he said. "Keep your hand up! And silence! For we
shall try another way of getting in."
And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come
down lately.
They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness
and the silence, till they came to the third cellar. Here the
Persian motioned to Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way,
crawling on both knees and one hand--for the other hand was held
in the position indicated--they reached the end wall.
Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the ROI DE LAHORE.
Close to this scene was a set piece. Between the scene and the set
piece there was just room for a body...for a body which one day
was found hanging there. The body of Joseph Buquet.
The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened. For a moment,
he seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his
eyes upward, toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint
glimmer of a lantern, through a cranny between two boards.
This glimmer seemed to trouble the Persian.
At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act. He slipped
between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, with Raoul
close upon his heels. With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall.
Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed
against the wall in Christine's dressing-room. Then a stone gave way,
leaving a hole in the wall.
This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made
a sign to Raoul to do as he did. He cocked the pistol.
And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole
in the wall. Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content
to follow him.
The hole was very narrow. The Persian stopped almost at once.
Raoul heard him feeling the stones around him. Then the Persian took
out his dark lantern again, stooped forward, examined something beneath
him and immediately extinguished his Iantern. Raoul heard him say,
in a whisper:
"We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise;
take off your boots."
The Persian handed his own shoes to Raoul.
"Put them outside the wall," he said. "We shall find them there
when we leave."[7]
----
[7] These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persian's
papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE,
on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were never discovered.
They must have been taken by some stage-carpenter or "door-shutter."
He crawled a little farther on his knees, then turned right round
and said:
"I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and
let myself drop INTO HIS HOUSE. You must do exactly the same.
Do not be afraid. I will catch you in my arms."
Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall
of the Persian, and then dropped down.
He felt himself clasped in the Persian's arms.
"Hush!" said the Persian.
And they stood motionless, listening.
The darkness was thick around them, the silence heavy and terrible.
Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again,
turning the rays over their heads, looking for the hole through
which they had come, and failing to find it:
"Oh!" he said. "The stone has closed of itself!"
And the light of the lantern swept down the wall and over the floor.
The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord,
which he examined for a second and flung away with horror.
"The Punjab lasso!" he muttered.
"What is it?" asked Raoul.
The Persian shivered. "It might very well be the rope by which
the man was hanged, and which was looked for so long."
And, suddenly seized with fresh anxiety, he moved the little red disk
of his lantern over the walls. In this way, he lit up a curious thing:
the trunk of a tree, which seemed still quite alive, with its leaves;
and the branches of that tree ran right up the walls and disappeared
in the ceiling.
Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult
at first to make out the appearance of things: they saw a corner
of a branch...and a leaf...and another leaf...and,
next to it, nothing at all, nothing but the ray of light
that seemed to reflect itself....Raoul passed his hand over
that nothing, over that reflection.
"Hullo!" he said. "The wall is a looking-glass!"
"Yes, a looking-glass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion.
And, passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead,
he added, "We have dropped into the torture-chamber!"
What the Persian knew of this torture-chamber and what there befell
him and his companion shall be told in his own words, as set down
in a manuscript which he left behind him, and which I copy VERBATIM.
Chapter XXI Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a
Persian in the Cellars of the Opera
THE PERSIAN'S NARRATIVE
It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake.
I had often begged the "trap-door lover," as we used to call Erik
in my country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused.
I made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance.
Watch him as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up
his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick
to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake.
One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat
and rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen
Erik disappear. It was then that I came into contact with the siren
who guarded the approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal
to me.
I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I
floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing
that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music;
it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it
through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me
and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my
longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony,
I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no doubt
in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this time,
I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voice--
for it was now distinctly a voice--was beside me, on the water.
I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm,
and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe
showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and
black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming;
but I soon had to accct the fact that there was no humming in
the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now
attracted me.
Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought
that I had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound
the traveler who should venture on the waters of the house on
the lake. Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too
fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through;
and I had no doubt but that I was face to face with some new
invention of Erik's. But this invention was so perfect that,
as I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire
to discover its trick than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out,
leaned out until I almost overturned the boat.
Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters
and seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths
with irresistible force. I should certainly have been lost,
if I had not had time to give a cry by which Erik knew me.
For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was certainly
his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the bank:
"How imprudent you are!" he said, as he stood before me, dripping with water.
"Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I don't want you there,
nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me?
However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting
it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself."
He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already
called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik,
who is a real monster--I have seen him at work in Persia, alas--is also,
in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited,
and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people,
as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind.
He laughed and showed me a long reed.
"It's the silliest trick you ever saw," he said, "but it's very useful for
breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates,
who are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers."[8]
----
[8] An official report from Tonkin, received in Paris at the end
of July, 1909, relates how the famous pirate chief De Tham
was tracked, together with his men, by our soldiers; and how
all of them succeeded in escaping, thanks to this trick of the reeds.
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