The Mystery of the Yellow Room: Extraordinary Adventures of Joseph Rouletabille, Reporter by Gaston Leroux

Author:Gaston Leroux
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Detective and mystery stories, French--Translations into English, Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2023-04-07T21:54:32+00:00

XIV

“I Ex­pect the As­sas­sin This Even­ing”

“I must take you,” said Roul­eta­bille, “so as to en­able you to un­der­stand, to the vari­ous scenes. I my­self be­lieve that I have dis­covered what every­body else is search­ing for, namely, how the mur­der­er es­caped from The Yel­low Room, without any ac­com­plice, and without Ma­demois­elle Stanger­son hav­ing had any­thing to do with it. But so long as I am not sure of the real mur­der­er, I can­not state the the­ory on which I am work­ing. I can only say that I be­lieve it to be cor­rect and, in any case, a quite nat­ur­al and simple one. As to what happened in this place three nights ago, I must say it kept me won­der­ing for a whole day and a night. It passes all be­lief. The the­ory I have formed from the in­cid­ent is so ab­surd that I would rather mat­ters re­mained as yet un­ex­plained.”

Say­ing which the young re­port­er in­vited me to go and make the tour of the château with him. The only sound to be heard was the crunch­ing of the dead leaves be­neath our feet. The si­lence was so in­tense that one might have thought the château had been aban­doned. The old stones, the stag­nant wa­ter of the ditch sur­round­ing the don­jon, the bleak ground strewn with the dead leaves, the dark, skel­et­on-like out­lines of the trees, all con­trib­uted to give to the des­ol­ate place, now filled with its aw­ful mys­tery, an as­pect the most fu­ner­eal. As we passed round the don­jon, we met the Green Man, the forest-keep­er, who did not greet us, but walked by as if we had not ex­is­ted. He was look­ing just as I had formerly seen him through the win­dow of the Don­jon Inn. He had still his fowl­ing-piece slung at his back, his pipe was in his mouth, and his eye­glasses on his nose.

“An odd kind of fish!” Roul­eta­bille said to me, in a low tone.

“Have you spoken to him?” I asked.

“Yes, but I could get noth­ing out of him. His only an­swers are grunts and shrugs of the shoulders. He gen­er­ally lives on the first floor of the don­jon—a big room that once served for an oratory. He lives like a bear, nev­er goes out without his gun, and is only pleas­ant with the girls. The wo­men, for twelve miles round, are all set­ting their caps at him. For the present, he is pay­ing at­ten­tion to Ma­dame Math­ieu, whose hus­band is keep­ing a lynx eye upon her in con­sequence.”

After passing the don­jon, which is situ­ated at the ex­treme end of the left wing, we went to the back of the château. Roul­eta­bille, point­ing to a win­dow which I re­cog­nised as the only one be­long­ing to Ma­demois­elle Stanger­son’s apart­ment, said to me:—

“If you had been here, two nights ago, you would have seen your humble ser­vant at the top of a lad­der, about to enter the château by that win­dow.”

As I ex­pressed some sur­prise at this piece of noc­turn­al gym­nastics, he begged me to no­tice care­fully the ex­ter­i­or dis­pos­i­tion of the château.

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