The Mystery of the Yellow Room

‘Where are you going, then?’ asked Monsieur de Marquet.

‘To the Château du Glandier,’ replied Rouletabille, without turning.

‘You’ll not get in, Monsieur Rouletabille!’

‘Will you prevent me?’ said my friend, already prepared to fight.

‘Not I! I like the press and journalists too well to be in any way disagreeable to them; but Monsieur Stangerson has given orders for his door to be closed against everybody, and it is well guarded. Not a journalist was able to pass through the gate of the Glandier yesterday.’

Monsieur de Marquet compressed his lips and seemed ready to relapse into obstinate silence. He only relaxed a little when Rouletabille no longer left him in ignorance of the fact that we were going to the Glandier for the purpose of shaking hands with an ‘old and intimate friend,’ Monsieur Robert Darzac—a man whom Rouletabille had perhaps seen once in his life.

‘Poor Robert!’ continued the young reporter, ‘this dreadful affair may be his death—he is so deeply in love with Mademoiselle Stangerson.’

‘His sufferings are truly painful to witness,’ escaped like a regret from the lips of Monsieur de Marquet.

‘But it is to be hoped that Mademoiselle Stangerson’s life will be saved.’

‘Let us hope so. Her father told me yesterday that, if she does not recover, it will not be long before he joins her in the grave. What an incalculable loss to science his death would be!’

‘The wound on her temple is serious, is it not?’

‘Evidently; but, by a wonderful chance, it has not proved mortal. The blow was given with great force.’

‘Then it was not with the revolver she was wounded,’ said Rouletabille, glancing at me in triumph.

Monsieur de Marquet appeared greatly embarrassed.

‘I didn’t say anything—I don’t want to say anything—I will not say anything,’ he said. And he turned towards his Registrar as if he no longer knew us.

But Rouletabille was not to be so easily shaken off. He moved nearer to the examining magistrate and, drawing a copy of the Matin from his pocket, he showed it to him and said:

‘There is one thing, Monsieur, which I may enquire of you without committing an indiscretion. You have, of course, seen the account given in the Matin? It is absurd, is it not?’

‘Not in the slightest, Monsieur.’

‘What! The Yellow Room has but one barred window—the bars of which have not been moved—and only one door, which had to be broken open—and the assassin was not found!’

‘That’s so, monsieur—that’s so. That’s how the matter stands.’

Rouletabille said no more but plunged into thought. A quarter of an hour thus passed.

Coming back to himself again he said, addressing the magistrate:

‘How did Mademoiselle Stangerson wear her hair on that evening?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Monsieur de Marquet.

‘That’s a very important point,’ said Rouletabille. ‘Her hair was done up in bands, wasn’t it? I feel sure that on that evening, the evening of the crime, she had her hair arranged in bands.’

‘Then you are mistaken, Monsieur Rouletabille,’ replied the magistrate; ‘Mademoiselle Stangerson that evening had her hair drawn up in a knot on the top of her head—her usual way of arranging it—her forehead completely uncovered. I can assure you, for we have carefully examined the wound. There was no blood on the hair, and the arrangement of it has not been disturbed since the crime was committed.’

‘You are sure! You are sure that, on the night of the crime, she had not her hair in bands?’

‘Quite sure,’ the magistrate continued, smiling, ‘because I remember the Doctor saying to me, while he was examining the wound, ‘It is a great pity Mademoiselle Stangerson was in the habit of drawing her hair back from her forehead. If she had worn it in bands, the blow she received on the temple would have been weakened.’ It seems strange to me that you should attach so much importance to this point.’

‘Oh! If she had not her hair in bands, I give it up,’ said Rouletabille, with a despairing gesture.

‘And was the wound on her temple a bad one?’ he asked presently.

‘Terrible.’

‘With what weapon was it made?’

‘That is a secret of the investigation.’

‘Have you found the weapon—whatever it was?’

The magistrate did not answer.

‘And the wound in the throat?’

Here the examining magistrate readily confirmed the decision of the doctor that, if the murderer had pressed her throat a few seconds longer, Mademoiselle Stangerson would have died of strangulation.

‘The affair as reported in the Matin,’ said Rouletabille eagerly, ‘seems to me more and more inexplicable. Can you tell me, Monsieur, how many openings there are in the pavilion? I mean doors and windows.’

‘There are five,’ replied Monsieur de Marquet, after having coughed once or twice, but no longer resisting the desire he felt to talk of the whole of the incredible mystery of the affair he was investigating. ‘There are five, of which the door of the vestibule is the only entrance to the pavilion—a door always automatically closed, which cannot be opened, either from the outer or inside, except with the two special keys which are never out of the possession of either Daddy Jacques or Monsieur Stangerson. Mademoiselle Stangerson had no need for one, since Daddy Jacques lodged in the pavilion and because, during the daytime, she never left her father. When they, all four, rushed into the Yellow Room, after breaking open the door of the laboratory, the door in the vestibule remained closed as usual and, of the two keys for opening it, Daddy Jacques had one in his pocket, and Monsieur Stangerson the other. As to the windows of the pavilion, there are four; the one window of the Yellow Room and those of the laboratory looking out on to the country; the window in the vestibule looking into the park.’

‘It is by that window that he escaped from the pavilion!’ cried Rouletabille.

‘How do you know that?’ demanded Monsieur de Marquet, fixing a strange look on my young friend.

‘We’ll see later how he got away from the Yellow Room,’ replied Rouletabille, ‘but he must have left the pavilion by the vestibule window.’

‘Once more—how do you know that?’

‘How? Oh, the thing is simple enough! As soon as he found he could not escape by the door of the pavilion his only way out was by the window in the vestibule, unless he could pass through a grated window. The window of the Yellow Room is secured by iron bars, because it looks out upon the open country; the two windows of the laboratory have to be protected in like manner for the same reason. As the murderer got away, I conceive that he found a window that was not barred—that of the vestibule, which opens on to the park—that is to say, into the interior of the estate. There’s not much magic in all that.’

‘Yes,’ said Monsieur de Marquet, ‘but what you have not guessed is that this single window in the vestibule, though it has no iron bars, has solid iron blinds. Now these iron blinds have remained fastened by their iron latch; and yet we have proof that the murderer made his escape from the pavilion by that window! Traces of blood on the inside wall and on the blinds as well as on the floor, and footmarks, of which I have taken the measurements, attest the fact that the murderer made his escape that way. But then, how did he do it, seeing that the blinds remained fastened on the inside? He passed through them like a shadow. But what is more bewildering than all is that it is impossible to form any idea as to how the murderer got out of the Yellow Room, or how he got across the laboratory to reach the vestibule! Ah, yes, Monsieur Rouletabille, it is altogether as you said, a fine case, the key to which will not be discovered for a long time, I hope.’

‘You hope, Monsieur?’

Monsieur de Marquet corrected himself.

‘I do not hope so—I think so.’

‘Could that window have been closed and refastened after the flight of the assassin?’ asked Rouletabille.

‘That is what occurred to me for a moment; but it would imply an accomplice or accomplices—and I don’t see—’