“I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “But shall I tell you something? There are no two cats in the world that cry like that. Well, on the night of the murder I also heard the cry of the Bete du bon Dieu outside; and yet she was on my knees, and did not mew once, I swear. I crossed myself when I heard that, as if I had heard the devil.”
I looked at the keeper when he put the last question, and I am much mistaken if I did not detect an evil smile on his lips. At that moment, the noise of loud quarrelling reached us. We even thought we heard a dull sound of blows, as if some one was being beaten. The Green Man quickly rose and hurried to the door by the side of the fireplace; but it was opened by the landlord who appeared, and said to the keeper:
“Don’t alarm yourself, Monsieur—it is my wife; she has the toothache.” And he laughed. “Here, Mother Angenoux, here are some scraps for your cat.”
He held out a packet to the old woman, who took it eagerly and went out by the door, closely followed by her cat.
“Then you won’t serve me?” asked the Green Man.
Daddy Mathieu’s face was placid and no longer retained its expression of hatred.
“I’ve nothing for you—nothing for you. Take yourself off.”
The Green Man quietly refilled his pipe, lit it, bowed to us, and went out. No sooner was he over the threshold than Daddy Mathieu slammed the door after him and, turning towards us, with eyes bloodshot, and frothing at the mouth, he hissed to us, shaking his clenched fist at the door he had just shut on the man he evidently hated:
“I don’t know who you are who tell me ‘We shall have to eat red meat—now’; but if it will interest you to know it—that man is the murderer!”
With which words Daddy Mathieu immediately left us. Rouletabille returned towards the fireplace and said:
“Now we’ll grill our steak. How do you like the cider?—It’s a little tart, but I like it.”
We saw no more of Daddy Mathieu that day, and absolute silence reigned in the inn when we left it, after placing five francs on the table in payment for our feast.
Rouletabille at once set off on a three mile walk round Professor Stangerson’s estate. He halted for some ten minutes at the corner of a narrow road black with soot, near to some charcoal-burners’ huts in the forest of Sainte-Genevieve, which touches on the road from Epinay to Corbeil, to tell me that the murderer had certainly passed that way, before entering the grounds and concealing himself in the little clump of trees.
“You don’t think, then, that the keeper knows anything of it?” I asked.
“We shall see that, later,” he replied. “For the present I’m not interested in what the landlord said about the man. The landlord hates him. I didn’t take you to breakfast at the Donjon Inn for the sake of the Green Man.”
Then Rouletabille, with great precaution glided, followed by me, towards the little building which, standing near the park gate, served for the home of the concierges, who had been arrested that morning. With the skill of an acrobat, he got into the lodge by an upper window which had been left open, and returned ten minutes later. He said only, “Ah!”—a word which, in his mouth, signified many things.
We were about to take the road leading to the chateau, when a considerable stir at the park gate attracted our attention. A carriage had arrived and some people had come from the chateau to meet it. Rouletabille pointed out to me a gentleman who descended from it.
“That’s the Chief of the Surete” he said. “Now we shall see what Frederic Larsan has up his sleeve, and whether he is so much cleverer than anybody else.”
The carriage of the Chief of the Surete was followed by three other vehicles containing reporters, who were also desirous of entering the park. But two gendarmes stationed at the gate had evidently received orders to refuse admission to anybody. The Chief of the Surete calmed their impatience by undertaking to furnish to the press, that evening, all the information he could give that would not interfere with the judicial inquiry.
Chapter 11. In Which Frederic Larsan Explains How the Murderer Was Able to Get Out of The Yellow Room
Among the mass of papers, legal documents, memoirs, and extracts from newspapers, which I have collected, relating to the mystery of The Yellow Room, there is one very interesting piece; it is a detail of the famous examination which took place that afternoon, in the laboratory of Professor Stangerson, before the Chief of the Surete. This narrative is from the pen of Monsieur Maleine, the Registrar, who, like the examining magistrate, had spent some of his leisure time in the pursuit of literature. The piece was to have made part of a book which, however, has never been published, and which was to have been entitled: “My Examinations.” It was given to me by the Registrar himself, some time after the astonishing denouement to this case, and is unique in judicial chronicles.
Here it is. It is not a mere dry transcription of questions and answers, because the Registrar often intersperses his story with his own personal comments.
The Registrar’s Narrative
The examining magistrate and I (the writer relates) found ourselves in The Yellow Room in the company of the builder who had constructed the pavilion after Professor Stangerson’s designs. He had a workman with him. Monsieur de Marquet had had the walls laid entirely bare; that is to say, he had had them stripped of the paper which had decorated them. Blows with a pick, here and there, satisfied us of the absence of any sort of opening. The floor and the ceiling were thoroughly sounded. We found nothing. There was nothing to be found. Monsieur de Marquet appeared to be delighted and never ceased repeating:
“What a case! What a case! We shall never know, you’ll see, how the murderer was able to get out of this room!”
Then suddenly, with a radiant face, he called to the officer in charge of the gendarmes.
“Go to the chateau,” he said, “and request Monsieur Stangerson and Monsieur Robert Darzac to come to me in the laboratory, also Daddy Jacques; and let your men bring here the two concierges.”
Five minutes later all were assembled in the laboratory. The Chief of the Surete, who had arrived at the Glandier, joined us at that moment. I was seated at Monsieur Stangerson’s desk ready for work, when Monsieur de Marquet made us the following little speech—as original as it was unexpected:
“With your permission, gentlemen—as examinations lead to nothing—we will, for once, abandon the old system of interrogation. I will not have you brought before me one by one, but we will all remain here as we are,—Monsieur Stangerson, Monsieur Robert Darzac, Daddy Jacques and the two concierges, the Chief of the Surete, the Registrar, and myself. We shall all be on the same footing. The concierges may, for the moment, forget that they have been arrested. We are going to confer together. We are on the spot where the crime was committed. We have nothing else to discuss but the crime. So let us discuss it freely—intelligently or otherwise, so long as we speak just what is in our minds. There need be no formality or method since this won’t help us in any way.”
Then, passing before me, he said in a low voice:
“What do you think of that, eh? What a scene! Could you have thought of that? I’ll make a little piece out of it for the Vaudeville.” And he rubbed his hands with glee.
I turned my eyes on Monsieur Stangerson. The hope he had received from the doctor’s latest reports, which stated that Mademoiselle Stangerson might recover from her wounds, had not been able to efface from his noble features the marks of the great sorrow that was upon him. He had believed his daughter to be dead, and he was still broken by that belief. His clear, soft, blue eyes expressed infinite sorrow.