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. I had had occasion, many times, to see Monsieur Stangerson at public ceremonies, and from the first had been struck by his countenance, which seemed as pure as that of a child—the dreamy gaze with the sublime and mystical expression of the inventor and thinker.

On those occasions his daughter was always to be seen either following him or by his side; for they never quitted each other, it was said, and had shared the same labours for many years. The young lady, who was then five and thirty, though she looked no more than thirty, had devoted herself entirely to science. She still won admiration for her imperial beauty which had remained intact, without a wrinkle, withstanding time and love. Who would have dreamed that I should one day be seated by her pillow with my papers, and that I should see her, on the point of death, painfully recounting to us the most monstrous and most mysterious crime I have heard of in my career? Who would have thought that I should be, that afternoon, listening to the despairing father vainly trying to explain how his daughter’s assailant had been able to escape from him? Why bury ourselves with our work in obscure retreats in the depths of woods, if it may not protect us against those dangerous threats to life which meet us in the busy cities?

“Now, Monsieur Stangerson,” said Monsieur de Marquet, with somewhat of an important air, “place yourself exactly where you were when Mademoiselle Stangerson left you to go to her chamber.”

Monsieur Stangerson rose and, standing at a certain distance from the door of The Yellow Room, said, in an even voice and without the least trace of emphasis—a voice which I can only describe as a dead voice:

“I was here. About eleven o’clock, after I had made a brief chemical experiment at the furnaces of the laboratory, needing all the space behind me, I had my desk moved here by Daddy Jacques, who spent the evening in cleaning some of my apparatus. My daughter had been working at the same desk with me. When it was her time to leave she rose, kissed me, and bade Daddy Jacques goodnight. She had to pass behind my desk and the door to enter her chamber, and she could do this only with some difficulty. That is to say, I was very near the place where the crime occurred later.”

“And the desk?” I asked, obeying, in thus mixing myself in the conversation, the express orders of my chief, “as soon as you heard the cry of ‘murder’ followed by the revolver shots, what became of the desk?”

Daddy Jacques answered.

“We pushed it back against the wall, here—close to where it is at the present moment-so as to be able to get at the door at once.”

I followed up my reasoning, to which, however, I attached but little importance, regarding it as only a weak hypothesis, with another question.

“Might not a man in the room, the desk being so near to the door, by stooping and slipping under the desk, have left it unobserved?”

“You are forgetting,” interrupted Monsieur Stangerson wearily, “that my daughter had locked and bolted her door, that the door had remained fastened, that we vainly tried to force it open when we heard the noise, and that we were at the door while the struggle between the murderer and my poor child was going on—immediately after we heard her stifled cries as she was being held by the fingers that have left their red mark upon her throat. Rapid as the attack was, we were no less rapid in our endeavors to get into the room where the tragedy was taking place.”

I rose from my seat and once more examined the door with the greatest care. Then I returned to my place with a despairing gesture.

“If the lower panel of the door,” I said, “could be removed without the whole door being necessarily opened, the problem would be solved. But, unfortunately, that last hypothesis is untenable after an examination of the door—it’s of oak, solid and massive. You can see that quite plainly, in spite of the injury done in the attempt to burst it open.”

“Ah!” cried Daddy Jacques, “it is an old and solid door that was brought from the chateau—they don’t make such doors now. We had to use this bar of iron to get it open, all four of us—for the concierge, brave woman she is, helped us. It pains me to find them both in prison now.”

Daddy Jacques had no sooner uttered these words of pity and protestation than tears and lamentations broke out from the concierges. I never saw two accused people crying more bitterly. I was extremely disgusted. Even if they were innocent, I could not understand how they could behave like that in the face of misfortune. A dignified bearing at such times is better than tears and groans, which, most often, are feigned.

“Now then, enough of that sniveling,” cried Monsieur de Marquet; “and, in your interest, tell us what you were doing under the windows of the pavilion at the time your mistress was being attacked; for you were close to the pavilion when Daddy Jacques met you.”

“We were coming to help!” they whined.

“If we could only lay hands on the murderer, he’d never taste bread again!” the woman gurgled between her sobs.

As before we were unable to get two connecting thoughts out of them. They persisted in their denials and swore, by heaven and all the saints, that they were in bed when they heard the sound of the revolver shot.

“It was not one, but two shots that were fired!—You see, you are lying. If you had heard one, you would have heard the other.”

“Mon Dieu! Monsieur—it was the second shot we heard. We were asleep when the first shot was fired.”

“Two shots were fired,” said Daddy Jacques. “I am certain that all the cartridges were in my revolver. We found afterward that two had been exploded, and we heard two shots behind the door. Was not that so, Monsieur Stangerson?”

“Yes,” replied the Professor, “there were two shots, one dull, and the other sharp and ringing.”

“Why do you persist in lying?” cried Monsieur de Marquet, turning to the concierges. “Do you think the police are the fools you are? Everything points to the fact that you were out of doors and near the pavilion at the time of the tragedy. What were you doing there? So far as I am concerned,” he said, turning to Monsieur Stangerson, “I can only explain the escape of the murderer on the assumption of help from these two accomplices. As soon as the door was forced open, and while you, Monsieur Stangerson, were occupied with your unfortunate child, the concierge and his wife facilitated the flight of the murderer, who, screening himself behind them, reached the window in the vestibule, and sprang out of it into the park. The concierge closed the window after him and fastened the blinds, which certainly could not have closed and fastened of themselves. That is the conclusion I have arrived at. If anyone here has any other idea, let him state it.”

Monsieur Stangerson intervened:

“What you say was impossible. I do not believe either in the guilt or in the connivance of my concierges, though I cannot understand what they were doing in the park at that late hour of the night. I say it was impossible, because Madame Bernier held the lamp and did not move from the threshold of the room; because I, as soon as the door was forced open, threw myself on my knees beside my daughter, and no one could have left or entered the room by the door, without passing over her body and forcing his way by me! Daddy Jacques and the concierge had but to cast a glance round the chamber and under the bed, as I had done on entering, to see that there was nobody in it but my daughter lying on the floor.”

“What do you think, Monsieur Darzac?” asked the magistrate.

Monsieur Darzac replied that he had no opinion to express. Monsieur Dax, the Chief of the Surete who, so far, had been listening and examining the room, at length deigned to open his lips:

“While search is being made for the criminal, we had better try to find out the motive for the crime; that will advance us a little,” he said. Turning towards Monsieur Stangerson, he continued, in the even, intelligent tone indicative of a strong character, “I understand that Mademoiselle was shortly to have been married?”

The professor looked sadly at Monsieur Robert Darzac.

“To my friend here, whom I should have been happy to call my son—to Monsieur Robert Darzac.”

“Mademoiselle Stangerson is much better and is rapidly recovering from her wounds. The marriage is simply delayed, is it not, Monsieur?” insisted the Chief of the Surete.

“I hope so.

“What! Is there any doubt about that?”

Monsieur Stangerson did not answer. Monsieur Robert Darzac seemed agitated. I saw that his hand trembled as it fingered his watchchain. Monsieur Dax coughed, as did Monsieur de Marquet. Both were evidently embarrassed.

“You understand, Monsieur Stangerson,” he said, “that in an affair so perplexing as this, we cannot neglect anything; we must know all, even the smallest and seemingly most futile thing concerning the victim—information apparently the most insignificant. Why do you doubt that this marriage will take place? You expressed a hope; but the hope implies a doubt. Why do you doubt?”

Monsieur Stangerson made a visible effort to recover himself.

“Yes, Monsieur,” he said at length, “you are right. It will be best that you should know something which, if I concealed it, might appear to be of importance; Monsieur Darzac agrees with me in this.”

Monsieur Darzac, whose pallor at that moment seemed to me to be altogether abnormal, made a sign of assent. I gathered he was unable to speak.

“I want you to know then,” continued Monsieur Stangerson, “that my daughter has sworn never to leave me, and adheres firmly to her oath, in spite of all my prayers and all that I have argued to induce her to marry. We have known Monsieur Robert Darzac many years. He loves my child; and I believed that she loved him; because she only recently consented to this marriage which I desire with all my heart. I am an old man, Monsieur, and it was a happy hour to me when I knew that, after I had gone, she would have at her side, one who loved her and who would help her in continuing our common labours. I love and esteem Monsieur Darzac both for his greatness of heart and for his devotion to science. But, two days before the tragedy, for I know not what reason, my daughter declared to me that she would never marry Monsieur Darzac.”

A dead silence followed Monsieur Stangerson’s words. It was a moment fraught with suspense.

“Did Mademoiselle give you any explanation,—did she tell you what her motive was?” asked Monsieur Dax.

“She told me she was too old to marry—that she had waited too long. She said she had given much thought to the matter and while she had a great esteem, even affection, for Monsieur Darzac, she felt it would be better if things remained as they were. She would be happy, she said, to see the relations between ourselves and Monsieur Darzac become closer, but only on the understanding that there would be no more talk of marriage.”

“That is very strange!” muttered Monsieur Dax.

“Strange!” repeated Monsieur de Marquet.

“You’ll certainly not find the motive there, Monsieur Dax,” Monsieur Stangerson said with a cold smile.

“In any case, the motive was not theft!” said the Chief impatiently.

“Oh! we are quite convinced of that!” cried the examining magistrate.

At that moment the door of the laboratory opened and the officer in charge of the gendarmes entered and handed a card to the examining magistrate. Monsieur de Marquet read it and uttered a half angry exclamation:

“This is really too much!” he cried.

“What is it?” asked the Chief.

“It’s the card of a young reporter engaged on the ‘Epoque,’ a Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille. It has these words written on it: ‘One of the motives of the crime was robbery.’”

The Chief smiled.

“Ah,—young Rouletabille—I’ve heard of him he is considered rather clever. Let him come in.”

Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille was allowed to enter. I had made his acquaintance in the train that morning on the way to Epinay-sur-Orge. He had introduced himself almost against my wish into our compartment. I had better say at once that his manners, and the arrogance with which he assumed to know what was incomprehensible even to us, impressed him unfavourably on my mind. I do not like journalists. They are a class of writers to be avoided as the pest. They think that everything is permissible and they respect nothing. Grant them the least favour, allow them even to approach you, and you never can tell what annoyance they may give you. This one appears to be scarcely twenty years old, and the effrontery with which he dared to question us and discuss the matter with us made him particularly obnoxious to me. Besides, he had a way of expressing himself that left us guessing as to whether he was mocking us or not. I know quite well that the ‘Epoque’ is an influential paper with which it is well to be on good terms, but the paper ought not to allow itself to be represented by sneaking reporters.

Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille entered the laboratory, bowed to us, and waited for Monsieur de Marquet to ask him to explain his presence.

“You pretend, Monsieur, that you know the motive for the crime, and that that motive—in the face of all the evidence that has been forthcoming—was robbery?”

“No, Monsieur, I do not pretend that. I do not say that robbery was the motive for the crime, and I don’t believe it was.”

“Then, what is the meaning of this card?”

“It means that robbery was one of the motives for the crime.”

“What leads you to think that?”

“If you will be good enough to accompany me, I will show you.”

The young man asked us to follow him into the vestibule, and we did. He led us towards the lavatory and begged Monsieur de Marquet to kneel beside him. This lavatory is lit by the glass door, and, when the door was open, the light which penetrated was sufficient to light it perfectly. Monsieur de Marquet and Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille knelt down on the threshold, and the young man pointed to a spot on the pavement.

“The stones of the lavatory have not been washed by Daddy Jacques for some time,” he said; “that can be seen by the layer of dust that covers them. Now, notice here, the marks of two large footprints and the black ash they left where they have been. That ash is nothing else than the charcoal dust that covers the path along which you must pass through the forest, in order to get directly from Epinay to the Glandier. You know there is a little village of charcoal-burners at that place, who make large quantities of charcoal. What the murderer did was to come here at midday, when there was nobody at the pavilion, and attempt his robbery.”

“But what robbery?—Where do you see any signs of robbery? What proves to you that a robbery has been committed?” we all cried at once. “What put me on the trace of it,” continued the journalist...

“Was this?” interrupted Monsieur de Marquet, still on his knees.

“Evidently,” said Rouletabille.

And Monsieur de Marquet explained that there were on the dus............