The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux (ereader iphone txt) 📕

After a brief silence, he continued:

“If you have not found any traces of the murderer in the attic, such as the dirty footmarks similar to those on the floor of “The Yellow Room”, you must come to the conclusion that it was not he who stole Daddy Jacques’s revolver.”

“There are no footmarks in the attic other than those of Daddy Jacques himself,” said the magistrate with a significant turn of his head. Then, after an apparent decision, he added: “Daddy Jacques was with Monsieur Stangerson in the laboratory—and it was lucky for him he was.”

“Then what part did his revolver play in the tragedy?—It seems very clear that this weapon did less harm to Mademoiselle Stangerson than it did to the murderer.”

The magistrate made no reply to this question, which doubtless embarrassed him. “Monsieur Stangerson,” he said, “tells us that the two bullets have been found in “The Yellow Room”, one embedded in the wall stained with the impression of a red hand—a man’s large hand—and the other in the ceiling.”

“Oh! oh! in the ceiling!” muttered Rouletabille. “In the ceiling! That’s very curious!—In the ceiling!”

He puffed awhile in silence at his pipe, enveloping himself in the smoke. When we reached Savigny-sur-Orge, I had to tap him on the shoulder to arouse him from his dream and come out on to the platform of the station.

There, the magistrate and his Registrar bowed to us, and by rapidly getting into a cab that was awaiting them, made us understand that they had seen enough of us.

“How long will it take to walk to the Chateau du Glandier?” Rouletabille asked one of the railway porters.

“An hour and a half or an hour and three quarters—easy walking,” the man replied.

Rouletabille looked up at the sky and, no doubt, finding its appearance satisfactory, took my arm and said:

“Come on!—I need a walk.”

“Are things getting less entangled?” I asked.

“Not a bit of it!” he said, “more entangled than ever! It’s true, I have an idea—”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you what it is just at present—it’s an idea involving the life or death of two persons at least.”

“Do you think there were accomplices?”

“I don’t think it—”

We fell into silence. Presently he went on:

“It was a bit of luck, our falling in with that examining magistrate and his Registrar, eh? What did I tell you about that revolver?” His head was bent down, he had his hands in his pockets, and he was whistling. After a while I heard him murmur:

“Poor woman!”

“Is it Mademoiselle Stangerson you are pitying?”

“Yes; she’s a noble woman and worthy of being pitied!—a woman of a great, a very great character—I imagine—I imagine.”

“You know her then?”

“Not at all. I have never seen her.”

“Why, then, do you say that she is a woman of great character?”

“Because she bravely faced the murderer; because she courageously defended herself—and, above all, because of the bullet in the ceiling.”

I looked at Rouletabille and inwardly wondered whether he was not mocking me, or whether he had not suddenly gone out of his senses. But I saw that he had never been less inclined to laugh, and the brightness of his keenly intelligent eyes assured me that he retained all his reason. Then, too, I was used to his broken way of talking, which only left me puzzled as to his meaning, till, with a very few clear, rapidly uttered words, he would make the drift of his ideas clear to me, and I saw that what he had previously said, and which had appeared to me void of meaning, was so thoroughly logical that I could not understand how it was I had not understood him sooner.