But, before going further, it is time that I present my friend to the reader.
I first knew Joseph Rouletabille when he was a young reporter. At that time I was a beginner at the Bar and often met him in the corridors of examining magistrates2, when I had gone to get a “permit to communicate” for the prison of Mazas, or for Saint-Lazare. He had, as they say, “a good nut.” He seemed to have taken his head—round as a bullet—out of a box of marbles, and it is from that, I think, that his comrades of the press—all determined3 billiard-players—had given him that nickname, which was to stick to him and be made illustrious by him. He was always as red as a tomato, now gay as a lark4, now grave as a judge. How, while still so young—he was only sixteen and a half years old when I saw him for the first time—had he already won his way on the press? That was what everybody who came into contact with him might have asked, if they had not known his history. At the time of the affair of the woman cut in pieces in the Rue5 Oberskampf—another forgotten story—he had taken to one of the editors of the “Epoque,”—a paper then rivalling the “Matin” for information,—the left foot, which was missing from the basket in which the gruesome remains6 were discovered. For this left foot the police had been vainly searching for a week, and young Rouletabille had found it in a drain where nobody had thought of looking for it. To do that he had dressed himself as an extra sewer-man, one of a number engaged by the administration of the city of Paris, owing to an overflow7 of the Seine.
When the editor-in-chief was in possession of the precious foot and informed as to the train of intelligent deductions8 the boy had been led to make, he was divided between the admiration9 he felt for such detective cunning in a brain of a lad of sixteen years, and delight at being able to exhibit, in the “morgue window” of his paper, the left foot of the Rue Oberskampf.
“This foot,” he cried, “will make a great headline.”
Then, when he had confided10 the gruesome packet to the medical lawyer attached to the journal, he asked the lad, who was shortly to become famous as Rouletabille, what he would expect to earn as a general reporter on the “Epoque”?
“Two hundred francs a month,” the youngster replied modestly, hardly able to breathe from surprise at the proposal.
“You shall have two hundred and fifty,” said the editor-in-chief; “only you must tell everybody that you have been engaged on the paper for a month. Let it be quite understood that it was not you but the ‘Epoque’ that discovered the left foot of the Rue Oberskampf. Here, my young friend, the man is nothing, the paper everything.”
Having said this, he begged the new reporter to retire, but before the youth had reached the door he called him back to ask his name. The other replied:
“Joseph Josephine.”
“That’s not a name,” said the editor-in-chief, “but since you will not be required to sign what you write it is of no consequence.”
The boy-faced reporter speedily made himself many friends, for he was serviceable and gifted with a good humour that enchanted11 the most severe-tempered and disarmed12 the most zealous13 of his companions. At the Bar cafe, where the reporters assembled before going to any of the courts, or to the Prefecture, in search of their news of crime, he began to win a reputation as an unraveller of intricate and obscure affairs which found its way to the office of the Chief of the Surete. When a case was worth the trouble and Rouletabille—he had already been given his nickname—had been started on the scent14 by his editor-in-chief, he often got the better of the most famous detective.
It was at the Bar cafe that I became intimately acquainted with him. Criminal lawyers and journalists are not enemies, the former need advertisement, the latter information. We chatted together, and I soon warmed towards him. His intelligence was so keen, and so original!—and he had a quality of thought such as I have never found in any other person.
Some time after this I was put in charge of the law news of the “Cri du Boulevard.” My entry into journalism15 could not but strengthen the ties which united me to Rouletabille. After a while, my new friend being allowed to carry out an idea of a judicial16 correspondence column, which he was allowed to sign “Business,” in the “Epoque,” I was often able to furnish him with the legal information of which he stood in need.
Nearly two years passed in this way, and the better I knew him, the more I learned to love him; for, in spite of his careless extravagance, I had discovered in him what was, considering his age, an extraordinary seriousness of mind. Accustomed as I was to seeing him gay and, indeed, often too gay, I would many times find him plunged17 in the deepest melancholy18. I tried then to question him as to the cause of this change of humour, but each time he laughed and made me no answer. One day, having questioned him about his parents, of whom he never spoke19, he left me, pretending not to have heard what I said.
While things were in this state between us, the famous case of The Yellow Room took place. It was this case which was to rank him as the leading newspaper reporter, and to obtain for him the reputation of being the greatest detective in the world. It should not surprise us to find in the one man the perfection of two such lines of activity if we remember that the daily press was already beginning to transform itself and to become what it is to-day—the gazette of crime.
Morose-minded people may complain of this; for myself I regard it a matter for congratulation. We can never have too many arms, public or private, against the criminal. To this some people may answer that, by continually publishing the details of crimes, the press ends by encouraging their commission. But then, with some people we can never do right. Rouletabille, as I have said, entered my room that morning of the 26th of October, 1892. He was looking redder than usual, and his eyes were bulging20 out of his head, as the phrase is, and altogether he appeared to be in a state of extreme excitement. He waved the “Matin” with a trembling hand, and cried:
“Well, my dear Sainclair,—have you read it?”
“The Glandier crime?”
“Yes; The Yellow Room!—What do you think of it?”
“I think that it must have been the Devil or the Bete du Bon Dieu that committed the crime.”
“Be serious!”
“Well, I don’t much believe in murderers* who make their escape through walls of solid brick. I think Daddy Jacques did wrong to leave behind him the weapon with which the crime was committed and, as he occupied the attic21 immediately above Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room, the builder’s job ordered by the examining magistrate1 will give us the key of the enigma22 and it will not be long before we learn by what natural trap, or by what secret door, the old fellow was able to slip in and out, and return immediately to the laboratory to Monsieur Stangerson, without his absence being noticed. That, of course, is only an hypothesis.”
* Although the original English translation often uses the words “murder” and “murderer,” the reader may substitute “attack” and “attacker” since no murder is actually committed.
Rouletabille sat down in an armchair, lit his pipe, which he was never without, smoked for a few minutes in silence—no doubt to calm the excitement which, visibly, dominated him—and then replied:
“Young man,” he said, in a tone the sad irony23 of which I will not attempt to render, “young man, you are a lawyer and I doubt not your ability to save the guilty from conviction; but if you were a magistrate on the bench, how easy it would be for you to condemn24 innocent persons!—You are really gifted, young man!”
He continued to smoke energetically, and then went on:
“No trap will be found, and the mystery of The Yellow Room will become more and more mysterious. That’s why it interests me. The examining magistrate is right; nothing stranger than this crime has ever been known.”
“Have you any idea of the way by which the murderer escaped?” I asked.
“None,” replied Rouletabille—“none, for the present. But I have an idea as to the revolver; the murderer did not use it.”
“Good Heavens! By whom, then, was it used?”
“Why—by Mademoiselle Stangerson.”
“I don’t understand,—or rather, I have never understood,” I said.
Rouletabille shrugged25 his shoulders.
“Is there nothing in this article in the ‘Matin’ by which you were particularly struck?”
“Nothing,—I have found the whole of the story it tells equally strange.”
“Well, but—the locked door—with the key on the inside?”
“That’s the only perfectly26 natural thing in the whole article.”
“Really!—And the bolt?”
“The bolt?”
“Yes, the bolt—also inside the room—a still further protection against entry? Mademoiselle Stangerson took quite extraordinary precautions! It is clear to me that she feared someone. That was why she took such precautions—even Daddy Jacques’s revolver—without telling him of it. No doubt she didn’t wish to alarm anybody, and least of all, her father. What she dreaded27 took place, and she defended herself. There was a struggle, and she used the revolver skilfully28 enough to wound the assassin in the hand—which explains the impression on the wall and on the door of the large, blood-stained hand of the man who was searching for a means of exit from the chamber29. But she didn’t fire soon enough to avoid the terrible blow on the right temple.”
“Then the wound on the temple was not done with the revolver?”
“The paper doesn’t say it was, and I don’t think it was; because logically it appears to me that the revolver was used by Mademoiselle Stangerson against the assassin. Now, what weapon did the murderer use? The blow on the temple seems to show that the murderer wished to stun30 Mademoiselle Stangerson,—after he had unsuccessfully tried to strangle her. He must have known that the attic was inhabited by Daddy Jacques, and that was one of the reasons, I think, why he must have used a quiet weapon,—a life-preserver, or a hammer.”
“All that doesn’t explain how the murderer got out of The Yellow Room,” I observed.
“Evidently,” replied Rouletabille, rising, “and that is what has to be explained. I am going to the Chateau31 du Glandier, and have come to see whether you will go with me.”
“I?—”
“Yes, my boy. I want you. The ‘Epoque’ has definitely entrusted32 this case to me, and I must clear it up as quickly as possible.”
“But in what way can I be of any use to you?”
“Monsieur Robert Darzac is at the Chateau du Glandier.”
“That’s true. His despair must be boundless33.”
“I must have a talk with him.”
Rouletabille said it in a tone that surprised me.
“Is it because—you think there is something to be got out of him?” I asked.
“Yes.”
That was all he would say. He retired34 to my sitting-room35, begging me to dress quickly.
I knew Monsieur Robert Darzac from having been of great service to him in a civil action, while I was acting36 as secretary to Maitre Barbet Delatour. Monsieur Robert Darzac, who was at that time about forty years of age, was a professor of physics at the Sorbonne. He was intimately acquainted with the Stangersons, and, after an assiduous seven years’ courtship of the daughter, had been on the point of marrying her. In spite of the fact that she has become, as the phrase goes, “a person of a certain age,” she was still remarkably37 good-looking. While I was dressing38 I called out to Rouletabille, who was impatiently moving about my sitting-room:
“Have you any idea as to the murderer’s station in life?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I think if he isn’t a man in society, he is, at least, a man belonging to the upper class. But that, again, is only an impression.”
“What has led you to form it?”
“Well,—the greasy39 cap, the common handkerchief, and the marks of the rough boots on the floor,” he replied.
“I understand,” I said; “murderers don’t leave traces behind them which tell the truth.”
“We shall make something out of you yet, my dear Sainclair,” concluded Rouletabille.
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1
magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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6
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
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9
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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10
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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disarmed
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| v.裁军( disarm的过去式和过去分词 )；使息怒 | |
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zealous
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| adj.狂热的，热心的 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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29
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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stun
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| vt.打昏，使昏迷，使震惊，使惊叹 | |
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chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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38
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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