The Perfume of the Lady in Black

by Gaston Leroux

  ‘You are a liar!’ howled the man, as he sprang at Rouletabille.

  But we got between them, and Rouletabille, who was not in the least disturbed, pointed to the cupboard and said:

  ‘He is in there now!’

  None of us will ever forget what followed. Just as on that memorable night, an invisible hand opened the door of the cupboard, and the body appeared before us again!

  Exclamations of surprise, excitement and fear rang through the Square Tower. The voice of the Lady in Black rose above all the others:

  ‘Robert! Robert! Robert!’

  It was a cry of joy. Before us stood two Darzacs, so much alike that anyone but the Lady in Black might have been deceived. But her heart could make no mistake, even if her reason, after Rouletabille’s arguments, had made her hesitate.

  With outstretched arms she went towards the Darzac who had stepped from the fatal cupboard. Her face lit up anew, her eyes, usually so sad, which I had often seen fixed upon the other’s countenance in doubt, now shone upon the newcomer with an infinite and positive happiness. It was he! He whom she had lost, whom she had sought in vain in the other, and, failing to find him, had accused her wandering wits.

  As for the impostor, though cornered and unmasked, he was not yet beaten. Surrounded on all sides, he yet tried to escape us. Though foreseeing the result of the debate with Rouletabille, he had, with iron self-control, given no hint of fear, not only that, he was even able to prolong the discussion in the hope of finding some means of escape. Little by little, he had placed himself in such a position that, when we made a rush at him, he was able to bound into Madame Darzac’s room and slam the door behind him, almost before we knew what had happened.

  Rouletabille’s chief anxiety had been to guard the door leading into the corridor, as he knew there was no way out from Madame Darzac’s room. Nevertheless, when the scoundrel vanished through the doorway we seemed to take leave of our senses. We hammered on the door with all our might, we shouted, we thought of all the brilliant wiles he had used before to make good his escape.

  Arthur Rance was the most excited of all. Mrs Rance clutched my arm so tightly it was painful. Nobody paid any attention to the Lady in Black and the real Darzac, who, amid all this uproar, seemed oblivious to everything but each other. They did not speak, but gazed at each other as if they had discovered a new heaven.

  Rouletabille opened the door leading into the corridor and called the three servants, who came with guns. But what we wanted was an axe. The massive door was fastened with great iron bolts. Old Jacques fetched a beam, which we used as a battering ram, and eventually the door gave way.

  By this time our excitement was at its highest pitch. In vain we told ourselves that there was no possibility of escape from the room. We were prepared for anything or, rather, nothing. We were maddened by the thought that he might have vanished into thin air.

  When the door began to give way, Rouletabille ordered the servants to make ready with their guns, but not to fire unless it was impossible to take the man alive. Then, pushing with his shoulder against the door, it gave way, and he entered first.

  We followed, but on the threshold we paused in amazement. Larsan was there, plainly visible. He seemed to be the only thing in the room. Quietly seated in an armchair in the centre of the room, he gazed at us with calm, unflinching eyes. He sat with his hands resting on the arms of the chair and his head leaning against the back. He looked as if he were receiving us in audience and waiting to hear what we had to say.

  I even thought I detected a slight smile upon his lips.

  Rouletabille stepped forward.

  ‘Larsan,’ he said. ‘Larsan, do you surrender?’

  But Larsan did not answer. Rouletabille touched his hand and cheek, and we saw that he was dead.

  Rouletabille called our attention to a signet ring on the dead man’s finger. There was an open receptacle where the stone should have been. It must have contained a virulent poison.

  Rance listened in vain for a pulse and announced that all was over. Rouletabille begged us to leave the tower and to forget about the dead man.

  ‘I will attend to everything,’ he said. ‘Since it is a surplus body, no one will know that it is missing.’ Turning to Walter, he said: ‘Bring me the sack at once.’

  Then he gestured to us to go, and we left him alone with his dead father.

  M. Darzac, who had fainted, was carried into Old Bob’s sitting room. The weakness was only momentary, however, and as soon as he came to, he smiled at Mathilde, whose beautiful face, bent over him, betrayed her anguish at the fear of losing her beloved husband just when she thought she had got him back. He was able to convince her that she had nothing to fear, and persuaded her to leave the room for a moment with Mrs Rance.

  As soon as the two women were gone, Rance and I attended to him. His injuries soon enlightened us. How was it possible for a man, whom everybody had assumed dead, who had been left dying in a sack, to step out of the cupboard alive?

  When we had undone his clothing and readjusted the bandages, we found that the wound, though it might have occasioned a temporary coma, was not, in fact, serious. The bullet which struck him during his desperate struggle with Larsan had hit the sternum, and though causing copious external bleeding, it had not in any way affected the vital organs.

  Men with wounds of this kind have been seen to walk about amongst the living soon after being given up for dead. I had no further anxiety about Darzac when I remembered a duel fought by L., a journalist, with V., a composer.

  The journalist thought he had killed his adversary by putting a bullet in his heart before the other man had had time to fire, when, suddenly, the supposed corpse stood up and fired back at L., hitting him in the leg and causing a wound which very nearly necessitated amputation and kept the sufferer in bed for months. As for the musician, who immediately fainted again, he was out of hospital the next day and walking about as usual on the boulevards. He had, like Darzac, been hit on the breastbone.

  Just as we finished dressing Darzac’s wound, the door of the sitting room leading into the hall, which had remained ajar, was stealthily closed by Old Jacques. I was just wondering why, when we heard a sound like that of a body being dragged along the floor, and I thought of Larsan, the potato sack and Rouletabille.

  Leaving Rance to attend to Darzac, I hurried to the window. I was not mistaken. It was almost dark, but I could see Walter standing on guard under the gardener’s gatehouse, ready to bar the way to anyone who might try to enter the courtyard.

  Going towards the well were Rouletabille and Old Jacques, like shadows, bending over another shadowy shape which I seemed to recognise. They set the sack down on the edge of the well, and I noticed that the cover had been removed.

  Rouletabille got in at once, as if he knew the way. When his head was no longer visible above the rim, Old Jacques lowered the sack. I could see him leaning right over the edge. Presently, he straightened up, put the cover on the well and fastened the iron clamps. As he did so, there seemed something familiar about the sound, and I remembered having heard it on the night I went to ‘discover Australia’.

  I wanted to know everything, everything! Too many things remain unexplained!

  I left the Square Tower and went up to my room in the New Castle, where I leaned out of the window and scanned the sea in the growing darkness, but I saw only impenetrable shadows.

  Suddenly, far away, a shape appeared silhouetted against the last glow of dying day that lay like a red belt along the horizon. It was a boat gliding over the water, Rouletabille’s figure stood out against the redness. I could see him as clearly as if he were only a few yards away. His slightest movement was visible. He stooped and lifted a burden which, in the gathering gloom, seemed to form part of himself.

  Then the burden slipped away into the black depths, and his silhouette was again clearly defined, alone. He peered motionless into the water, then sank into his seat. The boat once more glided along till it could
no longer be seen against the red horizon, and that too died away.

  Rouletabille had given Larsan’s body to the sea.

  EPILOGUE

  Nice, Cannes, San Raphael, Toulon. I take no interest in the various stages of my return journey. After such terrible doings, all I want is to leave the South, get back to Paris and turn my attention to my work.

  But, most of all, I long to be alone again with Rouletabille, who has shut himself up in the next compartment with the Lady in Black. I do not want to interrupt their secrets and plans for the future, so I will leave them undisturbed until the last minute, that is to say, until we reach Marseilles, where they will separate. Notwithstanding Mathilde’s earnest entreaties, Rouletabille has insisted upon going back to Paris and to his job at the newspaper. It is his wish to stand aside and allow Madame Darzac’s husband to have her entirely to himself. He will brook no argument, the Darzacs must continue on their honeymoon just as if nothing had happened. The M. Darzac who will finish the journey is not the one who began it, but in the eyes of the world there is no difference.

  M. and Madame Darzac have been through a civil ceremony, and that is sufficient. As for the religious ceremony, as Rouletabille puts it, some ‘arrangement’ can doubtless be made with the Pope should it be found when they arrive in Rome that their position is not absolutely correct. All they know is that they are supremely happy. They deserve to be.

  Nobody would ever have suspected the horrible tragedy of the surplus body, had it not been that after so many years, during which all the harrowing details of the affair seemed buried and forgotten, we find ourselves today, as I write these lines, obliged to make the matter public in order to save ourselves from a still greater scandal.

  The fact that I am now compelled to lift the veil on the Rochers Rouges mystery as I did before in regard to the Glandier secrets, is entirely due to that utter scoundrel Brignolles, who has taken refuge in America and, from there, is trying to blackmail us. Since Professor Stangerson has receded into the Eternal Nothing whither, according to his theories, everything goes and whence everything comes, we see no reason not to set out the facts, and we prefer to state them ourselves rather than allow the world to rely on the garbled version of a scoundrel.

  The day after the final drama, as the train was taking the Lady in Black, Rouletabille and myself far away from the scene of so many sorrows, I could not help wondering what Brignolles’ role in the affair had been. As I leaned back against the cushions in my compartment, my mind was harrowed by innumerable questions which a word from Rouletabille would have set to rest, but the young man had no thought for me then. His whole being was momentarily centred upon his mother.

  We had bade Professor Stangerson goodbye in La Louve. Robert Darzac left at once for Bordighera, where Mathilde was to join him. Arthur Rance and his wife accompanied us to the station. Much to my disappointment, our hostess did not seem to mind my going in the least, but I attributed her indifference to the fact that Prince Galitch had joined us on the platform. She gave him news of Old Bob, who was making excellent progress, and completely ignored me, which worried me considerably.

  Here it seems about time for me to make a confession to the reader. I should never have disclosed the feelings I entertained for Mrs Rance had it not been that later on, after the death of Arthur Rance – under particularly tragic circumstances, which I may some day relate – I married dark, melancholy, difficult Edith.

  We were approaching Marseilles …

  Marseilles!

  The farewell at Marseilles was heartrending. Madame Darzac and Rouletabille did not speak. As our train steamed out of the station, she stood upon the platform motionless and expressionless, her arms hanging by her sides, draped in her dark veil, the very personification of sorrow.

  Lyon! We cannot sleep and are taking a little exercise on the platform. We came through this station a few days ago, rushing to the aid of an unhappy woman, and our conversation returns to the details of the tragedy. Rouletabille talks rapidly to divert his mind from the sorrows of separation.

  ‘That man Brignolles was a scoundrel,’ he says reproachfully, as if I had ever thought the creature to be an honest man.

  Then he tells me everything. Larsan needed a member of Darzac’s family in order to have our friend shut up in a lunatic asylum, and he hit upon Brignolles. He could not have found anyone better suited to his purpose. The two men were as thick as thieves from the start. Everybody knows how easy it is, even today, to get someone confined to a madhouse. In France, the wish of a single member of a family and the signature of one doctor are all that are required. Larsan had no problem forging signatures, and Brignolles, well paid by him, did the rest. When Brignolles came to Paris, the whole thing had already been planned. Larsan’s scheme was to take Darzac’s place before the marriage. As I suspected, the accident to Darzac’s eyes was not genuine. It was Brignolles’ business to manage it so that Darzac’s eyes would be injured just badly enough to oblige Darzac to wear dark glasses, thus giving Larsan, when he was ready to take the other’s place, a trump card. A man who has been half-blinded would naturally, even when not wearing glasses, avoid all strong light.

  Darzac’s departure for the South provided an excellent opportunity for the conspirators. It was not until the end of his stay at San Remo, that Darzac, whom Larsan had kept under close observation, was packed off to the asylum. Larsan used the services of one of those private agencies that have absolutely no connection with genuine detectives, and are only too ready to act for people up to some shady business.

  One day, as Darzac was taking a walk in the mountains – the madhouse happened to be conveniently at hand, just on the Italian frontier – the thing was done. Before starting for Paris, Brignolles had made his arrangements with the superintendent of the asylum and had produced his letter of authority. Some superintendents of lunatic asylums are happy not to ask too many questions, provided they are well paid and can keep within the law.

  ‘How did you manage to find that out?’ I asked Rouletabille.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ replied the reporter, ‘perhaps you remember that little scrap of paper you brought me one day when, without telling me, you followed Brignolles into the mountains. That bit of paper, which bore a Sorbonne stamp and two syllables of an unfinished word, turned out to be most useful. To begin with, the circumstances under which you came into possession of it, inasmuch as you picked it up behind Brignolles and Larsan, made it very valuable. Moreover, the very spot where you found the paper furnished me with a clue when I set out to find the real Darzac, after becoming convinced that the surplus body in the sack was his.’

  Rouletabille then proceeded to expound the various phases of the reasoning which was eventually to clear up the mystery. To begin with, there was that little circumstance about the drying of the paint, and then the lie told by the supposed Darzac.

  In the course of the cross-examination to which Rouletabille had submitted him while awaiting the return of the man who had driven away with the sack, Bernier repeated what he had said. Rouletabille expressed his surprise, but did not tell Bernier that the Darzac for whom he opened the door at five o’clock was not the real one. Rouletabille felt he must conceal the fact that there was another Darzac. That being so, the other one must be the real one. It was as clear as day.

  When it dawned upon Rouletabille, he staggered, almost fainted, and his teeth chattered with excitement. On further reflection, he began to think that Bernier might have misunderstood either Darzac’s words or his astonishment, and Rouletabille decided to question Darzac himself. It seemed as if he would never come back. When at last Rouletabille was able to speak to him, he still had a glimmer of hope.

  ‘Did you see his face?’ he asked. And when Darzac answered: ‘No, I didn’t look,’ Rouletabille could have shouted for joy. It would have been so easy for him to have answered: ‘Yes, I did. It was Larsan.’

  The young man had not seen through the scoundrel’s cleverness until then. He had feig
ned a nervousness absolutely consistent with that of Darzac, who would have been in a hurry to get rid of the corpse without another glance. But all Larsan’s craft was more than equalled by Rouletabille’s reasoning powers. The man lied. That was the main thing. Now Rouletabille knew!

  What was he to do? Denounce Larsan at once, and thus give him a chance to escape? Let his mother learn at one and the same time that she had been married again to Larsan, and had perhaps helped to murder Darzac? No, no! He needed time to reflect and to plan. He protected the Lady in Black by making her move into Professor Stangerson’s apartments and getting her to promise that she would not leave the castle. He deceived Larsan by pretending to be convinced of Old Bob’s guilt. Then, when Walter brought back the empty sack, he had some hope that Darzac was not dead. In any case, dead or alive, he was determined to find him.

  The only trace he had of Darzac was the new revolver found on the floor of the room where the struggle took place. He noticed that it bore the trademark of a gunsmith who had a shop at Menton. He went there and found out that that the revolver was sold the day before to a man wearing a voluminous overcoat, a soft felt hat and a beard. From that point, he lost track of the man, but he did not waste any time over that. He set out on another trail. He followed the one which led Walter to the Castillon ruins.

  Unlike Walter, who merely found the empty sack and returned to the castle, Rouletabille followed the marks of the cartwheels past the ruins, and, to his astonishment, found that, instead of turning down towards Menton, they went over the hill in the direction of Sospel. He remembered that Brignolles had been seen at Sospel. Rouletabille remembered my expedition and decided to find out what Brignolles had been up to in those parts. His presence must be closely connected with the crime.