“Ah, Monsieur Holmes, things are going splendidly. Erik is forgotten for the moment, and we are playing at being engaged.”
“Playing?” I asked.
Something of his usual haughtiness returned. “It was her idea. There can, of course, be no question of real marriage. Some mysterious promise of hers and my position forbid it, but what is the harm in pretending to be engaged? It is a most delightful amusement.”
I turned away, feeling the need to conceal my face. “It seems to agree with you both,” Holmes said.
“It does. Yes, things have taken a turn for the better. You were right, Monsieur Holmes, and I regret my harsh words of yesterday.”
“You are too kind, Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“No, no–everything they say about your genius is true. You said she would reappear, and so she has.”
“In that case, might I be so presumptuous as to remind you that I have not yet been paid?”
“Of course, Monsieur Holmes. You will have a check for 25,000 francs by the end of the day.”
I jerked my head about. Holmes’s smile was filled with irony. “You are most generous, Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“You will discover that my gratitude is stronger even than my anger. You will have another check for the same amount when this Erik has been eliminated as a threat to me and my beloved Christine.”
“I have high hopes that some such outcome will soon take place.”
“Good, good.” I had never seen the Viscount smile so much; it had begun to grate upon me. “I have told Christine that she will soon have her freedom.”
“She seems free enough now,” I said.
“No.” For a moment the old scowl returned. “She has promised not to wander from the Opera House. She even has a cot in her dressing room. I like it not, but I cannot stay angry at her for long. Is she not beautiful, gentlemen? Ah, here she comes again, my heavenly vision–I must go. You shall have your payment, Monsieur Holmes.”
The two of them greeted each other as if they had been separated from birth, not for a mere quarter of an hour, and again I had to turn away.
“You do not seem to enjoy the spectacle, Henry,” Holmes said.
“No. I thought better of her.”
“They make a handsome, if insipid, pair. Perhaps she thinks this way she can remain loyal to Erik while trifling with the Viscount. It will never work, but she wants to have her cake and eat it, too.”
“This cake of hers,” I said, “is too sweet and too rich by far. A surfeit of the Viscount would certainly turn my stomach.”
Holmes laughed. “Rarely have I heard a metaphor so prolonged and so mangled. However, this nonsense has its benefits. I am to be paid, and if matters continue as they have, I shall be able to retire from the proceeds of this case.”
“25,000 francs!” I shook my head in disbelief. “One thousand pounds is a healthy sum.”
Holmes smiled. “I thought it best to mention the matter while he was in such a good mood. No doubt in a day or two he will be as churlish as ever. However, we have more important things to do than watch these young lovers. I believe I mentioned a boat ride to you.”
“A boat ride?”
“Through one of the most scenic parts of Paris. Unfortunately, it will be a trifle cold and damp.”
As I realized what he meant, I groaned. “Not the cellars again!” Familiarity had not made me any more eager to descend into that gloomy labyrinth below the Opera.
“Before we begin, however, we must don our special apparel. Come.” We were in the auditorium, but he led me downstairs to a deserted room. Certain no one else was close by, he opened the satchel he had been carrying and took out what seemed to be a thick leather belt. “Unfasten your collar button.”
“What on earth for?”
“I shall demonstrate.” He unfastened his own collar, then placed the belt about his neck, looping it through the buckle and fastening it.
“A dog collar!” I exclaimed.
“Exactly. I told them I had two particularly large and ferocious mastiffs.” He tightened his cravat, drawing the collar about the belt, but refastening the button was clearly impossible. He took a wool scarf from the bag, then wound it about his neck, hiding any sign of the dog collar. I had wondered at his informal dress, a heavy tweed suit and bowler hat instead of the usual frock coat and top hat. They were more suitable for the cold dirty cellars, and I wished he had told me where we were going. He withdrew another collar. “Here is yours, Henry.”
“Why on earth are we wearing dog collars?”
“The Punjab lasso. I do not believe in magical devices, but these collars will protect us from any unexpected ropes about the neck. Put it on.” With some distaste, I fastened it round my neck. “Oh, it must be tighter than that!” Holmes drew it two notches tighter.
“I cannot breathe, Sherlock–please.”
“I am sorry. I shall loosen it a notch, but it must be sufficiently tight to protect your neck.”
“Slow strangulation is not an appealing fate either.”
He laughed. “There, that should do the trick.” He withdrew another wool scarf. “Put this on.” He also gave me a small clasp knife. “If you feel a rope about you, cut yourself loose at once.”
I shuddered slightly, which was difficult because of the dog collar. “You think it may come to that?”
“I hope not, but we must be prepared. After all, Joseph Buquet was found strangled.”
“How pleasant of you to remind me.”
We found our friend Monsieur Gris eating lunch with the gas men in the “organ” room. From there the black gas pipes branched out to every corner of the Opera. The men sat about eating baguettes and cheese, a few bottles of cheap red wine being passed about.
“Ah, Monsieur Holmes.” Gris dabbed neatly at his mouth and bristly white stubble with a handkerchief which doubled as a napkin. “What project have you today?”
“Once more unto the cellars, Monsieur Gris. Henry and I wish to visit the lake and take a small boat ride, as I mentioned last week.”
Gris shook his head gravely, and the other men were visibly disturbed. “Ah, Monsieur Holmes, I warned you then that I thought that idea extremely unwise. Wandering the lower cellars is bad enough, but the lake... There is le Fantôme to consider as well as la sirène who calls to men, then drowns them. I shall go to the lake with you and help you get started, but the devil himself could not entice me onto those infernal waters.”
“I understand, Monsieur Gris, but my friend and I shall take the risk.”
Gris swallowed the last of his wine from a dirty-looking glass, then shook his head again. “Very well, very well.”
As we left I heard one of the men whisper, “Ils sont fous ces anglais.”
“Did you hear that?” I inquired in English. “They think we are crazy.”
“Mere superstition, Henry. Nothing more.”
Monsieur Gris took two dark lanterns from the storeroom, lit them, then gave one to Holmes, who in turn handed me the leather satchel. Soon we were trudging down the stone stairway toward the lowest depths of the Opera. The air grew colder and very damp as the strange, overwhelming silence of the underworld settled about us. The only sounds were our own footsteps and our breathing.
“Your hand at the level of your eyes,” Monsieur Gris warned me. “You must not forget.”
“But...” I was ready to tell him about our dog collars, but Holmes cut me off.
“Do just as he says, Henry.”
“Oh, very well.”
I was beginning to truly hate the cellars of the Paris Opera. They were a challenge to the rational structure which I had laid upon the world. Despite my education and my disdain for superstition and primitive religion, despite my convictions about the way the universe functioned, I was afraid down there–afraid, and slightly frustrated, slightly angry with myself for feeling that way. Each time I had returned to the surface, I had resolved it would be different the next time, but when we returned agai
n to the darkness, I found myself quaking in my boots even as some medieval peasant might. The Punjab lasso made it even worse. The thought of a rope dropping out of the air and tightening about my throat kept me on edge.
We passed through a large chamber I remembered from before: bodies filled the room, dummies in suits of armor which were used for battle scenes. With only the feeble light from the two lanterns, it was difficult to believe this had not been the actual scene of some frightful carnage, these corpses left sprawling about grotesquely.
“Pile high the English dead,” Holmes mumbled. “This would make a perfect hiding place. How are you faring, Henry?”
“Not well.”
“Courage. Only another level to go. I think I am beginning to know these depths. Is not the stairway to our right, Monsieur Gris?”
“No, to the left.”
“Are you certain of that?”
“Yes, of course.”
And just as he said, the stairway was to our left. The stairs went down to a landing, then reversed, going in the opposite direction. We came out before the lake. A single gas fitting cast its feeble light across the dark waters. It was so cold we could see the white vapor of our breaths, but the water and the air were absolutely still. Holmes’s glaring eyes, the rigid set of his mouth, revealed that he was angry with himself for not knowing in which direction the staircase lay. Since I possess almost no sense of direction, I was amazed that either he or Gris had any idea where we might be.
“The boat is here,” Gris said. Behind us was a stone arch, the boat stowed beneath it. Holmes and I pulled it free, then pushed it into the water. Holmes looped the rope tied to the prow through a rusty iron ring set into the stone. “Very well, gentlemen. Bonne chance. I do not envy you. I shall return here in three hours, as we discussed, and I hope to see you again.” He sounded skeptical we would be there. Lantern in hand, he turned and quickly started back up the stairs.
The water lapped faintly about the boat, still agitated from the disturbance we had made. Holmes shone the lantern about us. The walls were made of massive stones, the ceiling overhead of brick and mortar. We could not see the far shore, but every twenty feet or so a stone column rose from the black waters and curved up on either side into the ceiling. A musty, fetid smell permeated the chill air, and again I was aware of the awesome silence all about us. I reflected upon the many floors above, some seventeen or eighteen stories, those tons of steel, marble, stone, brick, and mortar. If the Opera were to collapse, we would be crushed like insects.
“Well,” said Holmes, taking up the wooden pole which had lain beside the boat, “our voyage awaits us. You may sit, Henry, while I shall see if I have retained my technique with a punt.”
I stepped warily into the boat, then sat while gripping both sides with my hands. Holmes gave me the dark lantern, then stepped in, freed the rope, and took the pole. Still standing, he raised the pole and used both arms to push. We swung gradually about.
“The water is not very deep, only about eight feet, but enough to drown anyone who could not swim. You do swim, do you not, Henry?”
“You know I do, but I am not so inclined today.”
Holmes laughed. “I cannot blame you. I shall do my best to keep us afloat. Do you recall the names of the three rivers of Hell?”
“No.”
“Lethe, Styx, and Acheron. Charon was the boatman upon the Acheron, but I hope you do not consider me that ugly rogue’s counterpart. Yours is most assuredly not a damned soul, and...”
The sound made him cut off his words. Faintly it drifted through the empty darkness around us, more an impression than an actual noise: a woman’s voice singing, the melody hauntingly sad and beautiful. “Good Lord,” I whispered.
“Does it come from the right or left?”
“I cannot tell. Has it...? It has stopped. What on earth could it have been?”
“It was not, I fear, a beautiful young maiden or a watery nymph. Would you open the leather satchel? You will find a loaded revolver there. Handle it carefully. I believe you have on occasion used a revolver?”
“Yes, but I am a dreadful shot.”
“Keep an eye open for sea serpents.”
My laughter was strained. By then I was shivering slightly, both from cold and fear. “I say, are you keeping track of the way? I do not see the bank back there.”
“Yes. We have passed some six stone arches like the one to our right, and we are proceeding in a straight line.”
Another nervous laugh slipped between my lips. “I should not want to be lost down here.”
“That is one worry you may dismiss. This seems an opportune time to thank you for accompanying me. This is a journey I did not wish to make alone.” He poled with strong, rhythmic strokes, raising the pole high, then putting hand over hand.
“Wherever did you learn the mastery of a punt?”
“At Oxford.” The water lapped gently at the boat, the pole cutting a neat straight line.
“You did?”
“You find that difficult to believe?”
“Not at all.”
“Yes, you do. You assume, quite logically, that all my time was spent peering over the brittle pages of dusty, massive tomes or toiling over flasks and beakers in the chemistry lab. I certainly spent most of my time at such endeavors, but I had other interests as well, such as mastering a punt. Of course, a punt is nothing without a young lady.”
“What?”
My voice was so incredulous that he laughed. “I, too, am a man, Henry, and I was frightfully young at the time. She was very beautiful, very beautiful indeed.” A faint sadness could be heard rising over the prevailing irony, even as a curious overtone sometimes rises above a melody.
“What happened to the young lady?”
“The inevitable. She married a handsome future earl, a fellow whose stupidity had provided a never-ending font of amusement for me and my fellows.”
“That must have been rather painful for you,” I said. He did not reply but kept poling, his back to me. “That type of sadness can become almost like a physical illness, a disease, in its intensity. I have seen several patients who had literally made themselves sick over some misfortune in love. Women are more likely to see a physician, but men suffer no less. There is no drug to cure that affliction, but time does the trick.”
“Ah yes, time,” he said. “Healer and destroyer of all things. You need not fear, Henry. I am certain your Michelle has more sense than to run off with an earl.”
I smiled. Her name was a hint of warmth amidst all the cold and darkness. “She tells me I am one of the few men she can tolerate.”
“How perceptive on her part. I share her sentiments. Most people, male and female alike, are insufferable boors.”
“She also thinks highly of you.”
Holmes gave a strange laugh. “You are certainly jesting.”
“Not in the least.”
“I am... quite flattered. You must tell her that.”
“I shall. I know another lady who shares her sentiments.”
“A forbidden topic, Henry. Besides, this is hardly the best of times and places for such a discussion. The subject does have some bearing, however, upon our friend le Fantôme.” He thrust the pole down, bracing himself and bringing the boat to a halt. “We have passed twelve arches.”
I shone the light to either side, but saw only black water and a gray stone column with green moss growing in a two-inch band above the water. “Does this blasted lake go on forever?”
“It seems larger because of the darkness. To our right should be an exit, a channel which leads to an underground dungeon of great antiquity. The Communards of Paris used it in the uprising of 1871.” He began to push the boat around to the right.
“However did you discover that?”
“Garnier mentions it briefly in his discussion of the artificial lake.” He straightened the boat’s course. “I am sorry you are so cold. I should have warned you to bring warmer clothes, but I was too bu
sy being clever. Would you like to punt for a while? It keeps one warm and occupies the mind as well.”
“You would not dare make such an offer if you had ever seen my efforts with a punt. I would capsize us at once. By the way, what exactly are we looking for?”
“La maison du Fantôme.”
“You think he dwells in this cold miserable place? He must be a specter indeed to survive down here without contracting pneumonia or some other equally severe respiratory disease.”
“I did not mean to suggest that he was a fish or amphibian living in the waters. His dwelling is no doubt heated and lighted by gas from the Opera.”
I rubbed my arms, trying to warm them. “Perhaps you will finally be good enough to elaborate upon what you told the Persian yesterday. How did you ever discover so much about the Phantom?”
“There was no single source, although Garnier’s memoirs were again most helpful. I told you about a Monsieur Noir, whose name comes up frequently. Garnier mentions in passing that Noir was masked and that the man was a veritable genius. He relied upon Noir for the construction of some of the most crucial parts of the Opera. It was Noir who conceived the scheme for pumping out the ground water and constructing an artificial lake. The Opera rests upon a massive foundation of stone, a kind of immense bathtub. Noir also designed and placed the main columns supporting the auditorium, and his final task was to oversee the construction of the network of gas piping throughout the Opera.”
“So you think he built himself a home down here?”
“Yes, a refuge from the world. He is hideously deformed. You remember what Miss Daaé said. Little wonder he hid himself away, but he knows every inch of the Opera–every attic, every corner of each basement, every door and trap door, as well as the aerie above the stage, the miles of rope, the flats, stairs, lime- and gaslights. Your mentioning the relationship between Quasimodo and Notre Dame helped me put our Phantom in his proper place. This grand and absurd edifice with all its splendor of marble, bronze, and gold, this gaudy baroque exterior built upon a skeleton of solid steel, has almost a life of its own, but it could not exist without its Phantom. His presence is everywhere; this is his universe, his world, his reflection. Hugo said Quasimodo was the very soul of Notre Dame; well, le Fantôme is the soul of l’Opéra de Paris.”
The Angel of the Opera Page 16