"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the house on the lake."He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls of the tub were built.In order to prevent the water surrounding the building-operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was obliged to build a double case in every direction.
The work of constructing this double case took a whole year.
It was the wall of the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of the house on the lake.To any one understanding the architecture of the edifice, the Persian's action would seem to indicate that Erik's mysterious house had been built in the double case, formed of a thick wall constructed as an embankment or dam, then of a brick wall, a tremendous layer of cement and another wall several yards in thickness.
At the Persian's words, Raoul flung himself against the wall and listened eagerly.But he heard nothing...nothing...except distant steps.
The Persian darkened his lantern again.
"Look out!" he said."Keep your hand up! And silence! For we shall try another way of getting in."And he led him to the little staircase by which they had come down lately.
They went up, stopping at each step, peering into the darkness and the silence, till they came to the third cellar.Here the Persian motioned to Raoul to go on his knees; and, in this way, crawling on both knees and one hand--for the other hand was held in the position indicated--they reached the end wall.
Against this wall stood a large discarded scene from the ROI DE LAHORE.
Close to this scene was a set piece.Between the scene and the set piece there was just room for a body...for a body which one day was found hanging there.The body of Joseph Buquet.
The Persian, still kneeling, stopped and listened.For a moment, he seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul; then he turned his eyes upward, toward the second cellar, which sent down the faint glimmer of a lantern, through a cranny between two boards.
This glimmer seemed to trouble the Persian.
At last, he tossed his head and made up his mind to act.He slipped between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, with Raoul close upon his heels.With his free hand, the Persian felt the wall.
Raoul saw him bear heavily upon the wall, just as he had pressed against the wall in Christine's dressing-room.Then a stone gave way, leaving a hole in the wall.
This time, the Persian took his pistol from his pocket and made a sign to Raoul to do as he did.He cocked the pistol.
And, resolutely, still on his knees, he wiggled through the hole in the wall.Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to be content to follow him.
The hole was very narrow.The Persian stopped almost at once.
Raoul heard him feeling the stones around him.Then the Persian took out his dark lantern again, stooped forward, examined something beneath him and immediately extinguished his Iantern.Raoul heard him say, in a whisper:
"We shall have to drop a few yards, without making a noise;take off your boots."
The Persian handed his own shoes to Raoul.
"Put them outside the wall," he said."We shall find them there when we leave."[7]
----
[7] These two pairs of boots, which were placed, according to the Persian's papers, just between the set piece and the scene from the ROI DE LAHORE, on the spot where Joseph Buquet was found hanging, were never discovered.
They must have been taken by some stage-carpenter or "door-shutter."He crawled a little farther on his knees, then turned right round and said:
"I am going to hang by my hands from the edge of the stone and let myself drop INTO HIS HOUSE.You must do exactly the same.
Do not be afraid.I will catch you in my arms."Raoul soon heard a dull sound, evidently produced by the fall of the Persian, and then dropped down.
He felt himself clasped in the Persian's arms.
"Hush!" said the Persian.
And they stood motionless, listening.
The darkness was thick around them, the silence heavy and terrible.
Then the Persian began to make play with the dark lantern again, turning the rays over their heads, looking for the hole through which they had come, and failing to find it:
"Oh!" he said."The stone has closed of itself!"And the light of the lantern swept down the wall and over the floor.
The Persian stooped and picked up something, a sort of cord, which he examined for a second and flung away with horror.
"The Punjab lasso!" he muttered.
"What is it?" asked Raoul.
The Persian shivered."It might very well be the rope by which the man was hanged, and which was looked for so long."And, suddenly seized with fresh anxiety, he moved the little red disk of his lantern over the walls.In this way, he lit up a curious thing:
the trunk of a tree, which seemed still quite alive, with its leaves;and the branches of that tree ran right up the walls and disappeared in the ceiling.
Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at first to make out the appearance of things: they saw a corner of a branch...and a leaf...and another leaf...and, next to it, nothing at all, nothing but the ray of light that seemed to reflect itself....Raoul passed his hand over that nothing, over that reflection.
"Hullo!" he said."The wall is a looking-glass!""Yes, a looking-glass!" said the Persian, in a tone of deep emotion.
And, passing the hand that held the pistol over his moist forehead, he added, "We have dropped into the torture-chamber!"What the Persian knew of this torture-chamber and what there befell him and his companion shall be told in his own words, as set down in a manuscript which he left behind him, and which I copy VERBATIM.
