第87章 The End of the Ghost's Love Story (5)

office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trap-door lover for nothing.I promised the Persian to do so as soon as Ihad time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity of the feats ascribed to the ghost.

The Persian's manuscript, Christine Daae's papers, the statements made to me by the people who used to work under MM.Richard and Moncharmin, by little Meg herself (the worthy Madame Giry, I am sorry to say, is no more)and by Sorelli, who is now living in retirement at Louveciennes:

all the documents relating to the existence of the ghost, which Ipropose to deposit in the archives of the Opera, have been checked and confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly proud.I have not been able to find the house on the lake, Erik having blocked up all the secret entrances.[12] On the other hand, I have discovered the secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces in parts, and also the trap-door through which Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the opera-house.In the Communists' dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in it;and among these were an "R" and a "C." R.C.: Raoul de Chagny.

The letters are there to this day.

----

[12] Even so, I am convinced that it would be easy to reach it by draining the lake, as I have repeatedly requested the Ministry of Fine Arts to do.I was speaking about it to M.Dujardin-Beaumetz, the under-secretary for fine arts, only forty-eight hours before the publication of this book.Who knows but that the score of DONJUAN TRIUMPHANT might yet be discovered in the house on the lake?

the voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side, for, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist.

The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptor's chisel; and I do not despair of one day discovering the ornament that could be raised or lowered at will, so as to admit of the ghost's mysterious correspondence with Mme.Giry and of his generosity.

If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he pleases, without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let him go to Box Five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous column that separates this from the stage-box.He will find that the column sounds hollow.After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice of the ghost: there is room inside the column for two men.

If you are surprised that, when the various incidents occurred, no one turned round to look at the column, you must remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble, and that----However, all these discoveries are nothing, to my mind, compared with that which I was able to make, in the presence of the acting-manager, in the managers' office, within a couple of inches from the desk-chair, and which consisted of a trap-door, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a man's fore-arm and no longer; a trap-door that falls back like the lid of a box; a trap-door through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallow-tail coat.

That is the way the forty-thousand francs went!....And that also is the way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned.

Speaking about this to the Persian, I said:

"So we may take it, as the forty-thousand francs were returned, that Erik was simply amusing himself with that memorandum-book of his?""Don't you believe it!" he replied."Erik wanted money.Thinking himself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination, which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary uglinesss, to prey upon his fellow-men.His reason for restoring the forty-thousand francs, of his own accord, was that he no longer wanted it.He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daae.

He had relinquished everything above the surface of the earth."According to the Persian's account, Erik was born in a small town not far from Rouen.He was the son of a master-mason.He ran away at an early age from his father's house, where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents.For a time, he frequented the fairs, where a showman exhibited him as the "living corpse."He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe, from fair to fair, and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountain-head of art and magic, among the Gipsies.

A period of Erik's life remained quite obscure.He was seen at the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory.

He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey.In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the Shah-in-Shah, was boring herself to death.

A dealer in furs, returning to Samarkand from Nijni-Novgorod, told of the marvels which he had seen performed in Erik's tent.

The trader was summoned to the palace and the daroga of Mazenderan was told to question him.Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik.He brought him to Persia, where for some months Erik's will was law.He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil.He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire.The Shah took a liking to him.