"Hand raised, ready to fire!" repeated hastily the companion of Raoul. Behind them, the wall, continuing to make a complete turn upon itself, had closed again.
The two men remained motionless for a few instants, holding their breath.
In these shadows reigned a silence that nothing came to disturb.
At last, the Persian decided to make a movement, and Raoul heard him sliding to his knees, searching for something in the night with his groping hands.
Suddenly, before the young man, the darkness was prudently lit by the glow of a small dark lantern, and Raoul recoiled instinctively as if to escape the investigation of an enemy secret. But he understood at once that this light belonged to the Persian, whose every gesture he was following. The little red disk wandered over the walls, high, low, all around them, meticulously. These walls were formed, on the right by a masonry wall, on the left by a wooden partition, above and below by floors. And Raoul told himself that Christine had passed that way on the day she followed the voice of the _Angel of Music_. This must have been Erik's customary path when he came through the walls to surprise Christine's good faith and intrigue her innocence. And Raoul, who remembered the Persian's words, thought that this path had been mysteriously established by the care of the Phantom himself. Now, he was to learn later that Erik had found there, all prepared for him, a secret corridor of which he long remained the only one to know the existence. This corridor had been created during the Commune of Paris to allow the jailers to lead their prisoners directly to the dungeons that had been built in the cellars, for the federates had occupied the building immediately after 18 March and had made it, at the very top, a point of departure for the hot-air balloons charged with carrying into the departments their incendiary proclamations, and, at the very bottom, a state prison.
The Persian had knelt and set his lantern on the ground. He seemed occupied with a rapid task in the floor, and suddenly he veiled his light.
Then Raoul heard a slight click and perceived in the floor of the corridor a square of very pale light. It was as if a window had just opened onto the still-lit underside of the Opera. Raoul no longer saw the Persian, but he felt him suddenly at his side and heard his breathing.
"Follow me, and do all that I do."
Raoul was directed toward the luminous hatch. Then he saw the Persian kneel again and, suspending himself by his hands from the hatch, let himself slide into the underside. The Persian held his pistol between his teeth.
Strange thing, the viscount had full confidence in the Persian. Though he knew nothing of him, and most of his words had only increased the obscurity of this adventure, he did not hesitate to believe that, in this decisive hour, the Persian was with him against Erik. His emotion had seemed sincere when he spoke to him of the "monster"; the interest he had shown him did not seem suspect. Finally, if the Persian had nourished some sinister project against Raoul, he would not have armed him with his own hands. And then, to say all, must they not arrive at any cost, at any cost, near Christine? Raoul had no choice of means. Had he hesitated, even with doubts as to the Persian's intentions, the young man would have considered himself the last of cowards.
Raoul, in his turn, knelt and suspended himself from the trapdoor, with both hands. "Let go entirely!" he heard, and he fell into the arms of the Persian, who immediately ordered him to throw himself flat on his belly, closed the trapdoor above their heads, without Raoul being able to see by what stratagem, and came to lie at the viscount's side. The latter wished to put a question to him, but the Persian's hand pressed upon his mouth and immediately he heard a voice that he recognized as belonging to the police commissioner who had just interrogated him.
Raoul and the Persian then found themselves both behind a partition that concealed them perfectly. Nearby, a narrow staircase climbed to a small room, in which the commissioner must have been walking about putting questions, for one heard the sound of his steps at the same time as that of his voice.
The light that surrounded the objects was very faint, but, coming out of that thick obscurity which reigned in the secret corridor above, Raoul had no difficulty in distinguishing the shape of things.
And he could not hold back a muffled exclamation, for there were three corpses there.
The first was stretched upon the narrow landing of the little staircase that climbed to the door behind which the commissioner was heard; the two others had rolled to the bottom of this staircase, their arms in a cross. Raoul, passing his fingers through the partition that hid him, could have touched the hand of one of these unfortunates.
"Silence!" whispered the Persian again.
He too had seen the outstretched bodies and he had a word to explain all:
"_Him!_"
The voice of the commissioner then made itself heard with more brilliance. He was demanding explanations on the lighting system, which the stage manager was giving him. The commissioner must therefore have been in the "organ loft" or its dependencies. Contrary to what one might believe, especially when it is a question of an opera house, the "organ loft" is in no way destined to make music.
At that epoch, electricity was employed only for certain very restricted scenic effects and for the bells. The immense building and the stage itself were still lit by gas, and it was still with hydrogen gas that one regulated and modified the lighting of a set, and that by means of a special apparatus to which the multiplicity of its pipes had given the name of "_organ loft_."
A niche was reserved next to the prompter's hole, for the head of lighting, who, from there, gave his orders to his employees and oversaw their execution. It is in this niche that, at every performance, Mauclair stood.
Now, Mauclair was not in his niche and his employees were not at their posts.
"Mauclair! Mauclair!"
The stage manager's voice now resounded in the underside like in a drum. But Mauclair did not answer:
We have said that a door opened onto a little staircase that climbed from the second underside. The commissioner pushed it, but it resisted: "Well! Well!" said he... "See here, Mr. Stage Manager, I cannot open this door... is it always so difficult?"
The stage manager, with a vigorous shoulder thrust, pushed the door. He perceived that he was pushing at the same time a human body and could not hold back an exclamation: this body, he recognized it at once:
"Mauclair!"
All the personages who had followed the commissioner in this visit to the organ loft advanced, uneasy.
"The poor man! He is dead," groaned the stage manager.
But M. the Commissioner Mifroid, whom nothing surprises, was already leaning over this large body.
"No," said he, "he is dead-drunk! it is not the same thing."
"That would be the first time," declared the stage manager.
"Then, he has been made to take a narcotic... That is quite possible."
Mifroid rose, descended a few more steps and cried:
"Look!"
By the glow of a small red lantern, at the bottom of the staircase, two other bodies were stretched out. The stage manager recognized Mauclair's assistants... Mifroid descended, examined them.
"They are sleeping profoundly," said he. "Very curious affair! We can no longer doubt the intervention of a stranger in the lighting service... and this stranger was evidently working for the abductor!... But what a queer idea to abduct an artiste on stage!... That is playing at difficulty, or I know nothing of it! Let someone go fetch me the theatre doctor."
And M. Mifroid repeated:
"Curious! very curious affair!"
Then he turned toward the interior of the small room, addressing persons whom, from the place where they were, neither Raoul nor the Persian could perceive.
"What do you say of all this, gentlemen?" he asked. "You are the only ones who give no opinion. You must however have a little one..."
Then, above the landing, Raoul and the Persian saw advance the two distraught faces of the Messieurs the directors—one saw only their faces above the landing—and they heard the moved voice of Moncharmin:
"There are things happening here, Mr. Commissioner, that we cannot explain to ourselves."
And the two faces disappeared.
"Thank you for the information, gentlemen," said Mifroid, bantering.
But the stage manager, whose chin then rested in the hollow of his right hand, which is the gesture of profound reflection, said:
"This is not the first time that Mauclair has fallen asleep at the theatre. I remember having found him one evening, snoring in his little niche, next to his snuffbox."
"That was long ago?" asked M. Mifroid, wiping with meticulous care the glasses of his lorgnon, for, M. the commissioner was nearsighted, as happens to the most beautiful eyes in the world.
"Good Lord!..." said the stage manager... "no, it was not very long ago... See here!... It was in the evening... Upon my word yes... it was the evening when Carlotta, you know well, Mr. Commissioner, launched her famous croak!..."
"Really, the evening when Carlotta launched her famous croak?"
And M. Mifroid having replaced upon his nose the binocular with transparent glasses, fixed attentively the stage manager, as if he wished to penetrate his thought.
"Mauclair takes snuff then?..." asked he in a negligent tone.
"But yes, Mr. Commissioner... See, here is precisely upon this little plank his snuffbox... Oh! he is a great snuff-taker."
"And so am I!" said M. Mifroid, and he put the snuffbox in his pocket.
Raoul and the Persian assisted, without anyone suspecting their presence, at the removal of the three bodies that some stagehands came to carry away. The commissioner followed them and everyone behind him, remounted. One heard, for a few instants still, their steps resounding upon the stage floor.
When they were alone, the Persian signed to Raoul to raise himself. The latter obeyed; but as, at the same time, he had not replaced the hand raised before the eyes, ready to fire, as the Persian never failed to do, the latter recommended him to take up that position again and not to depart from it, whatever might happen.
"But that tires the hand uselessly!" murmured Raoul, "and if I fire, I shall no longer be sure of myself!"
"Change your weapon to the other hand, then!" conceded the Persian.
"I do not know how to fire with the left hand!"
To which the Persian replied with this bizarre declaration, which was evidently not made to clarify the situation in the young man's overthrown brain:
"_It is not a question of firing with the left hand or the right hand; it is a question of having one of your hands placed as if it were about to work the trigger of a pistol, the arm being half bent; as for the pistol itself, after all, you may put it in your pocket._"
And he added:
"Let this be understood, or I answer for nothing more! It is a question of life or death. Now, silence and follow me!"
They then found themselves in the second underside; Raoul caught only a glimpse, by the glow of some motionless little lamps, here and there, in their glass prisons, of an infinitesimal part of that extravagant abyss, sublime and childish, amusing as a Punch-and-Judy box, frightful as a gulf, which are the undersides of the stage at the Opera.
They are formidable and five in number. They all reproduce the plans of the stage, its traps and its little traps. The side pieces alone are there replaced by rails. Transverse frameworks support traps and little traps. Posts, resting upon cast-iron or stone blocks, upon ground sills or "top hats," form series of trusses that permit leaving a free passage to the "glories" and other combinations or tricks. One gives these apparatus a certain stability by connecting them by means of iron hooks and according to the needs of the moment. The windlasses, the drums, the counterweights are generously distributed in the undersides. They serve to maneuver the great sets, to operate the changes in view, to provoke the sudden disappearance of the personages of fairyland. It is from the undersides, said MM. X., Y., Z., who devoted to the work of Garnier a study so interesting, it is from the undersides that one transforms the decrepit into handsome cavaliers, the hideous witches into radiant fairies of youth. Satan comes from the undersides, just as he sinks back into them. The lights of hell escape from them, the choruses of demons take their place there.
... And the phantoms walk there as in their own home...
Raoul followed the Persian, obeying to the letter his recommendations, not trying to understand the gestures he ordered him... telling himself that he had no hope but in him.
... What would he have done without his companion in that alarming labyrinth?
Would he not have been stopped at every step, by the prodigious crisscrossing of beams and ropes? Would he not have caught himself, unable to untangle, in that gigantic spider's web?
And if he had been able to pass through that net of threads and counterweights ceaselessly reborn before him, did he not run the risk of falling into one of those holes that opened at instants under his steps and whose bottom of darkness the eye could not perceive!
... They descended... They descended still...
Now, they were in the third underside.
And their march was always lit by some distant little lamp.
The lower they descended and the more the Persian seemed to take precautions... He never ceased turning toward Raoul and recommending him to hold himself as he should, showing him the way he himself held his fist, now disarmed, but always ready to fire as if he had had a pistol.
Suddenly a resounding voice nailed them on the spot. Someone, above them, was shouting.
"To the stage all the 'door-closers!' The police commissioner asks for them!"
... One heard steps, and shadows glided in the shadow. The Persian had drawn Raoul behind a flat... They saw pass near them, above them, old men bent by the years and the ancient burden of opera sets. Certain could barely drag themselves...; others, by habit, the back low and the hands forward, sought doors to close.
For they were the door-closers... the exhausted old stagehands of whom a charitable management had taken pity... It had made them door-closers in the undersides, in the uppers. They went and came ceaselessly from top to bottom of the stage to close the doors—and they were also called at that time, for since, I believe they are all dead: "the drafts hunters."
The drafts, from wherever they come, are very bad for the voice[3].
The Persian and Raoul congratulated themselves in _aside_ on this incident which rid them of embarrassing witnesses, for some of the door-closers, having nothing more to do and having scarcely a dwelling, remained by laziness or by need, at the Opera, where they passed the night. One could bump into them, wake them, draw upon oneself a demand for explanations. The inquiry of M. Mifroid kept our two companions momentarily from these bad encounters.
But they were not long in enjoying their solitude... Other shadows, now, descended the same path by which the "door-closers" had mounted. These shadows each had before it a small lantern... which they agitated strongly, carrying it high, low, examining all around them and seeming, of evident certainty, to seek something or someone.
"Devil!" murmured the Persian... "I know not what they seek, but they might well find us... let us flee!... quickly!... Hand on guard, sir, always ready to fire!... Bend the arm, more, there!... the hand at eye level, as if you were dueling and awaiting the command of 'fire!...' Leave your pistol in your pocket!... Quick, let us descend!" (He dragged Raoul into the fourth underside)... "at eye level, question of life or death!... There, by here, this staircase!" (they arrived at the fifth underside)... "Ah! what a duel, sir, what a duel!..."
The Persian having arrived at the bottom of the fifth underside, breathed... He seemed to enjoy a little more security than he had shown just now when the two had stopped at the third, but however he did not depart from the attitude of the hand!...
Raoul had time to wonder once more—without, moreover, making any new observation, none! for in truth, it was not the moment—to wonder, I say, in silence, at this extraordinary conception of personal defense which consisted in keeping one's pistol in one's pocket while the hand remained all ready to use it as if the pistol were still in the hand, at eye level; position of waiting for the command of "fire!" in the duel of that epoch.
And, on this subject Raoul believed he could still think this: "I remember quite well that he said to me: 'They are pistols of which I am sure.'"
Whence it seemed logical to him to draw this interrogative conclusion: "What can it matter to him to be sure of a pistol of which he finds it useless to make use?"
But the Persian stopped him in his vague attempts at cogitation. Signaling him to stay in place, he remounted a few steps of the staircase they had just left. Then rapidly, he returned to Raoul.
"We are stupid," he whispered to him, "we shall soon be rid of the shadows with lanterns... They are the firemen who are making their round[4]."
The two men then remained on the defensive for at least five long minutes, then the Persian drew Raoul again toward the staircase they had just descended; but, suddenly, his gesture ordered him immobility anew.
... Before them, the night stirred.
"Flat on your belly!" whispered the Persian!
The two men stretched out upon the ground.
It was none too soon.
... A shadow that this time carried no lantern, ...a shadow simply in the shadow passed.
It passed near them close enough to touch them.
They felt, upon their faces, the warm breath of its cloak...
For they could sufficiently distinguish it to see that the shadow had a cloak which enveloped it from head to foot. Upon the head, a soft felt hat.
... It moved away, grazing the walls with its foot and sometimes, giving, in the corners, kicks to the walls.
"Ouf!" said the Persian... "we had a narrow escape... This shadow knows me and has already brought me back twice to the director's office."
"Is it someone from the theatre police?" asked Raoul.
"It is someone far worse!" answered the Persian without other explanation[5].
"Is it not.... _him?_"
"_Him?_... if he does not arrive from behind, we shall always see his golden eyes!... That is a bit our strength in the night. But he can arrive from behind... on cat's paws... and we are dead if we do not always hold our hands as if they were about to fire, at eye level, in front!"
The Persian had not finished formulating anew this "line of attitude" than, before the two men, a fantastic figure appeared.
... An entire figure... a face; not merely two golden eyes.
... But a whole luminous face... a whole figure on fire!
Yes, a figure on fire that advanced at man's height, _but without a body!_
This figure gave off fire.
It appeared, in the night, like a flame in the shape of a man's figure.
"Oh!" said the Persian through his teeth, "it is the first time I see it!... The lieutenant of firemen was not mad! He had well seen it, him!... What is that flame there? It is not _him!_ but it is perhaps _him_ who sends it to us!... Attention!... Attention!... Your hand at eye level, in the name of heaven!... at eye level!"
The figure on fire, which appeared a figure of hell—of a flaming demon—advanced always at man's height, without body, toward the two astounded men...
"_He_ perhaps sends us that figure from in front, to better surprise us from behind... or from the sides... one never knows with him!... I know many of his tricks!... but that one!... that one!... I do not yet know it!... Let us flee!... by prudence!... is it not?... by prudence!... the hand at eye level..."
And they fled, both, all along the long underground corridor that opened before them.
At the end of some seconds of this race, which seemed to them long, long minutes, they stopped.
"Yet," said the Persian, "_he_ rarely comes by here! This side does not concern him!... This side does not lead to the Lake nor to the dwelling of the Lake!... But he perhaps knows that we are _on his heels!_... though I promised him to leave him in peace henceforth and no longer occupy myself with his affairs."
Saying this, he turned his head, and Raoul also turned his head.
Now, they perceived again the head on fire behind their two heads. It had followed them... And it must have run also and perhaps faster than them, for it seemed to them that it had drawn nearer.
At the same time, they began to distinguish a certain noise whose nature it was impossible for them to guess; they simply realized that this noise seemed to move and draw nearer with the flame-figure-man. They were creakings or rather scratchings, as if thousands of nails were being rasped upon the blackboard, a frightfully unbearable noise which is still sometimes produced by a small stone inside the stick of chalk that comes grating against the blackboard.
They recoiled still, but the flame-figure advanced, advanced always, gaining upon them. One could see very well its features now. The eyes were quite round and fixed, the nose a bit askew and the mouth large with a lower lip in a half-circle, hanging; about like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is all red, the color of blood.
How did this red moon glide in the darkness, at man's height without support, without a body to sustain it, at least apparently? And how did it go so fast, straight on, with its fixed eyes, so fixed? And all this grating, cracking, scratching that it dragged with it, whence came it?
At a moment, the Persian and Raoul could no longer recoil and they flattened themselves against the wall, not knowing what was going to befall them because of this incomprehensible figure of fire and above all, now, of the more intense noise, more swarming, more alive, very "numerous," for certainly this noise was made of hundreds of little noises that moved in the darkness, under the flame-head.
It advances, the flame-head... there it is!... with its noise!... there it is at level!...
And the two companions, flattened against the wall, feel their hair stand on end with horror upon their heads, for they know now whence come the thousand noises. They come in a troop, rolled in the shadow by innumerable little pressed waves, more rapid than the waves that trot upon the sand, at the rising tide, the little waves of night that foam under the moon, under the moon-flame-head.
And the little waves pass into their legs, mount into their legs, irresistibly. Then, Raoul and the Persian can no longer hold back their cries of horror, of fright and of pain.
They can no longer either, continue to hold their hands at eye level,—the stance of the pistol duel at that epoch, before the command of: "Fire!"—Their hands descend to their legs to push back the little shining islets, and which roll little sharp things, the waves that are full of paws, and of nails, and of claws, and of teeth.
Yes, yes, Raoul and the Persian are ready to faint like the fireman lieutenant Papin. But the fire-head has turned toward them at their howling. And it speaks to them:
"Do not move! Do not move!... Above all, do not follow me!... It is I, the rat-killer!... Let me pass with my rats!..."
And abruptly, the fire-head disappears, vanished in the darkness, while before it the corridor, far off, lights up, simple result of the maneuver that the rat-killer has just made his dark lantern undergo. A moment ago, so as not to frighten the rats before him, he had turned his dark lantern upon himself, illuminating his own head; now to hasten his flight, he lights the black space before her... Then he leaps, dragging with him all the waves of rats, climbing, scratching, all the thousand noises...
The Persian and Raoul, freed, breathe, though still trembling.
"I should have remembered that Erik had spoken to me of the rat-killer," said the Persian, "but he had not told me that he presented himself under this aspect... and it is strange that I never encountered him[6]."
"Ah! I truly believed it was again one of the monster's tricks!..." sighed he... "But no! He never comes in these parts!"
"Are we then very far from the lake?" asked Raoul. "When shall we arrive, sir?... Let us go to the lake! Let us go to the lake!... When we are at the lake we shall call, we shall shake the walls, we shall cry!... Christine will hear us!... And _Him_ also will hear us!... And since you know him, we shall speak to him!"
"Child!" said the Persian... "We shall never enter the dwelling of the Lake by the Lake!"
"Why is that?"
"Because it is there that he has accumulated all his defense... Myself I could never land on the other shore!... on the shore of the house!... One must cross the lake first... and it is well guarded!... I fear that more than one of those—old stagehands, old door-closers—whom one never saw again, did simply attempt to cross the lake... It is terrible... I myself almost remained there... If the monster had not recognized me in time!.... A counsel, sir, never approach the Lake... And above all, stop your ears if you hear singing _the Voice under the Water_, the voice of the Siren."
"But then," resumed Raoul in a transport of fever, of impatience and of rage, "what are we doing here?... If you can do nothing for Christine, at least leave me to die for her."
The Persian tried to calm the young man.
"We have but one means to save Christine Daaé, believe me, which is to penetrate into that dwelling without the monster perceiving it."
"May we hope for that, sir?"
"Eh! if I had not that hope, I should not have come to seek you!"
"And by where may one enter the dwelling of the Lake, without passing by the Lake?"
"By the third underside, whence we were so unfortunately chased... sir, and where we are going to return this very step... I am going to tell you, sir," said the Persian, his voice suddenly altered... "I am going to tell you the exact spot... It is found between a truss and an abandoned set of _The King of Lahore_, exactly, exactly at the place where Joseph Buquet died..."
"Ah! that chief stagehand that one found hanged?"
"Yes, sir," added the Persian in a singular tone, "and whose rope one could never recover!... Come! courage... and on the way!... and put your hand on guard again, sir... But where are we then?"
The Persian had to light his dark lantern anew. He directed its luminous jet upon two vast corridors that crossed at a right angle and whose vaults were lost in the infinite.
"We must be," said he, "in the part reserved more particularly for the water service... I perceive no fire coming from the calorifiers."
He preceded Raoul, seeking his way, stopping abruptly when he dreaded the passage of some _hydraulician_, then they had to dodge the glow of a sort of subterranean forge that one was finishing extinguishing and before which Raoul recognized the demons half-seen by Christine during her first voyage on the day of her first captivity.
Thus, they little by little returned even beneath the prodigious undersides of the stage.
They must then have been quite at the bottom of the _tank_, at a very great depth, if one considers that the earth was dug _fifteen meters below the water beds_ which existed in all this part of the capital; and one had to exhaust all the water... So much was drawn off that, to form an idea of the mass of water expelled by the pumps, one would have to represent upon the surface the court of the Louvre and in height once and a half the towers of Notre-Dame. All the same, one had to keep a lake.
At this moment, the Persian touched a wall and said:
"If I am not mistaken, here is a wall that might well belong to the dwelling of the lake!"
He was then striking against a wall of the tank. And perhaps it is not useless that the reader know how the bottom and the walls of the tank were constructed.
In order to avoid that the waters which surround the construction should remain in immediate contact with the walls supporting all the re-establishment of the theatrical machinery of which the ensemble of carpentry, joinery, ironwork, painted canvases in distemper must be especially preserved from humidity, _the architect found himself in the necessity of establishing everywhere a double envelope._
The work of this double envelope demanded a whole year. It is against the wall of the first interior envelope that the Persian was striking while speaking to Raoul of the dwelling of the Lake. For someone who had known the architecture of the monument, the gesture of the Persian seemed to indicate that _the mysterious house of Erik had been constructed in the double envelope_, formed of a thick wall built in cofferdam, then by a wall of bricks, an enormous layer of cement and another wall of several meters in thickness.
At the Persian's words, Raoul had thrown himself against the wall, and avidly listened.
... But he heard nothing... nothing but distant steps that resounded upon the floor in the high parts of the theatre.
The Persian had extinguished his lantern anew.
"Attention!" said he... "beware the hand! and now silence! for we are going to try again to penetrate into his house."
And he drew him to the little staircase that a moment ago they had descended.
... They remounted, stopping at each step, spying upon shadow and silence...
Thus they found themselves again at the third underside...
The Persian then signed to Raoul to kneel, and it is thus, dragging themselves upon the knees and upon one hand—the other hand being always in the indicated position—that they arrived against the back wall.
Against this wall, there was a vast abandoned canvas of the set of _The King of Lahore._
... And, quite near this set, a flat...
Between this set and this flat, there was just the space of a body.
... A body, that one day had been found hanged... the body of Joseph Buquet.
The Persian, always upon his knees, had stopped. He listened.
For a moment, he seemed to hesitate and looked at Raoul, then his eyes fixed above, toward the second underside, which sent them the faint glow of a lantern, in the interval of two planks.
Evidently, this glow embarrassed the Persian.
At last, he nodded and decided.
He slipped between the flat and the set of _The King of Lahore._
Raoul was at his heels.
The Persian's free hand felt the wall. Raoul saw him an instant press strongly upon the wall as he had pressed upon the wall of Christine's dressing room...
... And a stone tipped...
There was now a hole in the wall...
The Persian this time drew his pistol from his pocket and indicated to Raoul that he should imitate him. He cocked the pistol.
And resolutely, always on his knees, he engaged himself in the hole that the stone, in tipping, had made in the wall.
Raoul, who had wished to pass first, had to content himself with following.
This hole was very narrow. The Persian stopped almost immediately. Raoul heard him feel the stone around him. And then, he drew out his dark lantern again and leaned forward, examined something beneath him and extinguished the lantern at once. Raoul heard him say in a whisper:
"We shall have to let ourselves fall some meters, without noise; undo your boots."
The Persian was already proceeding himself with this operation. He passed his shoes to Raoul.
"Set them down," said he, "beyond the wall... We shall find them again on leaving[7]."
Thereupon, the Persian advanced a little. Then, he turned quite around, always on his knees and found himself thus face to face with Raoul. He said to him:
"I am going to suspend myself by the hands from the extremity of the stone and let myself fall _into his house._ Afterwards, you shall do exactly as I. Fear not: I shall receive you in my arms."
The Persian did as he said; and, below him, Raoul soon heard a muffled noise which was evidently produced by the fall of the Persian. The young man started in the fear that this noise might reveal their presence.
However, more than this noise, the absence of all other noise was for Raoul an awful subject of anguish. How! according to the Persian, they had just penetrated into the very walls of the dwelling of the Lake, and one heard not Christine!... Not a cry!... Not a call!... Not a moan!... Great gods! were they arriving too late?...
Scraping, with his knees, the masonry, clinging to the stone with his nervous fingers, Raoul, in his turn, let himself fall.
And immediately he felt an embrace.
"It is I!" said the Persian, "silence!"
And they remained immobile, listening...
Never, around them, had the night been more opaque...
Never the silence more heavy nor more terrible...
Raoul dug his nails into his lips so as not to howl: "Christine! It is I!... Answer me if you are not dead, Christine!"
At last, the play of the dark lantern recommenced. The Persian directed its rays above their heads, against the masonry, seeking the hole by which they had come and no longer finding it...
"Oh!" said he... "the stone has closed of itself."
And the luminous jet of the lantern descended along the wall, then down to the parquet.
The Persian bent and picked up something, a sort of thread that he examined a second and rejected with horror.
"_The thread of the Punjab!_" murmured he.
"What is it?" asked Raoul.
"That," answered the Persian shuddering, "that might well be the rope of the hanged man that was so much sought!..."
And, suddenly seized with a new anxiety, he passed the little red disk of his lantern over the walls... Thus he lit, bizarre event, a tree trunk that seemed still quite alive with its leaves... and the branches of this tree climbed all along the wall and were lost in the ceiling.
Because of the smallness of the luminous disk, it was difficult at first to make out things... one saw a corner of branches... and then a leaf... and another... and beside, one saw nothing at all... nothing but the luminous jet that seemed to reflect itself... Raoul slid his hand over this nothing at all, over this reflection...
"Why!" said he... "the wall, it is a mirror!"
"Yes! a mirror!" said the Persian, in the tone of the most profound emotion. And he added, passing his hand that held the pistol over his sweating brow:
"We have fallen into the torture chamber!"
[Note 3: M. Pedro Gailhard related to me himself that he had still created posts of door-closers for old stagehands, whom he did not himself wish to put out the door.]
[Note 4: At that epoch, the firemen still had mission, outside of performances, to watch over the security of the Opera; but this service has since been suppressed. As I asked M. Pedro Gailhard the reason, he answered me that "it was because one had feared that in their perfect inexperience of the undersides of the theatre, _they would set it on fire_."]
[Note 5: The author, no more than the Persian, will give other explanation on this appearance of that shadow there. While all in this historical story will be normally, in the course of events sometimes apparently abnormal, explained, the author will not expressly make the reader understand what the Persian meant by these words: It is someone far worse! (than someone from the theatre police). The reader must guess it, for the author has promised the ex-director of the Opera, M. Pedro Gailhard, to keep him the secret on the extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering shadow in the cloak who, while condemning himself to live in the undersides of the theatre, rendered such prodigious services to those who, on gala evenings for example, dare to risk themselves _in the uppers._ I speak here of services of state, and I cannot say more, my word.]
[Note 6: The former director of the Opera, M. Pedro Gailhard, told me one day at cap d'Ail, at Mme Pierre Wolff's, all the immense subterranean depredation due to the ravage of rats, until the day when the administration treated, for a rather elevated price moreover, with an individual who undertook to suppress the scourge by coming to make a turn in the cellars every fortnight.
Since, there are no more rats at the Opera, save those admitted to the dancers' foyer. M. Gailhard thought that this man had discovered a secret perfume that attracted the rats to him like the "cock-up" with which certain fishermen garnish their legs attracts the fish. He drew them, on his steps, into some vault, where the rats, intoxicated, let themselves be drowned. We have seen the fright that the appearance of this figure had already caused the fireman lieutenant, a fright that had gone to the point of fainting—conversation with M. Gailhard—and, for me, there is no doubt that the flame-head encountered by this fireman is the same that put into so cruel a stir the Persian and the Viscount of Chagny (papers of the Persian).]
[Note 7: One never recovered those two pairs of boots which had been deposited, according to the papers of the Persian, just between the flat and the set of _The King of Lahore_, at the place where one had found Joseph Buquet hanged. They must have been taken by some stagehand or "door-closer".]
