Gaston Leroux: The Mystery of the Yellow Room

CHAPTER 14: "I Expect the Assassin This Evening" (continued)

"Because I know that he must come."

Rouletabille very slowly filled his pipe and lit it. That meant an interesting story. At that moment we heard some one walking in the gallery and passing before our door. Rouletabille listened. The sound of the footstep died away in the distance.

"Is Frederic Larsan in his room?" I asked, pointing to the partition.

"No," my friend answered. "He went to Paris this morning, - still on the scent of Darzac, who also left for Paris. That matter will turn out badly. I expect that Monsieur Darzac will be arrested in the course of the next week. The worst of it is that everything seems to be in league against him, - circumstances, things, people. Not an hour passes without bringing some new evidence against him. The examining magistrate is overwhelmed by it - and blind."

"Frederic Larsan, however, is not a novice," I said.

"I thought so," said Rouletabile, with a slightly contemptuous turn of his lips, "I fancied he was a much abler man. I had, indeed, a great admiration for him, before I got to know his method of working. It's deplorable. He owes his reputation solely to his ability; but he lacks reasoning power, - the mathematics of his ideas are very poor."

I looked closely at Rouletabille and could not help smiling, on hearing this boy of eighteeen talking of a man who had proved to the world that he was the finest police sleuth in Europe.

"You smile," he said? "you are wrong! I swear I will outwit him - and in a striking way! But I must make haste about it, for he has an enormous start on me - given him by Monsieur Robert Darzac, who is this evening going to increase it still more. Think of it! - every time the murderer comes to the chateau, Monsieur Darzac, by a strange fatality, absents himself and refuses to give any account of how he employs his time."

"Every time the assassin comes to the chateau!" I cried. "Has he returned then -?"