It is not without a certain emotion that I begin to recount here the extraordinary adventures of Joseph Rouletabille. Down to the present time he had so firmly opposed my doing it that I had come to d...

I remember as well as if it had occurred yesterday, the entry of young Rouletabille into my bedroom that morning. It was about eight o’clock and I was still in bed reading the article in the Matin rel...

Half an hour later Rouletabille and I were on the platform of the Orleans station, awaiting the departure of the train which was to take us to Epinay-sur-Orge. On the platform we found Monsieur de Mar...

The Château du Glandier is one of the oldest châteaux in the Ile de France, where so many building remains of the feudal period are still standing. Built originally in the heart of the forest, in the ...

Rouletabille and I had been walking for several minutes, by the side of a long wall bounding the vast property of Monsieur Stangerson and had already come within sight of the entrance gate, when our a...

We reached the château, and, as we approached it, saw four gendarmes pacing in front of a little door in the ground floor of the donjon. We soon learned that in this ground floor, which had formerly s...

Rouletabille having pushed open the door of The Yellow Room paused on the threshold saying, with an emotion which I only later understood, “Ah, the perfume of the lady in black!” The chamber was dark....

Two minutes later, as Rouletabille was bending over the footprints discovered in the park, under the window of the vestibule, a man, evidently a servant at the château, came towards us rapidly and cal...

The three of us went back towards the pavilion. At some distance from the building the reporter made us stop and, pointing to a small clump of trees to the right of us, said:⁠— “That’s where the murde...

The Donjon Inn was of no imposing appearance; but I like these buildings with their rafters blackened with age and the smoke of their hearths⁠—these inns of the coaching-days, crumbling erections that...

Among the mass of papers, legal documents, memoirs, and extracts from newspapers, which I have collected, relating to the mystery of “The Yellow Room,” there is one very interesting piece; it is a det...

It was not till six o’clock that I left the château, taking with me the article hastily written by my friend in the little sitting-room which Monsieur Robert Darzac had placed at our disposal. The rep...

A week after the occurrence of the events I have just recounted⁠—on the 2nd of November, to be exact⁠—I received at my home in Paris the following telegraphic message: “Come to the Glandier by the ear...

“I must take you,” said Rouletabille, “so as to enable you to understand, to the various scenes. I myself believe that I have discovered what everybody else is searching for, namely, how the murderer ...

“Last night⁠—the night between the 29th and 30th of October⁠—” wrote Joseph Rouletabille, “I woke up towards one o’clock in the morning. Was it sleeplessness, or noise without?⁠—The cry of the Bête du...

“I am again at the windowsill,” continues Rouletabille, “and once more I raise my head above it. Through an opening in the curtains, the arrangement of which has not been changed, I am ready to look, ...

“Mademoiselle Stangerson appeared at the door of her anteroom,” continues Rouletabille’s notebook. “We were near her door in the gallery where this incredible phenomenon had taken place. There are mom...

“We separated on the thresholds of our rooms, with a melancholy shake of the hands. I was glad to have aroused in him a suspicion of error. His was an original brain, very intelligent but⁠—without met...

It was not until later that Rouletabille sent me the Notebook in which he had written at length the story of the phenomenon of the inexplicable gallery. On the day I arrived at the Glandier and joined...

“You remember me, Monsieur?” asked Rouletabille. “Perfectly!” replied Arthur Rance. “I recognise you as the lad at the bar. [The face of Rouletabille crimsoned at being called a “lad.”] I want to shak...

The act, which staggered me, did not appear to affect Rouletabille much. We returned to his room and, without even referring to what we had seen, he gave me his final instructions for the night. First...

I bent in great anxiety over the body of the reporter and had the joy to find that he was deeply sleeping, the same unhealthy sleep that I had seen fall upon Frédéric Larsan. He had succumbed to the i...

I had hardly recovered from the surprise into which this new discovery had plunged me, when Rouletabille touched me on the shoulder and asked me to follow him into his room. “What are we going to do t...

Mademoiselle Stangerson had been for the second time almost murdered. Unfortunately, she was in too weak a state to bear the severer injuries of this second attack as well as she had those of the firs...

That same evening Rouletabille and I left the Glandier. We were very glad to get away and there was nothing more to keep us there. I declared my intention to give up the whole matter. It had been too ...

On the 15th of January, that is to say, two months and a half after the tragic events I have narrated, the Epoque printed, as the first column of the front page, the following sensational article:⁠— “...

The excitement was extreme. Cries from fainting women were to be heard amid the extraordinary bustle and stir. The “majesty of the law” was utterly forgotten. The President tried in vain to make himse...

Great excitement prevailed when Rouletabille had finished. The courtroom became agitated with the murmurings of suppressed applause. Maître Henri Robert called for an adjournment of the trial and was ...

During the days that followed I had several opportunities to question him as to his reason for his voyage to America, but I obtained no more precise answers than he had given me on the evening of the ...

When I wrote these lines, Joseph Rouletabille was eighteen years of age⁠—and he spoke of his “youth.” I have kept the text of my friend, but I inform the reader here that the episode of the mystery of...