Chapter 6: A Persian Legend
Pensively, Alice turned another page in the volume she was reading. Her research at the Bibliothèque Nationale had consumed the entire afternoon, while she perched at a wide mahogany table and searched through maritime handbooks and volumes on India's history. She had hoped to find the source of the strange noose discovered around the neck of the murder victim found at the Place Denfert-Rochereau.
In her left hand, she unconsciously wound the rope around her fingers, its intricate knot resting in her palm. As if the fibrous texture invoked remembrance of a distant dream, she stared down at the knot and recalled the scene of the murder. The dead man's eyes had been open, bulging out of his skull like two slimy eggs from the suffocating effects of the noose. But Alice had also seen the terrible fear written on his frozen expression. Before the man died, he had received a horrible fright, worse than the mere realization that he was going to die. What had that man seen?
She returned her focus to the book before her on the table and slowly turned another page. Idly her eyes scanned the text as her mind continued to wander. Perhaps she had begun her research too hastily, she thought. She should have prepared herself before plunging into a pile of books. Instead, it seemed that her entire day had been exhausted in a futile search, and her weary thoughts were beginning to run in circles while her slender fingers readied to turn yet another page softened with years of use.
But something on the leaf caught her eye. Blinking in confusion, she leaned closer. As if her thoughts had conjured it, there on the page was an ink-drawn image of what she held in her hand! The scratchy, illustrated chord wound tightly around itself like a deadly cobra, its caption naming it the Punjab Lasso and describing how the knot was tied. It also noted that the lasso's strength derived from the jute fiber of its rope. Alice's tired mind wandered as she read again the name of this unusual weapon. Had she read before of the Punjab Lasso? She felt as though she recognized its name. In her twisted thoughts, she began to imagine that she was somehow linked to the history of this bizarre lasso…
A sudden noise echoing in the empty library awakened her from her reverie. Startled, she sprang from her chair like a bird taking wing. The noise was only the grandfather clock striking seven, and she placed a hand over her bosom to steady her heart. Already the sun had nearly set outside the library's tall windows. The librarian was making his rounds lighting the lamps and pulling the curtains closed. Perhaps, Alice reasoned, she was skittish from sitting in the library for too long without exercise.
Still reflecting on the knot's illustration, Alice rose to stretch her legs and wound her way through the aisles of musty volumes. The corridors were deadly silent—the library would only be open a few more hours, and most of the patrons had left to return home before nightfall. Stopping to rub her tired eyelids, Alice found herself at the Near East collections. These were among her favorite books, with descriptions and diagrams of places and palaces that most people could only visit in dreams. And yet, according to the information, the geography was real, and its people truly exist. Alice smiled as she recalled her meeting with the Persian, and his unusual drawing room. It seemed her books had come to life.
Curious, she pulled out a volume on Persia and thumbed through the pages. Another half-hour passed as she knelt in the corridor, admiring the beautiful images. But there was something unexpected about one picture. To her astonishment, hanging from the iron tree of a chamber of mirrors was the same noose she held in her hand. A shiver ran along her shoulders. What trick of fate kept bringing this terrible weapon before her eyes? Above the illustration, the caption described the torture chamber and its terrible Punjab Lasso. What's more, the text informed her that the Shah had ordered the execution of all who had been involved in the creation of his palace in Mazenderan, including the making of the horrid torture chamber, so that such structures could never be recreated!
Alice's heart skipped a beat. Hadn't she seen an exact replica beneath the Opera? The room she had believed to be so beautiful was in fact a chamber of torture! Certainly, then, someone who had produced this awful room intended for pain and suffering had escaped his fate and had built a second chamber. The idea seemed too fantastic and incredible, but she had seen the torture chamber with her own eyes, and here she held its weapon in her slender hands! She opened her fist and stared at the knot, trembling with realization. The horrible massacres in Mazenderan…. torture…. a weapon for inflicting agonizing pain… the architect of all this was in Paris!
"Mademoiselle Mifroid," a startling voice whispered behind her.
Alarmed, Alice turned to find the Persian standing in the aisle. She sighed and let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Forgive me, Monsieur, I wasn't expecting you." She stood and returned the book to its shelf, still trembling. The night was proving to be unnerving.
What she had been reading had not escaped his notice, nor had the broken weapon in her hand.
"Mademoiselle, I have warned you about the deadly secrets of the Opera, and I've cautioned you that these are not secrets best unearthed."
"Monsieur, you are not an officer of the police," she said with indignation, throwing his words back at him. "I do what I please. You can't prevent me from looking at a few books."
"But I can inform a certain commissioner of the Sûreté that his daughter has broken into the Paris Opera at night, to look for a ghost whom he believes does not exist."
Alice stepped back in surprise, outrage betrayed in her eyes. "How do you know where I've been? And how did you find me here? Have you been following me?"
From behind the shelves, the floor creaked with slow footsteps.
The Persian peered into the dark aisles with his wide, jade eyes. "We should not allow our conversation to be overheard," he whispered to her. "Come."
They walked silently out of the library, winding through the great labyrinth of shelves. Twice they thought they heard a shuffle or a knock behind them, but each time they both turned and found the space to be empty.
Once outside, Alice waited in the warm night air while the Persian frantically searched for a hansom cab. They asked to be driven to the Rue Scribe. The Persian did not resume their private discussion until they were well away from the deserted library. "I was not following you that night, Mademoiselle. I was… looking for something in the street when I saw you climb out of one of the sewer gates leading to the Opera. I could only guess that you had gained entrance through some clandestine means."
Sitting opposite him in the dark cab, Alice fought to control her frustration at having been discovered. "And how did you know that the gate's tunnel led to the Opera's cellars rather than to its sewers?"
The Persian looked away into the darkness outside the cab, avoiding her eyes. "That is my own affair."
"Or is that one of Erik's secrets?" she asked sarcastically.
"Mademoiselle, I can see that you are not taking kindly to my concern. If you knew what lay beneath the Opera, you would not venture down into it alone, or at all, for that matter."
"I have already been down there, Monsieur, and I saw all of it."
The Persian stared at her. "How much did you see?" he asked, his voice tight with astonishment. "How did you escape with your life?"
"I found a trap door next to a set piece from Le Roi de Lahore—"
"Ya Allah," the Persian groaned. "You went straight into his torture chamber then."
"Yes," she replied, looking strangely at her companion. How did he already know that if he hadn't been following her?
"But tell me, how did you escape? How could you escape?" He leaned towards her excitedly.
"There was a small cellar, with barrels in it, beneath the floor—"
"Yes, yes, you push the pin to open the trapdoor under the iron branch… but I know that. But how did you escape?"
"You seem to be very excited to hear this story, Monsieur."
He made an effort to control himself. "It has been an obsession ever since I myself was in that room. I couldn't solve the chamber's riddle."
Uncertain what he meant, and disturbed that he could have left the torture chamber without knowing how it was done, she nevertheless explained to him how she escaped the chamber and the other trapdoors she encountered while in the house beside the lake.
"I see," he commented at last, stroking his black beard thoughtfully, "It's so simple… But Mademoiselle, you must believe me when I tell you that you are in very grave danger, and you should never go down to that house again."
"But why, Monsieur?"
"Because I fear the chamber's architect has returned to his abode!"
She remembered what she had been reading in the library when the Persian had appeared. "Monsieur, how do you know this man?"
He smiled at her question and leaned back in his seat. "You mean you haven't learned that yet, from your library research?"
"Either you are the man himself, or maybe somehow you saved him from execution."
It had only been a guess, but her rapid deduction surprised him. "Yes, I saved his life."
Her confidence growing, Alice pulled the severed Punjab Lasso from her pocket. "Monsieur, we all may be in danger. A man was murdered at the entrance to the catacombs, and our architect's weapon was around the victim's neck."
"Ah!" he sighed, eyeing the rope with wide eyes in what could only be described as a look of paralyzed fear. "When did the murder take place?"
"The police found the body early last week. That's why I initially came to you."
"And who was the victim?"
"It seems he was just a homeless man."
"I see." He returned to stroking his beard pensively.
"Monsieur, I can tell the police what I know. I will lead them down there myself, and then they can search for him. This Punjab Lasso is our proof. The books put it in the torture chamber. Everything fits. We just need your help to tell the police what he looks like."
The Persian shook his head and sighed. "If you truly were in his house, and you didn't catch him there, then no one will find him. Take this token you have in your hand as a warning —if you go looking for him even now, he may find you before you find him, and his welcome will not be hospitable."
At last the Persian's warnings had their intended effect. Frightened, Alice touched her slender, fragile neck. Indeed, the danger was real. Slowly she realized how rashly she had behaved, how near to death she had come by foolishly exploring the subterranean house of a man who invented torture chambers! My God, she thought, the gun powder…
"But… he murdered men, Monsieur. He must be caught and punished for his crimes." She frowned. "It seems to me that you are protecting this man."
"That man has murdered far more souls in far more ways than your innocent gender could ever imagine." The Persian looked down at his hand. He had pulled several hairs from his beard without noticing. "But remember, I saved his life before, and with reason. You do not yet know all of his secrets. Yes, he's a genius whose hands can cause death, but those same hands can lift our lives to the heavens through his fascinating talents. Tell me honestly, Mademoiselle, what was your first reaction to his torture chamber? Were you terrified for your life?"
In answer she lowered her eyes, ashamed at what she knew her reaction had been.
"No," he continued, "I know that rather you must have been enchanted by its beauty. It was the same for me in Mazenderan when he unveiled its first creation. That such an invention was constructed for such dark deeds was really the furthest expectation from my mind. But even in the death that surrounds it, is it not magnificent? Like a work of art. And so it is with all of his creations. You may already know, he built not only that room, but constructed almost the entire palace for the Shah." And he told her of so many incredible inventions: a floor of polished glass that appeared to the eye to be water, and so many secret passages that seemed to make the Shah vanish or appear as he willed.
"But, Monsieur," she protested as the cab came to stop before her apartments, "his architecture doesn't make his crimes any less serious. What could possibly justify such sinister unconcern for human life?"
"Ah, but you do not yet know the saddest part," he answered mysteriously. "Erik has his reasons. But his reasons are his secrets." He helped her onto the street, then paid the driver. His apartment on the Rue Rivoli was within a reasonable walking distance, and it was perhaps the last comfortable night before autumn descended in all its fury. As she took the steps to her front door, he called after her this strange warning: "Be careful, Mademoiselle. The story of the Opera Ghost was written by a quill of human bone—and its ink the tears of human sorrow."
With that he left, his footsteps fading into the night as Alice stared after him with her forehead knitted in confusion. What could he mean by those words?