Chapter 21: A Trap is Set

Beneath the cover of nighttime shadow, Commissioner Mifroid held open the Rue Scribe gate while Richard and Mechnikov struggled to fit a small, contrived raft inside.

"Is this the door your daughter used during her secret visits to the Garnier, Monsieur?" asked the biologist, his voice muffled behind the raft's rough, wooden planks.

Mifroid peered through the bars of the gate and sighed. "Yes."

"I remember a conversation that I had with her—several months ago—she seemed to believe that the sewer gates of Paris are all locked. I couldn't understand where she had gotten such a notion! Now it is all clear."

The commissioner's grip on the cold gate tightened until his knuckles were white. "I was the one who told her that, Monsieur. She said she had found a trap door in one of the cellars, and that it led to a den used by the murderer. I didn't believe her. She even tried to show me the gate through which she had passed after crossing an underground lake—it was all too incredible for me to believe. What a fool I was!"

"Monsieur, don't be too hard on yourself," counseled Richard as he strained to lift one end of the raft. "We were all fooled."

"If only I had made the connection when Lefevre informed me that she was secretly entering the Opera through that same gate!"

Richard dropped his end of the raft and stared at Mifroid. "Do you mean that she came back? If she had already found the Ghost's lair, what reason did she have to return?"

"It's my fault, I fear. Since I wasn't listening to her, she would continue her own investigation until she caught the criminal, and prove her worth. I should have never doubted her."

"It is more complicated than that, I'm afraid," said the Persian, startling the group with his sudden appearance. He passed a shaded lantern and a fluff of cotton to Richard. "Take this cotton and fill your ears before crossing the lake. Your very lives may depend on it!" He turned to Mifroid. "You and I must go. Messieurs Mechnikov and Richard will take the raft alone."

Mifroid offered a shrug before following the Persian back to the Grand Foyer.

Mechnikov and Richard struggled to carry the raft down the narrow stairs. Their grunts and sighs echoed in the narrow tunnel like hidden demons.

"There's a musty smell, like damp rags," Mechnikov commented, his Russian voice hollow with echoes. "The temperature has dropped, too."

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and Richard released the raft and opened the shade of the lantern. "Mon Dieu…"

The lantern's rays of light glittered across the lake, which swirled and rippled with silky green and purple hues. The performance in the theater thundered in the subterranean cavern as though the two men had front row seats. The space was so vast and dark, that neither man could see the cavern's ceiling or its sides.

Fascinated, they dragged the raft onto the lake. Richard passed Mechnikov a small handful of the cotton, then began pressing it into his ears. Mechnikov hesitated, his hand with the cotton suspended midway to his ear.

"Just a minute, Monsieur," he said strangely. "I smell paraffin gas."

Richard froze.

Mechnikov examined his surroundings for the source of the odor. "Direct the light this way, if you please, Monsieur."

"Er… Doctor, our instructions were to take the raft to the other side and find a house by the lake; the Persian said nothing about exploring this abysmal cave."

"Yes, but the Persian didn't have us plug our noses as well as our ears. Right now I don't hear anything peculiar, but I certainly smell something. Perhaps it is the lake itself?... but what is this?"

Mechnikov climbed onto the raft and began guiding it along one of the cavern's sides. Richard stepped onto the raft before it could pull away, nearly dropping the lantern and their oar in his haste. He, too, caught a whiff of the sharp, burning smell. Along the edge of the lake, Mechnikov paused to scrutinize the exposed bedrock of the wall. His fingers explored the rock's recesses, reaching higher until his hands were above his head.

"Yes, there is a canal up here, running the length of this wall. What's this?" he pulled his hand down and licked the tip of his finger.

He said something after that, but Richard had just stuffed the cotton in his ears.

"What?" cried Richard, leaning closer.

"Paraffin!" Mechnikov shouted, holding up the hand with fingertips soaked in the reeking oil. His voice thundered across the empty cavern.

Richard was so startled, he nearly fell overboard. As it was, the lantern fell from his hands as he tried to keep his balance. It dropped into the water with a fantastic splash, plunging them into immediate and total darkness.

Several cellars above the luckless pair, Commissioner Mifroid followed the Persian down a stairwell while the two men kept their right hands at the level of their eyes.

"Why the cotton in their ears?" Mifroid dodged around a gondola left lying at the base of the stairs by a stage lackey.

The Persian stopped to wait for Mifroid. His answer was only a low and terrible whisper that made the hairs of the commissioner's neck stand on end: "Erik keeps a siren in the lake."

"That name again!" Mifroid replied in his own, strained whisper. "You'd better tell me who Erik is."

The Persian resumed his march through the cellar. "In my home country, I was once an officer of the law, like you. I was assigned the task of executing a prisoner of the Sultan. That prisoner was our Erik. He came from… another land."

"He escaped your execution, then?"

"No… I released him.."

From the corners of his eyes, Mifroid saw long, frightening shadows move against the walls as they walked. "Why?"

The Persian directed his lantern down another dark staircase. "If you see him, you will understand." He descended the stairs, with Mifroid doing his best to keep up.

Beneath them, the shadows thrown by the Persian's lantern against the balusters grew like skeletons reaching for them from the floor. "Mon Dieu!" Mifroid said under his breath. "Alice must be terrified!"

"On the contrary, Monsieur, she is infatuated. Erik is extremely talented—he wrote Don Juan Triumphant."

Mifroid fisted his hands. "He seduced her! She won't cooperate with his capture, then."

The Persian stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to the commissioner. "Take heart, Monsieur. This time, she did not go to him freely. When she found Lefevre's corpse, she gave up the ghost—so to speak."

Mifroid groaned, and removed his hat to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. The cellars were much warmer than he had expected.

"The trap we have set will catch him regardless: while the doctor and the manager distract him on the lake, we will creep over him from above. We're now in the third cellar, where the body of Buquet was found. Alice discovered a secret door here, which disappeared when she tried to show it to you. I thought at first that Erik had sealed the door and removed the mechanisms that open it. But the more I thought about it, I realized that his economy would find a way to be rid of his hunters while keeping his back door. I returned to investigate, and learned that an ingenious contraption of mirrors made the pin invisible."

The Persian set his lantern on a pile of wood and gathered some soft dirt in his hands.

Mifroid watched in confusion, still holding his hat. "Mirrors? There's nothing there."

"Ah! But watch!" the Persian exclaimed, and scattered his fistful of dust, creating a smoky fog.

In the light of his lantern, a nail head poked clearly out of the floor.

"There are tiny mirrors within the pile of wood," the Persian explained. "The mirrors bend the light and reflect an image of an empty part of the floor over the pin."

"Like hiding the house key under the mat."

"Precisely."

"He's a clever devil!" exclaimed the commissioner as he replaced his hat.

"Monsieur, he is very cunning indeed! This back door, through which we shall pass, leads to a torture chamber. We must be extremely careful—if Erik learns where we are, he might trigger the tortures to begin! Everything depends on our friends on the lake, who must distract the monster while we take this dangerous route."

Erik had risen from his seat after the doorbell rang, and he disappeared silently into the room with the terrible coffin in its center. He returned after a time with his arms full of various papers that smelled of ink.

Alice sat at the table with her head in her hands. She looked up as he closed his bedroom door, and he saw the tracts that her heavy tears had made along her cheeks.

"You really care for me," he whispered.

She wiped her eyes. "There's more to you than your lasso. Why won't you run away, and start a new life somewhere else?"

He shook his head. "My curse will find me wherever I go. The Sûreté intends to capture me, and so I must trust you with some of my possessions. Consider this my Last Will and Testament."

He laid a loose ream of papers in front of her on the table.

"These are unfinished concertos. Let no one see them. Keep them safe for me so that—God willing—if I am released, I may continue to work on them… but if I am executed—burn them."

She nodded, stunned by his seriousness.

Next, he unrolled several sheets of drafting paper that covered the entire surface of his table and hung off the sides. "These are the architectural plans for the basilica that they're building north of here. Paul Abadie's design attempts to recreate the domes of the mosques in the Muslim world, but Abadie has never visited a mosque—as his drafting plans reveal. The domes of the Sacré-Coeur are doomed to collapse, unless they make the changes that I've noted here in red ink."

He pointed with one slender finger to some marks drawn in the same, distinctive vermilion ink that she had seen in the manuscript of Don Juan and in his furtive letter to her the night of the séance.

"The Sacré-Coeur," he said, eying Alice soberly, "is intended to atone for the massacres committed by the communards. Place my revisions in the hands of the supervising architect, and perhaps the basilica will be my redemption, as well."

"Erik," cried Alice, "you don't have to do this! Run away! Hide! Don't let my father catch you!"

He looked in her eyes and saw she really meant it—that she had already forgiven him. Neither realized that the gala performance, stories above them, had ceased for intermission. Now the only sound was the dismal ticking of Erik's grandfather clock.

His eyes burned with more agony than she had ever seen in them before. "Because of you, Alice, I want to live—when I have only ever wanted to die. But that life is not for me; I cannot forget what I have done."

She took his hand and brought it to her lips before he could protest. He closed his eyes, trembling as his cadaver's fingers warmed beneath her kiss. As his breaths grew deeper, he pulled her hand back towards his breast and held her hand between his own. His eyes locked with hers, and he said nothing more.

"Release my daughter, you disgusting fiend!" shouted a familiar voice behind them.

The couple turned in their embrace to find the commissioner and the Persian, both with their revolvers aimed at the unfortunate pair.