Phantom of the Opera (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Gaston Leroux Read Free Book Online

said Jammes. “What’s the matter?”
    She opened the door. A respectable lady, built on the lines of a Pomeranian grenadier, burst into the dressing-room and dropped groaning into a vacant arm-chair. Her eyes rolled madly in her brick-dust coloured face.
    “How awful!” she said. “How awful!”
    “What? What?”
    “Joseph Buquet—”
    “What about him?”
    “Joseph Buquet is dead!”
    The room became filled with exclamations, with astonished outcries, with scared requests for explanations.
    “Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!”
    “It’s the ghost!” little Giry blurted, as though in spite of herself; but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth: “No, no!—I didn’t say it!—I didn’t say it!—”
    All around her, her panic-stricken companions repeated under their breaths:
    “Yes—it must be the ghost!”
    Sorelli was very pale.
    “I shall never be able to recite my speech,” she said.
    Ma Jammes gave her opinion, while she emptied a glass of liqueur that happened to be standing on a table; the ghost must have something to do with it.
    The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict at the inquest was “natural suicide.” In his Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin, one of the joint managers who succeeded MM. Debienne and Poligny, describes the incident as follows:
    “A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the manager’s office, when Mercier, the acting-manager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed half mad and told me that the body of a scene-shifter had been found hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farmhouse and a scene from the Roi de Lahore. 6 I shouted:
    ‘“Come and cut him down!’
    “By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob’s ladder, the man was no longer hanging from his rope!”
    So this is an event which M. Moncharmin thinks natural. A man hangs at the end of a rope; they go to cut him down; the rope has disappeared. Oh, M. Moncharmin found a very simple explanation! Listen to him:
    “It was just after the ballet; and leaders and dancing-girls lost no time in taking their precautions against the evil eye.”
    There you are! Picture the corps de ballet scuttling down the Jacob’s ladder and dividing the suicide’s rope among themselves in less time than it takes to write! When, on the other hand, I think of the exact spot where the body was discovered—the third cellar underneath the stage—I imagine that somebody must have been interested in seeing that the rope disappeared after it had effected its purpose; and time will show if I am wrong.
    The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet was very popular. The dressing-rooms emptied and the ballet-girls, crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess, made for the foyer through the ill-lit passages and staircases, trotting as fast as their little pink legs could carry them.

2
    THE NEW MARGARITA
    O n the first landing, Sorelli ran against the Comte de
    Chagny, who was coming upstairs. The count, who was generally so calm, seemed greatly excited.
    “I was just going to you,” he said, taking off his hat. “Oh, Sorelli, what an evening! And Christine Daaé: What a triumph!”
    “Impossible!” said Meg Giry. “Six months ago, she used to sing like a crock! But do let us get by, my dear count,” continued the brat, with a saucy curtsey. “We are going to inquire after a poor man who was found hanging by the neck.”
    Just then the acting-manager came fussing past and stopped when he heard this remark.
    “What!” he exclaimed roughly. “Have you girls heard already? Well, please forget about it for tonight—and above all don’t let M. Debienne and M. Poligny hear; it would upset them too much on their last day.”
    They all went on to the foyer of the ballet, which was already full of