Yes, a full six years of reclusive, self-indulgent solitude passed before I had the first of a devastating series of shocks.
I remember the evening very well. It was January 1881 and a cold, cheerless Paris mist had shrouded the city, bringing an early dusk. Seized by a sudden desire for fresh air and exercise, I ventured out into the dark streets some considerable time before theater hour. The hood of my opera cloak hid the mask, and thus attired I safely escaped notice from passersby. To anyone who saw me I was simply another frozen Parisian, hurrying home out of the cold and the threat of approaching rain.
I had reached the Rue de Rivoli and was brooding resentfully on the sad, blackened remains of the Tuileries palace when a rising wind whipped away the last of the mist and began to drive storm clouds overhead. As I turned to retrace my steps, the heavens opened; rain lashed down in torrents from the leaden sky and within minutes the street was awash with water. When you can no longer bear to get wet with total indifference, you know you are getting old. I raised my hand imperiously to a passing brougham cab.
The cab drew into the curb some distance ahead and waited for me. Almost immediately a man coming out of an apartment block on the same side of the road saw the cab and began to hurry toward it with an exclamation of delight. I saw nothing of him except his back, but he was wearing an opera cloak, like myself, and at this hour I could guess his destination with very little trouble.
"
My
cab, I think, monsieur," I hissed with a hostility that made him step aside in surprise.
Instinctively averting my face from his gaze, I swung into the carriage, slammed the door shut, and rapped my gold-topped walking stick on the dividing wall.
"To the Opera!" I said curtly, and sat back waiting to be obeyed.
To my astonished fury the door opened and the carriage rocked gently beneath the weight of the man who climbed inside.
I looked up, but the oath on my lips never took breath.
"Drive on, fellow," said this impertinent intruder calmly. "It so happens that I, too, am bound for the Opera. This gentleman and I are very well acquainted and I know he will be very happy to share the journey with me… Is that not so, Erik?"
I could not reply. All I could do was stare at Nadir Khan with numbed disbelief.
"Will that be all right, monsieur?" shouted the driver uncertainly.
"Yes," I snapped. "Drive on!"
As the brougham lurched out into the open road, Nadir took off his opera hat and his gloves and laid them on the seat at his side. The first thing I noticed about him was his hair. Once black and luxuriant, it was now thin and very gray, making him look at least sixty. I was shocked at the change in him, shocked and horrified.
"Well, Erik," he said, "this is indeed a pleasant surprise."
"That is entirely a matter of opinion," I retorted, trying to hide my conflicting emotions behind a fine veneer of sarcasm. "What the devil brings you to Paris after all this time?"
"Oh"—he shrugged—"I have been here for many years now, ever since I was released from Mazanderan."
"Released?" I echoed, with grim foreboding. "How long were you held?"
"Five years," he said with indifference.
I looked out the window at the rain-lashed streets and my hand tightened on the walking stick with a mixture of rage and grief. My God! Five years in a Mazanderan jail! No wonder he looked more than sixty… It was a miracle he had come out alive!
And what on earth was I going to do now, faced with the one person in this world that I could not simply remove from the dark paths of my solitude?
Invite him home?
I couldn't! It was impossible!
Unthinkable
! We no longer existed in the same world. There was no plane on which we could meet now, after more than twenty-five years.
"Did you leave Mazanderan of your own accord?" I demanded warily.
Nadir laughed.
"Let us say I was not invited to stay. My estates were forfeited, but I have been permitted to draw a modest pension from the imperial treasury in recognition of my royal descent. It has been sufficient for me to cultivate a taste for the opera. I hold a season ticket and attend as often as I am able to."
"You don't have a box?" I asked indignantly.
"But of course not, I am hardly—"
"You shall have one without delay. I shall speak to the management at once."
He looked bewildered.
"The management?"
Damn! What had possessed me to say that?
"I have some influence at the Opera," I continued guardedly.
"
Influence
?" I saw his expression change dramatically.
"I was one of the original contractors," 1 explained hastily. "I built the place."
"Oh, I see." He relaxed and sat back on his seat, a look of delight replacing the quiver of anxiety. "Then such a magnificent feat of engineering must have won you many further commissions."
"It was not a feat of engineering," I retorted coldly. "It was an act of love. I had no interest in further futile contracts on the surface of this earth once the building was completed."
I could not think why I was talking like this. Had I taken leave of my senses? Why didn't I just draw him a bloody map and have done with it?
Mercifully the carriage stopped in the rank on the rotunda and I opened the door, gesturing for him to get out.
On the pavement he paused to look back in surprise when I made no effort to follow him.
"Are you not attending tonight after all?" he inquired, looking puzzled.
"I never attend the Opera, except in my official capacity"
"Surely your official duties terminated with the completion of the building."
"Some duties can never be relinquished," I said.
I saw his gloved hand tighten on the carriage door. The suspicion in his dark eyes was now quite unmistakable.
"Erik, I don't like the way you talk of this, it gives me a very bad feeling."
"You had better hurry," I said, ignoring him. "The curtain rises in fifteen minutes and I am impatient to be home."
"Where do you live?" he demanded suddenly.
"That is no concern of yours or any other living creature."
"But it is nearby," he persisted. "You directed the cab to the Opera before you recognized me, so it must be nearby."
I shrugged contemptuously.
"Still the policeman, Nadir? Still tracking down a scent like the perennial bloodhound? Old habits die hard, don't they?"
"Don't think you can confuse me with your sarcasm," he retorted. "Why should you hide your home from me in this mysterious manner? Have I not deserved your trust?"
Beneath the mask I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
"I never entertain visitors," I said.
"Erik," he muttered with undisguised alarm, "What are you hiding from me? What have you done?"
I leaned forward in my seat to fix him with an icy stare.
"This is not Mazanderan," I told him coldly. "You have no jurisdiction in this country. Now, listen to me and listen very carefully.
Do not follow me
. I warn you very seriously that anyone who tries to gain access to my house without my knowledge will have bitter cause to regret it. And you ought to know by now that my warnings are not to be treated with contempt. Remember the scorpion… remember the scorpion and keep well away from my house… Do you understand, Nadir?
Keep away
!"
His hand slid from the carriage door and he stood back with trancelike obedience. He made no effort to prevent the brougham moving away, but although I knew my secret was safe for tonight, I felt no complacency.
Once before he had broken free of my control, torn down the swaddling cocoon of sound with which 1 had bound him. Unlike Jules he was not a natural subject; his will was too strong, his sense of identity and purpose too well developed.
Whenever he chose to fight my voice, I knew I would be unable to hold him.
I saw him so many times at the Opera after that evening that I wondered how I could possibly have overlooked his presence all these years. I must have been going around with my eyes closed!
He prowled around the building outside theater hours, questioning the hundreds of people who worked on the premises, making notes in a little black book and generally making an absolute nuisance of himself. Persistent and efficient as he was, I knew it was only a question of time before he unearthed some very interesting answers, and my sense of unease increased steadily.
One evening, roughly two months after Nadir first appeared on the scene, I returned to my house to find the alarm bell ringing. I knew there was no one on the lake… so it had to be the torture chamber. There was someone in the torture chamber!
My heart gave a sickening lurch of fear as I considered who it must be.
Turning off the electrical supply, I rushed into the chamber in a breathless panic. The room was still as hot as a furnace, but it was in pitch darkness now and I could only dimly see the blacker outline of the body which swung from the iron tree in the corner.
I stood absolutely still, paralyzed with horror, too shocked even to cry out. A great pressure seemed to have gathered behind my rib cage and there was a curious numbness in my left arm.
Why
? Why must the only victim of this virtually obsolete mantrap be my honest, stubborn, foolhardy friend? It was my fault… all my fault… I had known what he was like, I should have dismantled the whole device as soon as I knew he was on the premises.
Nadir, I warned you… I warned you to keep away!
It was a long time before I could conquer my revulsion and horror sufficiently to cut the body down and switch on the lights.
The blackened, distorted face and the bulging eyes were almost unrecognizable; it was a full minute before I suddenly realized that I was not looking at Nadir after all, and my relief was so great that I began to laugh hysterically.
Returning to the drawing room I sat down at the piano and played Chopin's Prelude in B minor, sotto voce, until I was calm enough to go back and examine the body with indifference and rationality.
The clothing alone was sufficient to place it now. I knew this man. His name was Joseph Buquet and he was one of the chief scene shifters. We had once had the misfortune to meet on the little staircase by the footlights which leads down to the cellars, and since I had not been wearing the mask, the fellow had had a damned good look at me. He had been responsible for one of the few authentic descriptions which now circulated around the dressing rooms of the corps de ballet.
How he had stumbled upon my secret lair I could not tell. Perhaps in the course of his work he had leaned against the mechanism that released the stone in the third cellar. I would have to alter the setting if that was so, make it more difficult to open. I really couldn't have people dropping in like this!
I looked down on him with a little regret and a great deal of annoyance. Did I ask people to come here and kill themselves? Did I lure them deliberately to their end? Well, then, I was not responsible for this death, I would
not
be held responsible. I was no more at fault than any householder who sleeps with a loaded shotgun in the house for fear of intruders.
Besides, this wasn't murder, it was suicide. And if a man wants to commit suicide, who am I to stop him?
I did not like to throw the body in the lake. Even weighted down, dead bodies have an unpleasant habit of finding their way back to the surface when filled with the noxious gases of putrefaction.
It occurred to me at length that if Buquet had taken his life here in my house, he might just as easily have chosen to take it in the third cellar. And so a few hours before curtain time I took the poor fellow back there and hung him up neatly like a coat on a peg. He was old and no doubt had had a sad, hard life. I'd probably done him a favor…
He was found at the end of the performance, but his demise excited little excitement. A policeman came, asked a few routine questions, yawned, and went away again. One more suicide for an unhallowed grave, that was all; hardly a case that required the attention of the Paris Surete!
I resolved to put the unpleasant incident out of my mind, but at the end of the week, when I went to box five on the grand tier I found an envelope addressed
For the attention of O. G
. sitting on the ledge.
I hardly needed to open it; I knew exactly what I was going to find inside.
Promptly at eight o'clock that evening I rapped once on the door of Nadir's flat in the Rue de Rivoli.
Darius showed me inside…
"So you are the Opera Ghost!" said Nadir grimly. "You can have no idea how much I hoped I was mistaken!"
I took off my cloak and sat down uninvited in the fireside chair, taking in the paucity of my surroundings with appalled eyes. It was perfectly evident that he did not live in any great luxury on his imperial pension, and I remembered his beautiful estate in Persia with hot shame. I would never willingly have brought him to exile and sadly reduced circumstances… never!
"You're not even going to bother to deny it, are you?" continued Nadir, outraged at my silence.
I peeled off my gloves slowly and laid them in my hat.
"What is the point in my denying anything? You've already tried and condemned me, haven't you? But I don't see why you're so angry. I'm a very harmless ghost, as a rule."
"That's not what I hear, Erik. The whole establishment goes in fear of you!"
"Oh, really?" I sighed. "A few silly girls and credulous old ladies?"
"And a management that meets your every demand!"
I frowned. "The world is full of victims and predators. Survival of the fittest is only the process of natural selection. Good Lord, you lived in Persia long enough to know that. And my terms are modest enough, all things considered."
"Twenty thousand francs a month is hardly modest!"
"I have expensive tastes," I said.
He made a gesture of angry despair and sank into the chair opposite.
"I risked my life to save you," he said slowly. "I risked everything I possessed!"