A man entered, also wearing an astrakhan cap and dressed in a long overcoat.He bowed and took a richly carved case from under his coat, put it on the dressing-table, bowed once again and went to the door.
"Did no one see you come in, Darius?"
"No, master."
"Let no one see you go out."
The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared.
The Persian opened the case.It contained a pair of long pistols.
"When Christine Daae was carried off, sir, I sent word to my servant to bring me these pistols.I have had them a long time and they can be relied upon.""Do you mean to fight a duel?" asked the young man.
"It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight,"said the other, examining the priming of his pistols."And what a duel!"Handing one of the pistols to Raoul, he added, "In this duel, we shall be two to one; but you must be prepared for everything, for we shall be fighting the most terrible adversary that you can imagine.But you love Christine Daae, do you not?""I worship the ground she stands on! But you, sir, who do not love her, tell me why I find you ready to risk your life for her!
You must certainly hate Erik!"
"No, sir," said the Persian sadly, "I do not hate him.If I hated him, he would long ago have ceased doing harm.""Has he done you harm?"
"I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me.""I do not understand you.You treat him as a monster, you speak of his crime, he has done you harm and I find in you the same inexplicable pity that drove me to despair when I saw it in Christine!"The Persian did not reply.He fetched a stool and set it against the wall facing the great mirror that filled the whole of the wall-space opposite.Then he climbed on the stool and, with his nose to the wallpaper, seemed to be looking for something.
"Ah," he said, after a long search, "I have it!" And, raising his finger above his head, he pressed against a corner in the pattern of the paper.Then he turned round and jumped off the stool:
"In half a minute," he said, "he shall be ON HIS ROAD!" and crossing the whole of the dressing-room he felt the great mirror.
"No, it is not yielding yet," he muttered.
"Oh, are we going out by the mirror?" asked Raoul."Like Christine Daae.""So you knew that Christine Daae went out by that mirror?""She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain of the inner room and I saw her vanish not by the glass, but in the glass!""And what did you do?"
"I thought it was an aberration of my senses, a mad dream.
"Or some new fancy of the ghost's!" chuckled the Persian.
"Ah, M.de Chagny," he continued, still with his hand on the mirror, "would that we had to do with a ghost! We could then leave our pistols in their case....Put down your hat, please...there...
and now cover your shirt-front as much as you can with your coat...
as I am doing....Bring the lapels forward...turn up the collar....We must make ourselves as invisible as possible."Bearing against the mirror, after a short silence, he said:
"It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press on the spring from the inside of the room.It is different when you are behind the wall and can act directly on the counterbalance.
Then the mirror turns at once and is moved with incredible rapidity.""What counterbalance?" asked Raoul.
"Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on to its pivot.You surely don't expect it to move of itself, by enchantment! If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and then shift an inch or two from left to right.
It will then be on a pivot and will swing round.""It's not turning!" said Raoul impatiently.
"Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn't working.
...Unless it is something else," added the Persian, anxiously.
"What?"
"He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the whole apparatus.""Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!""I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system.""It's not turning!...And Christine, sir, Christine?"The Persian said coldly:
"We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do!...But he may stop us at the first step!...He commands the walls, the doors and the trapdoors.In my country, he was known by a name which means the `trap-door lover.'""But why do these walls obey him alone? He did not build them!""Yes, sir, that is just what he did!"
Raoul looked at him in amazement; but the Persian made a sign to him to be silent and pointed to the glass....There was a sort of shivering reflection.Their image was troubled as in a rippling sheet of water and then all became stationary again.
"You see, sir, that it is not turning! Let us take another road!""To-night, there is no other!" declared the Persian, in a singularly mournful voice."And now, look out! And be ready to fire."He himself raised his pistol opposite the glass.Raoul imitated his movement.With his free arm, the Persian drew the young man to his chest and, suddenly, the mirror turned, in a blinding daze of cross-lights: it turned like one of those revolving doors which have lately been fixed to the entrances of most restaurants, it turned, carrying Raoul and the Persian with it and suddenly hurling them from the full light into the deepest darkness.
