He had lived in India and acquired an incredible skill in the art of strangulation.He would make them lock him into a courtyard to which they brought a warrior--usually, a man condemned to death--armed with a long pike and broadsword.Erik had only his lasso;and it was always just when the warrior thought that he was going to fell Erik with a tremendous blow that we heard the lasso whistle through the air.With a turn of the wrist, Erik tightened the noose round his adversary's neck and, in this fashion, dragged him before the little sultana and her women, who sat looking from a window and applauding.The little sultana herself learned to wield the Punjab lasso and killed several of her women and even of the friends who visited her.But I prefer to drop this terrible subject of the rosy hours of Mazenderan.I have mentioned it only to explain why, on arriving with the Vicomte de Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, I was bound to protect my companion against the ever-threatening danger of death by strangling.My pistols could serve no purpose, for Erik was not likely to show himself; but Erik could always strangle us.I had no time to explain all this to the viscount;besides, there was nothing to be gained by complicating the position.
I simply told M.de Chagny to keep his hand at the level of his eyes, with the arm bent, as though waiting for the command to fire.
With his victim in this attitude, it is impossible even for the most expert strangler to throw the lasso with advantage.
It catches you not only round the neck, but also round the arm or hand.This enables you easily to unloose the lasso, which then becomes harmless.
After avoiding the commissary of police, a number of door-shutters and the firemen, after meeting the rat-catcher and passing the man in the felt hat unperceived, the viscount and I arrived without obstacle in the third cellar, between the set piece and the scene from the Roi de Lahore.I worked the stone, and we jumped into the house which Erik had built himself in the double case of the foundation-walls of the Opera.And this was the easiest thing in the world for him to do, because Erik was one of the chief contractors under Philippe Garnier, the architect of the Opera, and continued to work by himself when the works were officially suspended, during the war, the siege of Paris and the Commune.
I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house.I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan.
From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo.With his trap-doors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds.
He hit upon astonishing inventions.Of these, the most curious, horrible and dangerous was the so-called torture-chamber.Except in special cases, when the little sultana amused herself by inflicting suffering upon some unoffending citizen, no one was let into it but wretches condemned to death.And, even then, when these had "had enough," they were always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or bowstring, left for their use at the foot of an iron tree.
My alarm, therefore, was great when I saw that the room into which M.le Vicomte de Chagny and I had dropped was an exact copy of the torture-chamber of the rosy hours of Mazenderan.
At our feet, I found the Punjab lasso which I had been dreading all the evening.I was convinced that this rope had already done duty for Joseph Buquet, who, like myself, must have caught Erik one evening working the stone in the third cellar.He probably tried it in his turn, fell into the torture-chamber and only left it hanged.
I can well imagine Erik dragging the body, in order to get rid of it, to the scene from the Roi de Lahore, and hanging it there as an example, or to increase the superstitious terror that was to help him in guarding the approaches to his lair! Then, upon reflection, Erik went back to fetch the Punjab lasso, which is very curiously made out of catgut, and which might have set an examining magistrate thinking.This explains the disappearance of the rope.
And now I discovered the lasso, at our feet, in the torture-chamber!
...I am no coward, but a cold sweat covered my forehead as Imoved the little red disk of my lantern over the walls.
M.de Chagny noticed it and asked:
"What is the matter, sir?"
I made him a violent sign to be silent.
