replied:
'It was because the management was afraid that, in their utter inexperience of the cellars of the Opera, the firemen might set fire to the building!'
The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them.
'Flat on your stomach!' whispered the Persian.
The two men lay flat on the floor.
They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them.
They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat....
It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner.
'Whew!' said the Persian. 'We've had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers' office.'
'Is it some one belonging to the theater police?' asked Raoul.
'It's some one much worse than that!' replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.[5]
[5] Like the Persian, I can give no further explanation touching the apparition of this shade. Whereas, in this historic narrative, everything else will be normally explained, however abnormal the course of events may seem, I can not give the reader expressly to understand what the Persian meant by the words, 'It is some one much worse than that!' The reader must try to guess for himself, for I promised M. Pedro Gailhard, the former manager of the Opera, to keep his secret regarding the extremely interesting and useful personality of the wandering, cloaked shade which, while condemning itself to live in the cellars of the Opera, rendered such immense services to those who, on gala evenings, for instance, venture to stray away from the stage. I am speaking of state services; and, upon my word of honor, I can say no more.
'It's not...he?'
'He?...If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow eyes! That is more or less our safeguard to-night. But he may come from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our hands as though about to fire, at the level of our eyes, in front!'
The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in sight...a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes!
Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man's height, but with no body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a flame shaped as a man's face.
'Oh,' said the Persian, between his teeth. 'I have never seen this before!...Pampin was not mad, after all: he had seen it!... What can that flame be? It is not HE, but he may have sent it! ...Take care!...Take care! Your hand at the level of your eyes, in Heaven's name, at the level of your eyes!...know most of his tricks... but not this one....Come, let us run....it is safer. Hand at the level of your eyes!'
And they fled down the long passage that opened before them.
After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they stopped.
'He doesn't often come this way,' said the Persian. 'This side has nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the house on the lake....But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels...although I promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in his business again!'
So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it seemed to be nearer to them.
At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the chalk that grates on the blackboard.
They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is quite red, bright red.
How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man's height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with it?
The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more intense, swarming, living, 'numerous' sound, for the sound was certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the darkness, under the fiery face.
And the fiery face came on...with its noise...came level with them!...
And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant. They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little hurried waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high tide, little night-waves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head that was like a moon. And the little waves passed between their legs, climbing up their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could no longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes: their hands went down to their legs to push back the waves, which were full of little legs and nails and claws and teeth.
Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the fireman. But the head of fire turned round in answcr to their cries, and spoke to them:
'Don't move! Don't move!...Whatever you do, don't come after me! ... I am the rat-catcher!...Let me pass, with my rats!...'
And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the rat-catcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself, lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark space in front of him. And he jumped along, dragging with him the waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds.
Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling.
'I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the rat-catcher,' said the Persian. 'But he never told me that he looked like that... and it's funny that I should never have met him before.... Of course, Erik never comes to this part!'
{two page color illustration}
'Are we very far from the lake, sir?' asked Raoul. 'When shall we get there?...Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake!... When we are at the lake, we will call out!...Christine will hear us!...And HE will hear us, too!...And, as you know him, we shall talk to him!' 'Baby!' said the Persian. 'We shall never enter the house on the lake by the lake!...I myself have never landed on the other bank...the bank on which the house stands. ...You have to cross the lake first...and it is well guarded! ...I fear that more than one of those men--old scene-shifters, old door-shutters--who have never been seen again were simply tempted to cross the lake....It is terrible....I myself would have been nearly killed there...if the monster had not recognized me in time!...One piece of advice, sir; never go near the lake. ...And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing under the water, the siren's voice!'
'But then, what are we here for?' asked Raoul, in a transport of fever, impatience and rage. 'If you can do nothing for Christine, at least let me die for her!' The Persian tried to calm the young man.
'We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me, which is to enter the house unperceived by the monster.'
'And is there any hope of that, sir?'
'Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!'
'And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the lake?'
'From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away. We will go back there now....I will tell
