The hand that was
laid on his shoulder was now placed on the lips of a person with an
ebony skin, with eyes of jade and with an astrakhan cap on his head:
the Persian! The stranger kept up the gesture that recommended
discretion and then, at the moment when the astonished viscount
was about to ask the reason of his mysterious intervention,
bowed and disappeared.
Chapter XVI Mme. Giry's Astounding Revelations as to Her
Personal Relations with the Opera Ghost
Before following the commissary into the manager's office I
must describe certain extraordinary occurrences that took place
in that office which Remy and Mercier had vainly tried to enter
and into which MM. Richard and Moncharmin had locked themselves
with an object which the reader does not yet know, but which it
is my duty, as an historian, to reveal without further postponement.
I have had occasion to say that the managers' mood had undergone
a disagreeable change for some time past and to convey the fact
that this change was due not only to the fall of the chandelier
on the famous night of the gala performance.
The reader must know that the ghost had calmly been paid his first
twenty thousand francs.
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