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.
Pages:
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322