The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux (bill gates best books .TXT) 📗

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 answer 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!”

“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 Daaé, 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 you,” said the Persian, with a sudden change in his voice, “I will tell you the exact place, sir: it is between a set piece and a discarded scene from Roi de Lahore, exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died.⁠ ⁠… Come, sir, take courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes!⁠ ⁠… But where are we?”

The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous corridors that crossed each other at right angles.

“We must be,” he said, “in the part used more particularly for the waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces.”

He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity.

In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the