The Mystery of the Yellow Room

Gaston Leroux

The Yellow Room! Who now remembers this affair which caused so much ink

to flow fifteen years ago? Events are so quickly forgotten in Paris.

Has not the very name of the Nayves trial and the tragic history of the

death of little Menaldo passed out of mind? And yet the public attention

was so deeply interested in the details of the trial that the occurrence

of a ministerial crisis was completely unnoticed at the time. Now The

Yellow Room trial, which, preceded that of the Nayves by some years,

made far more noise. The entire world hung for months over this obscure

problem--the most obscure, it seems to me, that has ever challenged the

perspicacity of our police or taxed the conscience of our judges. The

solution of the problem baffled everybody who tried to find it. It was

like a dramatic rebus with which old Europe and new America alike became

fascinated. That is, in truth--I am permitted to say, because there

cannot be any author's vanity in all this, since I do nothing more than

transcribe facts on which an exceptional documentation enables me to

throw a new light--that is because, in truth, I do not know that, in

the domain of reality or imagination, one can discover or recall to mind

anything comparable, in its mystery, with the natural mystery of The

Yellow Room.

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