Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-fourth chapter of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

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Take a look in a book and let's see what we can find take a chapter by chapter one by one at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word, line by line we Fight at a Time.

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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be continuing The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Le Rowe.

Chapter 24 barrels, barrels, any barrels to sell the Persian's narrative continued I have said that the room in which Monsieurli By, Count Deshagni and I were imprisoned was a regular hexagon lined entirely with mirrors.

Plenty of these rooms have been seen since, mainly at exhibitions.

They are called palaces of illusion or some such name, but the invention belongs entirely to Eric, who built the first room of this kind.

Under my eyes.

At the time of the rosy hours of mazadoran, a decorative object such as a column, for instance, was placed in one of the corners and immediately produced a hall of a thousand columns.

For, thanks to the mirrors, the real room was multiplied by six hexagonal rooms, each of which, in its turn, was multiplied indefinitely.

But the little sultana soon tired of this infantile illusion, whereupon Eric altered his invention into a torture chamber.

For the architectural motive placed in one corner, he substituted an iron tree.

This tree, with its painted leaves, was absolutely true to life and was made of iron so as to resist all the attacks of the patient who was locked into the torture chamber.

We shall see how the scene thus obtained was twice altered instantaneously into two successive other scenes by means of the automatic rotation of the drums or rollers in the corners.

These were divided into three sections, fitting into the angles of the mirrors and each supporting a decorative scheme that came into sight as the roller revolved upon its axis.

The walls of the strange room gave the patient nothing to lay hold of, because, apart from the solid decorative object, they were simply furnished with mirrors thick enough to withstand any onslaught of the victim who was flung into the chamber empty handed and barefoot.

There was no furniture.

The ceiling was capable of being lit up.

An ingenious system of electric heating, which had since been imitated, allowed the temperature of the walls and room to be increased at will.

I'm giving all these details of a perfectly natural invention, producing with a few painted branches the supernatural illusion of an equatorial forest blazing under the tropical sun, so that no.

1 may doubt the present balance of my brain, or feel entitled to say that I am mad or lying, or that I take him for a fool.

I now return to the facts where I left them.

When the ceiling lit up and the forest became visible around us, the VI count stupefaction was immense.

That impenetrable forest, with its innumerable trunks and branches threw him into a terrible state of consternation.

He passed his hands over his forehead as though to drive away a dream.

His eyes blinked, and for a moment he forgot to listen.

I've already said that the sight of the forest did not surprise me at all, and therefore I listened for the two of us to what was happening next door.

Lastly, my attention was especially attracted not so much to the scene as to the mirrors that produced it.

These mirrors were broken in parts.

Yes, they were marked and scratched.

They had been starred in spite of their solidity, and this proved to me that the torture chamber in which we were now had already served a purpose.

Yes, some wretch whose feet were not bare like those of the victims of the rosy hours of massadoran, had certainly fallen into this mortal illusion, and mad with rage, had kicked against those mirrors which nevertheless continued to reflect his agony.

And the branch of the tree on which he had put an end to his own sufferings was arranged in such a way that before dying he had seen, for his last consolation a thousand men writhing in his company.

Yes, Joseph Buuquette had undoubtedly been through all this.

Were we to die as he had done?

I did not think so, for I knew that we had a few hours before us and that I could employ them to better purpose than Joseph Buquette was able to do.

After all, I was thoroughly acquainted with most of Eric's tricks, and now or never, was the time to turn my knowledge to account.

To begin with, I gave up every idea of returning to the passage that had brought us to that accursed chamber.

I did not trouble about the possibility of working the inside stone that closed the passage, and this for the simple reason that to do so was out of the question.

We had dropped from too great a height into the torture chamber.

There was no furniture to help us reach that passage, not even the branch of the iron tree.

Not even each other's shoulders were of any avail.

There was only one possible outlet that opening into the Louis Philippe room in which Eric and Christine Dye were.

But though this outlet looked like an ordinary door on Christine's side, it was absolutely invisible to us.

We must therefore try to open it without even knowing where it was.

When I was quite sure that there was no hope for us from Christine daier's side, when I had heard the monster dragging the poor girl from the Louis Philippe room lest she should interfere with our tortures, I resolved to set to work without delay.

But I had first to calm Monsieur Deshagni, who was already walking about like a madman, uttering incoherent cries.

The snatches of conversation which he had caught between Christine and the monster had contributed not a little to drive him beside himself.

Add to that the shock of the magic forest and the scorching heat which was beginning to make the prespiration stream down his temples, and you will have no difficulty in understanding his state of mind.

He shouted Christine's name, brandished his pistol, knocked his forehead against the glass, and his endeavors to run down the glades of the elusive forest in short, the torture was beginning to work its spell upon a brain unprepared for it.

I did my best to induce the poor vai counts to listen to reason.

I made him touch the mirrors and iron tree and the branches, and explained to him by optical laws all the luminous imagery by which we were surrounded and of which we need not allow ourselves to be the victims like ordinary ignorant people.

We are in a room, a little room, that is what you must keep saying to yourself, and we shall leave the room as soon as we have found the door.

And I promised him that if he let me act without disturbing me by shouting and walking up and down, I would discover the trick of the door in less than an hour's time.

Then he lay flat on the floor, as one does in a wood, and declared that he would wait until I found the door of the forest, as there was nothing better to do.

And he added that from where he was the view was splendid.

The torture was working in spite of all that I had said myself.

Forgetting the forest, I tackled a glass panel and began to finger it in every direction, hunting for the weak point on which to press in order to turn the door in accordance with Eric's system of pivots.

This weak point might be a mere speck on the glass, no larger than a pee under which the spring lay hidden.

I hunted and hunted.

I felt as high as my hands could reach.

Eric was about the same height as myself, and I thought that he would not have placed the spring higher than suited his stature, while groping over the successive panels with the greatest care.

I endeavoured not to lose a minute, for I was feeling more and more overcome with the heat, and we were literally roasting in that blazing forest.

I had been working like this for half an hour and had finished three panels, when, as ill luck would have it, I turned round on hearing a muttered exclamation from the VI Count.

I'm stifling, he said, all those mirrors are sending out an infernal heat.

Do you think you will find that spring soon?

If you are much longer about it, we shall be roasted alive.

I was not sorry to hear him talk like this.

He had not said a word of the forest, and I hoped that my companion's reason would hold out some time longer against the torture.

But he added, what consoles me is that the monster is given Christine until eleven tomorrow evening.

If we can't get out of here and go to her assistance, at least we shall be dead before her.

Then Eric's Mask can serve for all of us.

And he gulped down a breath of hot air that nearly made him faint.

As I had not the same desperate reasons as monster Levi Count for accepting death.

I returned after giving him a word of encouragement to my panel.

But I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking.

And in the tangle of the elusive forest I was no longer able to find my panel for certain.

I had to begin all over again at random, feeling fumbling, groping.

Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn, for I found nothing, absolutely nothing.

In the next room all was silence.

We were quite lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything.

Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid, or if I did not find the spring.

But look as I might, I found nothing but branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me or spread gracefully over my head.

But they gave no shade.

And this was natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest with the sun right above our heads, an African forest.

Monsieur Deshagni and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter, and at another that they protected us against the heat.

I was still making a moral resistance, but Monsieur de Chagney seemed to me quite gone.

He pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and nights without stopping, looking for Christine Daie.

From time to time he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree or gliding between the branches, and he called to her with words of supplication that brought the tears to my eyes.

And then at last oh, how thirsty I am.

He cried in delirious accents.

I too was thirsty.

My throat was on fire.

And yet squatting on the floor, I went on hunting.

Hunting, hunting for the Spring of the Invisible Door, especially as it was dangerous to remain in the forest as evening drew nigh.

Already the shades of night were beginning to surround us.

It had happened very quickly.

Night falls quickly in tropical countries suddenly, with hardly any twilight.

Now night in the forests of the equator is always dangerous, particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire to keep off the beasts of prey.

I did indeed try for a moment to break off the branches which I would have lit with my dark lantern.

But I knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered in time that we had only images of branches to do with the heat did not go with the daylight.

On the contrary, it was now still hotter under the blue rays of the moon.

I urged the VI count to hold our weapons, ready to fire and not to stray from camp while I went on looking for my spring.

Suddenly we heard a lion roaring a few yards away.

Oh, whispered the Vy count, he s quite close.

Don't you see him there through the trees in that thicket?

If he roars again, I will fire.

And the roaring began again, louder than before, and the Vy Count fired.

But I do not think that he hit the lion, only he smashed a mirror, as I perceived the next morning.

At daybreak we must have covered a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones and rocks.

It was really not worthwhile leaving the forest to come upon the desert.

Tired out, I flung myself down beside the vikalunt, for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find.

I was quite surprised, and I said so to the Vicount that we had encountered no other dangerous animals during the night.

Usually after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the titzi fly.

These were easily obtained effects, and I explained to Montre Deshagni that Eric imitated the roar of a lion on a long taboer or timbrel, with an acid skin at one end.

Over the skin he tied a string of cat gut which was fastened at the middle to another similar string.

Passing through the whole length of the taboo.

Eric had only to rub the string with a glove smeared with resin, and according to the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the sea seafly.

The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us working his trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parlay with him, for we must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise, and by this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his torture chamber.

I called him.

Eric.

Eric.

I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert but there was no answer to my voice.

All around us lay the silence and the bare immensity of that stony desert.

What was to become of us in the midst of that awful solitude?

We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst.

Of thirst especially.

At last I saw Monsieur Deshagni raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon.

He had discovered an oasis.

Yes, far in the distance was an oasis.

An oasis was limpid water which reflected the iron trees.

It was the scene of the mirage.

I recognized it at once.

The worst of the three.

No one had been able to fight against it.

No one.

I did my utmost to keep my head and not to hope for water because I knew that if a man hoped for water the water that reflected the iron tree and if, after hoping for water, he struck against the mirror and there was only one thing for him to do to hang himself on the iron tree.

So I cried to Monsieur de Chagny.

It's the Mirage.

It's the mirage.

Don't believe in the water.

It's another trick of the mirrors.

And he flatly told me to shut up with my tricks of the mirrors my springs my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions.

He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water flowing over there among those splendid numberless trees was not real water.

And the desert was real and so was the forest.

And it was no use trying to take him in.

He was an old, experienced traveler.

He had been all over the place.

And he dragged himself along, saying Water.

Water.

And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking.

And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking.

For we not only saw the water, but we heard it.

We heard it flow.

We heard it ripple.

Do you understand the word ripple?

It is a sound which you hear with your tongue.

You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better.

Lastly, and this was the most pitiless torture of all we heard the rain.

And it was not raining.

This was an infernal invention.

Oh, I knew well enough how Eric obtained it.

He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box broken up inside with wooden and metal projections.

The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and were bounded from one to another.

And the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm.

You should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling riverbank.

Our eyes and ears were full of water but our tongues were hard and dry as horn.

When we reached the mirror, Monsieur de Shanghi licked it and I also licked the glass.

It was burning hot.

Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair.

Monsieur de Chagney put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree.

I knew why the iron tree had returned.

In this third change of scene.

The iron tree was waiting for me.

But as I stared at the Punjab lasso I saw a thing that made me start so violently that Monsieur de China delayed his attempt at suicide.

I took his arm and then I caught the pistol from him.

And then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen I had discovered near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a blackheaded nail of which I knew the youth.

At last I had discovered the spring.

I felt the nail.

I lifted a radiant face to Monty Shagmi.

The blackheaded nail yielded to my pressure.

And then?

And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar flap released in the floor.

Cool air came up to us from the black hole below.

We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid.

Well, with our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in and we bent lower and lower over the trap door.

What could be in that cellar which opened before us?

Water.

Water to drink.

I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone.

A staircase.

A dark staircase leading into the cellar.

The VI count wanted to fling himself down the hole, but I, fearing a new trick of the monsters, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first.

The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness.

But, oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs.

The lake could not be far away.

We soon reached the bottom.

Our eyes were beginning to accustomed themselves to the dark to distinguish shapes around us, circular shapes on which I turned the light of my lantern barrels.

We were in Eric cellar.

It was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinking water.

I knew that Eric was a great lover of good wine.

Ah, there was plenty to drink here.

Monsieur Deshagni padded the round shapes and kept on saying barrels, barrels.

What a lot of barrels.

Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us.

They were small barrels, and I thought that Eric must have selected them to that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake.

We examined them successively to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another.

But all the barrels were hermetically closed.

Then, after halflifting one, to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bung hole.

At that moment I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well from often hearing it in the streets of Paris.

Barrels, barrels, any barrels to sell my hand desisted from its work Monsieur Deshagni had also heard.

He said that's funny.

It sounds as if the barrel were singing.

The song was renewed further away.

Barrels, barrels, any barrels to sell.

Oh, I swear, said the VI count, that the tune dies away in the barrel.

We stood up and went to look behind the barrel.

It's inside, said Monsieur Deshagni.

It's inside.

But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses and we returned to the bung hole.

Monsieur de Sheng Ni put his two hands together underneath it and with a last effort, I burst the bung.

What's this?

Cried the vai count, this isn't water.

The VI count put his two full hands close to my lantern.

I stooped to look and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.

What I had seen in Monsieur Deshagni's hands was gunpowder.

Thank you for joining Bite Out of Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

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