Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the epilogue of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

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Wherever you listen to podcasts today we'll be finishing The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Lero.

Epilogue I have now told the singular but voracious story of the opera ghost.

As I declared on the first page of this work, it is no longer possible to deny that Eric really lived.

There are today so many proofs of his existence within the reach of everybody that we can follow Erik's actions logically through the whole tragedy of the Shagneys.

There is no need to repeat here how greatly the case excited the capital, the kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Countess Deshagni under such exceptional conditions, the disappearance of his brother, the drugging of the gas man at the Opera, and of his two assistants.

What tragedies, what passions, what crimes had surrounded the ideal of Raoul and the sweet and charming Christine?

What had become of that wonderful, mysterious artist of whom the world was never, never to hear again?

She was represented as the victim of a rivalry between two brothers, and nobody suspected what had really happened.

Nobody understood that Azraul and Christine had both disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness which they would not have cared to make public after the inexplicable death of Count Philippe, they took the train one day from the northern railway station of the world.

Possibly I too shall take the train at that station one day and go and seek around thy lakes, O Norway, o silent Scandinavia, for the perhaps still living traces of Raul and Christine, and also of Mama Valerius, who disappeared at the same time.

Possibly someday I shall hear the lonely echoes of the north repeat the singing of her who knew the angel of music long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of Monsieur Leis jieu de estrexen Fiore, the newspapers made efforts at intervals to fathom the mystery.

One evening paper alone which knew all the gossip of the theater, said we recognize the touch of the opera ghost.

And even then that was written by way of irony.

The Persian alone knew the whole truth and held the main proofs which came to him with the pious relics promised by the ghost.

It fell to my lot to complete these proofs with the aid of the Duroga himself.

Day by day I kept him informed of the progress of my inquiries, and he directed them.

He had not been to the opera for years and years, but he had preserved the most accurate recollection of the building, and there was no better guide than he possible to help me discover its most secret recesses.

He also told me where to gather further information, whom to ask, and he sent me to call on Monsieur Pollingi at a moment when the poor man was nearly drawing his last breath.

I had no idea that he was so very ill, and I shall never forget the effect which my questions about the ghost produced upon him.

He looked at me as if I were the devil, and answered only in a few incoherent sentences, which showed, however, and that was the main thing, the extent of the pertubation which OG and his time had brought into that already very restless life for Monsieur Paulingney was what people call a man of pleasure.

When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to Monsieur Paulingne, the Duroga gave a faint smile and said paulingly never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Eric humbug tim.

The Persian, by the way, spoke of Eric sometimes as a demi god, and sometimes as the lowest of the low.

Pauling knee was superstitious, and Eric knew it.

Eric knew most things about the public and private affairs of the opera.

When Monsieur Pollingy heard a mysterious voice tell him in box five of the manner in which he used to spend his time and abuse his partner's confidence, he did not wait to hear anymore.

Thinking at first that it was a voice from heaven, he believed himself damned.

And then, when the voice began to ask for money, he saw that he was being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer to whom Devinine himself had fallen a prey.

Both of them, already tired of management for various reasons, went away without trying to investigate further into the personality of that curious OG who had forced such a singular memorandum book upon them.

They bequeased the whole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when they were rid of a business that had puzzled them without amusing them in the least.

I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that in his memoirs of a manager, Monsieur Moncharmin, should describe the Opera Ghost's behavior at such length in the first part of the book and hardly mention it at all in the second.

In reply to this, the Persian, who knew the memoirs as thoroughly as if he had written them himself, observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if I would just recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to the ghost.

In the second part of Forsaid, I quote these lines, which are particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner in which the famous incident of the 20,000 francs was closed.

As for OG, some of whose curious tricks I've related in the first part of my memoirs, I will only say that he redeemed by one spontaneous fine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend and partner, and I'm bound to say it myself.

He felt, no doubt that there are limits to a joke, especially when it is so expensive and when the commissary of police has been informed.

For at the moment when we had made an appointment in our office with Montre Mifreud to tell him the whole story.

A few days after the disappearance of Christine Dale, we found on Richard's table a large envelope inscribed in red ink with OG's compliments.

It contained the large sum of money which he had succeeded in playfully extracting for the time being from the treasury.

Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be content with that and drop the business.

I agreed with Richard.

All's well that ends well.

What do you say, OG?

Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored, continued to believe that he had for a short while been the b*** of Richard's sense of humor.

Whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced that Montcharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole affair of the opera ghost.

In order to revenge himself for a few jokes, I asked the Persian to tell me by what trick the ghost had taken 200 francs from Richard's pocket, in spite of the safety pin.

He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the manager's office by remembering that Eric had not been nicknamed the trapdoor Lover for nothing.

I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory.

And I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity of the feats ascribed to the ghost.

The Persians manuscript, Christine Dyet's papers, the statements made to me by the people who used to work under Monsieur's Richard in Montcharmin by little Meg herself.

The worthy Madame Gyre, I'm sorry to say, is no more, and by Sorelli, who's now living in retirement at Lucien's.

All the documents relating to the existence of the ghost which I propose to deposit in the archives of the opera have been checked and confirmed by a number of important discoveries of which I am justly proud.

I've not been able to find the house on the lake, Eric having blocked up all the secret entrances.

On the other hand, I have discovered the secret passage of the communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces and parts.

And also the trapdoor through which Raul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the opera house.

In the communist's dungeon, I noticed numbers of initials traced on the walls by the unfortunate people confined in it.

And among these were an R and A-C-R-C raul Deshagni.

The letters are there to this day.

If the reader will visit the opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he places without being accompanied by a stupid guide, let him go to box five and knock with his fist or stick on the enormous column that separates this from the sage box he will find that the column sounds hollow.

After that, do not be astonished by the suggestion that it was occupied by the voice of a ghost.

There is room inside the column for two men.

If you are surprised that when the various incidents occurred no one turned round to look at the column, you must remember that it presented the appearance of solid marble and that the voice contained in it seemed rather to come from the opposite side.

For, as we have seen, the ghost was an expert ventriloquist.

The column was elaborately carved and decorated with the sculptor's Chisel, and I did not despair of one day discovering the ornament that could be raised or lowered at will so as to admit of the ghost's mysterious correspondence with Madame Jirey and of his generosity.

However, all these discoveries are nothing to my mind compared with that which I was able to make in the presence of the acting manager in the manager's office within a couple inches from the dusk chair and which consisted of a trap door the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a man's forearm and no longer a trap door that falls back like the lid of a box.

A trap door through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallowtail coat.

That is the way the 400 francs went, and that also is the way by which, through some trick or other, they were returned.

Speaking about this to the Persian, I said, so we may take it, as the 40,000 francs were returned that Eric was simply amusing himself with that memorandum book of his.

Don't you believe it, he replied.

Eric wanted money.

Thinking himself without the pale of humanity, he was restrained by no scruples and he employed his extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination which he had received, by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness to prey upon his fellow men.

His reason for restoring the 400 francs of his own accord was that he no longer wanted it.

He had relinquished his marriage with Christine Daie.

He had relinquished everything above the surface of the earth.

According to the Persians account, eric was born in a small town not far from Rowan.

He was the son of a master mason.

He ran away at an early age from his father's house where his ugliness was a subject of horror and terror to his parents.

For a time he frequented the fairs where a showman exhibited him as the living corpse.

He seems to have crossed the whole of Europe from fair to fair and to have completed his strange education as an artist and magician at the very fountain, head of art and magic among the gypsies.

A period of Erik's life remained quite obscure.

He was seen at the fair of Ninjig Novograd, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory.

He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before.

He practiced ventriloquism and gave displays of lejardomaine so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey.

In this way his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazadoran, where the little sultana, the favorite of the shah in Shah, was boring herself to death.

A dealer, infers returning to Samarkand from Ninja Novograd told of the marvels which she had seen performed in Erik's tent.

The trader was summoned to the palace and the Duroga of Mazadoran was told to question him.

Next, the Duroga was instructed to go and find Erik.

He brought him to Persia where for some months Erik's will was law.

He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil.

He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire.

The shah took a liking to him.

This was the time of the rosy hours of mazedran of which the Droga's narrative has given us a glimpse.

Eric had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjurer contrives a trick casket.

Lashaw ordered him to construct an edifice of this kind.

Eric did so, and the building appears to have been so ingenious that his Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to disappear without a possibility of the tricks being discovered.

When the shah in shah found himself the possessor of this gem, he ordered Eric's Yellow Eyes to be put out.

But he reflected that even when blind, eric would still be able to build so remarkable a house for another sovereign.

And also that as long as Eric was alive, someone would know the secret of the wonderful palace.

Eric's death was decided upon together with that of all the laborers who had worked under his orders.

The execution of this abominable decree devolved upon the Duroga of Mazda Ran.

Eric had shown him some slight services and procured him many a hearty laugh.

He saved Erik by providing him with the means of escape, but nearly paid with his head for his generous indulgence.

Fortunately for the Duroga, a corpse half eaten by the birds of prey was found on the shore of the Caspian Sea and was taken for Erik's body.

Because the Duroga's friends had dressed the remains in clothing that belonged to Eric, the Duroga was let off with the loss of the imperial favor, the confiscation of his property and an order of perpetual banishment.

As a member of the royal house, however, he continued to receive a monthly pension of a few hundred francs from the Persian treasury and on this he came to live in Paris.

As for Eric, he went to Asia Minor and thenced to Constantinople where he entered the Sultan's employment.

An explanation of the services which he was able to render a monarch haunted by perpetual terrors.

I need only say that it was Eric who constructed all the famous trap doors in secret chambers and mysterious strongboxes that were found at Yieldees Kiosk after the last Turkish Revolution.

He also invented those automata dressed like the Sultan and resembling the Sultan in all respects which made people believe that the commander of the faithful was awake at one place, when in reality he was asleep elsewhere.

Of course, he had to leave the Sultan service for the same reasons that made him fly from Persia.

He knew too much then, tired of his adventurous, formidable and monstrous life, he longed to be someone like everybody else and he became a contractor like any ordinary contractor building ordinary houses with ordinary bricks he tendered for part of the foundations in the opera.

His estimate was accepted when he found himself in the cellars of the enormous playhouse.

His artistic fantastic wizard nature resumed the upper hand.

Besides, was he not as ugly as ever?

He dreamed of creating for his own youth a dwelling unknown to the rest of the earth, where he could hide from men's eyes for all time.

The reader knows and guesses the rest.

It is all in keeping with this incredible and yet voracious story.

Poor unhappy Eric.

Shall we pity him?

Shall we curse him?

He asked only to be someone like everybody else, but he was too ugly and he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with when with an ordinary face he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind.

He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world and in the end he had to contend himself with a cellar.

Ah, yes, we must needs pity.

The Opera Ghost I have prayed over his mortal remains that God might show him mercy at notwithstanding his crimes.

Yes, I am sure, quite sure that I prayed beside his body the other day when they took it from the spot where they were burying the phonographic records.

It was his skeleton.

I did not recognize it by the ugliness of the head.

For all men are ugly when they've been dead as long as that, but by the plain gold ring which he wore and which Christine Dale had certainly slipped on his finger when she came to bury him in accordance with her promise.

The skeleton was lying near the little well in the place where the angel of Music first held Christine daie fainting in his trembling arms on the night when he carried her down to the cellars of the opera house.

And now what do they mean to do with that skeleton?

Surely they will not bury it in the common grave.

I say that the place of the skeleton of the opera ghost is in the archives of the National Academy of Music.

It is no ordinary skeleton.

The End thank you for joining Byte Out of Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the first of five days of brothers grim stories.

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