secret passage of the Communists, the planking of which is falling to pieces in parts, and also the trapdoor through which Raoul and the Persian penetrated into the cellars of the opera-house. In the Communists’ 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. : Raoul de Chagny. The letters are there to this day.
If the reader will visit the Opera one morning and ask leave to stroll where he pleases, 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 stage-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 the 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 do 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 Mame Giry 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 managers’ office, within a couple of inches from the desk-chair, and which consisted of a trapdoor, the width of a board in the flooring and the length of a man’s forearm and no longer; a trapdoor that falls back like the lid of a box; a trapdoor through which I can see a hand come and dexterously fumble at the pocket of a swallowtail coat.