Summary
Within the gothic confines of Professor Stangerson's secluded château, intellectual devotion becomes a prison for Mathilde Stangerson, who postpones matrimony with Robert Darzac to further her father's revolutionary scientific research. On the tempestuous eve of their belated engagement announcement, Mathilde retreats to her saffron-hued bedchamber—a sanctuary transformed into an inescapable crypt when gunpowder and screams rupture the midnight silence. The Professor's axe splinters the locked oak door to reveal a blood-drenched enigma: Mathilde savagely assaulted, vital research papers vanished, yet the assailant has evaporated from a chamber secured by iron-shuttered windows and unyielding locks. This impossibility captivates both stolid police detective Frederic Larsan and cub reporter Rouletabille, whose parallel investigations unravel amid poisoned candies, a gamekeeper's throat slit in the shadowed woods, and Darzac's arrest under damning yet unspoken circumstances—until Rouletabille's transatlantic return exposes Larsan's double life as the phantom assailant, whose obsession with Stangerson's research birthed a labyrinthine plot of theatrical murders and scientific theft.
Synopsis
Mathilde Stangerson delays marrying Robert Darzac, as she wants to continue to aide her father, a scientist, in his experiments. Later, on the evening of her engagement announcement, Mathilde leaves her father in his laboratory at midnight, and goes to her adjoining yellow room. The professor, hearing gunshots and screaming, breaks Mathilde's locked door to find her bloodied, and the room in disarray, with papers of their studies stolen. How the assailant escaped the room, with a locked door and windows secured with iron shutters, is a mystery which baffles the renowned police detective Frederic Larsan, and cub reporter Rouletabille, assigned to the case. While Larsan investigates at the house, the professor's gamekeeper is murdered. Although clues lead to Robert, who, when arrested, refuses to explain his actions, Rouletabille returns from America to interrupt the trial with the solution to the mystery and prove that Larsan is the killer.
