The kidnapping of the artist, the death of the Comte de
Chagny 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 idyll 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 the two brothers; and nobody suspected what had really
happened, nobody understood that, as Raoul 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disappeared, both had withdrawn far from the world to enjoy a happiness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
Raoul and Christine and also of Mamma Valerius, who disappeared at the
same time! ... Possibly, some day, 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 M. le
Juge d'Instruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to
fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip
of the theaters, said:

"We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost." And even 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 those proofs with the aid of the daroga 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 M. Poligny, 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 perturbation
which O. G., in his time, had brought into that already very restless
life (for M. Poligny was what people call a man of pleasure). When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M.
Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile and said:

"Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erik
humbugged him." --The Persian, by the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as a
demigod and sometimes as the lowest of the low--"Poligny was
superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the public
and private affairs of the Opera. When M. Poligny 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
any more. 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 Debienne 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 O. G., who had
forced such a singular memorandum-book upon them. They bequeathed 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, M. 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 aforesaid. I quote these lines, which are
particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner
in which the famous incident of the twenty-thousand francs was closed:

"As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have 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 am bound to say, 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 M. Mifroid to tell him the whole
story, a few days after the disappearance of Christine Daae, we found,
on Richard's table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, "WITH O.
G.'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, O. G.?" Of course, Moncharmin, especially after the money had been restored,
continued to believe that he had, for a short while, been the butt of
Richard's sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced
that Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the 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
twenty-thousand 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 managers'
office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trap-door
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 Persian's manuscript, Christine Daae's papers, the statements made
to me by the people who used to work under MM.