"Who has come bothering now?
Wait for me here ... I AM GOING TO TELL THE SIREN TO OPEN THE DOOR."
Steps moved away, a door closed.
I had no time to think of the fresh horror that was preparing; I forgot that the monster was only going out perhaps to perpetrate a fresh crime; I understood but one thing: Christine was alone behind the wall!
The Vicomte de Chagny was already calling to her:
"Christine!
Christine!"
As we could hear what was said in the next room, there was no reason why my companion should not be heard in his turn.
Nevertheless, the viscount had to repeat his cry time after time.
At last, a faint voice reached us.
"I am dreaming!" it said. "Christine, Christine, it is I, Raoul!"
A silence.
"But answer me, Christine! ...
In Heaven's name, if you are alone, answer me!"
Then Christine's voice whispered Raoul's name.
"Yes!
Yes!
It is I!
It is not a dream! ...
Christine, trust me! ...
We are here to save you ... but be prudent!
When you hear the monster, warn us!"
Then Christine gave way to fear.
She trembled lest Erik should discover where Raoul was hidden; she told us in a few hurried words that Erik had gone quite mad with love and that he had decided TO KILL EVERYBODY AND HIMSELF WITH EVERYBODY if she did not consent to become his wife.
He had given her till eleven o'clock the next evening for reflection.
It was the last respite.
She must choose, as he said, between the wedding mass and the requiem.
And Erik had then uttered a phrase which Christine did not quite understand:
"Yes or no! If your answer is no, everybody will be dead AND BURIED!"
But I understood the sentence perfectly, for it corresponded in a terrible manner with my own dreadful thought.
"Can you tell us where Erik is?" I asked.
She replied that he must have left the house.
"Could you make sure?"
"No.
I am fastened. I can not stir a limb."
When we heard this, M. de Chagny and I gave a yell of fury.
Our safety, the safety of all three of us, depended on the girl's liberty of movement.
"But where are you?" asked Christine.
"There are only two doors in my room, the Louis-Philippe room of which I told you, Raoul; a door through which Erik comes and goes, and another which he has never opened before me and which he has forbidden me ever to go through, because he says it is the most dangerous of the doors, the door of the torture-chamber!"
"Christine, that is where we are!"
"You are in the torture-chamber?"
"Yes, but we can not see the door."
"Oh, if I could only drag myself so far!
I would knock at the door and that would tell you where it is."
"Is it a door with a lock to it?" I asked.
"Yes, with a lock."
"Mademoiselle," I said, "it is absolutely necessary, that you should open that door to us!"
"But how?" asked the poor girl tearfully.
We heard her straining, trying to free herself from the bonds that held her.
"I know where the key is," she said, in a voice that seemed exhausted by the effort she had made.