The Man with the Black Feather

by Gaston Leroux

I had the sandalwood box opened; and in it I found a bundle of manuscripts. In a newspaper office one is used to receiving bundles of manuscripts; and I began to look through them with considerable weariness. Very soon it changed to the liveliest interest. As I went deeper and deeper into these posthumous documents I found the story related in them more and more extraordinary, more and more incredible. For a long while I disbelieved it. However, since the proofs of it exist, I ended, after a searching inquiry into them, by believing it to be true.

M. Theophrastus Longuet's reason for bequeathing this strange legacy to me was itself strange. He did not know me; but he had read articles by me in Le Matin, "his favourite organ"; and among the many contributors to that journal he had chosen me, not for my superior knowledge, an allegation which would have made me blush, but because he had come to the conclusion that I possessed "a more solid intellect" than the others.

Gaston Leroux

---

[CONTENTS]

		Page
HISTORICAL PREFACE--THE SANDALWOOD BOX		[v]
Chapter
I	M. Theophrastus Longuet Desires to Improve His Mind and Visits Historical Monuments	[1]
II	The Scrap of Paper	[13]
III	Theophrastus Longuet Bursts into Song	[22]
IV	Adolphe Lecamus is Flabbergasted but Frank	[48]
V	Theophrastus Shows the Black Feather	[55]
VI	The Portrait	[67]
VII	The Young Cartouche	[89]
VIII	The Wax Mask	[105]
IX	Strange Position of a Little Violet Cat	[116]
X	The Explanation of the Strange Attitude of a Little Violet Cat	[124]
XI	Theophrastus Maintains that He Did Not Die on the Place de Grève	[135]
XII	The House of Strange Words	[144]
XIII	The Cure That Missed	[155]
XIV	The Operation Begins	[171]
XV	The Operation Ends	[186]
XVI	The Drawbacks of Psychic Surgery	[200]
XVII	Theophrastus Begins to Take an Interest in Things	[206]
XVIII	The Evening Paper	[212]
XIX	The Story of the Calf	[221]
XX	The Strange Behaviour of an Express Train	[234]
XXI	The Earless Man with His Head Out of the Window	[242]
XXII	In Which the Catastrophe which Appears on the Point ofBeing Explained, Grows yet More Inexplicable	[246]
XXIII	The Melodious Bricklayer	[253]
XXIV	The Solution in the Catacombs	[261]
XXV	M. Mifroid Takes the Lead	[273]
XXVI	M. Longuet Fishes in the Catacombs	[288]
XXVII	M. Mifroid Parts from Theophrastus	[300]
XXVIII	Theophrastus Goes into Eternal Exile	[308]

---

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

In horror I recognized my own handwriting. ([See page 21])	[Frontispiece]
	Page
Theophrastus still gazed in wonder. ([See page 157])	[100]
"Theophrastus Longuet, awake!"	[200]

---