the pattern of
the paper. Then he turned round and jumped off the stool:

"In half a minute," he said, "he shall be ON HIS ROAD!" and crossing
the whole of the dressing-room he felt the great mirror.

"No, it is not yielding yet," he muttered.

"Oh, are we going out by the mirror?" asked Raoul. "Like Christine
Daae."

"So you knew that Christine Daae went out by that mirror?"

"She did so before my eyes, sir! I was hidden behind the curtain of
the inner room and I saw her vanish not by the glass, but in the glass!"

"And what did you do?"

"I thought it was an aberration of my senses, a mad dream.

"Or some new fancy of the ghost's!" chuckled the Persian. "Ah, M. de
Chagny," he continued, still with his hand on the mirror, "would that
we had to do with a ghost! We could then leave our pistols in their
case ... Put down your hat, please ... there ... and now cover your
shirt-front as much as you can with your coat ... as I am doing ...
Bring the lapels forward ... turn up the collar ... We must make
ourselves as invisible as possible."

Bearing against the mirror, after a short silence, he said:

"It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press on
the spring from the inside of the room. It is different when you are
behind the wall and can act directly on the counterbalance. Then the
mirror turns at once and is moved with incredible rapidity."

"What counterbalance?" asked Raoul.

"Why, the counterbalance that lifts the whole of this wall on to its
pivot. You surely don't expect it to move of itself, by enchantment!
If you watch, you will see the mirror first rise an inch or two and
then shift an inch or two from left to right. It will then be on a
pivot and will swing round."

"It's not turning!" said Raoul impatiently.

"Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism
has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn't working... Unless
it is something else," added the Persian, anxiously.

"What?"

"He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the
whole apparatus."

"Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!"

"I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system."

"It's not turning! ... And Christine, sir, Christine?"

The Persian said coldly:

"We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do! ... But he may stop
us at the first step! ... He commands the walls, the doors and the
trapd