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Updated: June 26, 2025
Moncharmin, looking severe and dissatisfied, at once insisted that the good lady should explain herself. "What does this mean, Mme. Giry?" he asked. "And why do you say that M. Richard ought to know better than you where the twenty-thousand francs went to?" As for Richard, who felt himself turning red under Moncharmin's eyes, he took Mme. Giry by the wrist and shook it violently.
Yes, he would like to see if, with that woman instead of the old lunatic, Box Five would continue to astonish the natives? "By the way," said Moncharmin, "you know that Mother Giry is going to lodge a complaint against you." "With whom? The ghost?" The ghost! Moncharmin had almost forgotten him.
M. Armand Moncharmin, in chapter eleven of his Memoirs, says: "When I think of this first evening, I can not separate the secret confided to us by MM. Debienne and Poligny in their office from the presence at our supper of that GHOSTLY person whom none of us knew." What happened was this: Mm. Debienne and Poligny, sitting at the center of the table, had not seen the man with the death's head.
"You know as well as I do that she has the reputation of being quite good," said Richard. "Reputations are easily obtained," replied Moncharmin. "Haven't I a reputation for knowing all about music? And I don't know one key from another." "Don't be afraid: you never had that reputation," Richard declared.
"By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob's ladder, the man was no longer hanging from his rope!" So this is an event which M. Moncharmin thinks natural. A man hangs at the end of a rope; they go to cut him down; the rope has disappeared. Oh, M. Moncharmin found a very simple explanation!
"Was there any one in the box on the right of Box Five?" asked Moncharmin. "No; Box Seven, and Box Three, the one on the left, were both empty. The curtain had only just gone up." "And what did you do?" "Well, I brought the footstool. Of course, it wasn't for himself he wanted it, but for his lady! But I never heard her nor saw her." "Eh? What? So now the ghost is married!"
Moncharmin understood what he meant, for, with a distracted gesture, he said: "Oh, tell everything and have done with it!" As for Mifroid, he looked at the managers and at Raoul by turns and wondered whether he had strayed into a lunatic asylum. He passed his hand through his hair.
"Send for the inspector," said Richard to his secretary, who had already read the report and marked it with blue pencil. M. Remy, the secretary, had foreseen the order and called the inspector at once. "Tell us what happened," said Richard bluntly. The inspector began to splutter and referred to the report. "Well, but what were those people laughing at?" asked Moncharmin.
Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to him presently, when the twenty-thousand francs were gone, and say: "Perhaps it was the ambassador ... or the manager of the Credit Central ... or Remy." The more so as, at the time of the first scene, as Richard himself admitted, Richard had met nobody in that part of the theater after Mme. Giry had brushed up against him...
And what happened was this: Moncharmin first locked the door again. Then he knelt down behind Richard's back. "I hope," he said, "that the notes are still there?" "So do I," said Richard. "The real ones?" asked Moncharmin, resolved not to be "had" this time. "Look for yourself," said Richard. "I refuse to touch them."
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