黄色房间的秘密 (1907)

《黄色房间之谜》是卡斯顿·勒胡所著的推理小说，是最早期的密室推理之一。黄色房间之谜原先于1907年9月至11月在杂志L'Illustration上连载，在1908年才集结成书。作为著名的密室推理小说，此书曾经多次被改编成电影，当中包括1919年、1930年、1947年、1949年及2003年。

故事简介

著名学者桑杰森的女儿在密室内遇袭，记者胡尔达必奉报社之名调查，与保安局的大侦探拉桑角力。众人住在桑杰森的城堡里调查，其中一晚，胡尔达必在桑杰森小姐房间遇到凶手，胡尔达必要求其他人在走廊上协助捉拿凶手，但凶手却在走廊上突然消失，令人大惑不解。又一个晚上，凶手再次出现，所有人一同追捕凶手，把凶手追到庭园的角落，凶手又一次表演消失的技俩。胡尔达必于是决定到美国追查凶手的身份。

续集

《黑衣女子的香气》（Le parfum de la dame en noir, 1908）

The Mystery of the Yellow Room (French: Le mystère de la chambre jaune) is a mystery novel written by French author Gaston Leroux. One of the first locked-room mystery novels, it was first published serially in France in the periodical L'Illustration from September 1907 to November 1907, then in its own right in 1908.

It is the first novel starring fictional reporter Joseph Rouletabille and concerns a complex, and seemingly impossible, crime in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room. Leroux provides the reader with detailed, precise diagrams and floorplans illustrating the crime scene. The story provides an intellectual challenge to the reader.

The novel finds its continuation in the 1908 novel The Perfume of the Lady in Black, wherein a number of the characters familiar from this story reappear.

Plot summary

Reporter and amateur sleuth Joseph Rouletabille is sent to investigate a criminal case at the Château du Glandier and takes along his friend, the lawyer Jean Sainclair, who narrates. Mathilde Stangerson, the 30-something daughter of the castle's owner, Professor Stangerson, was found near-critically battered in a room adjacent to his laboratory on the castle grounds with the door still locked from the inside. She recovers slowly but can give no useful testimony. Rouletabille meets and interrogates several characters: the castle's concierges, Mr and Mrs Bernier; the old servant Jacques; an unfriendly inn landlord; and a womanising gamekeeper, and begins a friendly rivalry with France's top police detective, Frédéric Larsan, who has been assigned the case. Larsan suspects Mlle. Stangerson's fiancé, another scientist called Robert Darzac, to Rouletabille's dismay.

More attempts are made on Mlle. Stangerson's life despite Rouletabille and Larsan's protection, and the perpetrator appears to vanish on two occasions when they are closing in on him, echoing Professor Stangerson's research into "matter dissociation". The gamekeeper is murdered during the second attempt. Ultimately, Larsan arrests Darzac who is charged with murder attempts. Rouletabille suspects that Darzac has secret reasons not to defend himself and he disappears to make further investigations.

Two-and-a-half months later, as Darzac's trial opens, Rouletabille reappears sensationally and tells the court that the culprit is Frédéric Larsan himself, whom he accuses of being an alter-ego of a master criminal called Ballmeyer. Larsan appeared to vanish on the two occasions he was nearly collared as he was one of the pursuers. Darzac is released when it emerges that Larsan has vanished after Rouletabille warned him he would accuse him in court. The mystery of the locked Yellow Room is explained thus: Larsan assaulted Mlle. Stangerson earlier in the day than originally thought, but she hid the traces of the attack and locked herself away. During the night, traumatised by the event, she fell off her bed and inflicted the gravest of the wounds by hitting her temple on the corner of her bed-side table.

The background to these events is kept secret in court but finally explained by Sainclair. Ballmeyer, in a different guise, had seduced Mlle. Stangerson in her youth and married her secretly in the United States. They had a child before he was arrested and his identity revealed to her. Mlle. Stangerson had arranged for her son's care and education and hidden the whole saga from her father; her silence and Robert Darzac's behaviour were motivated by her desperation to keep him from finding out. Ballmeyer however, hearing that she was engaged, had decided to reappear in her life and claim her as his wife once more, by force if necessary.

Characters

Joseph Rouletabille – the young journalist and amateur detective, protagonist.

Jean Sainclair – Rouletabille's friend and lawyer, the narrator.

Frédéric Larsan – the police detective.

Professor Stangerson – the scientist, owner of "Chateau du Glandier".

Mademoiselle Mathilde Stangerson – daughter of a famous scientist, the victim.