Other editions of book The Secret of the Night

The Secret of the Night by Gaston Leroux Three attempts on Russian General Trebass's his life have failed, but the Czar is determined to keep him alive. The Czar assigns the redoubtable, French detective reporter, Rouletabille to the case. It quickly becomes apparent that one of the General's own retinue is in league with the assassins! Why? We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

The Secret of the Night I. GAYETY AND DYNAMITE “BARINIA, the young stranger has arrived.” “Where is he?” “Oh, he is waiting at the lodge.” “I told you to show him to Natacha’s sitting-room. Didn’t you understand me, Ermolai?” “Pardon, Barinia, but the young stranger, when I asked to search him, as you directed, flatly refused to let me.” “Did you explain to him that everybody is searched before being allowed to enter, that it is the order, and that even my mother herself has submitted to it?” “I told him all that, Barinia; and I told him about madame your mother.” “What did he say to that?” “That he was not madame your mother. He acted angry.” “Well, let him come in without being searched.” “The Chief of Police won’t like it.” “Do as I say.”

Like The Mystery of the Yellow Room, The Secret of the Night is a Joseph Rouletabille mystery. In The Mystery of the Yellow Room fictional detective Rouletabille investigated a complex and seemingly impossible crime - in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room! There've been so many locked-room mysteries since that it's become a subgenre - but there are folks who believe Gaston Leroux invented the form. (We hate assertions like that. Have you noticed how often things turn out to have been invented by monks in the middle ages, or by prehistoric Chinamen, or seventeenth-century Englishmen? - Heavy sigh.) John Dickson Carr, the master of locked-room mystery, named The Mystery of the Yellow Room as the "finest locked room tale ever written" in his 1935 novel the Hollow Man.