Table of Content

       Historical Preface - The Sandalwood Box

       Chapter I. M. Theophrastus Longuet Desires to Improve His Mind and Visits Historical Monuments

       Chapter II. The Scrap of Paper

       Chapter III. Theophrastus Longuet Bursts into Song

       Chapter IV. Adolphe Lecamus is Flabbergasted but Frank

       Chapter V. Theophrastus Shows the Black Feather

       Chapter VI. The Portrait

       Chapter VII. The Young Cartouche

       Chapter VIII. The Wax Mask

       Chapter IX. Strange Position of a Little Violet Cat

       Chapter X. The Explanation of the Strange Attitude of a Little Violet Cat

       Chapter XI. Theophrastus Maintains that He Did Not Die on the Place de Grève

       Chapter XII. The House of Strange Words

       Chapter XIII. The Cure That Missed

       Chapter XIV. The Operation Begins

       Chapter XV. The Operation Ends

       Chapter XVI. The Drawbacks of Psychic Surgery

       Chapter XVII. Theophrastus Begins to Take an Interest in Things

       Chapter XVIII. The Evening Paper

       Chapter XIX. The Story of the Calf

       Chapter XX. The Strange Behaviour of an Express Train

       Chapter XXI. The Earless Man with His Head Out of the Window

       Chapter XXII. In Which the Catastrophe which Appears on the Point of Being Explained, Grows yet More Inexplicable

       Chapter XXIII. The Melodious Bricklayer

       Chapter XXIV. The Solution in the Catacombs

       Chapter XXV. M. Mifroid Takes the Lead

       Chapter XXVI. M. Longuet Fishes in the Catacombs

       Chapter XXVII. M. Mifroid Parts from Theophrastus

       Chapter XXVIII. Theophrastus Goes into Eternal Exile

Historical Preface - The Sandalwood Box

       Table of Contents

      One evening last year I perceived in the waiting-room of my newspaper, Le Matin, a man dressed in black, his face heavy with the darkest despair, whose dry, dead eyes seemed to receive the images of things like unmoving mirrors.

      He was seated; and there rested on his knees a sandalwood box inlaid with polished steel. An office-boy told me that he had sat there motionless, silent, awaiting my coming, for three mortal hours.

      I invited this figure of despair into my office and offered him a chair. He did not take it; he walked straight to my desk, and set down on it the sandalwood box.

      Then he said to me in an expressionless, far-away voice: "Monsieur, this box is yours. My friend, M. Theophrastus Longuet, charged me to bring it to you."

      He bowed and was going to the door, when I stopped him.

      "For goodness sake, don't run away like that!" I said sharply. "I can't receive this box without knowing what it contains."

      "I don't know what it contains myself," he said in the same dull, expressionless tone. "This box is locked; the key is lost. You will have to break it open to find out."

      "At any rate I should like to know the name of the bearer," I said firmly.

      "My friend, M. Theophrastus Longuet, called me 'Adolphe,'" he said in the mournfullest tone.

      "If M. Theophrastus Longuet had brought me this box himself, he would certainly have told me what it contains," I said stiffly. "I regret that M. Theophrastus Longuet—"

      "So do I," said my visitor. "M. Theophrastus Longuet is dead; and I am his executor."

      With that he opened the door, went through it, and shut it behind him. I stared at the sandalwood box; I stared at the door; then I ran after the man. He had vanished.

      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