Gaston LeRoux 
The Mystery of ‘The Yellow Room’ 

‘The finest locked room tale ever written.’ ! John Dickson Carr, author of The Hollow Man.

If I am the phantom, it is because man’s hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.- Gaston Leroux, The Mystery of the Yellow Room

Gaston Leroux is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera. However, he also wrote some excellent detective stories. In fact, Leroux’s contribution to French detective fiction is considered a parallel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s in the United Kingdom and Edgar Allan Poe’s in America. 

In this, his most popular mystery, rival detectives try to crack the following case: Madamoiselle Stangerson retires to bed in the Yellow Room. Suddenly, revolver shots echo through the house and she screams for help. Her father and a servant run to the locked room where they find the wounded girl — alone. The only other exit, a window, is barred. How had the assailant escaped?