When I came and told the Persian of the poor result of my visit to M.
Poligny, the daroga gave a faint smile and said: "Poligny never knew how far that extraordinary blackguard of an Erik
humbugged him."--The Persian, by the way, spoke of Erik sometimes as a
demigod and sometimes as the lowest of the low--"Poligny was
superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew most things about the public
and private affairs of the Opera. When M. Poligny heard a mysterious
voice tell him, in Box Five, of the manner in which he used to spend
his time and abuse his partner's confidence, he did not wait to hear
any more. Thinking at first that it was a voice from Heaven, he
believed himself damned; and then, when the voice began to ask for
money, he saw that he was being victimized by a shrewd blackmailer to
whom Debienne himself had fallen a prey. Both of them, already tired
of management for various reasons, went away without trying to
investigate further into the personality of that curious O. G., who had
forced such a singular memorandum-book upon them. They bequeathed the
whole mystery to their successors and heaved a sigh of relief when they
were rid of a business that had puzzled them without amusing them in
the least."
I then spoke of the two successors and expressed my surprise that, in
his Memoirs of a Manager, M. Moncharmin should describe the Opera
ghost's behavior at such length in the first part of the book and
hardly mention it at all in the second. In reply to this, the Persian,
who knew the MEMOIRS as thoroughly as if he had written them himself,
observed that I should find the explanation of the whole business if I
would just recollect the few lines which Moncharmin devotes to the
ghost in the second part aforesaid. I quote these lines, which are
particularly interesting because they describe the very simple manner
in which the famous incident of the twenty-thousand francs was closed: "As for O. G., some of whose curious tricks I have related in the first
part of my Memoirs, I will only say that he redeemed by one spontaneous
fine action all the worry which he had caused my dear friend and
partner and, I am bound to say, myself. He felt, no doubt, that there
are limits to a joke, especially when it is so expensive and when the
commissary of police has been informed, for, at the moment when we had
made an appointment in our office with M. Mifroid to tell him the whole
story, a few days after the disappearance of Christine Daae, we found,
on Richard's table, a large envelope, inscribed, in red ink, "WITH O.
G.'S COMPLIMENTS." It contained the large sum of money which he had
succeeded in playfully extracting, for the time being, from the
treasury. Richard was at once of the opinion that we must be content
with that and drop the business. I agreed with Richard. All's well
that ends well. What do you say, O. G.?"