Before #AndrewLloydWebber's musical their was #GastonLeroux #ThePhantomOfTheOpera.

Note on the text: The Mystery of the Yellow Room was written by Gaston Leroux and translated (as well as published) by Nik Marcel in 2018.

Admittedly I didn’t really care for this book. However there was one scene in it that I liked because it provided a bit of nice foreshadowing. For although Joseph Rouletabille in the scene is warning people not to jump to conclusions, he also, in retrospect, is challenging the reader and asking the reader to be wary of jumping to conclusions themselves about who is and is not the murderer:

there is something, Monsieur Frederic Larsan, which is much more grave than missing logic; it is the disposition of a mind peculiar to certain police officers which makes them- in good faith- gently bend this logic to the requirements of their conception.

You already have your idea about the murderer, Monsieur Fred, do not deny it and you need your murderer to be wounded not in the hand, without which your idea would have become redundant. And you have searched and you have found something else.

It is a very dangerous system, Monsieur Fred. It is dangerous to start with the idea that one has of the murderer, in order to arrive at the proofs that one needs. It could lead you far [astray]. Watch out for the miscarriage of justice, Monsieur Fred; it is lying in wait for you (48).