ACT TWO SCENE TWO
BACKSTAGE (GIRY is hurrying across. RAOUL appears and calls after her)
RAOUL Madame Giry. Madame Giry ...
GIRY Monsieur, don't ask me - I know no more than anyone else.
(She moves off again. He stops her)
RAOUL That's not true. You've seen something, haven't you ?
GIRY (uneasily) I don't know what I've seen ... Please don't ask me, monsieur ...
RAOUL (desperately) Madame, for all our sakes ...
GIRY (She has glanced nervously about her and suddenly deciding to trust him, cuts in): Very well. It was years ago. There was a travelling fair in the city. Tumblers, conjurors, human oddities ...
RAOUL Go on ...
GIRY (trance-like, as she retraces the past) And there was ... I shall never forget him: a man ... Iocked in a cage ...
RAOUL In a cage ... ?
GIRY A prodigy, monsieur! Scholar, architect, musician ...
RAOUL (piecing together the jigsaw) A composer ...
GIRY And an inventor too, monsieur. They boasted he had once built for the Shah of Persia, a maze of mirrors ...
RAOUL (mystified and impatient, cuts in) Who was this man ...?
GIRY (with a shudder) A freak of nature ... more monster than man ...
RAOUL (a murmur) Deformed ...?
GIRY From birth, it seemed ...
RAOUL My God ...
GIRY And then ... he went missing. He escaped.
RAOUL Go on.
GIRY They never found him it was said he had died ...
RAOUL (darkly) But he didn't die, did he?
GIRY The world forgot him, but I never can ... For in this darkness I have seen him again ...
RAOUL And so our Phantom's this man ...
GIRY (starts from her daze and turns to go) I have said too much, monsieur.
(She moves off into the surrounding blackness)
And there have been too many accidents ...
RAOUL (ironical) Accidents?!
GIRY Too many ...
(And, before he can question her further, she has disappeared)
RAOUL (running after her) Madame Giry ...!