In the front line of the crowd that waited to see Annouchka come out he recognized Natacha, with her head enveloped in the black mantle so that none should see her face. Besides, this corner of the garden was in a half-gloom. The police barred the way; he could not approach as near Natacha as he wished. He set himself to slip like a serpent through the crowd. He was not separated from Natacha by more than four or five persons when a great jostling commenced. Annouchka was coming out. Cries rose: “Annouchka! Annouchka!” Rouletabille threw himself on his knees and on all-fours succeeded in sticking his head through into the way kept by the police for Annouchka’s passage. There, wrapped in a great red mantle, his hat on his arm, was a man Rouletabille immediately recognized. It was Prince Galitch. They were hurrying to escape the impending pressure of the crowd. But Annouchka as she passed near Natacha stopped just a second – a movement that did not escape Rouletabille – and, turning toward her said just the one word, “Caracho.” Then she passed on. Rouletabille got up and forced his way back, having once more lost Natacha. He searched for her. He ran to the carriage-way and arrived just in time to see her seated in a carriage with the Mourazoff family. The carriage started at once in the direction of the datcha des Iles. The young man remained standing there, thinking. He made a gesture as though he were ready now to let luck take its course. “In the end,” said he, “it will be better so, perhaps,” and then, to himself, “Now to supper, my boy.”
He turned in his tracks and soon was established in the glaring light of the restaurant. Officers standing, glass in hand, were saluting from table to table and waving a thousand compliments with grace that was almost feminine.
He heard his name called joyously, and recognized the voice of Ivan Petrovitch. The three boon companions were seated over a bottle of champagne resting in its ice-bath and were being served with tiny pates while they waited for the supper-hour, which was now near.
Rouletabille yielded to their invitation readily enough, and accompanied them when the head-waiter informed Thaddeus that the gentlemen were desired in a private room. They went to the first floor and were ushered into a large apartment whose balcony opened on the hall of the winter-theater, empty now. But the apartment was already occupied. Before a table covered with a shining service Gounsovski did the honors.
He received them like a servant, with his head down, an obsequious smile, and his back bent, bowing several times as each of the guests were presented to him. Athanase had described him accurately enough, a mannikin in fat. Under the vast bent brow one could hardly see his eyes, behind the blue glasses that seemed always ready to fall as he inclined too far his fat head with its timid and yet all-powerful glance. When he spoke in his falsetto voice, his chin dropped in a fold over his collar, and he had a steady gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to retain the glasses from sliding down his short, thick nose.
Behind him there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch. He had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could not be further compromised by this affair, as they were already under the eye of the Okrana (Secret Police) despite their high birth. Gounsovski had seen them come with a sinister chuckle and had lavished upon them his marks of devotion.
He loved Annouchka. It would have sufficed to have surprised just once the jealous glance he sent from beneath his great blue glasses when he gazed at the singer to have understood the sentiments that actuated him in the presence of the beautiful daughter of the Black Land.
Annouchka was seated, or, rather, she lounged, Oriental fashion, on the sofa which ran along the wall behind the table. She paid attention to no one. Her attitude was forbidding, even hostile. She indifferently allowed her marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her shoulder to be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka’s success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut. “Come to supper,” Annouchka had said to her.
“With whom?” inquired the Spanish artist.
“With Gounsovski.”
“Never.”
“Do come. You will help me pay my debt and perhaps he will be useful to you as well. He is useful to everybody.”
Decidedly Onoto did not understand this country, where the worst enemies supped together.
Rouletabille had been monopolized at once by Prince Galitch, who took him into a corner and said:
“What are you doing here?”
“Do I inconvenience you?” asked the boy.
The other assumed the amused smile of the great lord.
“While there is still time,” he said, “believe me, you ought to start, to quit this country. Haven’t you had sufficient notice?”
“Yes,” replied the reporter. “And you can dispense with any further notice from this time on.”
He turned his back.
“Why, it is the little Frenchman from the Trebassof villa,” commenced the falsetto voice of Gounsovski as he pushed a seat towards the young man and begged him to sit between him and Athanase Georgevitch, who was already busy with the hors-doeuvres.
“How do you do, monsieur?” said the beautiful, grave voice of Annouchka.
Rouletabille saluted.
“I see that I am in a country of acquaintances,” he said, without appearing disturbed.
He addressed a lively compliment to Annouchka, who threw him a kiss.
“Rouletabille!” cried la belle Onoto. “Why, then, he is the little fellow who solved the mystery of the Yellow Room.”
“Himself.”
“What are you doing here?”
“He came to save the life of General Trebassof,” sniggered Gounsovski. “He is certainly a brave little young man.”
“The police know everything,” said Rouletabille coldly. And he asked for champagne, which he never drank.
The champagne commenced its work. While Thaddeus and the officers told each other stories of Bakou or paid compliments to the women, Gounsovski, who was through with raillery, leaned toward Rouletabille and gave that young man fatherly counsel with great unction.
“You have undertaken, young man, a noble task and one all the more difficult because General Trebassof is condemned not only by his enemies but still more by the ignorance of Koupriane. Understand me thoroughly: Koupriane is my friend and a man whom I esteem very highly. He is good, brave as a warrior, but I wouldn’t give a kopeck for his police. He has mixed in our affairs lately by creating his own secret police, but I don’t wish to meddle with that. It amuses us. It’s the new style, anyway; everybody wants his secret police nowadays. And yourself, young man, what, after all, are you doing here? Reporting? No. Police work? That is our business and your business. I wish you good luck, but I don’t expect it. Remember that if you need any help I will give it you willingly. I love to be of service. And I don’t wish any harm to befall you.”
“You are very kind, monsieur,” was all Rouletabille replied, and he called again for champagne.
Several times Gounsovski addressed remarks to Annouchka, who concerned herself with her meal and had little answer for him.
“Do you know who applauded you the most this evening?”
“No,” said Annouchka indifferently.
“The daughter of General Trebassof.”
“Yes, that is true, on my word,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“Yes, yes, Natacba was there,” joined in the other friends from the datcha des Iles.
“For me, I saw her weep,” said Rouletabille, looking at Annouchka fixedly.
But Annouchka replied in an icy tone:
“I do not know her.”
“She is unlucky in having a father…” Prince Galitch commenced.
“Prince, no politics, or let me take my leave,” clucked Gounsovski. “Your health, dear Annouchka.”
“Your health, Gounsovski. But you have no worry about that.”
“Why?” demanded Thaddeus Tchitcbnikoff in equivocal fashion.
“Because he is too useful to the government,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“No,” replied Annouchka; “to the revolutionaries.”
All broke out laughing. Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by his usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat boiling in the pot:
“So they say. And it is my strength.”
“His system is excellent,” said the prince. “As he is in with everybody, everybody is in with the police, without knowing it.”
“They say … ah, ah … they say …” (Athanase was choking over a little piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) “they say that he has driven away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of Kasan.”
Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans, street-thieves who since the recent political troubles had infested St. Petersburg and whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.
Athanase Georgevitch said:
“There are hooligans that ought to have existed even if they never have. One of them stopped a young girl before Varsovie station. The girl, frightened, immediately held out her purse to him, with two roubles and fifty kopecks in it. The hooligan took it all. ‘Goodness,’ cried she, ‘I have nothing now to take my train with.’ ‘How much is it?’ asked the hooligan. ‘Sixty kopecks.’ ‘Sixty kopecks! Why didn’t you say so?’ And the bandit, hanging onto the two roules, returned the fifty-kopeck piece to the trembling child and added a ten-kopeck piece out of his own pocket.”
“Something quite as funny happened to me two winters ago, at Moscow,” said la belle Onoto. “I had just stepped out of the door when I was stopped by a hooligan. ‘Give me twenty kopecks,’ said the hooligan. I was so frightened that I couldn’t get my purse open. ‘Quicker,’ said he. Finally I gave him twenty kopecks. ‘Now,’ said he then, ‘kiss my hand.’ And I had to kiss it, because he held his knife in the other.”
“Oh, they are quick with their knives,” said Thaddeus. “As I was leaving Gastinidvor once I was stopped by a hooligan who stuck a huge carving-knife under my nose. ‘You can have it for a rouble and a half,’ he said. You can believe that I bought it without any haggling. And it was a very good bargain. It was worth at least three roubles. Your health, belle Onoto.”
“I always take my revolver when I go out,” said Athanase. “It is more prudent. I say this before the police. But I would rather be arrested by the police than stabbed by the hooligans.”
“There’s no place any more to buy revolvers,” dedared Ivan Petrovitch. “All such places are closed.”
Gounsovski settled his glasses, rubbed his fat hands and said:
“There are some still at my locksmith’s place. The proof is that to-day in the little Kaniouche my locksmith, whose name is Smith, when into the house of the grocer at the corner and wished to sell him a revolver. It was a Browning. ‘An arm of the greatest reliability,’ he said to him, ‘which never misses fire and which works very easily.’ Having pronounced these words, the locksmith tried his revolver and lodged a ball in the grocer’s lung. The grocer is dead, but before he died he bought the revolver. ‘You are right,’ he said to the locksmith; ‘it is a terrible weapon.’ And then he died.”
The others laughed heartily. They thought it very funny. Decidedly this great Gounsovski always had a funny story. Who would not like to be his friend? Annouchka had deigned to smile. Gounsovski, in recognition, extended his hand to her like a mendicant. The young woman touched it with the end of her fingers, as if she were placing a twenty-kopeck piece in the hand of a hooligan, and withdrew from it with disgust. Then the doors opened for the Bohemians. Their swarthy troupe soon filled the room. Every evening men and women in their native costumes came from old Derevnia, where they lived all together in a sort of ancient patriarchal community, with customs that had not changed for centuries; they scattered about in the places of pleasure, in the fashionable restaurants, where they gathered large sums, for it was a fashionable luxury to have them sing at the end of suppers, and everyone showered money on them in order not to be behind the others. They accompanied on guzlas, on castanets, on tambourines, and sang the old airs, doleful and languorous, or excitable and breathiess as the flight of the earliest nomads in the beginnings of the world.
When they had entered, those present made place for them, and Rouletabille, who for some moments had been showing marks of fatigue and of a giddiness natural enough in a young man who isn’t in the habit of drinking the finest champagnes, profited by the diversion to get a corner of the sofa not far from Prince Galitch, who occupied the place at Annouchka’s right.
“Look, Rouletabaille is asleep,” remarked la belle Onoto.
“Poor boy!” said Annouchka.
And, turning toward Gounsovski:
“Aren’t you soon going to get him out of our way? I heard some of our brethren the other day speaking in a way that would cause pain to those who care about his health.”
“Oh, that,” said Gounsovski, shaking his head, “is an affair I have nothing to do with. Apply to Koupriane. Your health, belle Annouchka.”
But the Bohemians swept some opening chords for their songs, and the singers took everybody’s attention, everybody excepting Prince Galitch and Annouchka, who, half turned toward one another, exchanged some words on the edge of all this musical uproar. As for Rouletabille, he certainly must have been sleeping soundly not to have been waked by all that noise, melodious as it was. It is true that he had – apparently – drunk a good deal and, as everyone knows, in Russia drink lays out those who can’t stand it. When the Bohemians had sung three times Gounsovski made a sign that they might go to charm other ears, and slipped into the hands of the chief of the band a twenty-five rouble note. But Onoto wished to give her mite, and a regular collection commenced. Each one threw roubles into the plate held out by a little swarthy Bohemian girl with crow-black hair, carelessly combed, falling over her forehead, her eyes and her face, in so droll a fashion that one would have said the little thing was a weeping-willow soaked in ink. The plate reached Prince Galitch, who futilely searched his pockets.
“Bah!” said he, with a lordly air, “I have no money. But here is my pocket-book; I will give it to you for a souvenir of me, Katharina.”
Thaddeus and Athanase exclaimed at the generosity of the prince, but Annouchka said:
“The prince does as he should, for my friends can never sufficiently repay the hospitality that that little thing gave me in her dirty hut when I was in hiding, while your famous department was deciding what to do about me, my dear Gounsovski.”
“Eh,” replied Gounsovski, “I let you know that all you had to do was to take a fine apartment in the city.”
Annouchka spat on the ground like a teamster, and Gounsovski from yellow turned green.
“But why did you hide yourself that way, Annouchka?” asked Onoto as she caressed the beautiful tresses of the singer.
“You know I had been condemned to death, and then pardoned. I had been able to leave Moscow, and I hadn’t any desire to be re-taken here and sent to taste the joys of Siberia.”
“But why were you condemned to death?”
“Why, she doesn’t know anything!” exclaimed the others.
“Good Lord, I’m just back from London and Paris – how should I know anything! But to have been condemned to death! That must have been amusing.”
“Very amusing,” said Annouchka icily. “And if you have a brother whom you love, Onoto, think how much more amusing it must be to have him shot before you.”
“Oh, my love, forgive me!”
“So you may know and not give any pain to your Annouchka in the future, I will tell you, madame, what happened to our dear friend,” said Prince Galitch.
“We would do better to drive away such terrible memories,” ventured Gounsovski, lifting his eyelashes behind his glasses, but he bent his head as Annouchka sent him a blazing glance.
“Speak, Galitch.”
The Prince did as she said.
“Annouchka had a brother, Vlassof, an engineer on the Kasan line, whom the Strike Committee had ordered to take out a train as the only means of escape for the leaders of the revolutionary troops when Trebassof’s soldiers, aided by the Semenowsky regiment, had become masters of the city. The last resistance took place at the station. It was necessary to get started. All the ways were guarded by the military. There were soldiers everywhere! Vlassof said to his comrades, ‘I will save you;’ and his comrades saw him mount the engine with a woman. That woman was – well, there she sits. Vlassof’s fireman had been killed the evening before, on a barricade; it was Annouchka who took his place. They busied themselves and the train started like a shot. On that curved line, discovered at once, easy to attack, under a shower of bullets, Vlassof developed a speed of ninety versts an hour. He ran the indicator up to the explosion point. The lady over there continued to pile coal into the furnace. The danger came to be less from the military and more from an explosion at any moment. In the midst of the balls Vlassof kept his usual coolness. He sped not only with the firebox open but with the forced draught. It was a miracle that the engine was not smashed against the curve of the embankment. But they got past. Not a man was hurt. Only a woman was wounded. She got a ball in the chest.”
“There!” cried Annouchka.
With a magnificent gesture she flung open her white and heaving chest, and put her finger on a scar that Gounsovski, whose fat began to melt in heavy drops of sweat about his temples, dared not look at.
“Fifteen days later,” continued the prince, “Vlassof entered an inn at Lubetszy. He didn’t know it was full of soldiers. His face never altered. They searched him. They found a revolver and papers on him. They knew whom they had to do with. He was a good prize. Vlassof was taken to Moscow and condemned to be shot. His sister, wounded as she was, learned of his arrest and joined him. ‘I do not wish,’ she said to him, ‘to leave you to die alone.’ She also was condemned. Before the execution the soldiers offered to bandage their eyes, but both refused, saying they preferred to meet death face to face. The orders were to shoot all the other condemned revolutionaries first, then Vlassof, then his sister. It was in vain that Vlassof asked to die last. Their comrades in execution sank to their knees, bleeding from their death wounds. Vlassof embraced his sister and walked to the place of death. There he addressed the soldiers: ‘Now you have to carry out your duty according to the oath you have taken. Fulfill it honestly as I have fulfilled mine. Captain, give the order.’ The volley sounded. Vlassof remained erect, his arms crossed on his breast, safe and sound. Not a ball had touched him. The soldiers did not wish to fire at him. He had to summon them again to fulfill their duty, and obey their chief. Then they fired again, and he fell. He looked at his sister with his eyes full of horrible suffering. Seeing that he lived, and wishing to appear charitable, the captain, upon Annouchka’s prayers, approached and cut short his sufferings by firing a revolver into his ear. Now it was Annouchka’s turn. She knelt by the body of her brother, kissed his bloody lips, rose and said, ‘I am ready.’ As the guns were raised, an officer came running, bearing the pardon of the Tsar. She did not wish it, and she whom they had not bound when she was to die had to be restrained when she learned she was to live.”
Prince Galitch, amid the anguished silence of all there, started to add some words of comment to his sinister recital, but Annouchka interrupted:
“The story is ended,” said she. “Not a word, Prince. If I asked you to tell it in all its horror, if I wished you to bring back to us the atrocious moment of my brother’s death, it is so that monsieur” (her fingers pointed to Gounsovski) “shall know well, once for all, that if I have submitted for some hours now to this promiscuous company that has been imposed upon me, now that I have paid the debt by accepting this abominable supper, I have nothing more to do with this purveyor of bagnios and of hangman’s ropes who is here.”
“She is mad,” he muttered. “She is mad. What has come over her? What has happened? Only to-day she was so, so amiable.”
And he stuttered, desolately, with an embarrassed laugh:
“Ah, the women, the women! Now what have I done to her?”
“What have you done to me, wretch? Where are Belachof, Bartowsky and Strassof? And Pierre Slutch? All the comrades who swore with me to revenge my brother? Where are they? On what gallows did you have them hung? What mine have you buried them in? And still you follow your slavish task. And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any other crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who believed they could talk freely in my dressing-room – where are they? Why have they left me, one by one? Why have they disappeared? It is you, wretch, who watched them, who spied on them, making me, I haven’t any doubt, your horrible accomplice, mixing me up in your beastly work, you dog! You knew what they call me. You have known it for a long time, and you may well laugh over it. But I, I never knew until this evening; I never learned until this evening all I owe to you. ‘Stool pigeon! Stool pigeon!’ I! Horror! Ah, you dog, you dog! Your mother, when you were brought into the world, your mother …” Here she hurled at him the most offensive insult that a Russian can offer a man of that race.
She trembled and sobbed with rage, spat in fury, and stood up ready to go, wrapped in her mantle like a great red flag. She was the statue of hate and vengeance. She was horrible and terrible. She was beautiful. At the final supreme insult, Gounsovski started and rose to his feet as though he had received an actual blow in the face. He did not look at Annouchka, but fixed his eyes on Prince Galitch. His finger pointed him out:
“There is the man,” he hissed, “who has told you all these fine things.”
“Yes, it is I,” said the Prince, tranquilly.
“Caracho!” barked Gounsovski, instantaneously regaining his coolness.
“Ah, yes, but you’ll not touch him,” clamored the spirited girl of the Black Land; “you are not strong enough for that.”
“I know that monsieur has many friends at court,” agreed the chief of the Secret Service with an ominous calm. “I ‘don’t wish ill to monsieur. You speak, madame, of the way some of your friends have had to be sacrificed. I hope that some day you will be better informed, and that you will understand I saved all of them I could.”
“Let us go,” muttered Annouchka. “I shall spit in his face.”
“Yes, all I could,” replied the other, with his habitual gesture of hanging on to his glasses. “And I shall continue to do so. I promise you not to say anything more disagreeable to the prince than as regards his little friend the Bohemian Katharina, whom he has treated so generously just now, doubtless because Boris Mourazoff pays her too little for the errands she runs each morning to the villa of Krestowsky Ostrow.”
At these words the Prince and Annouchka both changed countenance. Their anger rose. Annouchka turned her head as though to arrange the folds of her cloak. Galitch contented himself with shrugging his shoulders impatiently and murmuring:
“Still some other abomination that you are concocting, monsieur, and that we don’t know how to reply to.”
After which he bowed to the supper-party, took Annouchka’s arm and had her move before him. Gounsovski bowed, almost bent in two. When he rose he saw before him the three astounded and horrified figures of Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch.
“Messieurs,” he said to them, in a colorless voice which seemed not to belong to him, “the time has come for us to part. I need not say that we have supped as friends and that, if you wish it to be so, we can forget everything that has been said here.”
The three others, frightened, at once protested their discretion. He added, roughly this time, “Service of the Tsar,” and the three stammered, “God save the Tsar!” After which he saw them to the door. When the door had closed after them, he said, “My little Annouchka, you mustn’t reckon without me.” He hurried toward the sofa, where Rouletabille was lying forgotten, and gave him a tap on the shoulder.
“Come, get up. Don’t act as though you were asleep. Not an instant to lose. They are going to carry through the Trebassof affair this evening.”
Rouletabille was already on his legs.
“Oh, monsieur,” said he, “I didn’t want you to tell me that. Thanks all the same, and good evening.”
He went out.
Gounsovski rang. A servant appeared.
“Tell them they may now open all the rooms on this corridor; I’ll not hold them any longer.” Thus had Gounsovski kept himself protected.
Left alone, the head of the Secret Service wiped his brow and drank a great glass of iced water which he emptied at a draught. Then he said:
“Koupriane will have his work cut out for him this evening; I wish him good luck. As to them, whatever happens, I wash my hands of them.”
And he rubbed his hands.
X
A DRAMA IN THE NIGHT
At the door of the Krestowsky Rouletabille, who was in a hurry for a conveyance, jumped into an open carriage where la belle Onoto was already seated. The dancer caught him on her knees.
“To Eliaguine, fast as you can,” cried the reporter for all explanation.
“Scan! Scan! (Quickly, quickly)” repeated Onoto.
She was accompanied by a vague sort of person to whom neither of them paid the least attention.
“What a supper! You waked up at last, did you?” quizzed the actress. But Rouletabille, standing up behind the enormous coachman, urged the horses and directed the route of the carriage. They bolted along through the night at a dizzy pace. At the corner of a bridge he ordered the horses stopped, thanked his companions and disappeared.
“What a country! What a country! Caramba!” said the Spanish artist.
The carriage waited a few minutes, then turned back toward the city.
Rouletabille got down the embankment and slowly, taking infinite precautions not to reveal his presence by making the least noise, made his way to where the river is widest. Seen through the blackness of the night the blacker mass of the Trebassof villa loomed like an enormous blot, he stopped. Then he glided like a snake through the reeds, the grass, the ferns. He was at the back of the villa, near the river, not far from the little path where he had discovered the passage of the assassin, thanks to the broken cobwebs. At that moment the moon rose and the birch-trees, which just before had been like great black staffs, now became white tapers which seemed to brighten that sinister solitude.
The reporter wished to profit at once by the sudden luminance to learn if his movements had been noticed and if the approaches to the villa on that side were guarded. He picked up a small pebble and threw it some distance from him along the path. At the unexpected noise three or four shadowy heads were outlined suddenly in the white light of the moon, but disappeared at once, lost again in the dark tufts of grass.
He had gained his information.
The reporter’s acute ear caught a gliding in his direction, a slight swish of twigs; then all at once a shadow grew by his side and he felt the cold of a revolver barrel on his temple. He said “Koupriane,” and at once a hand seized his and pressed it.
The night had become black again. He murmured: “How is it you are here in person?”
The Prefect of Police whispered in his ear:
“I have been informed that something will happen to-night. Natacha went to Krestowsky and exchanged some words with Annouchka there. Prince Galitch is involved, and it is an affair of State.”
“Natacha has returned?” inquired Rouletabille.
“Yes, a long time ago. She ought to be in bed. In any case she is pretending to be abed. The light from her chamber, in the window over the garden, has been put out.”
“Have you warned Matrena Petrovna?”
“Yes, I have let her know that she must keep on the sharp look-out to-night.”
“That’s a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her anything. She will take such extra precautions that the others will be instantly warned.”
“I have told her she should not go to the ground-floor at all this night, and that she must not leave the general’s chamber.”
“That is perfect, if she will obey you.”
“You see I have profited by all your information. I have followed your instructions. The road from the Krestowsky is under surveillance.”
“Perhaps too much. How are you planning?”
“We will let them enter. I don’t know whom I have to deal with. I want to strike a sure blow. I shall take him in the act. No more doubt after this, you trust me.”
“Adieu.”
“Where are you going?”
“To bed. I have paid my debt to my host. I have the right to some repose now. Good luck!”
But Koupriane had seized his hand.
“Listen.”
With a little attention they detected a light stroke on the water. If a boat was moving at this time for this bank of the Neva and wished to remain hidden, the right moment had certainly been chosen. A great black cloud covered the moon; the wind was light. The boat would have time to get from one bank to the other without being discovered. Rouletabille waited no longer. On all-fours he ran like a beast, rapidly and silently, and rose behind the wall of the villa, where he made a turn, reached the gate, aroused the dvornicks and demanded Ermolai, who opened the gate for him.
“The Barinia?” he said.
Ermolai pointed his finger to the bedroom floor.
“Caracho!”
Rouletabille was already across the garden and had hoisted himself by his fingers to the window of Natacha’s chamber, where he listened. He plainly heard Natacha walking about in the dark chamber. He fell back lightly onto his feet, mounted the veranda steps and opened the door, then closed it so lightly that Ermolai, who watched him from outside not two feet away, did not hear the slightest grinding of the hinges. Inside the villa Rouletabille advanced on tiptoe. He found the door of the drawing-room open. The door of the sitting-room had not been closed, or else had been reopened. He turned in his tracks, felt in the dark for a chair and sat down, with his hand on his revolver in his pocket, waiting for the events that would not delay long now. Above he heard distinctly from time to time the movements of Matrena Petrovna. And this would evidently give a sense of security to those who needed to have the ground-floor free this night. Rouletabille imagined that the doors of the rooms on the ground-floor had been left open so that it would be easier for those who would be below to hear what was happening upstairs. And perhaps he was not wrong.
Suddenly there was a vertical bar of pale light from the sitting-room that overlooked the Neva. He deduced two things: first, that the window was already slightly open, then that the moon was out from the clouds again. The bar of light died almost instantly, but Rouletabille’s eyes, now used to the obscurity, still distinguished the open line of the window. There the shade was less deep. Suddenly he felt the blood pound at his temples, for the line of the open window grew larger, increased, and the shadow of a man gradually rose on the balcony. Rouletabille drew his revolver.
The man stood up immediately behind one of the shutters and struck a light blow on the glass. Placed as he was now he could be seen no more. His shadow mixed with the shadow of the shutter. At the noise on the glass Natacha’s door had opened cautiously, and she entered the sitting-room. On tiptoe she went quickly to the window and opened it. The man entered. The little light that by now was commencing to dawn was enough to show Rouletabille that Natacha still wore the toilette in which he had seen her that same evening at Krestowsky. As for the man, he tried in vain to identify him; he was only a dark mass wrapped in a mantle. He leaned over and kissed Natacha’s hand. She said only one word: “Scan!” (Quickly).
But she had no more than said it before, under a vigorous attack, the shutters and the two halves of the window were thrown wide, and silent shadows jumped rapidly onto the balcony and sprang into the villa. Natacha uttered a shrill cry in which Rouletabille believed still he heard more of despair than terror, and the shadows threw themselves on the man; but he, at the first alarm, had thrown himself upon the carpet and had slipped from them between their legs. He regained the balcony and jumped from it as the others turned toward him. At least, it was so that Rouletabille believed he saw the mysterious struggle go in the half-light, amid most impressive silence, after that frightened cry of Natacha’s. The whole affair had lasted only a few seconds, and the man was still hanging over the balcony, when from the bottom of the hall a new person sprang. It was Matrena Petrovna.
Warned by Koupriane that something would happen that night, and foreseeing that it would happen on the ground-floor where she was forbidden to be, she had found nothing better to do than to make her faithful maid go secretly to the bedroom floor, with orders to walk about there all night, to make all think she herself was near the general, while she remained below, hidden in the dining-room.
Matrena Petrovna now threw herself out onto the balcony, crying in Russian, “Shoot! Shoot!” In just that moment the man was hesitating whether to risk the jump and perhaps break his neck, or descend less rapidly by the gutter-pipe. A policeman fired and missed him, and the man, after firing back and wounding the policeman, disappeared. It was still too far from dawn for them to see clearly what happened below, where the barking of Brownings alone was heard. And there could be nothing more sinister than the revolver-shots unaccompanied by cries in the mists of the morning. The man, before he disappeared, had had only time by a quick kick to throw down one of the two ladders which had been used by the police in climbing; down the other one all the police in a bunch, even to the wounded one, went sliding, falling, rising, running after the shadow which fled still, discharging the Browning steadily; other shadows rose from the river-bank, hovering in the mist. Suddenly Koupniane’s voice was heard shouting orders, calling upon his agents to take the quarry alive or dead. From the balcony Matrena Petrovna cried out also, like a savage, and Rouletabille tried in vain to keep her quiet. She was delirious at the thought “The Other” might escape yet. She fired a revolver, she also, into the group, not knowing whom she might wound. Rouletabille grabbed her arm and as she turned on him angrily she observed Natacha, who, leaning until she almost fell over the balcony, her lips trembling with delirious utterance, followed as well as she could the progress of the struggle, trying to understand what happened below, under the trees, near the Neva, where the tumult by now extended. Matrena Petrovna pulled her back by the arms. Then she took her by the neck and threw her into the drawing-room in a heap. When she had almost strangled her step-daughter, Matrena Petrovna saw that the general was there. He appeared in the pale glimmerings of dawn like a specter. By what miracle had Feodor Feodorovitch been able to descend the stairs and reach there? How had it been brought about? She saw him tremble with anger or with wretchedness under the folds of the soldier’s cape that floated about him. He demanded in a hoarse voice, “What is it?”
Matrena Petrovna threw herself at his feet, made the orthodox sign of the Cross, as if she wished to summon God to witness, and then, pointing to Natacha, she denounced his daughter to her husband as she would have pointed her out to a judge.
“The one, Feodor Feodorovitch, who has wished more than once to assassinate you, and who this night has opened the datcha to your assassin is your daughter.”
The general held himself up by his two hands against the wall, and, looking at Matrena and Natacha, who now were both upon the floor before him like suppliants, he said to Matrena:
“It is you who assassinate me.”
“Me! By the living God!” babbled Matrena Petrovna desperately. “If I had been able to keep this from you, Jesus would have been good! But I say no more to crucify you. Feodor Feodorovitch, question your daughter, and if what I have said is not true, kill me, kill me as a lying, evil beast. I will say thank you, thank you, and I will die happier than if what I have said was true. Ah, I long to be dead! Kill me!”
Feodor Feodorovitch pushed her back with his stick as one would push a worm in his path. Without saying anything further, she rose from her knees and looked with her haggard eyes, with her crazed face, at Rouletabille, who grasped her arm. If she had had her hands still free she would not have hesitated a second in wreaking justice upon herself under this bitter fate of alienating Feodor. And it seemed frightful to Rouletabille that he should be present at one of those horrible family dramas the issue of which in the wild times of Peter the Great would have sent the general to the hangman either as a father or as a husband.
The general did not deign even to consider for any length of time Matrena’s delirium. He said to his daughter, who shook with sobs on the floor, “Rise, Natacha Feodorovna.” And Feodor’s daughter understood that her father never would believe in her guilt. She drew herself up towards him and kissed his hands like a happy slave.
At this moment repeated blows shook the veranda door. Matrena, the watch-dog, anxious to die after Feodor’s reproach, but still at her post, ran toward what she believed to be a new danger. But she recognized Koupriane’s voice, which called on her to open. She let him in herself.
“What is it?” she implored.
“Well, he is dead.”
A cry answered him. Natacha had heard.
“But who – who – who?” questioned Matrena breathlessly.
Koupriane went over to Feodor and grasped his hands.
“General,” he said, “there was a man who had sworn your ruin and who was made an instrument by your enemies. We have just killed that man.”
“Do I know him?” demanded Feodor.
“He is one of your friends, you have treated him like a son.”
“His name?”
“Ask your daughter, General.”
Feodor turned toward Natacha, who burned Koupriane with her gaze, trying to learn what this news was he brought – the truth or a ruse.
“You know the man who wished to kill me, Natacha?”
“No,” she replied to her father, in accents of perfect fury. “No, I don’t know any such man.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Koupriane, in a firm, terribly hostile voice, “you have yourself, with your own hands, opened that window to-night; and you have opened it to him many other times besides. While everyone else here does his duty and watches that no person shall be able to enter at night the house where sleeps General Trebassof, governor of Moscow, condemned to death by the Central Revolutionary Committee now reunited at Presnia, this is what you do; it is you who introduce the enemy into this place.”
“Answer, Natacha; tell me, yes or no, whether you have let anybody into this house by night.”
“Father, it is true.”
Feodor roared like a lion:
“His name!”
“Monsieur will tell you himself,” said Natacha, in a voice thick with terror, and she pointed to Koupriane. “Why does he not tell you himself the name of that person? He must know it, if the man is dead.”
“And if the man is not dead,” replied Feodor, who visibly held onto himself, “if that man, whom you helped to enter my house this night, has succeeded in escaping, as you seem to hope, will you tell us his name?”
“I could not tell it, Father.”
“And if I prayed you to do so?”
Natacha desperately shook her head.
“And if I order you?”
“You can kill me, Father, but I will not pronounce that name.”
“Wretch!”
He raised his stick toward her. Thus Ivan the Terrible had killed his son with a blow of his boar-spear.
But Natacha, instead of bowing her head beneath the blow that menaced her, turned toward Koupriane and threw at him in accents of triumph:
“He is not dead. If you bad succeeded in taking him, dead or alive, you would already have his name.”
Koupriane took two steps toward her, put his hand on her shoulder and said:
“Michael Nikolajevitch.”
“Michael Korsakoff!” cried the general.
Matrena Petrovna, as if revolted by that suggestion, stood upright to repeat:
“Michael Korsakoff!”
The general could not believe his ears, and was about to protest when he noticed that his daughter had turned away and was trying to flee to her room. He stopped her with a terrible gesture.
“Natacha, you are going to tell us what Michael Korsakoff came here to do to-night.”
“Feodor Feodorovitch, he came to poison you.”
It was Matrena who spoke now and whom nothing could have kept silent, for she saw in Natacha’s attempt at flight the most sinister confession. Like a vengeful fury she told over with cries and terrible gestures what she had experienced, as if once more stretched before her the hand armed with the poison, the mysterious hand above the pillow of her poor invalid, her dear, rigorous tyrant; she told them about the preceding night and all her terrors, and from her lips, by her voluble staccato utterance that ominous recital had grotesque emphasis. Finally she told all that she had done, she and the little Frenchman, in order not to betray their suspicions to The Other, in order to take finally in their own trap all those who for so many days and nights schemed for the death of Feodor Feodorovitch. As she ended she pointed out Rouletabille to Feodor and cried, “There is the one who has saved you.”
Natacha, as she listened to this tragic recital, restrained herself several times in order not to interrupt, and Rouletabille, who was watching her closely, saw that she had to use almost superhuman efforts in order to achieve that. All the horror of what seemed to be to her as well as to Feodor a revelation of Michael’s crime did not subdue her, but seemed, on the contrary, to restore to her in full force all the life that a few seconds earlier had fled from her. Matrena had hardly finished her cry, “There is the one who has saved you,” before Natacha cried in her turn, facing the reporter with a look full of the most frightful hate, “There is the one who has been the death of an innocent man!” She turned to her father. “Ah, papa, let me, let me say that Michael Nikolaievitch, who came here this evening, I admit, and whom, it is true, I let into the house, that Michael Nikolaievitch did not come here yesterday, and that the man who has tried to poison you is certainly someone else.”
At these words Rouletabille turned pale, but he did not let himself lose self-control. He replied simply:
“No, mademoiselle, it was the same man.”
And Koupriane felt compelled to add:
“Anyway, we have found the proof of Michael Nikolaievitch’s relations with the revolutionaries.”
“Where have you found that?” questioned the young girl, turning toward the Chief of Police a face ravished with anguish.
“At Krestowsky, mademoiselle.”
She looked a long time at him as though she would penetrate to the bottom of his thoughts.
“What proofs?” she implored.
“A correspondence which we have placed under seal.”
“Was it addressed to him? What kind of correspondence?”
“If it interests you, we will open it before you.”
“My God! My God!” she gasped. “Where have you found this correspondence? Where? Tell me where!”
“I will tell you. `At the villa, in his chamber. We forced the lock of his bureau.”
She seemed to breathe again, but her father took her brutally by the arm.
“Come, Natacha, you are going to tell us what that man was doing here to-night.”
“In her chamber!” cried Matrena Petrovna.
Natacha turned toward Matrena:
“What do you believe, then? Tell me now.”
“And I, what ought I to believe?” muttered Feodor. “You have not told me yet. You did not know that man had relations with my enemies. You are innocent of that, perhaps. I wish to think so. I wish it, in the name of Heaven I wish it. But why did you receive him? Why? Why did you bring him in here, as a robber or as a…”
“Oh, papa, you know that I love Boris, that I love him with all my heart, and that I would never belong to anyone but him.”
“Then, then, then. – speak!”
The young girl had reached the crisis.
“Ah, Father, Father, do not question me! You, you above all, do not question me now. I can say nothing! There is nothing I can tell you. Excepting that I am sure – sure, you understand – that Michael Nikolaievitch did not come here last night.”
“He did come,” insisted Rouletabille in a slightly troubled voice.
“He came here with poison. He came here to poison your father, Natacha,” moaned Matrena Petrovna, who twined her hands in gestures of sincere and naive tragedy.
“And I,” replied the daughter of Feodor ardently, with an accent of conviction which made everyone there vibrate, and particularly Rouletabille, “and I, I tell you it was not he, that it was not he, that it could not possibly be he. I swear to you it was another, another.”
“But then, this other, did you let him in as well?” said Koupriane.
“Ah, yes, yes. It was I. It was I. It was I who left the window and blinds open. Yes, it is I who did that. But I did not wait for the other, the other who came to assassinate. As to Michael Nikolaievitch, I swear to you, my father, by all that is most sacred in heaven and on earth, that he could not have committed the crime that you say. And now – kill me, for there is nothing more I can say.”
“The poison,” replied Koupriane coldly, “the poison that he poured into the general’s potion was that arsenate of soda which was on the grapes the Marshal of the Court brought here. Those grapes were left by the Marshal, who warned Michael Nikolaievitch and Boris Alexandrovitch to wash them. The grapes disappeared. If Michael is innocent, do you accuse Boris?”
Natacha, who seemed to have suddenly lost all power for defending herself, moaned, begged, railed, seemed dying.
“No, no. Don’t accuse Boris. He has nothing to do with it. Don’t accuse Michael. Don’t accuse anyone so long as you don’t know. But these two are innocent. Believe me. Believe me. Ah, how shall I say it, how shall I persuade you! I am not able to say anything to you. And you have killed Michael. Ah, what have you done, what have you done!”
“We have suppressed a man,” said the icy voice of Koupriane, “who was merely the agent for the base deeds of Nihilism.”
She succeeded in recovering a new energy that in her depths of despair they would have supposed impossible. She shook her fists at Koupriane:
“It is not true, it is not true. These are slanders, infamies! The inventions of the police! Papers devised to incriminate him. There is nothing at all of what you said you found at his house. It is not possible. It is not true.”
“Where are those papers?” demanded the curt voice of Feodor. “Bring them here at once, Koupriane; I wish to see them.”
Koupriane was slightly troubled, and this did not escape Natacha, who cried:
“Yes, yes, let him give us them, let him bring them if he has them. But he hasn’t,” she clamored with a savage joy. “He has nothing. You can see, papa, that he has nothing. He would already have brought them out. He has nothing. I tell you he has nothing. Ah, he has nothing! He has nothing!”
And she threw herself on the floor, weeping, sobbing, “He has nothing, he has nothing!” She seemed to weep for joy.
“Is that true?” demanded Feodor Feodorovitch, with his most somber manner. “Is it true, Koupriane, that you have nothing?”
“It is true, General, that we have found nothing. Everything had already been carried away.”
But Natacha uttered a veritable torrent of glee:
“He has found nothing! Yet he accuses him of being allied with the revolutionaries. Why? Why? Because I let him in? But I, am I a revolutionary? Tell me. Have I sworn to kill papa? I? I? Ah, he doesn’t know what to say. You see for yourself, papa, he is silent. He has lied. He has lied.”
“Why have you made this false statement, Koupriane?”
“Oh, we have suspected Michael for some time, and truly, after what has just happened, we cannot have any doubt.”
“Yes, but you declared you had papers, and you have not. That is abominable procedure, Koupriane,” replied Feodor sternly. “I have heard you condemn such expedients many times.”
“General! We are sure, you hear, we are absolutely sure that the man who tried to poison you yesterday and the man to-day who is dead are one and the same.”
“And what reason have you for being so sure? It is necessary to tell it,” insisted the general, who trembled with distress and impatience.
“Yes, let him tell now.”
“Ask monsieur,” said Koupriane.
They all turned to Rouletabille.
The reporter replied, affecting a coolness that perhaps he did not entirely feel:
“I am able to state to you, as I already have before Monsieur the Prefect of Police, that one, and only one, person has left the traces of his various climbings on the wall and on the balcony.”
“Idiot!” interrupted Natacha, with a passionate disdain for the young man. “And that satisfies you?”
The general roughly seized the reporter’s wrist:
“Listen to me, monsieur. A man came here this night. That concerns only me. No one has any right to be astonished excepting myself. I make it my own affair, an affair between my daughter and me. But you, you have just told us that you are sure that man is an assassin. Then, you see, that calls for something else. Proofs are necessary, and I want the proofs at once. You speak of traces; very well, we will go and examine those traces together. And I wish for your sake, monsieur, that I shall be as convinced by them as you are.”
Rouletabille quietly disengaged his wrist and replied with perfect calm:
“Now, monsieur, I am no longer able to prove anything to you.”
“Why?”
“Because the ladders of the police agents have wiped out all my proofs, monsieur.
“So now there remains for us only your word, only your belief in yourself. And if you are mistaken?”
“He would never admit it, papa,” cried Natacha. “Ah, it is he who deserves the fate Michael Nikolaievitch has met just now. Isn’t it so? Don’t you know it? And that will be your eternal remorse! Isn’t there something that always keeps you from admitting that you are mistaken? You have had an innocent man killed. Now, you know well enough, you know well that I would not have admitted Michael Nikolaievitch here if I had believed he was capable of wishing to poison my father.”
“Mademoiselle,” replied Rouletabille, not lowering his eyes under Natacha’s thunderous regard, “I am sure of that.”
He said it in such a tone that Natacha continued to look at him with incomprehensible anguish in her eyes. Ah, the baffling of those two regards, the mute scene between those two young people, one of whom wished to make himself understood and the other afraid beyond all other things of being thoroughly understood. Natacha murmured:
“How he looks at me! See, he is the demon; yes, yes, the little domovoi, the little domovoi. But look out, poor wretch; you don’t know what you have done.”
She turned brusquely toward Koupriane:
“Where is the body of Michael Nikolaievitch?” said she. “I wish to see it. I must see it.”
Feodor Feodorovitch had fallen, as though asleep, upon a chair. Matrena Petrovna dared not approach him. The giant appeared hurt to the death, disheartened forever. What neither bombs, nor bullets, nor poison had been able to do, the single idea of his daughter’s co-operation in the work of horror plotted about him – or rather the impossibility he faced of understanding Natacha’s attitude, her mysterious conduct, the chaos of her explanations, her insensate cries, her protestations of innocence, her accusations, her menaces, her prayers and all her disorder, the avowed fact of her share in that tragic nocturnal adventure where Michael Nikolaievitch found his death, had knocked over Feodor Feodorovitch like a straw. One instant he sought refuge in some vague hope that Koupriane was less assured than he pretended of the orderly’s guilt. But that, after all, was only a detail of no importance in his eyes. What alone mattered was the significance of Natacha’s act, and the unhappy girl seemed not to be concerned over what he would think of it. She was there to fight against Koupriane, Rouletabille and Matrena Petrovna, defending her Michael Nikolajevitch, while he, the father, after having failed to overawe her just now, was there in a corner suffering agonizedly.
Koupriane walked over to him and said:
“Listen to me carefully, Feodor Feodorovitch. He who speaks to you is Head of the Police by the will of the Tsar, and your friend by the grace of God. If you do not demand before us, who are acquainted with all that has happened and who know how to keep any necessary secret, if you do not demand of your daughter the reason for her conduct with Michael Nikolaievitch, and if she does not tell you in all sincerity, there is nothing more for me to do here. My men have already been ordered away from this house as unworthy to guard the most loyal subject of His Majesty; I have not protested, but now I in my turn ask you to prove to me that the most dangerous enemy you have had in your house is not your daughter.”
These words, which summed up the horrible situation, came as a relief for Feodor. Yes, they must know. Koupriane was right. She must speak. He ordered his daughter to tell everything, everything.
Natacha fixed Koupriane again with her look of hatred to the death, turned from him and repeated in a firm voice:
“I have nothing to say.”
“There is the accomplice of your assassins,” growled Koupriane then, his arm extended.
Natacha uttered a cry like a wounded beast and fell at her father’s feet. She gathered them within her supplicating arms. She pressed them to her breasts. She sobbed from the bottom of her heart. And he, not comprehending, let her lie there, distant, hostile, somber. Then she moaned, distractedly, and wept bitterly, and the dramatic atmosphere in which she thus suddenly enveloped Feodor made it all sound like those cries of an earlier time when the all-powerful, punishing father appeared in the women’s apartments to punish the culpable ones.
“My father! Dear Father! Look at me! Look at me! Have pity on me, and do not require me to speak when I must be silent forever. And believe me! Do not believe these men! Do not believe Matrena Petrovna. And am I not your daughter? Your very own daughter! Your Natacha Feodorovna! I cannot make things dear to you. No, no, by the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus I cannot explain. By the holy ikons, it is because I must not. By my mother, whom I have not known and whose place you have taken, oh, my father, ask me nothing more! Ask me nothing more! But take me in your arms as you did when I was little; embrace me, dear father; love me. I never have had such need to be loved. Love me! I am miserable. Unfortunate me, who cannot even kill myself before your eyes to prove my innocence and my love. Papa, Papa! What will your arms be for in the days left you to live, if you no longer wish to press me to your heart? Papa! Papa!”
She laid her head on Feodor’s knees. Her hair had come down and hung about her in a magnificent disorderly mass of black.
“Look in my eyes! Look in my eyes! See how they love you, Batouchka! Batouchka! My dear Batouchka!”
Then Feodor wept. His great tears fell upon Natacha’s tears. He raised her head and demanded simply in a broken voice:
“You can tell me nothing now? But when will you tell me?”
Natacha lifted her eyes to his, then her look went past him toward heaven, and from her lips came just one word, in a sob:
“Never.”
Matrena Petrovna, Koupriane and the reporter shuddered before the high and terrible thing that happened then. Feodor had taken his daughter’s face between his hands. He looked long at those eyes raised toward heaven, the mouth which had just uttered the word “Never,” then, slowly, his rude lips went to the tortured, quivering lips of the girl. He held her close. She raised her head wildly, triumphantly, and cried, with arm extended toward Matrena Petrovna:
“He believes me! He believes me! And you would have believed me also if you had been my real mother.”
Her head fell back and she dropped unconscious to the floor. Feodor fell to his knees, tending her, deploring her, motioning the others out of the room.
“Go away! All of you, go! All! You, too, Matrena Petrovna. Go away!”
They disappeared, terrified by his savage gesture.
In the little datcha across the river at Krestowsky there was a body. Secret Service agents guarded it while they waited for their chief. Michael Nikolaievitch had come there to die, and the police had reached him just at his last breath. They were behind him as, with the death-rattle in his throat, he pulled himself into his chamber and fell in a heap. Katharina the Bohemian was there. She bent her quick-witted, puzzled head over his death agony. The police swarmed everywhere, ransacking, forcing locks, pulling drawers from the bureau and tables, emptying the cupboards. Their search took in everything, even to ripping the mattresses, and not respecting the rooms of Boris Mourazoff, who was away this night. They searched thoroughly, but they found absolutely nothing they were looking for in Michael’s rooms. But they accumulated a multitude of publications that belonged to Boris: Western books, essays on political economy, a history of the French Revolution, and verses that a man ought to hang for. They put them all under seal. During the search Michael died in Katharina’s arms. She had held him close, after opening his clothes over the chest, doubtless to make his last breaths easier. The unfortunate officer had received a bullet at the back of the head just after he had plunged into the Neva from the rear of the Trebassof datcha and started to swim across. It was a miracle that he had managed to keep going. Doubtless he hoped to die in peace if only he could reach his own house. He apparently had believed he could manage that once he had broken through his human bloodhounds. He did not know he was recognized and his place of retreat therefore known.
Now the police had gone from cellar to garret. Koupriane came from the Trebassof villa and joined them, Rouletabille followed him. The reporter could not stand the sight of that body, that still had a lingering warmth, of the great open eyes that seemed to stare at him, reproaching him for this violent death. He turned away in distaste, and perhaps a little in fright. Koupriane caught the movement.
“Regrets?” he queried.
“Yes,” said Rouletabille. “A death always must be regretted. None the less, he was a criminal. But I’m sincerely sorry he died before he had been driven to confess, even though we are sure of it.”
“Being in the pay of the Nihilists, you mean? That is still your opinion?” asked Koupriane.
“Yes.”
“You know that nothing has been found here in his rooms. The only compromising papers that have been found belong to Boris Mourazoff.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh – nothing.”
Koupriane questioned his men further. They replied categorically. No, nothing had been found that directly incriminated anybody; and suddenly Rouletabille noted that the conversation of the police and their chief had grown more animated. Koupriane had become angry and was violently reproaching them. They excused themselves with vivid gesture and rapid speech.
Koupriane started away. Rouletabille followed him. What had happened?
As he came up behind Koupriane, he asked the question. In a few curt words, still hurrying on, Koupriane told the reporter he had just learned that the police had left the little Bohemian Katharina alone for a moment with the expiring officer. Katharina acted as housekeeper for Michael and Boris. She knew the secrets of them both. The first thing any novice should have known was to keep a constant eye upon her, and now no one knew where she was. She must be searched for and found at once, for she had opened Michael’s shirt, and therein probably lay the reason that no papers were found on the corpse when the police searched it. The absence of papers, of a portfolio, was not natural.
The chase commenced in the rosy dawn of the isles. Already blood-like tints were on the horizon. Some of the police cried that they had the trail. They ran under the trees, because it was almost certain she had taken the narrow path leading to the bridge that joins Krestowsky to Kameny-Ostrow. Some indications discovered by the police who swarmed to right and left of the path confirmed this hypothesis. And no carriage in sight! They all ran on, Koupriane among the first. Rouletabille kept at his heels, but he did not pass him. Suddenly there were cries and calls among the police. One pointed out something below gliding upon the sloping descent. It was little Kathanna. She flew like the wind, but in a distracted course. She had reached Kameny-Ostrow on the west bank. “Oh, for a carriage, a horse!” clamored Koupriane, who had left his turn-out at Eliaguine. “The proof is there. It is the final proof of everything that is escaping us!”
Dawn was enough advanced now to show the ground clearly. Katharina was easily discernible as she reached the Eliaguine bridge. There she was in Eliaguine-Ostrow. What was she doing there? Was she going to the Trebassof villa? What would she have to say to them? No, she swerved to the right. The police raced behind her. She was still far ahead, and seemed untiring. Then she disappeared among the trees, in the thicket, keeping still to the right. Koupriane gave a cry of joy. Going that way she must be taken. He gave some breathless orders for the island to be barred. She could not escape now! She could not escape! But where was she going? Koupriane knew that island better than anybody. He took a short cut to reach the other side, toward which Katharina seemed to be heading, and all at once he nearly fell over the girl, who gave a squawk of surprise and rushed away, seeming all arms and legs.
“Stop, or I fire!” cried Koupriane, and he drew his revolver. But a hand grabbed it from him.
“Not that!” said Rouletabille, as be threw the revolver far from them. Koupriane swore at him and resumed the chase. His fury multiplied his strength, his agility; he almost reached Katharina, who was almost out of breath, but Rouletabille threw himself into the Chief’s arms and they rolled together upon the grass. When Koupriane rose, it was to see Katharina mounting in mad haste the stairs that led to the Barque, the floating restaurant of the Strielka. Cursing Rouletabille, but believing his prey easily captured now, the Chief in his turn hurried to the Barque, into which Katharina had disappeared. He reached the bottom of the stairs. On the top step, about to descend from the festive place, the form of Prince Galltch appeared. Koupriane received the sight like a blow stopping him short in his ascent. Galitch had an exultant air which Koupriane did not mistake. Evidently he had arrived too late. He felt the certainty of it in profound discouragement. And this appearance of the prince on the Barque explained convincingly enough the reason for Katharina’s flight here.
If the Bohemian had filched the papers or the portfolio from the dead, it was the prince now who had them in his pocket.
Koupriane, as he saw the prince about to pass him, trembled. The prince saluted him and ironically amused himself by inquiring:
“Well, well, how do you do, my dear Monsieur Koupriane. Your Excellency has risen in good time this morning, it seems to me. Or else it is I who start for bed too late.”
“Prince,” said Koupriane, “my men are in pursuit of a little Bohemian named Katharina, well known in the restaurants where she sings. We have seen her go into the Barque. Have you met her by any chance?”
“Good Lord, Monsieur Koupriane, I am not the concierge of the Barque, and I have not noticed anything at all, and nobody. Besides, I am naturally a little sleepy. Pardon me.”
“Prince, it is not possible that you have not seen Katharina.”
“Oh, Monsieur the Prefect of Police, if I had seen her I would not tell you about it, since you are pursuing her. Do you take me for one of your bloodhounds? They say you have them in all classes, but I insist that I haven’t enlisted yet. You have made a mistake, Monsieur Koupriane.”
The prince saluted again. But Koupriane still stood in his way.
“Prince, consider that this matter is very serious. Michael Nikolaievitch, General Trebassof’s orderly, is dead, and this little girl has stolen his papers from his body. All persons who have spoken with Katharina will be under suspicion. This is an affair of State, monsieur, which may reach very far. Can you swear to me that you have not seen, that you have not spoken to Katharina?”
The prince looked at Koupriane so insolently that the Prefect turned pale with rage. Ah, if he were able – if he only dared! – but such men as this were beyond him. Galitch walked past him without a word of answer, and ordered the schwitzar to call him a carriage.
“Very well,” said Koupriane, “I will make my report to the Tsar.”
Galitch turned. He was as pale as Koupriane.
“In that case, monsieur,” said he, “don’t forget to add that I am His Majesty’s most humble servant.”
The carriage drew up. The prince stepped in. Koupriane watched him roll away, raging at heart and with his fists doubled. Just then his men came up.
“Go. Search,” he said roughiy, pointing into the Barque.
They scattered through the establishment, entering all the rooms. Cries of irritation and of protest arose. Those lingering after the latest of late suppers were not pleased at this invasion of the police. Everybody had to rise while the police looked under the tables, the benches, the long table-cloths. They went into the pantries and down into the bold. No sign of Katharina. Suddenly Koupriane, who leaned against a netting and looked vaguely out upon the horizon, waiting for the outcome of the search, got a start. Yonder, far away on the other side of the river, between a little wood and the Staria Derevnia, a light boat drew to the shore, and a little black spot jumped from it like a flea. Koupriane recognized the little black spot as Kathanna. She was safe. Now he could not reach her. It would be useless to search the maze of the Bohemian quarter, where her country-people lived in full control, with customs and privileges that had never been infringed. The entire Bohemian population of the capital would have risen against him. It was Prince Galitch who had made him fail. One of his men came to him:
“No luck,” said he. “We have not found Katharina, but she has been here nevertheless. She met Prince Galitch for just a minute, and gave him something, then went over the other side into a canoe.”
“Very well,” and the Prefect shrugged his shoulders. “I was sure of it.”
He felt more and more, exasperated. He went down along the river edge and the first person he saw was Rouletabille, who waited for him without any impatience, seated philosophically on a bench.
“I was looking for you,” cried the Prefect. “We have failed. By your fault! If you had not thrown yourself into my arms -“
“I did it on purpose,” declared the reporter.
“What! What is that you say? You did it on purpose?”
Koupriane choked with rage.
“Your Excellency,” said Rouletabille, taking him by the arm, “calm yourself. They are watching us. Come along and have a cup of tea at Cubat’s place. Easy now, as though we were out for a walk.”
“Will you explain to me?”
“No, no, Your Excellency. Remember that I have promised you General Trebassof’s life in exchange for your prisoner’s. Very well; by throwing myself in your arms and keeping you from reaching Katharina, I saved the general’s life. It is very simple.”
“Are you laughing at me? Do you think you can mock me?”
But the prefect saw quickly that Rouletabille was not fooling and had no mockery in his manner.
“Monsieur,” he insisted, “since you speak seriously, I certainly wish to understand -“
“It is useless,” said Rouletabille. “It is very necessary that you should not understand.”
“But at least…”
“No, no, I can’t tell you anything.”
“When, then, will you tell me something to explain your unbelievable conduct?”
Rouletabille stopped in his tracks and declared solemnly:
“Monsieur Koupriane, recall what Natacha Feodorovna as she raised her lovely eyes to heaven, replied to her father, when he, also, wished to understand: ‘Never.'”
XI
THE POISON CONTINUES
At ten o’clock that morning Rouletabille went to the Trebassof villa, which had its guard of secret agents again, a double guard, because Koupriane was sure the Nihilists would not delay in avenging Michael’s death. Rouletabille was met by Ermolai, who would not allow him to enter. The faithful servant uttered some explanation in Russian, which the young man did not understand, or, rather, Rouletabille understood perfectly from his manner that henceforth the door of the villa was closed to him. In vain he insisted on seeing the general, Matrena Petrovna and Mademoiselle Natacha. Ermolai made no reply but “Niet, niet, niet.” The reporter turned away without having seen anyone, and walked away deeply depressed. He went afoot clear into the city, a long promenade, during which his brain surged with the darkest forebodings. As he passed by the Department of Police he resolved to see Koupriane again. He went in, gave his name, and was ushered at once to the Chief of Police, whom he found bent over a long report that he was reading through with noticeable agitation.
“Gounsovski has sent me this,” he said in a rough voice, pointing to the report. “Gounsovski, ‘to do me a service,’ desires me to know that he is fully aware of all that happened at the Trebassof datcha last night. He warns me that the revolutionaries have decided to get through with the general at once, and that two of them have been given the mission to enter the datcha in any way possible. They will have bombs upon their bodies and will blow the bombs and themselves up together as soon as they are beside the general. Who are the two victims designated for this horrible vengeance, and who have light-heartedly accepted such a death for themselves as well as for the general? That is what we don’t know. That is what we would have known, perhaps, if you had not prevented me from seizing the papers that Prince Galitch has now,” Koupriane finished, turning hostilely toward Rouletabille.
Rouletabille had turned pale.
“Don’t regret what happened to the papers,” he said. “It is I who tell you not to. But what you say doesn’t surprise me. They must believe that Natacha has betrayed them.”
“Ah, then you admit at last that she really is their accomplice?”
“I haven’t said that and I don’t admit it. But I know what I mean, and you, you can’t. Only, know this one thing, that at the present moment I am the only person able to save you in this horrible situation. To do that I must see Natacha at once. Make her understand this, while I wait at my hotel for word. I’ll not leave it.”
Rouletabille saluted Koupriane and went out.
Two days passed, during which Rouletabille did not receive any word from either Natacha or Koupriane, and tried in vain to see them. He made a trip for a few hours to Finland, going as far as Pergalovo, an isolated town said to be frequented by the revolutionaries, then returned, much disturbed, to his hotel, after having written a last letter to Natacha imploring an interview. The minutes passed very slowly for him in the hotel’s vestibule, where he had seemed to have taken up a definite residence.
Installed on a bench, he seemed to have become part of the hotel staff, and more than one traveler took him for an interpreter. Others thought he was an agent of the Secret Police appointed to study the faces of those arriving and departing. What was he waiting for, then? Was it for Annouchka to return for a luncheon or dinner in that place that she sometimes frequented? And did he at the same time keep watch upon Annouchka’s apartments just across the way? If that was so, he could only bewail his luck, for Annouchka did not appear either at her apartments or the hotel, or at the Krestowsky establishment, which had been obliged to suppress her performance. Rouletabille naturally thought, in the latter connection, that some vengeance by Gounsovski lay back of this, since the head of the Secret Service could hardly forget the way he had been treated. The reporter could see already the poor singer, in spite of all her safeguards and the favor of the Imperial family, on the road to the Siberian steppes or the dungeons of Schlusselbourg.
“My, what a country!” he murmured.
But his thoughts soon quit Annouchka and returned to the object of his main preoccupation. He waited for only one thing, and for that as soon as possible – to have a private interview with Natacha. He had written her ten letters in two days, but they all remained unanswered. It was an answer that he waited for so patiently in the vestibule of the hotel – so patiently, but so nervously, so feverishly.
When the postman entered, poor Rouletabille’s heart beat rapidly. On that answer he waited for depended the formidable part he meant to play before quitting Russia. He had accomplished nothing up to now, unless he could play his part in this later development.
But the letter did not come. The postman left, and the schwitzar, after examining all the mail, made him a negative sign. Ah, the servants who entered, and the errand-boys, how he looked at them! But they never came for him. Finally, at six o’clock in the evening of the second day, a man in a frock-coat, with a false astrakhan collar, came in and handed the concierge a letter for Joseph Rouletabille. The reporter jumped up. Before the man was out the door he had torn open the letter and read it. The letter was not from Natacha. It was from Gounsovski. This is what it said:
“My dear Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille, if it will not inconvenience you, I wish you would come and dine with me to-day. I will look for you within two hours. Madame Gounsovski will be pleased to make your acquaintance. Believe me your devoted Gounsovski.”
Rouletabille considered, and decided:
“I will go. He ought to have wind of what is being plotted, and as for me, I don’t know where Annoucbka has gone. I have more to learn from him than he has from me. Besides, as Athanase Georgevitch said, one may regret not accepting the Head of the Okrana’s pleasant invitation.”
From six o’clock to seven he still waited vainly for Natacha’s response. At seven o’clock, he decided to dress for the dinner. Just as he rose, a messenger arrived. There was still another letter for Joseph Rouletabille. This time it was from Natacha, who wrote him:
“General Trebassof and my step-mother will be very happy to have you come to dinner to-day. As for myself, monsieur, you will pardon me the order which has closed to you for a number of days a dwelling where you have rendered services which I shall not forget all my life.”
The letter ended with a vague polite formula. With the letter in his hand the reporter sat in thought. He seemed to be asking himself, “Is it fish or flesh?” Was it a letter of thanks or of menace? That was what he could not decide. Well, he would soon know, for he had decided to accept that invitation. Anything that brought him and Natacha into communication at the moment was a thing of capital importance to him. Half-an-hour later he gave the address of the villa to an isvotchick, and soon he stepped out before the gate where Ermolai seemed to be waiting for him.
Rouletabille was so occupied by thought of the conversation he was going to have with Natacha that he had completely forgotten the excellent Monsieur Gounsovski and his invitation.
The reporter found Koupriane’s agents making a close-linked chain around the grounds and each watching the other. Matrena had not wished any agent to be in house. He showed Koupriane’s pass and entered.
Ermolai ushered Rouletabille in with shining face. He seemed glad to have him there again. He bowed low before him and uttered many compliments, of which the reporter did not understand a word. Rouletablle passed on, entered the garden and saw Matrena Petrovna there walking with her step-daughter. They seemed on the best of terms with each other. The grounds wore an air of tranquillity and the residents seemed to have totally forgotten the somber tragedy of the other night. Matrena and Natacha came smilingly up to the young man, who inquired after the general. They both turned and pointed out Feodor Feodorovitch, who waved to him from the height of the kiosk, where it seemed the table had been spread. They were going to dine out of doors this fine night.
“Everything goes very well, very well indeed, dear little domovoi,” said Matrena. “How glad it is to see you and thank you. If you only knew how I suffered in your absence, I who know how unjust my daughter was to you. But dear Natacha knows now what she owes you. She doesn’t doubt your word now, nor your clear intelligence, little angel. Michael Nikolaievitch was a monster and he was punished as he deserved. You know the police have proof now that he was one of the Central Revolutionary Committee’s most dangerous agents. And he an officer! Whom can we trust now!”
“And Monsieur Boris Mourazoff, have you seen him since?” inquired Rouletabille.
“Boris called to see us to-day, to say good-by, but we did not receive him, under the orders of the police. Natacha has written to tell him of Koupriane’s orders. We have received letters from him; he is quitting St. Petersburg.
“What for?”
“Well, after the frightful bloody scene in his little house, when he learned how Michael Nikolaievitch had found his death, and after he himself had undergone a severe grilling from the police, and when he learned the police had sacked his library and gone through his papers, he resigned, and has resolved to live from now on out in the country, without seeing anyone, like the philosopher and poet he is. So far as I am concerned, I think he is doing absolutely right. When a young man is a poet, it is useless to live like a soldier. Someone has said that, I don’t know the name now, and when one has ideas that may upset other people, surely they ought to live in solitude.”
Rouletabille looked at Natacha, who was as pale as her white gown, and who added no word to her mother’s outburst. They had drawn near the kiosk. Rouletabille saluted the general, who called to him to come up and, when the young man extended his hand, he drew him abruptly nearer and embraced him. To show Rouletabille how active he was getting again, Feodor Feodorovitch marched up and down the kiosk with only the aid of a stick. He went and came with a sort of wild, furious gayety.
“They haven’t got me yet, the dogs. They haven’t got me! And one (he was thinking of Michael) who saw me every day was here just for that. Very well. I ask you where he is now. And yet here I am! An attack! I’m always here! But with a good eye; and I begin to have a good leg. We shall see. Why, I recollect how, when I was at Tiflis, there was an insurrection in the Caucasus. We fought. Several times I could feel the swish of bullets past my hair. My comrades fell around me like flies. But nothing happened to me, not a thing. And here now! They will not get me, they will not get me. You know how they plan now to come to me, as living bombs. Yes, they have decided on that. I can’t press a friend’s hand any more without the fear of seeing him explode. What do you think of that? But they won’t get me. Come, drink my health. A small glass of vodka for an appetizer. You see, young man, we are going to have zakouskis here. What a marvelous panorama! You can see everything from here. If the enemy comes,” he added with a singular loud laugh, “we can’t fail to detect him.”
Certainly the kiosk did rise high above the garden and was completely detached, no wall being near. They had a clear view. No branches of trees hung over the roof and no tree hid the view. The rustic table of rough wood was covered with a short cloth and was spread with zakouskis. It was a meal under the open sky, a seat and a glass in the clear azure. The evening could not have been softer and clearer. And, as the general felt so gay, the repast would have promised to be most agreeable, if Rouletabille had not noticed that Matrena Petrovna and Natacha were uneasy and downcast. The reporter soon saw, too, that all the general’s joviality was a little excessive. Anyone would have said that Feodor Feodorovitch spoke to distract himself, to keep himself from thinking. There was sufficient excuse for him after the outrageous drama of the other night. Rouletabille noticed further that the general never looked at his daughter, even when he spoke to her. There was too formidable a mystery lying between them for restraint not to increase day by day. Rouletabille involuntarily shook his head, saddened by all he saw. His movement was surprised by Matrena Petrovna, who pressed his hand in silence.
“Well, now,” said the general, “well, now my children, where is the vodka?”
Among all the bottles which graced the table the general looked in vain for his flask of vodka. How in the world could he dine if he did not prepare for that important act by the rapid absorption of two or three little glasses of white wine, between two or three sandwiches of caviare!
“Ermolai must have left it in the wine-chest,” said Matrena.
The wine-closet was in the dining-room. She rose to go there, but Natacha hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying, “Stay there, mamma. I will go.”
“Don’t you bother, either. I know where it is,” cried Rouletabille, and hurried after Natacha.
She did not stop. The two young people arrived in the dining-room at the same time. They were there alone, as Rouletabille had foreseen. He stopped Natacha and planted himself in front of her.
“Why, mademoiselle, did you not answer me earlier?”
“Because I don’t wish to have any conversation with you.”
“If that was so, you would not have come here, where you were sure I would follow.”
She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to all others perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.
“Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don’t write to me any more. Don’t speak to me. Don’t see me. Go away from here, monsieur; go away. They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it. Ah, on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost. That is what I wished to tell you. And now, you go.”
She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed instantly to regret.
“You go away,” she repeated.
Rouletabille still held his place before her. She turned from him; she did not wish to hear anything further.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “you are watched closer than ever. Who will take Michael Nikolaievitch’s place?”
“Madman, be silent! Hush!”
“I am here.”
He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.
“Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!” She did not know what to say. Her emotion checked all utterance. But it was necessary for her to enable him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her sad straits.
“No. If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now, you would be dead to-morrow. Don’t let them suspect. And above all, don’t try to see me anywhere. Go back to papa at once. We have been here too long. What if they learn of it? – and they learn everything! They are everywhere, and have ears everywhere.”
“Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word. Do you doubt now that Michael tried to poison your father?”
“Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to. I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy.”
Rouletabille desired something besides “I wish to believe it for your sake, my poor boy.” He was far from being satisfied. She saw him turn pale. She tried to reassure him while her trembling hands raised the lid of the wine-chest.
“What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well.”
But he persisted still.
“And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, ‘I wish to believe it, my poor boy.'”
“Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father, and not have come by way of the window.”
“No, that is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible to them.”
And she turned her head away again.
“Why, why,” she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite indifferent, as if she wished to be merely ‘the daughter of the house’ in conversation with the young man, “the vodka is not in the wine chest, after all. What has Ermolai done with it, then?”
She ran over to the buffet and found the flask.
“Oh, here it is. Papa shan’t be without it, after all.”
Rouletabille was already into the garden again.
“If that is the only doubt she has,” he said to himself, “I can reassure her. No one could come, excepting by the window. And only one came that way.”
The young girl had rejoined him, bringing the flask. They crossed the garden together to the general, who was whiling away the time as he waited for his vodka explaining to Matrena Petrovna the nature of “the constitution.” He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged them carefully.
“Here,” he cried to Natacha and Rouletabille. “Come here and I will explain to you as well what this Constitution amounts to.”
The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in the kiosk were intent on the matches.
“You see that match,” said Feodor Feodorovitch. “It is the Emperor. And this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that one is the Grand-duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes. Now, here are the ministers and there the principal governors, and then the generals; these here are the bishops.”
The whole box of matches was used up, and each match was in its place, as is the way in an empire where proper etiquette prevails in government and the social order.
“Well,” continued the general, “do you want to know, Matrena Petrovna, what a constitution is? There! That is the Constitution.”
The general, with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches. Rouletabille laughed, but the good Matrena said:
“I don’t understand, Feodor.”
“Find the Emperor now.”
Then Matrena understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently, and Natacha laughed also. Delighted with his success, Feodor Feodorovitch took up one of the little glasses that Natacha had filled with the vodka she brought.
“Listen, my children,” said he. “We are going to commence the zakouskis. Koupriane ought to have been here before this.”
Saying this, holding still the little glass in his hand, he felt in his pocket with the other for his watch, and drew out a magnificent large watch whose ticking was easily heard.
“Ah, the watch has come back from the repairer,” Rouletabille remarked smilingly to Matrena Petrovna. “It looks like a splendid one.”
“It has very fine works,” said the general. “It was bequeathed to me by my grandfather. It marks the seconds, and the phases of the moon, and sounds the hours and half-hours.”
Rouletabille bent over the watch, admiring it.
“You expect M. Koupriane for dinner?” inquired the young man, still examining the watch.
“Yes, but since he is so late, we’ll not delay any longer. Your healths, my children,” said the general as Rouletabille handed him back the watch and he put it in his pocket.
“Your health, Feodor Feodorovitch,” replied Matrena Petrovna, with her usual tenderness.
Rouletabille and Natacha only touched their lips to the vodka, but Feodor Feodorovitch and Matrena drank theirs in the Russian fashion, head back and all at a draught, draining it to the bottom and flinging the contents to the back of the throat. They had no more than performed this gesture when the general uttered an oath and tried to expel what he had drained so heartily. Matrena Petrovna spat violently also, looking with horror at her husband.
“What is it? What has someone put in the vodka?” cried Feodor.
“What has someone put in the vodka?” repeated Matrena Petrovna in a thick voice, her eyes almost starting from her head.
The two young people threw themselves upon the unfortunates. Feodor’s face had an expression of atrocious suffering.
“We are poisoned,” cried the general, in the midst of his chokings. “I am burning inside.”
Almost mad, Natacha took her father’s head in her hands. She cried to him:
“Vomit, papa; vomit!”
“We must find an emetic,” cried Rauletabille, holding on to the general, who had almost slipped from his arms.
Matrena Petrovna, whose gagging noises were violent, hurried down the steps of the kiosk, crossed the garden as though wild-fire were