Part 21

“Oh, they haven’t been hoodwinked. As a matter of fact, the struggle was quite too visible not to have been done for appearances’ sake. What a child you are! Can’t you see that Natacha’s presence in the datcha had become quite too dangerous for that charming young girl after the poisoning of her father and step-mother failed and at the moment when her comrades were preparing to send General Trebassof a pleasant little gift of dynamite? She arranged to get away and yet to appear kidnapped. It is too simple.”

Rouletabille raised his head.

“There is something simpler still to imagine than the culpability of Natacha. It is that Priemkof schemed to pour the poison into the flask of vodka, saying to himself that if the poison didn’t succeed at least it would make the occasion for introducing his dynamite into the house in the pockets of the ‘doctors’ that they would go to find.”

Koupriane seized Rouletabille’s wrist and threw some terrible words at him, looking into the depths of his eyes:

“It was not Priemkof who poured the poison, because there was no poison in the flask.”

Rouletabille, as he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, more startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling campaign.

If there was no poison in the flask, the poison must have been poured directly into the glasses by a person who was in the kiosk! Now, there were only four persons in the kiosk: the two who were poisoned and Natacha and himself, Rouletabille. And that kiosk was so perfectly isolated that it was impossible for any other persons than the four who were there to pour poison upon the table.

“But it is not possible!” he cried.

“It is so possible that it is so. Pere Alexis declared that there is no poison in the flask, and I ought to tell you that an analysis I had made after his bears him out. There was no poison, either, in the small bottle you took to Pere Alexis and into which you yourself had poured the contents of Natacha’s glass and yours; no trace of poison excepting in two of the four glasses, arsenate of soda was found only on the soiled napkins of Trebassof and his wife and in the two glasses they drank from.”

“Oh, that is horrible,” muttered the stupefied reporter; “that is horrible, for then the poisoner must be either Natacha or me.”

“I have every confidence in you,” declared Koupriane with a great laugh of satisfaction, striking him on the shoulder. “And I arrest Natacha, and you who love logic ought to be satisfied now.”

Rouletabille hadn’t a word more to say. He sat down again and let his head fall into his hands, like one sleep has seized.

“Ah, our young girls; you don’t know them. They are terrible, terrible!” said Koupriane, lighting a big cigar. “Much more terrible than the boys. In good families the boys still enjoy themselves; but the girls--they read! It goes to their heads. They are ready for anything; they know neither father nor mother. Ah, you are a child, you cannot comprehend. Two lovely eyes, a melancholy air, a soft, low voice, and you are captured--you believe you have before you simply an inoffensive, good little girl. Well, Rouletabille, here is what I will tell you for your instruction. There was the time of the Tchipoff attack; the revolutionaries who were assigned to kill Tchipoff were disguised as coachmen and footmen. Everything had been carefully prepared and it would seem that no one could have discovered the bombs in the place they had been stored. Well, do you know the place where those bombs were found? In the rooms of the governor, of Wladmir’s daughter! Exactly, my little friend, just there! The rooms of the governor’s daughter, Mademoiselle Alexeieiv. Ah, these young girls! Besides, it was this same Mademoiselle Alexeieiv who, so prettily, pierced the brain of an honest Swiss merchant who had the misfortune to resemble one of our ministers. If we had hanged that charming young girl earlier, my dear Monsieur Rouletabille, that last catastrophe might have been avoided. A good rope around the neck of all these little females--it is the only way, the only way!”

A man entered. Rouletabille recognized the driver of the telega. There were some rapid words between the Chief and the agent. The man closed the shutters of the room, but through the interstices they would be able to see what went on outside. Then the agent left; Koupriane, as he pushed aside the table that was near the window, said to the reporter:

“You had better come to the window; my man has just told me the boat is drawing near. You can watch an interesting sight. We are sure that Natacha is still aboard. The yacht, after the explosion at the datcha, took up two men who put off to it in a canoe, and since then it has simply sailed back and forth in the gulf. We have taken our precautions in Finland the same as here and it is here they are going to try to disembark. Keep an eye on them.”

Koupriane was at his post of observation. Evening slowly fell. The sky was growing grayish-black, a tint that blended with the slate-colored sea. To those on the bank, the sound of the men about to die came softly across the water. There was a sail far out. Between the strand and the touba where Koupriane watched, was a ridge, a window, which, however, did not hide the shore or the bay from the prefect of police, because at the height where he was his glance passed at an angle above it. But from the sea this ridge entirely hid anyone who lay in ambush behind it. The reporter watched fifty moujiks flat on their stomachs crawling up the ridge, behind two of their number whose heads alone topped the ridge. In the line of gaze taken by those two heads was the white sail, looming much larger now. The yacht was heeled in the water and glided with real elegance, heading straight on. Suddenly, just when they supposed she was coming straight to shore, the sails fell and a canoe was dropped over the side. Four men got into it; then a woman jumped lightly down a little gangway into the canoe. It was Natacha. Koupriane had no difficulty in recognizing her through the gathering darkness.

“Ah, my dear Monsieur Rouletabille,” said he, “see your prisoner of the Nihilists. Notice how she is bound. Her thongs certainly are causing her great pain. These revolutionaries surely are brutes!”

The truth was that Natacha had gone quite readily to the rudder and while the others rowed she steered the light boat to the place on the beach that had been pointed out to her. Soon the prow of the canoe touched the sands. There did not seem to be a soul about, and that was the conclusion the men in the canoe who stood up looking around, seemed to reach. They jumped out, and then it was Natacha’s turn. She accepted the hand held out to her, talking pleasantly with the men all the time. She even turned to press the hand of one of them. The group came up across the beach. All this time the watchers in the little eating-house could see the false moujiks, who had wriggled on their stomachs to the very edge of the ridge, holding themselves ready to spring.

Behind his shutter, Koupriane could not restrain an exclamation of triumph; he gradually identified some of the figures in the group, and muttered:

“Eh! eh! There is Priemkof himself and the others. Gounsovski is right and he certainly is well-informed; his system is decidedly a good one. What a net-full!”

He hardly breathed as he watched the outcome. He could discern elsewhere, beside the bay, flat on the ground, concealed by the slightest elevation of the soil, other false moujiks. The wood of Sestroriesk was watched in the same way. The group of revolutionaries who strolled behind Natacha stopped to confer. In three--maybe two--minutes, they would be surrounded--cut off, taken in the trap. Suddenly a gunshot sounded in the night, and the group, with startled speed, turned in their tracks and made silently for the sea, while from all directions poured the concealed agents and threw themselves into the pursuit, jostling each other and crying after the fugitives. But the cries became cries of rage, for the group of revolutionaries gained the beach. They saw Natacha, who was held up by Priemkof himself, reject the aid of the Nihilist, who did not wish to abandon her, in order that he might save himself. She made him go and seeing that she was going to be taken, stopped short and waited for the enemy stoically, with folded arms. Meanwhile, her three companions succeeded in throwing themselves into the canoe and plied the oars hard while Koupriane’s men, in the water up to their chests, discharged their revolvers at the fugitives. The men in the canoe, fearing to wound Natacha, made no reply to the firing. The yacht had sails up by the time they drew alongside, and made off like a bird toward the mysterious fords of Finland, audaciously hoisting the black flag of the Revolution.

Meantime, Koupriane’s agents, trembling before his anger, gathered at the eating-house. The Prefect of Police let his fury loose on them and treated them like the most infamous of animals. The capture of Natacha was little comfort. He had planned for the whole bag, and his men’s stupidity took away all his self-control. If he had had a whip at hand he would have found prompt solace for his mined hopes. Natacha, standing in a corner, with her face singularly calm, watched this extraordinary scene that was like a menagerie in which the tamer himself had become a wild beast. From another corner, Rouletabille kept his eyes fixed on Natacha who ignored him. Ah, that girl, sphinx to them all! Even to him who thought a while ago that he could read things invisible to other vulgar men in her features, in her eyes! The impassive face of that girl whose father they had tried to assassinate only a few hours before and who had just pressed the hand of Priemkof, the assassin! Once she turned her head slightly toward Rouletabille. The reporter then looked towards her with increased eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he would say: “Surely, Natacha, you are not the accomplice of your father’s assassins; surely it was not you who poured the poison!”

But Natacha’s glance passed the reporter coldly over. Ah, that mysterious, cold mask, the mouth with its bitter, impudent smile, an atrocious smile which seemed to say to the reporter: “If it is not I who poured the poison, then it is you!”

It was the visage common enough to the daughters whom Koupriane had spoken of a little while before, “the young girls who read” and, their reading done, set themselves to accomplish some terrible thing, some thing because of which, from time to time, they place stiff ropes around the necks of these young females.

Finally, Koupriane’s frenzy wore itself out and he made a sign. The men filed out in dismal silence. Two of them remained to guard Natacha. From outside came the sounds of a carriage from Sestroriesk ready to convey the girl to the Dungeons of Sts. Peter and Paul. A final gesture from the Prefect of Police and the rough bands of the two guards seized the prisoner’s frail wrists. They hustled her along, thrust her outside, jamming her against the doorway, venting thus their anger at the reproaches of their chief. A few seconds later the carriage departed, not to stop until the fortress was reached with the trickling tombs under the bed of the river where young girls about to die are confined--who have read too much, without entirely understanding, as Monsieur Kropotkine says.

Koupriane prepared to leave in turn. Rouletabille stopped him.

“Excellency, I wish you to tell me why you have shown such anger to your men just now.”

“They are brute beasts,” cried the Chief of Police, quite beside himself again. “They have made me miss the biggest catch of my life. They threw themselves on the group two minutes too early. Some of them fired a gun that they took for the signal and that served to warn the Nihilists. But I will let them all rot in prison until I learn which one fired that shot.”

“You needn’t look far for that,” said Rouletabille. “I did it.”

“You! Then you must have gone outside the touba?”

“Yes, in order to warn them. But still I was a little late, since you did take Natacha.”

Koupriane’s eyes blazed.

“You are their accomplice in all this,” he hurled at the reporter, “and I am going to the Tsar for permission to arrest you.”

“Hurry, then, Excellency,” replied the reporter coldly, “because the Nihilists, who also think they have a little account to settle with me, may reach me before you.”

And he saluted.

XV. “I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU”

At the hotel a note from Gounsovski: “Don’t forget this time to come to-morrow to have luncheon with me. Warmest regards from Madame Gounsovski.” Then a horrible, sleepless night, shaken with echoes of explosions and the clamor of the wounded; and the solemn shade of Pere Alexis, stretching out toward Rouletabille a phial of poison and saying, “Either Natacha or you!” Then, rising among the shades the bloody form of Michael Nikolaievitch the Innocent!

In the morning a note from the Marshal of the Court.

Monsieur le Marechal had no particular good news, evidently, for in terms quite without enthusiasm he invited the young man to luncheon for that same day, rather early, at midday, as he wished to see him once more before he left for France. “I see,” said Rouletabille to himself; “Monsieur le Marechal pronounces my expulsion from the country”--and he forgot once more the Gounsovski luncheon. The meeting-place named was the great restaurant called the Bear. Rouletabille entered it promptly at noon. He asked the schwitzar if the Grand Marshal of the Court had arrived, and was told no one had seen him yet. They conducted him to the huge main hall, where, however, there was only one person. This man, standing before the table spread with zakouskis, was stuffing himself. At the sound of Rouletabille’s step on the floor this sole famished patron turned and lifted his hands to heaven as he recognized the reporter. The latter would have given all the roubles in his pocket to have avoided the recognition. But he was already face to face with the advocate so celebrated for his table-feats, the amiable Athanase Georgevitch, his head swathed in bandages and dressings from the midst of which one could perceive distinctly only the eyes and, above all, the mouth.

“How goes it, little friend?”

“How are you?”

“Oh, I! There is nothing the matter. In a week we shall have forgotten it.”

“What a terrible affair,” said the reporter, “I certainly believed we were all dead men.”

“No, no. It was nothing. Nitchevo!”

“And poor Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff with his two poor legs broken!”

“Eh! Nitchevo! He has plenty of good solid splints that will make him two good legs again. Nitchevo! Don’t you think anything more about that! It is nothing. You have come here to dine? A very celebrated house this. Caracho!” He busied himself to do the honors. One would have said the restaurant belonged to him. He boasted of its architecture and the cuisine “a la Francaise.”

“Do you know,” he inquired confidently, “a finer restaurant room anywhere in the world?”

In fact, it seemed to Rouletabille as he looked up into the high glass arch that he was in a railway station decorated for some illustrious traveler, for there were flowers and plants everywhere. But the visitor whom the ball awaited was the Russian eater, the ogre who never failed to come to eat at The Bear. Pointing out the lines of tables shining with their white cloths and bright silver, Athanase Georgevitch, with his mouth full, said:

“Ah, my dear little French monsieur, you should see it at supper-time, with the women, and the jewels, and the music. There is nothing in France that can give you any idea of it, nothing! The gayety--the champagne--and the jewels, monsieur, worth millions and millions of roubles! Our women wear them all--everything they have. They are decked like sacred shrines! All the family jewels--from the very bottom of the caskets! it is magnificent, thoroughly Russian--Muscovite! What am I saying? It is Asiatic. Monsieur, in the evening, at a fete, we are Asiatic. Let me tell you something on the quiet. You notice that this enormous dining hall is surrounded by those windowed balconies. Each of those windows belongs to a separate private room. Well, you see that window there?--yes, there--that is the room of a grand duke--yes, he’s the one I mean--a very gay grand duke. Do you know, one evening when there was a great crowd here--families, monsieur, family parties, high-born families--the window of that particular balcony was thrown open, and a woman stark naked, as naked as my hand, monsieur, was dropped into the dining-hall and ran across it full-speed. It was a wager, monsieur, a wager of the jolly grand duke’s, and the demoiselle won it. But what a scandal! Ah, don’t speak of it; that would be very bad form. But--sufficiently Asiatic, eh? Truly Asiatic. And--something much more unfortunate--you see that table? It happened the Russian New Year Eve, at supper. All the beauty, the whole capital, was here. Just at midnight the orchestra struck up the Bodje tsara krani* to inaugurate the joyful Russian New Year, and everybody stood up, according to custom, and listened in silence, as loyal subjects should. Well, at that table, accompanying his family, there was a young student, a fine fellow, very correct, and in uniform. This unhappy young student, who had risen like everybody else, to listen to the Bodje tsara krani, inadvertently placed his knee on a chair. Truly that is not a correct attitude, monsieur, but really it was no reason for killing him, was it now? Certainly not. Well, a brute in uniform, an officer quite immaculately gotten-up, drew a revolver from his pocket and discharged it at the student point-blank. You can imagine the scandal, for the student was dead! There were Paris journalists there, besides, who had never been there before, you see! Monsieur Gaston Leroux was at that very table. What a scandal! They had a regular battle. They broke carafes over the head of the assassin--for he was neither more nor less than an assassin, a drinker of blood--an Asiatic. They picked up the assassin, who was bleeding all over, and carried him off to look after him. As to the dead man, he lay stretched out there under a table-cloth, waiting for the police--and those at the tables went on with their drinking. Isn’t that Asiatic enough for you? Here, a naked woman; there, a corpse! And the jewels--and the champagne! What do you say to that?”

* The Russian national anthem.

“His Excellency the Grand Marshal of the Court is waiting for you, Monsieur.”

Rouletabille shook hands with Athanase Georgevitch, who returned to his zakouskis, and followed the interpreter to the door of one of the private rooms. The high dignitary was there. With a charm in his politeness of which the high-born Russian possesses the secret over almost everybody else in the world, the Marshal intimated to Rouletabille that he had incurred imperial displeasure.

“You have been denounced by Koupriane, who holds you responsible for the checks he has suffered in this affair.”

“Monsieur Koupriane is right,” replied Rouletabille, “and His Majesty should believe him, since it is the truth. But don’t fear anything from me, Monsieur le Grand Marechal, for I shall not inconvenience Monsieur Koupriane any further, nor anybody else. I shall disappear.”

“I believe Koupriane is already directed to vise your passport.”

“He is very good, and he does himself much harm.”

“All that is a little your fault, Monsieur Rouletabille. We believed we could consider you as a friend, and you have never failed, it appears, on each occasion to give your help to our enemies.

“Who says that?”

“Koupriane. Oh, it is necessary to be one with us. And you are not one with us. And if you are not for us you are against us. You understand that, I think. That is the way it has to be. The Terrorists have returned to the methods of the Nihilists, who succeeded altogether too well against Alexander II. When I tell you that they succeeded in placing their messages even in the imperial palace...”

“Yes, yes,” said Rouletabille, vaguely, as though he were already far removed from the contingencies of this world. “I know that Czar Alexander II sometimes found under his napkin a letter announcing his condemnation to death.”

“Monsieur, at the Chateau yesterday morning something happened that is perhaps more alarming than the letter found by Alexander II under his napkin.”

“What can it be? Have bombs been discovered?”

“No. It is a bizarre occurrence and almost unbelievable. The eider downs, all the eider down coverings belonging to the imperial family disappeared yesterday morning.” *

* Historically authentic.

“Surely not!”

“It is just as I say. And it was impossible to learn what had become of them--until yesterday evening, when they were found again in their proper places in the chambers. That is the new mystery!”

“Certainly. But how were they taken out?”

“Shall we ever know? All we found was two feathers, this morning, in the boudoir of the Empress, which leads us to think that the eider downs were taken out that way. I am taking the two feathers to Koupriane.”

“Let me see them,” asked the reporter.

Rouletabille looked them over and handed them back.

“And what do you think the whole affair means?”

“We are inclined to regard it as a threat by the revolutionaries. If they can carry away the eider downs, it would be quite as easy for them to carry away...”

“The Imperial family? No, I don’t think it is that.”

“What do you mean, then?”

“I? Nothing any more. Not only do I not think any more, but I don’t wish to. Tell me, Monsieur le Grand Marechal, it is useless, I suppose, to try to see His Majesty before I go?”

“What good would it do, monsieur? We know everything now. This Natacha that you defended against Koupriane is proved the culprit. The last affair does not leave that in any reasonable doubt. And she is taken care of from this time on. His Majesty wishes never to hear Natacha spoken of again under any pretext.”

“And what are you going to do with that young girl?”

“The Tsar has decided that there shall not be any trial and that the daughter of General Trebassof shall be sent, by administrative order, to Siberia. The Tsar, monsieur, is very good, for he might have had her hanged. She deserved it.”

“Yes, yes, the Tsar is very good.”

“You are very absorbed, Monsieur Rouletabille, and you are not eating.”

“I have no appetite, Monsieur le Marechal. Tell me,--the Emperor must be rather bored at Tsarskoie-Coelo?”

“Oh, he has plenty of work. He rises at seven o’clock and has a light English luncheon--tea and toast. At eight o’clock he starts and works till ten. From ten to eleven he promenades.”

“In the jail-yard?” asked Rouletabille innocently.