The Secret of the Night
general, but threw himself on his bed. Natacha got onto the bed beside
her father, embraced him a dozen times, and went downstairs again.
Matrena followed behind her, closed doors and windows, went upstairs
again to close the door of the landing-place and found Rouletabille
seated on his bed, his arms crossed, not appearing to have any desire
for sleep at all. His face was so strangely pensive also that the
anxiety of Matrena, who had been able to make nothing out of his acts
and looks all day, came back upon her instantly in greater force than
ever. She touched his arm in order to be sure that he knew she was
there.
“My little friend,” she said, “will you tell me now?”
“Yes, madame,” he replied at once. “Sit in that chair and listen to
me. There are things you must know at once, because we have reached a
dangerous hour.”
“The hat-pins first. The hat-pins!”
Rouletabille rose lightly from the bed and, facing her, but watching
something besides her, said:
“It is necessary you should know that someone almost immediately is
going to renew the attempt of the bouquet.”
Matrena sprang to her feet as quickly as though she had been told there
was a bomb in the seat of her chair. She made herself sit down again,
however, in obedience to Rouletabille’s urgent look commanding absolute
quiet.
“Renew the attempt of the bouquet!” she murmured in a stifled voice.
“But there is not a flower in the general’s chamber.”
“Be calm, madame. Understand me and answer me: You heard the tick-tack
from the bouquet while you were in your own chamber?”
“Yes, with the doors open, naturally.”
“You told me the persons who came to say good-night to the general. At
that time there was no noise of tick-tack?”
“No, no.”
“Do you think that if there had been any tick-tack then you would have
heard it, with all those persons talking in the room?”
“I hear everything. I hear everything.”
“Did you go downstairs at the same time those people did?”
“No, no; I remained near the general for some time, until he was sound
asleep.”
“And you heard nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“You closed the doors behind those persons?”
“Yes, the door to the great staircase. The door of the servants’
stairway was condemned a long time ago; it has been locked by me,
I alone have the key and on the inside of the door opening into the
general’s chamber there is also a bolt which is always shot. All the
other doors of the chambers have been condemned by me. In order to enter
any of the four rooms on this floor it is necessary now to pass by the
door of my chamber, which gives on the main staircase.”
“Perfect. Then, no one has been able to enter the apartment. No one
had been in the apartment for at least two hours excepting you and the
general, when you heard the clockwork. From that the only conclusion is
that only the general and you could have started it going.”
“What are you trying to say?” Matrena demanded, astounded.
“I wish to prove to you by this absurd conclusion, madame, that it is
necessary never--never, you understand? Never--to reason solely upon
even the most evident external evidence when those seemingly-conclusive
appearances are in conflict with certain moral truths that also are
clear as the light of day. The light of day for me, madame, is that the
general does not desire to commit suicide and, above all, that he would
not choose the strange method of suicide by clockwork. The light of
day for me is that you adore your husband and that you are ready to
sacrifice your life for his.”
“Now!” exclaimed Matrena, whose tears, always ready in emotional moments,
flowed freely. “But, Holy Mary, why do you speak to me without looking
at me? What is it? What is it?”
“Don’t turn! Don’t make a movement! You hear--not a move! And speak low,
very low. And don’t cry, for the love of God!”
“But you say at once... the bouquet! Come to the general’s room!”
“Not a move. And continue listening to me without interrupting,” said
he, still inclining his ear, and still without looking at her. “It
is because these things were as the light of day to me that I say to
myself, ‘It is impossible that it should be impossible for a third
person not to have placed the bomb in the bouquet. Someone is able to
enter the general’s chamber even when the general is watching and all
the doors are locked.’”
“Oh, no. No one could possibly enter. I swear it to you.”
As she swore it a little too loudly, Rouletabille seized her arm so that
she almost cried out, but she understood instantly that it was to keep
her quiet.
“I tell you not to interrupt me, once for all.”
“But, then, tell me what you are looking at like that.”
“I am watching the corner where someone is going to enter the general’s
chamber when everything is locked, madame. Do not move!”
Matrena, her teeth chattering, recalled that when she entered
Rouletabille’s chamber she had found all the doors open that
communicated with the chain of rooms: the young man’s chamber with
hers, the dressing-room and the general’s chamber. She tried, under
Rouletabille’s look, to keep calm, but in spite of all the reporter’s
exhortations she could not hold her tongue.
“But which way? Where will they enter?”
“By the door.”
“Which door?”
“That of the chamber giving on the servants’ stair-way.”
“Why, how? The key! The bolt!”
“They have made a key.”
“But the bolt is drawn this side.”
“They will draw it back from the other side.”
“What! That is impossible.”
Rouletabille laid his two hands on Matrena’s strong shoulders and
repeated, detaching each syllable, “They will draw it back from the
other side.”
“It is impossible. I repeat it.”
“Madame, your Nihilists haven’t invented anything. It is a trick much
in vogue with sneak thieves in hotels. All it needs is a little hole the
size of a pin bored in the panel of the door above the bolt.”
“God!” quavered Matrena. “I don’t understand what you mean by your
little hole. Explain to me, little domovoi.”
“Follow me carefully, then,” continued Rouletabille, his eyes all the
time fixed elsewhere. “The person who wishes to enter sticks through the
hole a brass wire that he has already given the necessary curve to and
which is fitted on its end with a light point of steel curved inward.
With such an instrument it is child’s play, if the hole has been made
where it ought to be, to touch the bolt on the inside from the outside,
pick the knob on it, withdraw it, and open the door if the bolt is like
this one, a small door-bolt.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” moaned Matrena, who paled visibly. “And that hole?”
“It exists.”
“You have discovered it?”
“Yes, the first hour I was here.”
“Oh, domovoi! But how did you do that when you never entered the
general’s chamber until to-night?”
“Doubtless, but I went up that servants’ staircase much earlier than
that. And I will tell you why. When I was brought into the villa the
first time, and you watched me, bidden behind the door, do you know what
I was watching myself, while I appeared to be solely occupied digging
out the caviare? The fresh print of boot-nails which left the carpet
near the table, where someone had spilled beer (the beer was still
running down the cloth). Someone had stepped in the beer. The boot-print
was not clearly visible excepting there. But from there it went to the
door of the servants’ stairway and mounted the stairs. That boot was too
fine to be mounting a stairway reserved to servants and that Koupriane
told me had been condemned, and it was that made me notice it in a
moment; but just then you entered.”
“You never told me anything about it. Of course if I had known there was
a boot-print...”
“I didn’t tell you anything about it because I had my reasons for that,
and, anyway, the trace dried while I was telling you about my journey.”
“Ah, why not have told me later?”
“Because I didn’t know you yet.”
“Subtle devil! You will kill me. I can no longer... Let us go into the
general’s chamber. We will wake him.”
“Remain here. Remain here. I have not told you anything. That boot-print
preoccupied me, and later, when I could get away from the dining-room,
I was not easy until I had climbed that stairway myself and gone to see
that door, where I discovered what I have just told you and what I am
going to tell you now.”
“What? What? In all you have said there has been nothing about the
hat-pins.”
“We have come to them now.”
“And the bouquet attack, which is going to happen again? Why? Why?”
“This is it. When this evening you let me go to the general’s chamber, I
examined the bolt of the door without your suspecting it. My opinion was
confirmed. It was that way that the bomb was brought, and it is by that
way that someone has prepared to return.”
“But how? You are sure the little hole is the way someone came? But what
makes you think that is how they mean to return? You know well enough
that, not having succeeded in the general’s chamber, they are at work in
the dining-room.”
“Madame, it is probable, it is certain that they have given up the work
in the dining-room since they have commenced this very day working again
in the general’s chamber. Yes, someone returned, returned that way, and
I was so sure of that, of the forthcoming return, that I removed the
police in order to be able to study everything more at my ease. Do you
understand now my confidence and why I have been able to assume so heavy
a responsibility? It is because I knew I had only one thing to watch:
one little hat-pin. It is not difficult, madame, to watch a single
little hat-pin.”
“A mistake,” said Matrena, in a low voice. “Miserable little domovoi who
told me nothing, me whom you let go to sleep on my mattress, in front of
that door that might open any moment.”
“No, madame. For I was behind it!”
“Ah, dear little holy angel! But what were you thinking of! That door
has not been watched this afternoon. In our absence it could have been
opened. If someone has placed a bomb during our absence!”
“That is why I sent you at once in to the dining-room on that search
that I thought would be fruitless, dear madame. And that is why I
hurried upstairs to the bedroom. I went to the stairway door instantly.
I had prepared for proof positive if anyone had pushed it open even half
a millimeter. No, no one had touched the door in our absence.
“Ah, dear heroic little friend of Jesus! But listen to me. Listen to me,
my angel. Ah, I don’t know where I am or what I say. My brain is no
more than a flabby balloon punctured with pins, with little holes of
hat-pins. Tell me about the hat-pins. Right off! No, at first, what is
it that makes you believe--good God!--that someone will return by that
door? How can you see that, all that, in a poor little hat-pin?”
“Madame, it is not a single hat-pin hole; there are two of them.
“Two hat-pin holes?”
“Yes, two. An old one and a new one. One quite new. Why this second
hole? Because the old one was judged a little too narrow and they wished
to enlarge it, and in enlarging it they broke off the point of a hat-pin
in it. Madame, the point is there yet, filling up the little old hole
and the piece of metal is very sharp and very bright.”
“Now I understand the examination of the hat-pins. Then it is so easy as
that to get through a door with a hat-pin?”
“Nothing easier, especially if the panel is of pine. Sometimes one
happens to break the point of a pin in the first hole. Then of necessity
one makes a second. In order to commence the second hole, the point of
the pin being broken, they have used the point of a pen-knife, then have
finished the hole with the hat-pin. The second hole is still nearer the
bolt than the first one. Don’t move like that, madame.”
“But they are going to come! They are going to come!”
“I believe so.”