The Secret of the Night
porches of houses, from under the skulls of dvornicks--all police, the
dvornicks; all police, also the joyous concierges with extended hands.
Ah, ah, one mocks at it all in such air, provided one has roubles
in one’s pockets, plenty of roubles, and that one is not besotted by
reading those extraordinary books that preach the happiness of all
humanity to students and to poor girl-students too. Ah, ah, seed of the
Nihilists, all that! These poor little fellows and poor little girls who
have their heads turned by lectures that they cannot digest! That is
all the trouble, the digestion. The digestion is needed. Messieurs the
commercial travelers for champagne, who talk together importantly in
the lobbies of the Grand Morskaia Hotel and who have studied the Russian
people even in the most distant cities where champagne is sold, will
tell you that over any table of hors-d’oeuvres, and will regulate the
whole question of the Revolution between two little glasses of vodka,
swallowed properly, quickly, elbow up, at a single draught, in the
Russian manner. Simply an affair of digestion, they tell you. Who is the
fool that would dare compare a young gentleman who has well digested
a bottle of champagne or two, and another young man who has poorly
digested the lucubrations of, who shall we say?--the lucubrations of the
economists? The economists? The economists! Fools who compete which
can make the most violent statements! Those who read them and don’t
understand them go off like a bomb! Your health! Nichevo! The world goes
round still, doesn’t it?
Discussion political, economic, revolutionary, and other in the room
where they munch hors-d’oeuvres! You will hear it all as you pass
through the hotel to your chamber, young Rouletabille. Get quickly
now to the home of Koupriane, if you don’t wish to arrive there at
luncheon-time; then you would have to put off these serious affairs
until evening.
The Department of Police. Massive entrance, heavily guarded, a great
lobby, halls with swinging doors, many obsequious schwitzars on the
lookout for tips, many poor creatures sitting against the walls on dirty
benches, desks and clerks, brilliant boots and epaulets of gay young
officers who are telling tales of the Aquarium with great relish.
“Monsieur Rouletabille! Ah, yes. Please be seated. Delighted, M.
Koupriane will be very happy to receive you, but just at this moment he
is at inspection. Yes, the inspection of the police dormitories in
the barracks. We will take you there. His own idea! He doesn’t neglect
anything, does he? A great Chief. Have you seen the police-guards’
dormitory? Admirable! The first dormitories of the world. We say that
without wishing to offend France. We love France. A great nation! I will
take you immediately to M. Koupriane. I shall be delighted.”
“I also,” said Rouletabille, who put a rouble into the honorable
functionary’s hand.
“Permit me to precede you.”
Bows and salutes. For two roubles he would have walked obsequiously
before him to the end of the world.
“These functionaries are admirable,” thought Rouletabille as he was led
to the barracks. He felt he had not paid too much for the services of a
personage whose uniform was completely covered with lace. They tramped,
they climbed, they descended. Stairways, corridors. Ah, the barracks at
last. He seemed to have entered a convent. Beds very white, very narrow,
and images of the Virgin and saints everywhere, monastic neatness and
the most absolute silence. Suddenly an order sounded in the corridor
outside, and the police-guard, who sprang from no one could tell where,
stood to attention at the head of their beds. Koupriane and his aide
appeared. Koupriane looked at everything closely, spoke to each man in
turn, called them by their names, inquired about their needs, and
the men stammered replies, not knowing what to answer, reddening like
children. Koupriane observed Rouletabille. He dismissed his aide with
a gesture. The inspection was over. He drew the young man into a little
room just off the dormitory. Rouletabille, frightened, looked about him.
He found himself in a chapel. This little chapel completed the effect of
the guards’ dormitory. It was all gilded, decorated in marvelous colors,
thronged with little ikons that bring happiness, and, naturally, with
the portrait of the Tsar, the dear Little Father.
“You see,” said Koupriane, smiling at Rouletabille’s amazement, “we deny
them nothing. We give them their saints right here in their quarters.”
Closing the door, he drew a chair toward Rouletabille and motioned him
to sit down. They sat before the little altar loaded with flowers, with
colored paper and winged saints.
“We can talk here without being disturbed,” he said. “Yonder there is
such a crowd of people waiting for me. I’m ready to listen.”
“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, “I have come to give you the report of my
mission here, and to terminate my connection with it. All that is left
for clearing this obscure affair is to arrest the guilty person, with
which I have nothing to do. That concerns you. I simply inform you that
someone tried to poison the general last night by pouring arsenate of
soda into his sleeping-potion, which I bring you in this phial, arsenate
which was secured most probably by washing it from grapes brought to
General Trebassof by the marshal of the court, and which disappeared
without anyone being able to say how.”
“Ah, ah, a family affair, a plot within the family. I told you so,”
murmured Koupriane.
“The affair at least has happened within the family, as you think,
although the assassin came from outside. Contrary to what you may be
able to believe, he does not live in the house.”
“Then how does he get there?” demanded Koupriane.
“By the window of the room overlooking the Neva. He has often come that
way. And that is the way he returns also, I am sure. It is there you can
take him if you act with prudence.”
“How do you know he often comes that way?”
“You know the height of the window above the little roadway. To reach it
he uses a water-trough, whose iron rings are bent, and also the marks of
a grappling-iron that he carries with him and uses to hoist himself to
the window are distinctly visible on the ironwork of the little balcony
outside. The marks are quite obviously of different dates.”
“But that window is closed.”
“Someone opens it for him.”
“Who, if you please?”
“I have no desire to know.”
“Eh, yes. It necessarily is Natacha. I was sure that the Villa des Iles
had its viper. I tell you she doesn’t dare leave her nest because she
knows she is watched. Not one of her movements outside escapes us! She
knows it. She has been warned. The last time she ventured outside alone
was to go into the old quarters of Derewnia. What has she to do in such
a rotten quarter? I ask you that. And she turned in her tracks without
seeing anyone, without knocking at a single door, because she saw that
she was followed. She isn’t able to get to see them outside, therefore
she has to see them inside.”
“They are only one, and always the same one.”
“Are you sure?”
“An examination of the marks on the wall and on the pipe doesn’t leave
any doubt of it, and it is always the same grappling-iron that is used
for the window.”
“The viper!”
“Monsieur Koupriane, Mademoiselle Natacha seems to preoccupy you
exceedingly. I did not come here to talk about Mademoiselle Natacha. I
came to point out to you the route used by the man who comes to do the
murder.”
“Eh, yes, it is she who opens the way.”
“I can’t deny that.”
“The little demon! Why does she take him into her room at night? Do you
think perhaps there is some love-affair...?”
“I am sure of quite the opposite.”
“I too. Natacha is not a wanton. Natacha has no heart. She has only a
brain. And it doesn’t take long for a brain touched by Nihilism to get
so it won’t hesitate at anything.”
Koupriane reflected a minute, while Rouletabille watched him in silence.
“Have we solely to do with Nihilism?” resumed Koupriane. “Everything you
tell me inclines me more and more to my idea: a family affair, purely in
the family. You know, don’t you, that upon the general’s death Natacha
will be immensely rich?”
“Yes, I know it,” replied Rouletabille, in a voice that sounded singular
to the ear of the Chief of Police and which made him raise his head.
“What do you know?”
“I? Nothing,” replied the reporter, this time in a firmer tone. “I
ought, however, to say this to you: I am sure that we are dealing with
Nihilism...”
“What makes you believe it?”
“This.”
And Rouletabille handed Koupriane the message he had received that same
morning.
“Oh, oh,” cried Koupriane. “You are under watch! Look out.”
“I have nothing to fear; I’m not bothering myself about anything
further. Yes, we have an affair of the revolutionaries, but not of the
usual kind. The way they are going about it isn’t like one of their
young men that the Central Committee arms with a bomb and who is
sacrificed in advance.”
“Where are the tracks that you have traced?”
“Right up to the little Krestowsky Villa.”
Koupriane bounded from his chair.
“Occupied by Boris. Parbleu! Now we have them. I see it all now. Boris,
another cracked brain! And he is engaged. If he plays the part of the
Revolutionaries, the affair would work out big for him.”
“That villa,” said Rouletabille quietly, “is also occupied by Michael
Korosakoff.”
“He is the most loyal, the most reliable soldier of the Tsar.”
“No one is ever sure of anything, my dear Monsieur Koupriane.”
“Oh, I am sure of a man like that.”
“No man is ever sure of any man, my dear Monsieur Koupriane.”
“I am, in every case, for those I employ.”
“You are wrong.”
“What do you say?”
“Something that can serve you in the enterprise you are going to
undertake, because I trust you can catch the murderer right in his nest.
To do that, I’ll not conceal from you that I think your agents will have
to be enormously clever. They will have to watch the datcha des Iles at
night, without anyone possibly suspecting it. No more maroon coats with
false astrakhan trimmings, eh? But Apaches, Apaches on the wartrail, who
blend themselves with the ground, with the trees, with the stones in the
roadway. But among those Apaches don’t send that agent of your Secret
Service who watched the window while the assassin climbed to it.”
“What?”
“Why, these climbs that you can read the proofs of on the wall and on
the iron forgings of the balcony went on while your agents, night and
day, were watching the villa. Have you noticed, monsieur, that it was
always the same agent who took the post at night, behind the villa,
under the window? General Trebassof’s book in which he kept a statement
of the exact disposal of each of your men during the period of siege was
most instructive on that point. The other posts changed in turn, but the
same agent, when he was among the guard, demanded always that same post,
which was not disputed by anybody, since it is no fun to pass the hours
of the night behind a wall, in an empty field. The others much preferred
to roll away the time watching in the villa or in front of the lodge,
where vodka and Crimean wine, kwass and pivo, kirsch and tchi, never ran
short. That agent’s name is Touman.”
“Touman! Impossible! He is one of the best agents from Kiew. He was
recommended by Gounsovski.”
Rouletabille chuckled.
“Yes, yes, yes,” grumbled the Chief of Police. “Someone always laughs
when his name is mentioned.”
Koupriane had turned red. He rose, opened the door, gave a long
direction in Russian, and returned to his chair.
“Now,” said he, “go ahead and tell me all the details of the poison and
the grapes the marshal of the court brought. I’m listening.”