The Secret of the Night
Rouletabille told him very briefly and without drawing any deductions
all that we already know. He ended his account as a man dressed in a
maroon coat with false astrakhan was introduced. It was the same man
Rouletabille had met in General Trebassof’s drawing-room and who
spoke French. Two gendarmes were behind him. The door had been closed.
Koupriane turned toward the man in the coat.
“Touman,” he said, “I want to talk to you. You are a traitor, and I have
proof. You can confess to me, and I will give you a thousand roubles and
you can take yourself off to be hanged somewhere else.”
The man’s eyes shrank, but he recovered himself quickly. He replied in
Russian.
“Speak French. I order it,” commanded Koupriane.
“I answer, Your Excellency,” said Touman firmly, “that I don’t know what
Your Excellency means.”
“I mean that you have helped a man get into the Trebassof villa by night
when you were on guard under the window of the little sitting-room.
You see that there is no use deceiving us any longer. I play with you
frankly, good play, good money. The name of that man, and you have a
thousand roubles.”
“I am ready to swear on the ikon of...”
“Don’t perjure yourself.”
“I have always loyally served...”
“The name of that man.”
“I still don’t know yet what Your Excellency means.”
“Oh, you understand me,” replied Koupriane, who visibly held in an anger
that threatened to break forth any moment. “A man got into the house
while you were watching...”
“I never saw anything. After all, it is possible. There were some very
dark nights. I went back and forth.”
“You are not a fool. The name of that man.”
“I assure you, Excellency...”
“Strip him.”
“What are you going to do?” cried Rouletabille.
But already the two guards had thrown themselves on Touman and had drawn
off his coat and shirt. The man was bare to the waist.
“What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”
“Leave them alone,” said Koupriane, roughly pushing Rouletabille back.
Seizing a whip which hung at the waist of the guards he struck Touman a
blow across the shoulders that drew blood. Touman, mad with the outrage
and the pain, shouted, “Yes, it is true! I brag of it!”
Koupriane did not restrain his rage. He showered the unhappy man with
blows, having thrown Rouletabille to the end of the room when he tried
to interfere. And while he proceeded with the punishment the Chief of
Police hurled at the agent who had betrayed him an accompaniment of
fearful threats, promising him that before he was hanged he should rot
in the bottom-most dungeon of Peter and Paul, in the slimy pits lying
under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who
sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them,
never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there
was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille,
who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief
of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had
spattered all about.
“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, who supported himself against the wall.
“I shall complain to the Tsar.”
“You are right,” Koupriane replied, “but I feel relieved now. You can’t
imagine the harm this man can have done to us in the weeks he has been
here.”
Touman, across whose shoulders they had thrown his coat and who lay now
across a chair, found strength to look up and say:
“It is true. You can’t do me as much harm as I have done you, whether
you think so or not. All the harm that can be done me by you and yours
is already accomplished. My name is not Touman, but Matiev. Listen. I
had a son that was the light of my eyes. Neither my son nor I had ever
been concerned with politics. I was employed in Moscow. My son was a
student. During the Red Week we went out, my son and I, to see a little
of what was happening over in the Presnia quarter. They said everybody
had been killed over there! We passed before the Presnia gate. Soldiers
called to us to stop because they wished to search us. We opened our
coats. The soldiers saw my son’s student waistcoat and set up a cry.
They unbuttoned the vest, drew a note-book out of his pocket and they
found a workman’s song in it that had been published in the Signal.
The soldiers didn’t know how to read. They believed the paper was a
proclamation, and they arrested my son. I demanded to be arrested with
him. They pushed me away. I ran to the governor’s house. Trebassof
had me thrust away from his door with blows from the butt-ends of his
Cossacks’ guns. And, as I persisted, they kept me locked up all that
night and the morning of the next day. At noon I was set free. I
demanded my son and they replied they didn’t know what I was talking
about. But a soldier that I recognized as having arrested my son the
evening before pointed out a van that was passing, covered with a
tarpaulin and surrounded by Cossacks. ‘Your son is there,’ he said;
‘they are taking him to the graves.’ Mad with despair, I ran after the
van. It went to the outskirts of Golountrine cemetery. There I saw
in the white snow a huge grave, wide, deep. I shall see it to my last
minute. Two vans had already stopped near the hole. Each van held
thirteen corpses. The vans were dumped into the trench and the soldiers
commenced to sort the bodies into rows of six. I watched for my son.
At last I recognized him in a body that half hung over the edge of the
trench. Horrors of suffering were stamped in the expression of his face.
I threw myself beside him. I said that I was his father. They let me
embrace him a last time and count his wounds. He had fourteen. Someone
had stolen the gold chain that had hung about his neck and held the
picture of his mother, who died the year before. I whispered into his
ear, I swore to avenge him. Forty-eight hours later I had placed myself
at the disposition of the Revolutionary Committee. A week had not passed
before Touman, whom, it seems, I resemble and who was one of the Secret
Service agents in Kiew, was assassinated in the train that was taking
him to St. Petersburg. The assassination was kept a secret. I received
all his papers and I took his place with you. I was doomed beforehand
and I asked nothing better, so long as I might last until after the
execution of Trebassof. Ah, how I longed to kill him with my own hands!
But another had already been assigned the duty and my role was to help
him. And do you suppose I am going to tell you the name of that other?
Never! And if you discover that other, as you have discovered me,
another will come, and another, and another, until Trebassof has paid
for his crimes. That is all I have to say to you, Koupriane. As for you,
my little fellow,” added he, turning to Rouletabille, “I wouldn’t
give much for your bones. Neither of you will last long. That is my
consolation.”
Koupriane had not interrupted the man. He looked at him in silence,
sadly.
“You know, my poor man, you will be hanged now?” he said.
“No,” growled Rouletabille. “Monsieur Koupriane, I’ll bet you my purse
that he will not be hanged.”
“And why not?” demanded the Chief of rolice, while, upon a sign from
him, they took away the false Touman.
“Because it is I who denounced him.”
“What a reason! And what would you like me to do?”
“Guard him for me; for me alone, do you understand?”
“In exchange for what?”
“In exchange for the life of General Trebassof, if I must put it that
way.”
“Eh? The life of General Trebassof! You speak as if it belonged to you,
as if you could dispose of it.”
Rouletabille laid his hand on Koupriane’s arm.
“Perhaps that’s so,” said he.
“Would you like me to tell you one thing, Monsieur Rouletabille? It is
that General Trebassof’s life, after what has just escaped the lips of
this Touman, who is not Touman, isn’t worth any more than--than yours if
you remain here. Since you are disposed not to do anything more in this
affair, take the train, monsieur, take the train, and go.”
Rouletabille walked back and forth, very much worked up; then suddenly
he stopped short.
“Impossible,” he said. “It is impossible. I cannot; I am not able to go
yet.”
“Why?”
“Good God, Monsieur Koupriane, because I have to interview the President
of the Duma yet, and complete my little inquiry into the politics of the
cadets.”
“Oh, indeed!”
Koupriane looked at him with a sour grin.
“What are you going to do with that man?” demanded Rouletabille.
“Have him fixed up first.”
“And then?”
“Then take him before the judges.”
“That is to say, to the gallows?”
“Certainly.”
“Monsieur Koupriane, I offer it to you again. Life for life. Give me the
life of that poor devil and I promise you General Trebassof’s.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Not at all. Do you promise me that you will maintain silence about the
case of that man and that you will not touch a hair of his head?”
Koupriane looked at Rouletabille as he had looked at him during the
altercation they had on the edge of the Gulf. He decided the same way
this time.
“Very well,” said he. “You have my word. The poor devil!”
“You are a brave man, Monsieur Koupriane, but a little quick with the
whip...”
“What would you expect? One’s work teaches that.”
“Good morning. No, don’t trouble to show me out. I am compromised enough
already,” said Rouletabille, laughing.
“Au revoir, and good luck! Get to work interviewing the President of the
Duma,” added Koupriane knowingly, with a great laugh.
But Rouletabille was already gone.
“That lad,” said the Chief of Police aloud to himself, “hasn’t told me a
bit of what he knows.”
IX. ANNOUCHKA
“And now it’s between us two, Natacha,” murmured Rouletabille as soon
as he was outside. He hailed the first carriage that passed and gave the
address of the datcha des Iles. When he got in he held his head between
his hands; his face burned, his jaws were set. But by a prodigious
effort of his will he resumed almost instantly his calm, his
self-control. As he went back across the Neva, across the bridge where
he had felt so elated a little while before, and saw the isles again he
sighed heavily. “I thought I had got it all over with, so far as I was
concerned, and now I don’t know where it will stop.” His eyes grew dark
for a moment with somber thoughts and the vision of the Lady in Black
rose before him; then he shook his head, filled his pipe, lighted it,
dried a tear that had been caused doubtless by a little smoke in his
eye, and stopped sentimentalizing. A quarter of an hour later he gave
a true Russian nobleman’s fist-blow in the back to the coachman as an
intimation that they had reached the Trebassof villa. A charming picture
was before him. They were all lunching gayly in the garden, around the
table in the summer-house. He was astonished, however, at not seeing
Natacha with them. Boris Mourazoff and Michael Korsakoff were there.
Rouletabille did not wish to be seen. He made a sign to Ermolai, who was
passing through the garden and who hurried to meet him at the gate.
“The Barinia,” said the reporter, in a low voice and with his finger to
his lips to warn the faithful attendant to caution.
In two minutes Matrena Petrovna joined Rouletabille in the lodge.
“Well, where is Natacha?” he demanded hurriedly as she kissed his hands
quite as though she had made an idol of him.
“She has gone away. Yes, out. Oh, I did not keep her. I did not try
to hold her back. Her expression frightened me, you can understand, my
little angel. My, you are impatient! What is it about? How do we stand?
What have you decided? I am your slave. Command me. Command me. The keys
of the villa?”
“Yes, give me a key to the veranda; you must have several. I must be
able to get into the house to-night if it becomes necessary.”