The Secret of the Night
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
Koupriane’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