The Secret of the Night
floor, “Rise, Natacha Feodorovna.” And Feodor’s daughter understood that
her father never would believe in her guilt. She drew herself up towards
him and kissed his hands like a happy slave.
At this moment repeated blows shook the veranda door. Matrena, the
watch-dog, anxious to die after Feodor’s reproach, but still at
her post, ran toward what she believed to be a new danger. But she
recognized Koupriane’s voice, which called on her to open. She let him
in herself.
“What is it?” she implored.
“Well, he is dead.”
A cry answered him. Natacha had heard.
“But who--who--who?” questioned Matrena breathlessly.
Koupriane went over to Feodor and grasped his hands.
“General,” he said, “there was a man who had sworn your ruin and who was
made an instrument by your enemies. We have just killed that man.”
“Do I know him?” demanded Feodor.
“He is one of your friends, you have treated him like a son.”
“His name?”
“Ask your daughter, General.”
Feodor turned toward Natacha, who burned Koupriane with her gaze, trying
to learn what this news was he brought--the truth or a ruse.
“You know the man who wished to kill me, Natacha?”
“No,” she replied to her father, in accents of perfect fury. “No, I
don’t know any such man.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Koupriane, in a firm, terribly hostile voice, “you
have yourself, with your own hands, opened that window to-night; and you
have opened it to him many other times besides. While everyone else here
does his duty and watches that no person shall be able to enter at night
the house where sleeps General Trebassof, governor of Moscow, condemned
to death by the Central Revolutionary Committee now reunited at Presnia,
this is what you do; it is you who introduce the enemy into this place.”
“Answer, Natacha; tell me, yes or no, whether you have let anybody into
this house by night.”
“Father, it is true.”
Feodor roared like a lion:
“His name!”
“Monsieur will tell you himself,” said Natacha, in a voice thick with
terror, and she pointed to Koupriane. “Why does he not tell you himself
the name of that person? He must know it, if the man is dead.”
“And if the man is not dead,” replied Feodor, who visibly held onto
himself, “if that man, whom you helped to enter my house this night, has
succeeded in escaping, as you seem to hope, will you tell us his name?”
“I could not tell it, Father.”
“And if I prayed you to do so?”
Natacha desperately shook her head.
“And if I order you?”
“You can kill me, Father, but I will not pronounce that name.”
“Wretch!”
He raised his stick toward her. Thus Ivan the Terrible had killed his
son with a blow of his boar-spear.
But Natacha, instead of bowing her head beneath the blow that menaced
her, turned toward Koupriane and threw at him in accents of triumph:
“He is not dead. If you had succeeded in taking him, dead or alive, you
would already have his name.”
Koupriane took two steps toward her, put his hand on her shoulder and
said:
“Michael Nikolaievitch.”
“Michael Korsakoff!” cried the general.
Matrena Petrovna, as if revolted by that suggestion, stood upright to
repeat:
“Michael Korsakoff!”
The general could not believe his ears, and was about to protest when he
noticed that his daughter had turned away and was trying to flee to her
room. He stopped her with a terrible gesture.
“Natacha, you are going to tell us what Michael Korsakoff came here to
do to-night.”
“Feodor Feodorovitch, he came to poison you.”
It was Matrena who spoke now and whom nothing could have kept silent,
for she saw in Natacha’s attempt at flight the most sinister confession.
Like a vengeful fury she told over with cries and terrible gestures what
she had experienced, as if once more stretched before her the hand
armed with the poison, the mysterious hand above the pillow of her poor
invalid, her dear, rigorous tyrant; she told them about the preceding
night and all her terrors, and from her lips, by her voluble staccato
utterance that ominous recital had grotesque emphasis. Finally she told
all that she had done, she and the little Frenchman, in order not to
betray their suspicions to The Other, in order to take finally in their
own trap all those who for so many days and nights schemed for the death
of Feodor Feodorovitch. As she ended she pointed out Rouletabille to
Feodor and cried, “There is the one who has saved you.”
Natacha, as she listened to this tragic recital, restrained herself
several times in order not to interrupt, and Rouletabille, who was
watching her closely, saw that she had to use almost superhuman efforts
in order to achieve that. All the horror of what seemed to be to her as
well as to Feodor a revelation of Michael’s crime did not subdue her,
but seemed, on the contrary, to restore to her in full force all the
life that a few seconds earlier had fled from her. Matrena had hardly
finished her cry, “There is the one who has saved you,” before Natacha
cried in her turn, facing the reporter with a look full of the most
frightful hate, “There is the one who has been the death of an innocent
man!” She turned to her father. “Ah, papa, let me, let me say that
Michael Nikolaievitch, who came here this evening, I admit, and whom, it
is true, I let into the house, that Michael Nikolaievitch did not
come here yesterday, and that the man who has tried to poison you is
certainly someone else.”
At these words Rouletabille turned pale, but he did not let himself lose
self-control. He replied simply:
“No, mademoiselle, it was the same man.”
And Koupriane felt compelled to add:
“Anyway, we have found the proof of Michael Nikolaievitch’s relations
with the revolutionaries.”
“Where have you found that?” questioned the young girl, turning toward
the Chief of Police a face ravished with anguish.
“At Krestowsky, mademoiselle.”
She looked a long time at him as though she would penetrate to the
bottom of his thoughts.
“What proofs?” she implored.
“A correspondence which we have placed under seal.”
“Was it addressed to him? What kind of correspondence?”
“If it interests you, we will open it before you.”
“My God! My God!” she gasped. “Where have you found this correspondence?
Where? Tell me where!”
“I will tell you. At the villa, in his chamber. We forced the lock of
his bureau.”
She seemed to breathe again, but her father took her brutally by the
arm.
“Come, Natacha, you are going to tell us what that man was doing here
to-night.”
“In her chamber!” cried Matrena Petrovna.
Natacha turned toward Matrena:
“What do you believe, then? Tell me now.”
“And I, what ought I to believe?” muttered Feodor. “You have not told
me yet. You did not know that man had relations with my enemies. You are
innocent of that, perhaps. I wish to think so. I wish it, in the name
of Heaven I wish it. But why did you receive him? Why? Why did you bring
him in here, as a robber or as a...”
“Oh, papa, you know that I love Boris, that I love him with all my
heart, and that I would never belong to anyone but him.”
“Then, then, then.--speak!”
The young girl had reached the crisis.
“Ah, Father, Father, do not question me! You, you above all, do not
question me now. I can say nothing! There is nothing I can tell
you. Excepting that I am sure--sure, you understand--that Michael
Nikolaievitch did not come here last night.”
“He did come,” insisted Rouletabille in a slightly troubled voice.
“He came here with poison. He came here to poison your father, Natacha,”
moaned Matrena Petrovna, who twined her hands in gestures of sincere and
naive tragedy.
“And I,” replied the daughter of Feodor ardently, with an accent
of conviction which made everyone there vibrate, and particularly
Rouletabille, “and I, I tell you it was not he, that it was not he, that
it could not possibly be he. I swear to you it was another, another.”
“But then, this other, did you let him in as well?” said Koupriane.
“Ah, yes, yes. It was I. It was I. It was I who left the window and
blinds open. Yes, it is I who did that. But I did not wait for the
other, the other who came to assassinate. As to Michael Nikolaievitch,
I swear to you, my father, by all that is most sacred in heaven and
on earth, that he could not have committed the crime that you say. And
now--kill me, for there is nothing more I can say.”
“The poison,” replied Koupriane coldly, “the poison that he poured into
the general’s potion was that arsenate of soda which was on the grapes
the Marshal of the Court brought here. Those grapes were left by the
Marshal, who warned Michael Nikolaievitch and Boris Alexandrovitch to
wash them. The grapes disappeared. If Michael is innocent, do you accuse
Boris?”
Natacha, who seemed to have suddenly lost all power for defending
herself, moaned, begged, railed, seemed dying.
“No, no. Don’t accuse Boris. He has nothing to do with it. Don’t accuse
Michael. Don’t accuse anyone so long as you don’t know. But these two
are innocent. Believe me. Believe me. Ah, how shall I say it, how shall
I persuade you! I am not able to say anything to you. And you have
killed Michael. Ah, what have you done, what have you done!”
“We have suppressed a man,” said the icy voice of Koupriane, “who was
merely the agent for the base deeds of Nihilism.”
She succeeded in recovering a new energy that in her depths of despair
they would have supposed impossible. She shook her fists at Koupriane:
“It is not true, it is not true. These are slanders, infamies! The
inventions of the police! Papers devised to incriminate him. There
is nothing at all of what you said you found at his house. It is not
possible. It is not true.”
“Where are those papers?” demanded the curt voice of Feodor. “Bring them
here at once, Koupriane; I wish to see them.”
Koupriane was slightly troubled, and this did not escape Natacha, who
cried:
“Yes, yes, let him give us them, let him bring them if he has them. But
he hasn’t,” she clamored with a savage joy. “He has nothing. You can
see, papa, that he has nothing. He would already have brought them out.
He has nothing. I tell you he has nothing. Ah, he has nothing! He has
nothing!”
And she threw herself on the floor, weeping, sobbing, “He has nothing,
he has nothing!” She seemed to weep for joy.
“Is that true?” demanded Feodor Feodorovitch, with his most somber
manner. “Is it true, Koupriane, that you have nothing?”
“It is true, General, that we have found nothing. Everything had already
been carried away.”
But Natacha uttered a veritable torrent of glee:
“He has found nothing! Yet he accuses him of being allied with
the revolutionaries. Why? Why? Because I let him in? But I, am I a
revolutionary? Tell me. Have I sworn to kill papa? I? I? Ah, he doesn’t
know what to say. You see for yourself, papa, he is silent. He has lied.
He has lied.”
“Why have you made this false statement, Koupriane?”
“Oh, we have suspected Michael for some time, and truly, after what has
just happened, we cannot have any doubt.”
“Yes, but you declared you had papers, and you have not. That is
abominable procedure, Koupriane,” replied Feodor sternly. “I have heard
you condemn such expedients many times.”
“General! We are sure, you hear, we are absolutely sure that the man who
tried to poison you yesterday and the man to-day who is dead are one and
the same.”
“And what reason have you for being so sure? It is necessary to tell
it,” insisted the general, who trembled with distress and impatience.
“Yes, let him tell now.”
“Ask monsieur,” said Koupriane.
They all turned to Rouletabille.
The reporter replied, affecting a coolness that perhaps he did not
entirely feel:
“I am able to state to you, as I already have before Monsieur the