The Secret of the Night
Prefect of Police, that one, and only one, person has left the traces of
his various climbings on the wall and on the balcony.”
“Idiot!” interrupted Natacha, with a passionate disdain for the young
man. “And that satisfies you?”
The general roughly seized the reporter’s wrist:
“Listen to me, monsieur. A man came here this night. That concerns only
me. No one has any right to be astonished excepting myself. I make it my
own affair, an affair between my daughter and me. But you, you have just
told us that you are sure that man is an assassin. Then, you see, that
calls for something else. Proofs are necessary, and I want the proofs
at once. You speak of traces; very well, we will go and examine those
traces together. And I wish for your sake, monsieur, that I shall be as
convinced by them as you are.”
Rouletabille quietly disengaged his wrist and replied with perfect calm:
“Now, monsieur, I am no longer able to prove anything to you.”
“Why?”
“Because the ladders of the police agents have wiped out all my proofs,
monsieur.
“So now there remains for us only your word, only your belief in
yourself. And if you are mistaken?”
“He would never admit it, papa,” cried Natacha. “Ah, it is he who
deserves the fate Michael Nikolaievitch has met just now. Isn’t it so?
Don’t you know it? And that will be your eternal remorse! Isn’t there
something that always keeps you from admitting that you are mistaken?
You have had an innocent man killed. Now, you know well enough, you know
well that I would not have admitted Michael Nikolaievitch here if I had
believed he was capable of wishing to poison my father.”
“Mademoiselle,” replied Rouletabille, not lowering his eyes under
Natacha’s thunderous regard, “I am sure of that.”
He said it in such a tone that Natacha continued to look at him with
incomprehensible anguish in her eyes. Ah, the baffling of those two
regards, the mute scene between those two young people, one of whom
wished to make himself understood and the other afraid beyond all other
things of being thoroughly understood. Natacha murmured:
“How he looks at me! See, he is the demon; yes, yes, the little domovoi,
the little domovoi. But look out, poor wretch; you don’t know what you
have done.”
She turned brusquely toward Koupriane:
“Where is the body of Michael Nikolaievitch?” said she. “I wish to see
it. I must see it.”
Feodor Feodorovitch had fallen, as though asleep, upon a chair. Matrena
Petrovna dared not approach him. The giant appeared hurt to the death,
disheartened forever. What neither bombs, nor bullets, nor poison had
been able to do, the single idea of his daughter’s co-operation in the
work of horror plotted about him--or rather the impossibility he faced
of understanding Natacha’s attitude, her mysterious conduct, the
chaos of her explanations, her insensate cries, her protestations
of innocence, her accusations, her menaces, her prayers and all
her disorder, the avowed fact of her share in that tragic nocturnal
adventure where Michael Nikolaievitch found his death, had knocked over
Feodor Feodorovitch like a straw. One instant he sought refuge in some
vague hope that Koupriane was less assured than he pretended of the
orderly’s guilt. But that, after all, was only a detail of no importance
in his eyes. What alone mattered was the significance of Natacha’s act,
and the unhappy girl seemed not to be concerned over what he would
think of it. She was there to fight against Koupriane, Rouletabille and
Matrena Petrovna, defending her Michael Nikolaievitch, while he, the
father, after having failed to overawe her just now, was there in a
corner suffering agonizedly.
Koupriane walked over to him and said:
“Listen to me carefully, Feodor Feodorovitch. He who speaks to you is
Head of the Police by the will of the Tsar, and your friend by the grace
of God. If you do not demand before us, who are acquainted with all that
has happened and who know how to keep any necessary secret, if you do
not demand of your daughter the reason for her conduct with Michael
Nikolaievitch, and if she does not tell you in all sincerity, there is
nothing more for me to do here. My men have already been ordered away
from this house as unworthy to guard the most loyal subject of His
Majesty; I have not protested, but now I in my turn ask you to prove to
me that the most dangerous enemy you have had in your house is not your
daughter.”
These words, which summed up the horrible situation, came as a relief
for Feodor. Yes, they must know. Koupriane was right. She must speak. He
ordered his daughter to tell everything, everything.
Natacha fixed Koupriane again with her look of hatred to the death,
turned from him and repeated in a firm voice:
“I have nothing to say.”
“There is the accomplice of your assassins,” growled Koupriane then, his
arm extended.
Natacha uttered a cry like a wounded beast and fell at her father’s
feet. She gathered them within her supplicating arms. She pressed them
to her breasts. She sobbed from the bottom of her heart. And he, not
comprehending, let her lie there, distant, hostile, somber. Then she
moaned, distractedly, and wept bitterly, and the dramatic atmosphere in
which she thus suddenly enveloped Feodor made it all sound like those
cries of an earlier time when the all-powerful, punishing father
appeared in the women’s apartments to punish the culpable ones.
“My father! Dear Father! Look at me! Look at me! Have pity on me, and do
not require me to speak when I must be silent forever. And believe me!
Do not believe these men! Do not believe Matrena Petrovna. And am I not
your daughter? Your very own daughter! Your Natacha Feodorovna! I cannot
make things dear to you. No, no, by the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus
I cannot explain. By the holy ikons, it is because I must not. By my
mother, whom I have not known and whose place you have taken, oh, my
father, ask me nothing more! Ask me nothing more! But take me in your
arms as you did when I was little; embrace me, dear father; love me.
I never have had such need to be loved. Love me! I am miserable.
Unfortunate me, who cannot even kill myself before your eyes to prove
my innocence and my love. Papa, Papa! What will your arms be for in the
days left you to live, if you no longer wish to press me to your heart?
Papa! Papa!”
She laid her head on Feodor’s knees. Her hair had come down and hung
about her in a magnificent disorderly mass of black.
“Look in my eyes! Look in my eyes! See how they love you, Batouchka!
Batouchka! My dear Batouchka!”
Then Feodor wept. His great tears fell upon Natacha’s tears. He raised
her head and demanded simply in a broken voice:
“You can tell me nothing now? But when will you tell me?”
Natacha lifted her eyes to his, then her look went past him toward
heaven, and from her lips came just one word, in a sob:
“Never.”
Matrena Petrovna, Koupriane and the reporter shuddered before the high
and terrible thing that happened then. Feodor had taken his daughter’s
face between his hands. He looked long at those eyes raised toward
heaven, the mouth which had just uttered the word “Never,” then, slowly,
his rude lips went to the tortured, quivering lips of the girl. He held
her close. She raised her head wildly, triumphantly, and cried, with arm
extended toward Matrena Petrovna:
“He believes me! He believes me! And you would have believed me also if
you had been my real mother.”
Her head fell back and she dropped unconscious to the floor. Feodor fell
to his knees, tending her, deploring her, motioning the others out of
the room.
“Go away! All of you, go! All! You, too, Matrena Petrovna. Go away!”
They disappeared, terrified by his savage gesture.
In the little datcha across the river at Krestowsky there was a body.
Secret Service agents guarded it while they waited for their chief.
Michael Nikolaievitch had come there to die, and the police had
reached him just at his last breath. They were behind him as, with the
death-rattle in his throat, he pulled himself into his chamber and fell
in a heap. Katharina the Bohemian was there. She bent her quick-witted,
puzzled head over his death agony. The police swarmed everywhere,
ransacking, forcing locks, pulling drawers from the bureau and tables,
emptying the cupboards. Their search took in everything, even to ripping
the mattresses, and not respecting the rooms of Boris Mourazoff, who
was away this night. They searched thoroughly, but they found absolutely
nothing they were looking for in Michael’s rooms. But they accumulated a
multitude of publications that belonged to Boris: Western books, essays
on political economy, a history of the French Revolution, and verses
that a man ought to hang for. They put them all under seal. During the
search Michael died in Katharina’s arms. She had held him close, after
opening his clothes over the chest, doubtless to make his last breaths
easier. The unfortunate officer had received a bullet at the back of
the head just after he had plunged into the Neva from the rear of the
Trebassof datcha and started to swim across. It was a miracle that he
had managed to keep going. Doubtless he hoped to die in peace if only
he could reach his own house. He apparently had believed he could manage
that once he had broken through his human bloodhounds. He did not know
he was recognized and his place of retreat therefore known.
Now the police had gone from cellar to garret. Koupriane came from the
Trebassof villa and joined them, Rouletabille followed him. The reporter
could not stand the sight of that body, that still had a lingering
warmth, of the great open eyes that seemed to stare at him, reproaching
him for this violent death. He turned away in distaste, and perhaps a
little in fright. Koupriane caught the movement.
“Regrets?” he queried.
“Yes,” said Rouletabille. “A death always must be regretted. None the
less, he was a criminal. But I’m sincerely sorry he died before he had
been driven to confess, even though we are sure of it.”
“Being in the pay of the Nihilists, you mean? That is still your
opinion?” asked Koupriane.
“Yes.”
“You know that nothing has been found here in his rooms. The only
compromising papers that have been found belong to Boris Mourazoff.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh--nothing.”
Koupriane questioned his men further. They replied categorically. No,
nothing had been found that directly incriminated anybody; and suddenly
Rouletabille noted that the conversation of the police and their chief
had grown more animated. Koupriane had become angry and was violently
reproaching them. They excused themselves with vivid gesture and rapid
speech.
Koupriane started away. Rouletabille followed him. What had happened?
As he came up behind Koupriane, he asked the question. In a few curt
words, still hurrying on, Koupriane told the reporter he had just
learned that the police had left the little Bohemian Katharina alone for
a moment with the expiring officer. Katharina acted as housekeeper for
Michael and Boris. She knew the secrets of them both. The first thing
any novice should have known was to keep a constant eye upon her, and
now no one knew where she was. She must be searched for and found at
once, for she had opened Michael’s shirt, and therein probably lay the
reason that no papers were found on the corpse when the police searched
it. The absence of papers, of a portfolio, was not natural.
The chase commenced in the rosy dawn of the isles. Already blood-like
tints were on the horizon. Some of the police cried that they had the
trail. They ran under the trees, because it was almost certain she had
taken the narrow path leading to the bridge that joins Krestowsky to
Kameny-Ostrow. Some indications discovered by the police who swarmed to