The Secret of the Night
had been obliged to suppress her performance. Rouletabille naturally
thought, in the latter connection, that some vengeance by Gounsovski lay
back of this, since the head of the Secret Service could hardly forget
the way he had been treated. The reporter could see already the poor
singer, in spite of all her safeguards and the favor of the Imperial
family, on the road to the Siberian steppes or the dungeons of
Schlusselbourg.
“My, what a country!” he murmured.
But his thoughts soon quit Annouchka and returned to the object of his
main preoccupation. He waited for only one thing, and for that as soon
as possible--to have a private interview with Natacha. He had written
her ten letters in two days, but they all remained unanswered. It was an
answer that he waited for so patiently in the vestibule of the hotel--so
patiently, but so nervously, so feverishly.
When the postman entered, poor Rouletabille’s heart beat rapidly. On
that answer he waited for depended the formidable part he meant to play
before quitting Russia. He had accomplished nothing up to now, unless he
could play his part in this later development.
But the letter did not come. The postman left, and the schwitzar, after
examining all the mail, made him a negative sign. Ah, the servants who
entered, and the errand-boys, how he looked at them! But they never came
for him. Finally, at six o’clock in the evening of the second day, a man
in a frock-coat, with a false astrakhan collar, came in and handed the
concierge a letter for Joseph Rouletabille. The reporter jumped up.
Before the man was out the door he had torn open the letter and read it.
The letter was not from Natacha. It was from Gounsovski. This is what it
said:
“My dear Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille, if it will not inconvenience
you, I wish you would come and dine with me to-day. I will look for
you within two hours. Madame Gounsovski will be pleased to make your
acquaintance. Believe me your devoted Gounsovski.”
Rouletabille considered, and decided:
“I will go. He ought to have wind of what is being plotted, and as for
me, I don’t know where Annouchka has gone. I have more to learn from
him than he has from me. Besides, as Athanase Georgevitch said, one may
regret not accepting the Head of the Okrana’s pleasant invitation.”
From six o’clock to seven he still waited vainly for Natacha’s response.
At seven o’clock, he decided to dress for the dinner. Just as he rose,
a messenger arrived. There was still another letter for Joseph
Rouletabille. This time it was from Natacha, who wrote him:
“General Trebassof and my step-mother will be very happy to have you
come to dinner to-day. As for myself, monsieur, you will pardon me the
order which has closed to you for a number of days a dwelling where you
have rendered services which I shall not forget all my life.”
The letter ended with a vague polite formula. With the letter in his
hand the reporter sat in thought. He seemed to be asking himself, “Is it
fish or flesh?” Was it a letter of thanks or of menace? That was what he
could not decide. Well, he would soon know, for he had decided to
accept that invitation. Anything that brought him and Natacha into
communication at the moment was a thing of capital importance to him.
Half-an-hour later he gave the address of the villa to an isvotchick,
and soon he stepped out before the gate where Ermolai seemed to be
waiting for him.
Rouletabille was so occupied by thought of the conversation he was going
to have with Natacha that he had completely forgotten the excellent
Monsieur Gounsovski and his invitation.
The reporter found Koupriane’s agents making a close-linked chain around
the grounds and each watching the other. Matrena had not wished any
agent to be in house. He showed Koupriane’s pass and entered.
Ermolai ushered Rouletabille in with shining face. He seemed glad
to have him there again. He bowed low before him and uttered many
compliments, of which the reporter did not understand a word.
Rouletabille passed on, entered the garden and saw Matrena Petrovna there
walking with her step-daughter. They seemed on the best of terms with
each other. The grounds wore an air of tranquillity and the residents
seemed to have totally forgotten the somber tragedy of the other night.
Matrena and Natacha came smilingly up to the young man, who inquired
after the general. They both turned and pointed out Feodor Feodorovitch,
who waved to him from the height of the kiosk, where it seemed the table
had been spread. They were going to dine out of doors this fine night.
“Everything goes very well, very well indeed, dear little domovoi,” said
Matrena. “How glad it is to see you and thank you. If you only knew how
I suffered in your absence, I who know how unjust my daughter was to
you. But dear Natacha knows now what she owes you. She doesn’t doubt
your word now, nor your clear intelligence, little angel. Michael
Nikolaievitch was a monster and he was punished as he deserved. You know
the police have proof now that he was one of the Central Revolutionary
Committee’s most dangerous agents. And he an officer! Whom can we trust
now!”
“And Monsieur Boris Mourazoff, have you seen him since?” inquired
Rouletabille.
“Boris called to see us to-day, to say good-by, but we did not receive
him, under the orders of the police. Natacha has written to tell him of
Koupriane’s orders. We have received letters from him; he is quitting
St. Petersburg.
“What for?”
“Well, after the frightful bloody scene in his little house, when he
learned how Michael Nikolaievitch had found his death, and after he
himself had undergone a severe grilling from the police, and when he
learned the police had sacked his library and gone through his papers,
he resigned, and has resolved to live from now on out in the country,
without seeing anyone, like the philosopher and poet he is. So far as I
am concerned, I think he is doing absolutely right. When a young man is
a poet, it is useless to live like a soldier. Someone has said that,
I don’t know the name now, and when one has ideas that may upset other
people, surely they ought to live in solitude.”
Rouletabille looked at Natacha, who was as pale as her white gown, and
who added no word to her mother’s outburst. They had drawn near the
kiosk. Rouletabille saluted the general, who called to him to come up
and, when the young man extended his hand, he drew him abruptly nearer
and embraced him. To show Rouletabille how active he was getting again,
Feodor Feodorovitch marched up and down the kiosk with only the aid of a
stick. He went and came with a sort of wild, furious gayety.
“They haven’t got me yet, the dogs. They haven’t got me! And one (he was
thinking of Michael) who saw me every day was here just for that. Very
well. I ask you where he is now. And yet here I am! An attack! I’m
always here! But with a good eye; and I begin to have a good leg. We
shall see. Why, I recollect how, when I was at Tiflis, there was an
insurrection in the Caucasus. We fought. Several times I could feel the
swish of bullets past my hair. My comrades fell around me like flies.
But nothing happened to me, not a thing. And here now! They will not get
me, they will not get me. You know how they plan now to come to me, as
living bombs. Yes, they have decided on that. I can’t press a friend’s
hand any more without the fear of seeing him explode. What do you think
of that? But they won’t get me. Come, drink my health. A small glass
of vodka for an appetizer. You see, young man, we are going to have
zakouskis here. What a marvelous panorama! You can see everything from
here. If the enemy comes,” he added with a singular loud laugh, “we
can’t fail to detect him.”
Certainly the kiosk did rise high above the garden and was completely
detached, no wall being near. They had a clear view. No branches of
trees hung over the roof and no tree hid the view. The rustic table of
rough wood was covered with a short cloth and was spread with zakouskis.
It was a meal under the open sky, a seat and a glass in the clear azure.
The evening could not have been softer and clearer. And, as the general
felt so gay, the repast would have promised to be most agreeable, if
Rouletabille had not noticed that Matrena Petrovna and Natacha were
uneasy and downcast. The reporter soon saw, too, that all the general’s
joviality was a little excessive. Anyone would have said that Feodor
Feodorovitch spoke to distract himself, to keep himself from thinking.
There was sufficient excuse for him after the outrageous drama of the
other night. Rouletabille noticed further that the general never looked
at his daughter, even when he spoke to her. There was too formidable
a mystery lying between them for restraint not to increase day by day.
Rouletabille involuntarily shook his head, saddened by all he saw. His
movement was surprised by Matrena Petrovna, who pressed his hand in
silence.
“Well, now,” said the general, “well, now my children, where is the
vodka?”
Among all the bottles which graced the table the general looked in vain
for his flask of vodka. How in the world could he dine if he did not
prepare for that important act by the rapid absorption of two or
three little glasses of white wine, between two or three sandwiches of
caviare!
“Ermolai must have left it in the wine-chest,” said Matrena.
The wine-closet was in the dining-room. She rose to go there, but
Natacha hurried before her down the little flight of steps, crying,
“Stay there, mamma. I will go.”
“Don’t you bother, either. I know where it is,” cried Rouletabille, and
hurried after Natacha.
She did not stop. The two young people arrived in the dining-room at
the same time. They were there alone, as Rouletabille had foreseen. He
stopped Natacha and planted himself in front of her.
“Why, mademoiselle, did you not answer me earlier?”
“Because I don’t wish to have any conversation with you.”
“If that was so, you would not have come here, where you were sure I
would follow.”
She hesitated, with an emotion that would have been incomprehensible to
all others perhaps, but was not to Rouletabille.
“Well, yes, I wished to say this to you: Don’t write to me any more.
Don’t speak to me. Don’t see me. Go away from here, monsieur; go away.
They will have your life. And if you have found out anything, forget it.
Ah, on the head of your mother, forget it, or you are lost. That is what
I wished to tell you. And now, you go.”
She grasped his hand in a quick sympathetic movement that she seemed
instantly to regret.
“You go away,” she repeated.
Rouletabille still held his place before her. She turned from him; she
did not wish to hear anything further.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “you are watched closer than ever. Who will
take Michael Nikolaievitch’s place?”
“Madman, be silent! Hush!”
“I am here.”
He said this with such simple bravery that tears sprang to her eyes.
“Dear man! Poor man! Dear brave man!” She did not know what to say. Her
emotion checked all utterance. But it was necessary for her to enable
him to understand that there was nothing he could do to help her in her
sad straits.
“No. If they knew what you have just said, what you have proposed now,
you would be dead to-morrow. Don’t let them suspect. And above all,
don’t try to see me anywhere. Go back to papa at once. We have been here
too long. What if they learn of it?--and they learn everything! They are
everywhere, and have ears everywhere.”
“Mademoiselle, just one word more, a single word. Do you doubt now that
Michael tried to poison your father?”
“Ah, I wish to believe it. I wish to. I wish to believe it for your
sake, my poor boy.”
Rouletabille desired something besides “I wish to believe it for your