The Secret of the Night
sake, my poor boy.” He was far from being satisfied. She saw him turn
pale. She tried to reassure him while her trembling hands raised the lid
of the wine-chest.
“What makes me think you are right is that I have decided myself that
only one and the same person, as you said, climbed to the window of the
little balcony. Yes, no one can doubt that, and you have reasoned well.”
But he persisted still.
“And yet, in spite of that, you are not entirely sure, since you say, ‘I
wish to believe it, my poor boy.’”
“Monsieur Rouletabille, someone might have tried to poison my father,
and not have come by way of the window.”
“No, that is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible to them.”
And she turned her head away again.
“Why, why,” she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite
indifferent, as if she wished to be merely ‘the daughter of the house’
in conversation with the young man, “the vodka is not in the wine chest,
after all. What has Ermolai done with it, then?”
She ran over to the buffet and found the flask.
“Oh, here it is. Papa shan’t be without it, after all.”
Rouletabille was already into the garden again.
“If that is the only doubt she has,” he said to himself, “I can reassure
her. No one could come, excepting by the window. And only one came that
way.”
The young girl had rejoined him, bringing the flask. They crossed the
garden together to the general, who was whiling away the time as he
waited for his vodka explaining to Matrena Petrovna the nature of “the
constitution.” He had spilt a box of matches on the table and arranged
them carefully.
“Here,” he cried to Natacha and Rouletabille. “Come here and I will
explain to you as well what this Constitution amounts to.”
The young people leaned over his demonstration curiously and all eyes in
the kiosk were intent on the matches.
“You see that match,” said Feodor Feodorovitch. “It is the Emperor. And
this other match is the Empress; this one is the Tsarevitch; and that
one is the Grand-duke Alexander; and these are the other granddukes.
Now, here are the ministers and there the principal governors, and then
the generals; these here are the bishops.”
The whole box of matches was used up, and each match was in its place,
as is the way in an empire where proper etiquette prevails in government
and the social order.
“Well,” continued the general, “do you want to know, Matrena Petrovna,
what a constitution is? There! That is the Constitution.”
The general, with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches.
Rouletabille laughed, but the good Matrena said:
“I don’t understand, Feodor.”
“Find the Emperor now.”
Then Matrena understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently,
and Natacha laughed also. Delighted with his success, Feodor
Feodorovitch took up one of the little glasses that Natacha had filled
with the vodka she brought.
“Listen, my children,” said he. “We are going to commence the zakouskis.
Koupriane ought to have been here before this.”
Saying this, holding still the little glass in his hand, he felt in his
pocket with the other for his watch, and drew out a magnificent large
watch whose ticking was easily heard.
“Ah, the watch has come back from the repairer,” Rouletabille remarked
smilingly to Matrena Petrovna. “It looks like a splendid one.”
“It has very fine works,” said the general. “It was bequeathed to me by
my grandfather. It marks the seconds, and the phases of the moon, and
sounds the hours and half-hours.”
Rouletabille bent over the watch, admiring it.
“You expect M. Koupriane for dinner?” inquired the young man, still
examining the watch.
“Yes, but since he is so late, we’ll not delay any longer. Your healths,
my children,” said the general as Rouletabille handed him back the watch
and he put it in his pocket.
“Your health, Feodor Feodorovitch,” replied Matrena Petrovna, with her
usual tenderness.
Rouletabille and Natacha only touched their lips to the vodka, but
Feodor Feodorovitch and Matrena drank theirs in the Russian fashion,
head back and all at a draught, draining it to the bottom and flinging
the contents to the back of the throat. They had no more than performed
this gesture when the general uttered an oath and tried to expel what he
had drained so heartily. Matrena Petrovna spat violently also, looking
with horror at her husband.
“What is it? What has someone put in the vodka?” cried Feodor.
“What has someone put in the vodka?” repeated Matrena Petrovna in a
thick voice, her eyes almost starting from her head.
The two young people threw themselves upon the unfortunates. Feodor’s
face had an expression of atrocious suffering.
“We are poisoned,” cried the general, in the midst of his chokings. “I
am burning inside.”
Almost mad, Natacha took her father’s head in her hands. She cried to
him:
“Vomit, papa; vomit!”
“We must find an emetic,” cried Rouletabille, holding on to the general,
who had almost slipped from his arms.
Matrena Petrovna, whose gagging noises were violent, hurried down the
steps of the kiosk, crossed the garden as though wild-fire were
behind her, and bounded into the veranda. During this time the general
succeeded in easing himself, thanks to Rouletabille, who had thrust a
spoon to the root of his tongue. Natacha could do nothing but cry, “My
God, my God, my God!” Feodor held onto his stomach, still crying, “I’m
burning, I’m burning!” The scene was frightfully tragic and funny at the
same time. To add to the burlesque, the general’s watch in his pocket
struck eight o’clock. Feodor Feodorovitch stood up in a final supreme
effort. “Oh, it is horrible!” Matrena Petrovna showed a red, almost
violet face as she came back; she distorted it, she choked, her mouth
twitched, but she brought something, a little packet that she waved, and
from which, trembling frightenedly, she shook a powder into the first
two empty glasses, which were on her side of the table and were those
she and the general had drained. She still had strength to fill them
with water, while Rouletabille was almost overcome by the general, whom
he still had in his arms, and Natacha concerned herself with nothing
but her father, leaning over him as though to follow the progress of
the terrible poison, to read in his eyes if it was to be life or death.
“Ipecac,” cried Matrena Petrovna, and she made the general drink it.
She did not drink until after him. The heroic woman must have exerted
superhuman force to go herself to find the saving antidote in her
medicine-chest, even while the agony pervaded her vitals.
Some minutes later both could be considered saved. The servants, Ermolai
at their head, were clustered about. Most of them had been at the lodge
and they had not, it appeared, heard the beginning of the affair, the
cries of Natacha and Rouletabille. Koupriane arrived just then. It was
he who worked with Natacha in getting the two to bed. Then he directed
one of his agents to go for the nearest doctors they could find.
This done, the Prefect of Police went toward the kiosk where he had left
Rouletabille. But Rouletabille was not to be found, and the flask of
vodka and the glasses from which they had drunk were gone also. Ermolai
was near-by, and he inquired of the servant for the young Frenchman.
Ermolai replied that he had just gone away, carrying the flask and the
glasses. Koupriane swore. He shook Ermolai and even started to give him
a blow with the fist for permitting such a thing to happen before his
eyes without making a protest.
Ermolai, who had his own haughtiness, dodged Koupriane’s fist and
replied that he had wished to prevent the young Frenchman, but the
reporter had shown him a police-paper on which Koupriane himself had
declared in advance that the young Frenchman was to do anything he
pleased.
XII. PERE ALEXIS
Koupriane jumped into his carriage and hurried toward St. Petersburg.
On the way he spoke to three agents who only he knew were posted in
the neighborhood of Eliaguine. They told him the route Rouletabille had
taken. The reporter had certainly returned into the city. He hurried
toward Troitski Bridge. There, at the corner of the Naberjnaia,
Koupriane saw the reporter in a hired conveyance. Rouletabille was
pounding his coachman in the back, Russian fashion, to make him go
faster, and was calling with all his strength one of the few words he
had had time to learn, “Naleva, naleva” (to the left). The driver was
forced to understand at last, for there was no other way to turn than to
the left. If he had turned to the right (naprava) he would have driven
into the river. The conveyance clattered over the pointed flints of a
neighborhood that led to a little street, Aptiekarski-Pereoulok, at
the corner of the Katharine canal. This “alley of the pharmacists” as a
matter of fact contained no pharmacists, but there was a curious sign
of a herbarium, where Rouletabille made the driver stop. As the carriage
rolled under the arch Rouletabille recognized Koupriane. He did not
wait, but cried to him, “Ah, here you are. All right; follow me.” He
still had the flask and the glasses in his hands. Koupriane couldn’t
help noticing how strange he looked. He passed through a court with him,
and into a squalid shop.
“What,” said Koupriane, “do you know Pere Alexis?”
They were in the midst of a curious litter. Clusters of dried herbs hung
from the ceiling, and all among them were clumps of old boots, shriveled
skins, battered pans, scrap-iron, sheep-skins, useless touloupes, and on
the floor musty old clothes, moth-eaten furs, and sheep-skin coats that
even a moujik of the swamps would not have deigned to wear. Here and
there were old teeth, ragged finery, dilapidated hats, and jars of
strange herbs ranged upon some rickety shelving. Between the set of
scales on the counter and a heap of little blocks of wood used for
figuring the accounts of this singular business were ungilded ikons,
oxidized silver crosses, and Byzantine pictures representing scenes from
the Old and New Testaments. Jars of alcohol with what seemed to be the
skeletons of frogs swimming in them filled what space was left. In a
corner of this large, murky room, under the vault of mossed stone, a
small altar stood and the light burned in a hanging glass of oil before
the holy images. A man was praying before the altar. He wore the costume
of old Russia, the caftan of green cloth, buttoned at the shoulder and
tucked in at the waist by a narrow belt. He had a bushy beard and his
hair fell to his shoulders. When he had finished his prayer he rose,
perceived Rouletabille and came over to take his hand. He spoke French
to the reporter:
“Well, here you are again, lad. Do you bring poison again to-day? This
will end by being found out, and the police...”
Just then he discerned Koupriane’s form in the shadow, drew close
to make out who it was, and fell to his knees as he saw who it was.
Rouletabille tried to raise him, but he insisted on prostrating himself.
He was sure the Prefect of Police had come to his house to hang him.
Finally he was reassured by Rouletabille’s positive assertions and the
great chief’s robust laugh. The Prefect wished to know how the young man
came to be acquainted with the “alchemist” of the police. Rouletabille
told him in a few words.
Maitre Alexis, in his youth, went to France afoot, to study pharmacy,
because of his enthusiasm for chemistry. But he always remained
countrified, very much a Russian peasant, a semi-Oriental bear, and did
not achieve his degree. He took some certificates, but the examinations
were too much for him. For fifty years he lived miserably as a
pharmacist’s assistant in the back of a disreputable shop in the Notre
Dame quarter. The proprietor of the place was implicated in the famous