The Secret of the Night
“The reason is simple enough. Natacha Feodorovna is the last word in
wickedness and doesn’t deserve anybody’s pity. She is the accomplice
of the revolutionaries and the instigator of all the crimes against her
father.”
“I am sure that you are mistaken, Excellency. But how have you been
guided to her?”
“Simply by you.”
“By me?”
“Yes, we lost all trace of Natacha. But, as you had disappeared also,
I made up my mind that you could only be occupied in searching for her,
and that by finding you I might have the chance to lay my hands on her.”
“But I haven’t seen any of your men?”
“Why, one of them brought you here.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Didn’t you climb onto a telega?”
“Ah, the driver.”
“Exactly. I had arranged to have him meet me at the Sestroriesk station.
He pointed out the place where you dropped off, and here I am.”
The reporter bent his head, red with chagrin. Decidedly the sinister
idea that he was responsible for the death of an innocent man and
all the ills which had followed out of it had paralyzed his detective
talents. He recognized it now. What was the use of struggling! If
anyone had told him that he would be played with that way sometime,
he, Rouletabille! he would have laughed heartily enough--then. But now,
well, he wasn’t capable of anything further. He was his own most cruel
enemy. Not only was Natacha in the hands of the revolutionaries through
his fault, by his abominable error, but worse yet, in the very moment
when he wished to save her, he foolishly, naively, had conducted the
police to the very spot where they should have been kept away. It was
the depth of his humiliation; Koupriane really pitied the reporter.
“Come, don’t blame yourself too much,” said he. “We would have found
Natacha without you; Gounsovski notified us that she was going to embark
in the Bay of Lachtka this evening with Priemkof.”
“Natacha with Priemkof!” exclaimed Rouletabille. “Natacha with the man
who introduced the two living bombs into her father’s house! If she is
with him, Excellency, it is because she is his prisoner, and that alone
will be sufficient to prove her innocence. I thank the Heaven that has
sent you here.”
Koupriane swallowed a glass of vodka, poured another after it, and
finally deigned to translate his thought:
“Natacha is the friend of these precious men and we will see them
disembark hand in hand.”
“Your men, then, haven’t studied the traces of the struggle that ‘these
precious men’ have had on the banks of the Neva before they carried away
Natacha?”
“Oh, they haven’t been hoodwinked. As a matter of fact, the struggle was
quite too visible not to have been done for appearances’ sake. What a
child you are! Can’t you see that Natacha’s presence in the datcha
had become quite too dangerous for that charming young girl after the
poisoning of her father and step-mother failed and at the moment when
her comrades were preparing to send General Trebassof a pleasant little
gift of dynamite? She arranged to get away and yet to appear kidnapped.
It is too simple.”
Rouletabille raised his head.
“There is something simpler still to imagine than the culpability of
Natacha. It is that Priemkof schemed to pour the poison into the flask
of vodka, saying to himself that if the poison didn’t succeed at least
it would make the occasion for introducing his dynamite into the house
in the pockets of the ‘doctors’ that they would go to find.”
Koupriane seized Rouletabille’s wrist and threw some terrible words at
him, looking into the depths of his eyes:
“It was not Priemkof who poured the poison, because there was no poison
in the flask.”
Rouletabille, as he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, more
startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling campaign.
If there was no poison in the flask, the poison must have been poured
directly into the glasses by a person who was in the kiosk! Now, there
were only four persons in the kiosk: the two who were poisoned and
Natacha and himself, Rouletabille. And that kiosk was so perfectly
isolated that it was impossible for any other persons than the four who
were there to pour poison upon the table.
“But it is not possible!” he cried.
“It is so possible that it is so. Pere Alexis declared that there is no
poison in the flask, and I ought to tell you that an analysis I had
made after his bears him out. There was no poison, either, in the small
bottle you took to Pere Alexis and into which you yourself had poured
the contents of Natacha’s glass and yours; no trace of poison excepting
in two of the four glasses, arsenate of soda was found only on the
soiled napkins of Trebassof and his wife and in the two glasses they
drank from.”
“Oh, that is horrible,” muttered the stupefied reporter; “that is
horrible, for then the poisoner must be either Natacha or me.”
“I have every confidence in you,” declared Koupriane with a great laugh
of satisfaction, striking him on the shoulder. “And I arrest Natacha,
and you who love logic ought to be satisfied now.”
Rouletabille hadn’t a word more to say. He sat down again and let his
head fall into his hands, like one sleep has seized.
“Ah, our young girls; you don’t know them. They are terrible, terrible!”
said Koupriane, lighting a big cigar. “Much more terrible than the boys.
In good families the boys still enjoy themselves; but the girls--they
read! It goes to their heads. They are ready for anything; they know
neither father nor mother. Ah, you are a child, you cannot comprehend.
Two lovely eyes, a melancholy air, a soft, low voice, and you are
captured--you believe you have before you simply an inoffensive, good
little girl. Well, Rouletabille, here is what I will tell you for
your instruction. There was the time of the Tchipoff attack; the
revolutionaries who were assigned to kill Tchipoff were disguised as
coachmen and footmen. Everything had been carefully prepared and it would
seem that no one could have discovered the bombs in the place they had
been stored. Well, do you know the place where those bombs were found?
In the rooms of the governor, of Wladmir’s daughter! Exactly, my little
friend, just there! The rooms of the governor’s daughter, Mademoiselle
Alexeieiv. Ah, these young girls! Besides, it was this same Mademoiselle
Alexeieiv who, so prettily, pierced the brain of an honest Swiss
merchant who had the misfortune to resemble one of our ministers. If
we had hanged that charming young girl earlier, my dear Monsieur
Rouletabille, that last catastrophe might have been avoided. A good rope
around the neck of all these little females--it is the only way, the
only way!”
A man entered. Rouletabille recognized the driver of the telega. There
were some rapid words between the Chief and the agent. The man closed
the shutters of the room, but through the interstices they would be
able to see what went on outside. Then the agent left; Koupriane, as he
pushed aside the table that was near the window, said to the reporter:
“You had better come to the window; my man has just told me the boat
is drawing near. You can watch an interesting sight. We are sure that
Natacha is still aboard. The yacht, after the explosion at the datcha,
took up two men who put off to it in a canoe, and since then it has
simply sailed back and forth in the gulf. We have taken our precautions
in Finland the same as here and it is here they are going to try to
disembark. Keep an eye on them.”
Koupriane was at his post of observation. Evening slowly fell. The sky
was growing grayish-black, a tint that blended with the slate-colored
sea. To those on the bank, the sound of the men about to die came softly
across the water. There was a sail far out. Between the strand and the
touba where Koupriane watched, was a ridge, a window, which, however,
did not hide the shore or the bay from the prefect of police, because at
the height where he was his glance passed at an angle above it. But from
the sea this ridge entirely hid anyone who lay in ambush behind it. The
reporter watched fifty moujiks flat on their stomachs crawling up the
ridge, behind two of their number whose heads alone topped the ridge.
In the line of gaze taken by those two heads was the white sail, looming
much larger now. The yacht was heeled in the water and glided with real
elegance, heading straight on. Suddenly, just when they supposed she was
coming straight to shore, the sails fell and a canoe was dropped over
the side. Four men got into it; then a woman jumped lightly down
a little gangway into the canoe. It was Natacha. Koupriane had no
difficulty in recognizing her through the gathering darkness.
“Ah, my dear Monsieur Rouletabille,” said he, “see your prisoner of the
Nihilists. Notice how she is bound. Her thongs certainly are causing her
great pain. These revolutionaries surely are brutes!”
The truth was that Natacha had gone quite readily to the rudder and
while the others rowed she steered the light boat to the place on the
beach that had been pointed out to her. Soon the prow of the canoe
touched the sands. There did not seem to be a soul about, and that was
the conclusion the men in the canoe who stood up looking around, seemed
to reach. They jumped out, and then it was Natacha’s turn. She accepted
the hand held out to her, talking pleasantly with the men all the time.
She even turned to press the hand of one of them. The group came up
across the beach. All this time the watchers in the little eating-house
could see the false moujiks, who had wriggled on their stomachs to the
very edge of the ridge, holding themselves ready to spring.
Behind his shutter, Koupriane could not restrain an exclamation of
triumph; he gradually identified some of the figures in the group, and
muttered:
“Eh! eh! There is Priemkof himself and the others. Gounsovski is right
and he certainly is well-informed; his system is decidedly a good one.
What a net-full!”
He hardly breathed as he watched the outcome. He could discern
elsewhere, beside the bay, flat on the ground, concealed by the
slightest elevation of the soil, other false moujiks. The wood of
Sestroriesk was watched in the same way. The group of revolutionaries
who strolled behind Natacha stopped to confer. In three--maybe
two--minutes, they would be surrounded--cut off, taken in the trap.
Suddenly a gunshot sounded in the night, and the group, with startled
speed, turned in their tracks and made silently for the sea, while from
all directions poured the concealed agents and threw themselves into
the pursuit, jostling each other and crying after the fugitives. But the
cries became cries of rage, for the group of revolutionaries gained the
beach. They saw Natacha, who was held up by Priemkof himself, reject the
aid of the Nihilist, who did not wish to abandon her, in order that he
might save himself. She made him go and seeing that she was going to
be taken, stopped short and waited for the enemy stoically, with folded
arms. Meanwhile, her three companions succeeded in throwing themselves
into the canoe and plied the oars hard while Koupriane’s men, in the
water up to their chests, discharged their revolvers at the fugitives.
The men in the canoe, fearing to wound Natacha, made no reply to the
firing. The yacht had sails up by the time they drew alongside, and
made off like a bird toward the mysterious fords of Finland, audaciously
hoisting the black flag of the Revolution.
Meantime, Koupriane’s agents, trembling before his anger, gathered at
the eating-house. The Prefect of Police let his fury loose on them and
treated them like the most infamous of animals. The capture of Natacha
was little comfort. He had planned for the whole bag, and his men’s
stupidity took away all his self-control. If he had had a whip at hand