The Secret of the Night
he would have found prompt solace for his mined hopes. Natacha, standing
in a corner, with her face singularly calm, watched this extraordinary
scene that was like a menagerie in which the tamer himself had become
a wild beast. From another corner, Rouletabille kept his eyes fixed on
Natacha who ignored him. Ah, that girl, sphinx to them all! Even to him
who thought a while ago that he could read things invisible to other
vulgar men in her features, in her eyes! The impassive face of that girl
whose father they had tried to assassinate only a few hours before and
who had just pressed the hand of Priemkof, the assassin! Once she turned
her head slightly toward Rouletabille. The reporter then looked towards
her with increased eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he would say:
“Surely, Natacha, you are not the accomplice of your father’s assassins;
surely it was not you who poured the poison!”
But Natacha’s glance passed the reporter coldly over. Ah, that
mysterious, cold mask, the mouth with its bitter, impudent smile, an
atrocious smile which seemed to say to the reporter: “If it is not I who
poured the poison, then it is you!”
It was the visage common enough to the daughters whom Koupriane had
spoken of a little while before, “the young girls who read” and, their
reading done, set themselves to accomplish some terrible thing, some
thing because of which, from time to time, they place stiff ropes around
the necks of these young females.
Finally, Koupriane’s frenzy wore itself out and he made a sign. The men
filed out in dismal silence. Two of them remained to guard Natacha. From
outside came the sounds of a carriage from Sestroriesk ready to convey
the girl to the Dungeons of Sts. Peter and Paul. A final gesture from
the Prefect of Police and the rough bands of the two guards seized the
prisoner’s frail wrists. They hustled her along, thrust her outside,
jamming her against the doorway, venting thus their anger at the
reproaches of their chief. A few seconds later the carriage departed,
not to stop until the fortress was reached with the trickling
tombs under the bed of the river where young girls about to die are
confined--who have read too much, without entirely understanding, as
Monsieur Kropotkine says.
Koupriane prepared to leave in turn. Rouletabille stopped him.
“Excellency, I wish you to tell me why you have shown such anger to your
men just now.”
“They are brute beasts,” cried the Chief of Police, quite beside himself
again. “They have made me miss the biggest catch of my life. They threw
themselves on the group two minutes too early. Some of them fired a gun
that they took for the signal and that served to warn the Nihilists.
But I will let them all rot in prison until I learn which one fired that
shot.”
“You needn’t look far for that,” said Rouletabille. “I did it.”
“You! Then you must have gone outside the touba?”
“Yes, in order to warn them. But still I was a little late, since you
did take Natacha.”
Koupriane’s eyes blazed.
“You are their accomplice in all this,” he hurled at the reporter, “and
I am going to the Tsar for permission to arrest you.”
“Hurry, then, Excellency,” replied the reporter coldly, “because the
Nihilists, who also think they have a little account to settle with me,
may reach me before you.”
And he saluted.
XV. “I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU”
At the hotel a note from Gounsovski: “Don’t forget this time to
come to-morrow to have luncheon with me. Warmest regards from Madame
Gounsovski.” Then a horrible, sleepless night, shaken with echoes of
explosions and the clamor of the wounded; and the solemn shade of Pere
Alexis, stretching out toward Rouletabille a phial of poison and saying,
“Either Natacha or you!” Then, rising among the shades the bloody form
of Michael Nikolaievitch the Innocent!
In the morning a note from the Marshal of the Court.
Monsieur le Marechal had no particular good news, evidently, for in
terms quite without enthusiasm he invited the young man to luncheon for
that same day, rather early, at midday, as he wished to see him once
more before he left for France. “I see,” said Rouletabille to himself;
“Monsieur le Marechal pronounces my expulsion from the country”--and he
forgot once more the Gounsovski luncheon. The meeting-place named was
the great restaurant called the Bear. Rouletabille entered it promptly
at noon. He asked the schwitzar if the Grand Marshal of the Court had
arrived, and was told no one had seen him yet. They conducted him to
the huge main hall, where, however, there was only one person. This man,
standing before the table spread with zakouskis, was stuffing himself.
At the sound of Rouletabille’s step on the floor this sole famished
patron turned and lifted his hands to heaven as he recognized the
reporter. The latter would have given all the roubles in his pocket to
have avoided the recognition. But he was already face to face with
the advocate so celebrated for his table-feats, the amiable Athanase
Georgevitch, his head swathed in bandages and dressings from the midst
of which one could perceive distinctly only the eyes and, above all, the
mouth.
“How goes it, little friend?”
“How are you?”
“Oh, I! There is nothing the matter. In a week we shall have forgotten
it.”
“What a terrible affair,” said the reporter, “I certainly believed we
were all dead men.”
“No, no. It was nothing. Nitchevo!”
“And poor Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff with his two poor legs broken!”
“Eh! Nitchevo! He has plenty of good solid splints that will make him
two good legs again. Nitchevo! Don’t you think anything more about that!
It is nothing. You have come here to dine? A very celebrated house this.
Caracho!” He busied himself to do the honors. One would have said the
restaurant belonged to him. He boasted of its architecture and the
cuisine “a la Francaise.”
“Do you know,” he inquired confidently, “a finer restaurant room
anywhere in the world?”
In fact, it seemed to Rouletabille as he looked up into the high glass
arch that he was in a railway station decorated for some illustrious
traveler, for there were flowers and plants everywhere. But the visitor
whom the ball awaited was the Russian eater, the ogre who never failed
to come to eat at The Bear. Pointing out the lines of tables shining
with their white cloths and bright silver, Athanase Georgevitch, with
his mouth full, said:
“Ah, my dear little French monsieur, you should see it at supper-time,
with the women, and the jewels, and the music. There is nothing in
France that can give you any idea of it, nothing! The gayety--the
champagne--and the jewels, monsieur, worth millions and millions of
roubles! Our women wear them all--everything they have. They are decked
like sacred shrines! All the family jewels--from the very bottom of the
caskets! it is magnificent, thoroughly Russian--Muscovite! What am
I saying? It is Asiatic. Monsieur, in the evening, at a fete, we are
Asiatic. Let me tell you something on the quiet. You notice that this
enormous dining hall is surrounded by those windowed balconies. Each of
those windows belongs to a separate private room. Well, you see that
window there?--yes, there--that is the room of a grand duke--yes, he’s
the one I mean--a very gay grand duke. Do you know, one evening when
there was a great crowd here--families, monsieur, family parties,
high-born families--the window of that particular balcony was thrown
open, and a woman stark naked, as naked as my hand, monsieur, was
dropped into the dining-hall and ran across it full-speed. It was a
wager, monsieur, a wager of the jolly grand duke’s, and the demoiselle
won it. But what a scandal! Ah, don’t speak of it; that would be very
bad form. But--sufficiently Asiatic, eh? Truly Asiatic. And--something
much more unfortunate--you see that table? It happened the Russian New
Year Eve, at supper. All the beauty, the whole capital, was here. Just
at midnight the orchestra struck up the Bodje tsara krani* to inaugurate
the joyful Russian New Year, and everybody stood up, according to
custom, and listened in silence, as loyal subjects should. Well, at
that table, accompanying his family, there was a young student, a fine
fellow, very correct, and in uniform. This unhappy young student, who
had risen like everybody else, to listen to the Bodje tsara krani,
inadvertently placed his knee on a chair. Truly that is not a correct
attitude, monsieur, but really it was no reason for killing him, was
it now? Certainly not. Well, a brute in uniform, an officer quite
immaculately gotten-up, drew a revolver from his pocket and discharged
it at the student point-blank. You can imagine the scandal, for the
student was dead! There were Paris journalists there, besides, who had
never been there before, you see! Monsieur Gaston Leroux was at that
very table. What a scandal! They had a regular battle. They broke
carafes over the head of the assassin--for he was neither more nor less
than an assassin, a drinker of blood--an Asiatic. They picked up the
assassin, who was bleeding all over, and carried him off to look after
him. As to the dead man, he lay stretched out there under a table-cloth,
waiting for the police--and those at the tables went on with their
drinking. Isn’t that Asiatic enough for you? Here, a naked woman; there,
a corpse! And the jewels--and the champagne! What do you say to that?”
* The Russian national anthem.
“His Excellency the Grand Marshal of the Court is waiting for you,
Monsieur.”
Rouletabille shook hands with Athanase Georgevitch, who returned to
his zakouskis, and followed the interpreter to the door of one of
the private rooms. The high dignitary was there. With a charm in his
politeness of which the high-born Russian possesses the secret
over almost everybody else in the world, the Marshal intimated to
Rouletabille that he had incurred imperial displeasure.
“You have been denounced by Koupriane, who holds you responsible for the
checks he has suffered in this affair.”
“Monsieur Koupriane is right,” replied Rouletabille, “and His Majesty
should believe him, since it is the truth. But don’t fear anything from
me, Monsieur le Grand Marechal, for I shall not inconvenience Monsieur
Koupriane any further, nor anybody else. I shall disappear.”
“I believe Koupriane is already directed to vise your passport.”
“He is very good, and he does himself much harm.”
“All that is a little your fault, Monsieur Rouletabille. We believed we
could consider you as a friend, and you have never failed, it appears,
on each occasion to give your help to our enemies.
“Who says that?”
“Koupriane. Oh, it is necessary to be one with us. And you are not one
with us. And if you are not for us you are against us. You understand
that, I think. That is the way it has to be. The Terrorists have
returned to the methods of the Nihilists, who succeeded altogether
too well against Alexander II. When I tell you that they succeeded in
placing their messages even in the imperial palace...”
“Yes, yes,” said Rouletabille, vaguely, as though he were already
far removed from the contingencies of this world. “I know that Czar
Alexander II sometimes found under his napkin a letter announcing his
condemnation to death.”
“Monsieur, at the Chateau yesterday morning something happened that is
perhaps more alarming than the letter found by Alexander II under his
napkin.”
“What can it be? Have bombs been discovered?”
“No. It is a bizarre occurrence and almost unbelievable. The eider
downs, all the eider down coverings belonging to the imperial
family disappeared yesterday morning.” *
* Historically authentic.
“Surely not!”
“It is just as I say. And it was impossible to learn what had become
of them--until yesterday evening, when they were found again in their