The Secret of the Night
was part of some old abandoned mill. Above his head the sky was pale as
a winding sheet. A thunderous, intermittent, rhythmical noise appraised
him that he could not be far from the sea.
He had plenty of time to note all these things, for they had stopped
the march to execution a moment and had made him sit down in the open
courtyard on an old box. A few steps away from him under the shed where
he certainly was going to be hanged, a man got upon a stool (the stool
that would serve Rouletabille a few moments later) with his arm raised,
and drove with a few blows of a mallet a great ring-bolt into a beam
above his head.
The reporter’s eyes, which had not lost their habit of taking everything
in, rested again on a coarse canvas sack that lay on the ground. The
young man felt a slight tremor, for he saw quickly that the sack swathed
a human form. He turned his head away, but only to confront another
empty sack that was intended for him. Then he closed his eyes. The sound
of music came from somewhere outside, notes of the balalaika. He said to
himself, “Well, we certainly are in Finland”; for he knew that, if the
guzla is Russian the balalaika certainly is Finnish. It is a kind of
accordeon that the peasants pick plaintively in the doorways of their
toubas. He had seen and heard them the afternoon that he went to
Pergalovo, and also a little further away, on the Viborg line. He
pictured to himself the ruined structure where he now found himself shut
in with the revolutionary tribunal, as it must appear from the outside
to passers-by; unsinister, like many others near it, sheltering under
its decaying roof a few homes of humble workers, resting now as they
played the balalaika at their thresholds, with the day’s labor over.
And suddenly from the ineffable peace of his last evening, while the
balalaika mourned and the man overhead tested the solidity of his
ring-bolt, a voice outside, the grave, deep voice of Annouchka, sang for
the little Frenchman:
“For whom weave we now the crown
Of lilac, rose and thyme?
When my hand falls lingering down
Who then will bring your crown
Of lilac, rose and thyme?
O that someone among you would hear,
And come, and my lonely hand
Would press, and shed the friendly tear--
For alone at the end I stand.
Who now will bring the crown
Of lilac, rose and thyme?”
Rouletabille listened to the voice dying away with the last sob of the
balalaika. “It is too sad,” he said, rising. “Let us go,” and he wavered
a little.
They came to search him. All was ready above. They pushed him gently
towards the shed. When he was under the ring-bolt, near the stool, they
made him turn round and they read him something in Russian, doubtless
less for him than for those there who did not understand French.
Rouletabille had hard work to hold himself erect.
The gentleman of the Neva said to him further:
“Monsieur, we now read you the final formula. It asks you to say
whether, before you die, you have anything you wish to add to what we
know concerning the sentence which has been passed upon you.”
Rouletabille thought that his saliva, which at that moment he had the
greatest difficulty in swallowing, would not permit him to utter a word.
But disdain of such a weakness, when he recalled the coolness of so many
illustrious condemned people in their last moments, brought him the last
strength needed to maintain his reputation.
“Why,” said he, “this sentence is not wrongly drawn up. I blame it
only for being too short. Why has there been no mention of the crime I
committed in contriving the tragic death of poor Michael Korsakoff?”
“Michael Korsakoff was a wretch,” pronounced the vindictive voice of the
young man who had presided at the trial and who, at this supreme moment,
happened to be face to face with Rouletabille. “Koupriane’s police, by
killing that man, ridded us of a traitor.”
Rouletabille uttered a cry, a cry of joy, and while he had some reason
for believing that at the point he had reached now of his too-short
career only misfortune could befall him, yet here Providence, in his
infinite grace, sent him before he died this ineffable consolation: the
certainty that he had not been mistaken.
“Pardon, pardon,” he murmured, in an excess of joy which stifled him
almost as much as the wretched rope would shortly do that they were
getting ready behind him. “Pardon. One second yet, one little second.
Then, messieurs, then, we are agreed in that, are we? This Michael,
Michael Nikolaievitch was the the last of traitors.”
“The first,” said the heavy voice.
“It is the same thing, my dear monsieur. A traitor, a wretched traitor,”
continued Rouletabille.
“A poisoner,” replied the voice.
“A vulgar poisoner! Is that not so? But, tell me how--a vulgar poisoner
who, under cover of Nihilism, worked for his own petty ends, worked for
himself and betrayed you all!”
Now Rouletabille’s voice rose like a fanfare. Someone said:
“He did not deceive us long; our enemies themselves undertook his
punishment.”
“It was I,” cried Rouletabille, radiant again. “It was I who wound up
that career. I tell you that was managed right. It was I who rid you of
him. Ah, I knew well enough, messieurs, in the bottom of my heart I knew
that I could not be mistaken. Two and two make four always, don’t they?
And Rouletabille is always Rouletabille. Messieurs, it is all right,
after all.”
But it was probable that it was also all wrong, for the gentleman of the
Neva came up to him hat in hand and said:
“Monsieur, you know now why the witnesses at your trial did not raise a
fact against you that, on the contrary, was entirely in your favor.
Now it only remains for us to execute the sentence which is entirely
justified on other grounds.”
“Ah, but--wait a little. What the devil! Now that I am sure I have not
been mistaken and that I have been myself, Rouletabille, all the time I
cling to life a little--oh, very much!”
A hostile murmur showed the condemned man that the patience of his
judges was getting near its limit.
“Monsieur,” interposed the president, “we know that you do not belong to
the orthodox religion; nevertheless, we will bring a priest if you wish
it.”
“Yes, yes, that is it, go for the priest,” cried Rouletabille.
And he said to himself, “It is so much time gained.”
One of the revolutionaries started over to a little cabin that had been
transformed into a chapel, while the rest of them looked at the reporter
with a good deal less sympathy than they had been showing. If his
bravado had impressed them agreeably in the trial room, they were
beginning to be rather disgusted by his cries, his protestations and all
the maneuvers by which he so apparently was trying to hold off the hour
of his death.
But all at once Rouletabille jumped up onto the fatal stool. They
believed he had decided finally to make an end of the comedy and die
with dignity; but he had mounted there only to give them a discourse.
“Messieurs, understand me now. If it is true that you are not
suppressing me in order to avenge Michael Nikolaievitch, then why do you
hang me? Why do you inflict this odious punishment on me? Because you
accuse me of causing Natacha Feodorovna’s arrest? Truly I have been
awkward. Of that, and that alone, I accuse myself.”
“It was you, with your revolver, who gave the signal to Koupriane’s
agents! You have done the dirty work for the police.”
Rouletabille tried vainly to protest, to explain, to say that his
revolver shot, on the contrary, had saved the revolutionaries. But no
one cared to listen and no one believed him.
“Here is the priest, monsieur,” said the gentleman of the Neva.
“One second! These are my last words, and I swear to you that after this
I will pass the rope about my neck myself! But listen to me! Listen to
me closely! Natacha Feodorovna was the most precious recruit you had,
was she not?”
“A veritable treasure,” declared the president, his voice more and more
impatient.
“It was a terrible blow, then,” continued the reporter, “a terrible blow
for you, this arrest?”
“Terrible,” some of them ejaculated.
“Do not interrupt me! Very well, then, I am going to say this to you:
‘If I ward off this blow--if, after having been the unintentional cause
of Natacha’s arrest, I have the daughter of General Trebassof set at
liberty, and that within twenty-four hours,--what do you say? Would you
still hang me?’”
The president, he who had the Christ-like countenance, said:
“Messieurs, Natacha Feodorovna has fallen the victim of terrible
machinations whose mystery we so far have not been able to penetrate.
She is accused of trying to poison her father and her step-mother,
and under such conditions that it seems impossible for human reason to
demonstrate the contrary. Natacha Feodorovna herself, crushed by the
tragic occurrence, was not able to answer her accusers at all, and her
silence has been taken for a confession of guilt. Messieurs, Natacha
Feodorovna will be started for Siberia to-morrow. We can do nothing for
her. Natacha Feodorovna is lost to us.”
Then, with a gesture to those who surrounded Rouletabille:
“Do your duty, messieurs.”
“Pardon, pardon. But if I do prove the innocence of Natacha? Just
wait, messieurs. There is only I who can prove that innocence! You lose
Natacha by killing me!”
“If you had been able to prove that innocence, monsieur, the thing would
already be done. You would not have waited.”
“Pardon, pardon. It is only at this moment that I have become able to do
it.”
“How is that?”
“It is because I was sick, you see--very seriously sick. That affair of
Michael Nikolaievitch and the poison that still continued after he was
dead simply robbed me of all my powers. Now that I am sure I have not
been the means of killing an innocent man--I am Rouletabille again!
It is not possible that I shall not find the way, that I shall not see
through this mystery.”
The terrible voice of the Christ-like figure said monotonously:
“Do your duty, messieurs.”
“Pardon, pardon. This is of great importance to you--and the proof is
that you have not yet hanged me. You were not so procrastinating with my
predecessor, were you? You have listened to me because you have hoped!
Very well, let me think, let me consider. Oh, the devil! I was there
myself at the fatal luncheon, and I know better than anyone else all
that happened there. Five minutes! I demand five minutes of you; it is
not much. Five little minutes!”
These last words of the condemned man seemed to singularly influence the
revolutionaries. They looked at one another in silence.
Then the president took out his watch and said:
“Five minutes. We grant them to you.”
“Put your watch here. Here on this nail. It is five minutes to seven,
eh? You will give me until the hour?”
“Yes, until the hour. The watch itself will strike when the hour has
come.”
“Ah, it strikes! Like the general’s watch, then. Very well, here we
are.”
Then there was the curious spectacle of Rouletabille standing on
the hangman’s stool, the fatal rope hanging above his head, his legs
crossed, his elbow on his knees in that eternal attitude which Art
has always given to human thought, his fists under his jaws, his eyes
fixed--all around him, all those young men intent on his silence, not
moving a muscle, turned into statues themselves that they might not
disturb the statue which thought and thought.
XVIII. A SINGULAR EXPERIENCE
The five minutes ticked away and the watch commenced to strike the
hour’s seven strokes. Did it sound the death of Rouletabille? Perhaps
not! For at the first silver tinkle they saw Rouletabille shake himself,
and raise his head, with his face alight and his eyes shining. They saw