The Secret of the Night.
by Gaston Leroux.
I. GAYETY AND DYNAMITE
"BARINIA, the young stranger has arrived."
"Where is he?"
"Oh, he is waiting at the lodge."
"I told you to show him to Natacha"s sitting-room. Didn"t you understand me, Ermolai?"
"Pardon, Barinia, but the young stranger, when I asked to search him, as you directed, flatly refused to let me."
"Did you explain to him that everybody is searched before being allowed to enter, that it is the order, and that even my mother herself has submitted to it?"
"I told him all that, Barinia; and I told him about madame your mother."
"What did he say to that?"
"That he was not madame your mother. He acted angry."
"Well, let him come in without being searched."
"The Chief of Police won"t like it."
"Do as I say."
Ermolai bowed and returned to the garden. The "barinia" left the veranda, where she had come for this conversation with the old servant of General Treba.s.sof, her husband, and returned to the dining-room in the datcha des Iles, where the gay Councilor Ivan Petrovitch was regaling his amused a.s.sociates with his latest exploit at Cubat"s resort. They were a noisy company, and certainly the quietest among them was not the general, who nursed on a sofa the leg which still held him captive after the recent attack, that to his old coachman and his two piebald horses had proved fatal. The story of the always-amiable Ivan Petrovitch (a lively, little, elderly man with his head bald as an egg) was about the evening before. After having, as he said, "recure la bouche" for these gentlemen spoke French like their own language and used it among themselves to keep their servants from understanding-after having wet his whistle with a large gla.s.s of sparkling rosy French wine, he cried:
"You would have laughed, Feodor Feodorovitch. We had sung songs on the Barque* and then the Bohemians left with their music and we went out onto the river-bank to stretch our legs and cool our faces in the freshness of the dawn, when a company of Cossacks of the Guard came along. I knew the officer in command and invited him to come along with us and drink the Emperor"s health at Cubat"s place. That officer, Feodor Feodorovitch, is a man who knows vintages and boasts that he has never swallowed a gla.s.s of anything so common as Crimean wine. When I named champagne he cried, "Vive l"Empereur!" A true patriot. So we started, merry as school-children. The entire company followed, then all the diners playing little whistles, and all the servants besides, single file. At Cubat"s I hated to leave the companion-officers of my friend at the door, so I invited them in, too. They accepted, naturally. But the subalterns were thirsty as well. I understand discipline. You know, Feodor Feodorovitch, that I am a stickler for discipline. Just because one is gay of a spring morning, discipline should not be forgotten. I invited the officers to drink in a private room, and sent the subalterns into the main hall of the restaurant. Then the soldiers were thirsty, too, and I had drinks served to them out in the courtyard. Then, my word, there was a perplexing business, for now the horses whinnied. The brave horses, Feodor Feodorovitch, who also wished to drink the health of the Emperor. I was bothered about the discipline. Hall, court, all were full. And I could not put the horses in private rooms. Well, I made them carry out champagne in pails and then came the perplexing business I had tried so hard to avoid, a grand mixture of boots and horse-shoes that was certainly the liveliest thing I have ever seen in my life. But the horses were the most joyous, and danced as if a torch was held under their nostrils, and all of them, my word! were ready to throw their riders because the men were not of the same mind with them as to the route to follow! From our window we laughed fit to kill at such a mixture of sprawling boots and dancing hoofs. But the troopers finally got all their horses to barracks, with patience, for the Emperor"s cavalry are the best riders in the world, Feodor Feodorovitch. And we certainly had a great laugh!-Your health, Matrena Petrovna."
[* The "Barque" is a restaurant on a boat, among the isles, near the Gulf of Finland, on a bank of the Neva.]
These last graceful words were addressed to Madame Treba.s.sof, who shrugged her shoulders at the undesired gallantry of the gay Councilor. She did not join in the conversation, excepting to calm the general, who wished to send the whole regiment to the guard-house, men and horses. And while the roisterers laughed over the adventure she said to her husband in the advisory voice of the helpful wife:
"Feodor, you must not attach importance to what that old fool Ivan tells you. He is the most imaginative man in the capital when he has had champagne."
"Ivan, you certainly have not had horses served with champagne in pails," the old boaster, Athanase Georgevitch, protested jealously. He was an advocate, well-known for his table-feats, who claimed the hardest drinking reputation of any man in the capital, and he regretted not to have invented that tale.
"On my word! And the best brands! I had won four thousand roubles. I left the little fete with fifteen kopecks."
Matrena Petrovna was listening to Ermolai, the faithful country servant who wore always, even here in the city, his habit of fresh nankeen, his black leather belt, his large blue pantaloons and his boots glistening like ice, his country costume in his master"s city home. Madame Matrena rose, after lightly stroking the hair of her step-daughter Natacha, whose eyes followed her to the door, indifferent apparently to the tender manifestations of her father"s orderly, the soldier-poet, Boris Mourazoff, who had written beautiful verses on the death of the Moscow students, after having shot them, in the way of duty, on their barricades.
Ermolai conducted his mistress to the drawing-room and pointed across to a door that he had left open, which led to the sitting-room before Natacha"s chamber.
"He is there," said Ermolai in a low voice.
Ermolai need have said nothing, for that matter, since Madame Matrena was aware of a stranger"s presence in the sitting-room by the extraordinary att.i.tude of an individual in a maroon frock-coat bordered with false astrakhan, such as is on the coats of all the Russian police agents and makes the secret agents recognizable at first glance. This policeman was on his knees in the drawing-room watching what pa.s.sed in the next room through the narrow s.p.a.ce of light in the hinge-way of the door. In this manner, or some other, all persons who wished to approach General Treba.s.sof were kept under observation without their knowing it, after having been first searched at the lodge, a measure adopted since the latest attack.
Madame Matrena touched the policeman"s shoulder with that heroic hand which had saved her husband"s life and which still bore traces of the terrible explosion in the last attack, when she had seized the infernal machine intended for the general with her bare hand. The policeman rose and silently left the room, reached the veranda and lounged there on a sofa, pretending to be asleep, but in reality watching the garden paths.
Matrena Petrovna took his place at the hinge-vent. This was her rule; she always took the final glance at everything and everybody. She roved at all hours of the day and night round about the general, like a watch-dog, ready to bite, to throw itself before the danger, to receive the blows, to perish for its master. This had commenced at Moscow after the terrible repression, the ma.s.sacre of revolutionaries under the walls of Presnia, when the surviving Nihilists left behind them a placard condemning the victorious General Treba.s.sof to death. Matrena Petrovna lived only for the general. She had vowed that she would not survive him. So she had double reason to guard him.
But she had lost all confidence even within the walls of her own home.
Things had happened even there that defied her caution, her instinct, her love. She had not spoken of these things save to the Chief of Police, Koupriane, who had reported them to the Emperor. And here now was the man whom the Emperor had sent, as the supreme resource, this young stranger-Joseph Rouletabille, reporter.
"But he is a mere boy!" she exclaimed, without at all understanding the matter, this youthful figure, with soft, rounded cheeks, eyes clear and, at first view, extraordinarily naive, the eyes of an infant. True, at the moment Rouletabille"s expression hardly suggested any superhuman profundity of thought, for, left in view of a table, spread with hors-d"oeuvres, the young man appeared solely occupied in digging out with a spoon all the caviare that remained in the jars. Matrena noted the rosy freshness of his cheeks, the absence of down on his lip and not a hint of beard, the thick hair, with the curl over the forehead. Ah, that forehead-the forehead was curious, with great over-hanging cranial lumps which moved above the deep arcade of the eye-sockets while the mouth was busy-well, one would have said that Rouletabille had not eaten for a week. He was demolishing a great slice of Volgan sturgeon, contemplating at the same time with immense interest a salad of creamed cuc.u.mbers, when Matrena Petrovna appeared.
He wished to excuse himself at once and spoke with his mouth full.
"I beg your pardon, madame, but the Czar forgot to invite me to breakfast."
Madame Matrena smiled and gave him a hearty handshake as she urged him to be seated.
"You have seen His Majesty?"
"I come from him, madame. It is to Madame Treba.s.sof that I have the honor of speaking?"
"Yes. And you are Monsieur-?"
"Joseph Rouletabille, madame. I do not add, "At your service-because I do not know about that yet. That is what I said just now to His Majesty."
"Then?" asked Madame Matrena, rather amused by the tone the conversation had taken and the slightly flurried air of Rouletabille.
"Why, then, I am a reporter, you see. That is what I said at once to my editor in Paris, "I am not going to take part in revolutionary affairs that do not concern my country," to which my editor replied, "You do not have to take part. You must go to Russia to make an inquiry into the present status of the different parties. You will commence by interviewing the Emperor." I said, "Well, then, here goes," and took the train."
"And you have interviewed the Emperor?"
"Oh, yes, that has not been difficult. I expected to arrive direct at St. Petersburg, but at Krasnoie-Coelo the train stopped and the grand-marshal of the court came to me and asked me to follow him. It was very flattering. Twenty minutes later I was before His Majesty. He awaited me! I understood at once that this was obviously for something out of the ordinary."
"And what did he say to you?"
"He is a man of genuine majesty. He rea.s.sured me at once when I explained my scruples to him. He said there was no occasion for me to take part in the politics of the matter, but to save his most faithful servant, who was on the point of becoming the victim of the strangest family drama ever conceived."
Madame Matrena, white as a sheet, rose to her feet.
"Ah," she said simply.
But Rouletabille, whom nothing escaped, saw her hand tremble on the back of the chair.
He went on, not appearing to have noticed her emotion:
"His Majesty added these exact words: "It is I who ask it of you; I and Madame Treba.s.sof. Go, monsieur, she awaits you.""
He ceased and waited for Madame Treba.s.sof to speak.
She made up her mind after brief reflection.