As she swore it a little too loudly, Rouletabille seized her arm so that she almost cried out, but she understood instantly that it was to keep her quiet.
"I tell you not to interrupt me, once for all."
"But, then, tell me what you are looking at like that."
"I am watching the corner where someone is going to enter the general"s chamber when everything is locked, madame. Do not move!"
Matrena, her teeth chattering, recalled that when she entered Rouletabille"s chamber she had found all the doors open that communicated with the chain of rooms: the young man"s chamber with hers, the dressing-room and the general"s chamber. She tried, under Rouletabille"s look, to keep calm, but in spite of all the reporter"s exhortations she could not hold her tongue.
"But which way? Where will they enter?"
"By the door."
"Which door?"
"That of the chamber giving on the servants" stair-way."
"Why, how? The key! The bolt!"
"They have made a key."
"But the bolt is drawn this side."
"They will draw it back from the other side."
"What! That is impossible."
Rouletabille laid his two hands on Matrena"s strong shoulders and repeated, detaching each syllable, "They will draw it back from the other side."
"It is impossible. I repeat it."
"Madame, your Nihilists haven"t invented anything. It is a trick much in vogue with sneak thieves in hotels. All it needs is a little hole the size of a pin bored in the panel of the door above the bolt."
"G.o.d!" quavered Matrena. "I don"t understand what you mean by your little hole. Explain to me, little domovoi."
"Follow me carefully, then," continued Rouletabille, his eyes all the time fixed elsewhere. "The person who wishes to enter sticks through the hole a bra.s.s wire that he has already given the necessary curve to and which is fitted on its end with a light point of steel curved inward. With such an instrument it is child"s play, if the hole has been made where it ought to be, to touch the bolt on the inside from the outside, pick the k.n.o.b on it, withdraw it, and open the door if the bolt is like this one, a small door-bolt."
"Oh, oh, oh," moaned Matrena, who paled visibly. "And that hole?"
"It exists."
"You have discovered it?"
"Yes, the first hour I was here."
"Oh, domovoi! But how did you do that when you never entered the general"s chamber until to-night?"
"Doubtless, but I went up that servants" staircase much earlier than that. And I will tell you why. When I was brought into the villa the first time, and you watched me, bidden behind the door, do you know what I was watching myself, while I appeared to be solely occupied digging out the caviare? The fresh print of boot-nails which left the carpet near the table, where someone had spilled beer (the beer was still running down the cloth). Someone had stepped in the beer. The boot-print was not clearly visible excepting there. But from there it went to the door of the servants" stairway and mounted the stairs. That boot was too fine to be mounting a stairway reserved to servants and that Koupriane told me had been condemned, and it was that made me notice it in a moment; but just then you entered."
"You never told me anything about it. Of course if I had known there was a boot-print..."
"I didn"t tell you anything about it because I had my reasons for that, and, anyway, the trace dried while I was telling you about my journey."
"Ah, why not have told me later?"
"Because I didn"t know you yet."
"Subtle devil! You will kill me. I can no longer... Let us go into the general"s chamber. We will wake him."
"Remain here. Remain here. I have not told you anything. That boot-print preoccupied me, and later, when I could get away from the dining-room, I was not easy until I had climbed that stairway myself and gone to see that door, where I discovered what I have just told you and what I am going to tell you now."
"What? What? In all you have said there has been nothing about the hat-pins."
"We have come to them now."
"And the bouquet attack, which is going to happen again? Why? Why?"
"This is it. When this evening you let me go to the general"s chamber, I examined the bolt of the door without your suspecting it. My opinion was confirmed. It was that way that the bomb was brought, and it is by that way that someone has prepared to return."
"But how? You are sure the little hole is the way someone came? But what makes you think that is how they mean to return? You know well enough that, not having succeeded in the general"s chamber, they are at work in the dining-room."
"Madame, it is probable, it is certain that they have given up the work in the dining-room since they have commenced this very day working again in the general"s chamber. Yes, someone returned, returned that way, and I was so sure of that, of the forthcoming return, that I removed the police in order to be able to study everything more at my ease. Do you understand now my confidence and why I have been able to a.s.sume so heavy a responsibility? It is because I knew I had only one thing to watch: one little hat-pin. It is not difficult, madame, to watch a single little hat-pin."
"A mistake," said Matrena, in a low voice. "Miserable little domovoi who told me nothing, me whom you let go to sleep on my mattress, in front of that door that might open any moment."
"No, madame. For I was behind it!"
"Ah, dear little holy angel! But what were you thinking of! That door has not been watched this afternoon. In our absence it could have been opened. If someone has placed a bomb during our absence!"
"That is why I sent you at once in to the dining-room on that search that I thought would be fruitless, dear madame. And that is why I hurried upstairs to the bedroom. I went to the stairway door instantly. I had prepared for proof positive if anyone had pushed it open even half a millimeter. No, no one had touched the door in our absence.
"Ah, dear heroic little friend of Jesus! But listen to me. Listen to me, my angel. Ah, I don"t know where I am or what I say. My brain is no more than a flabby balloon punctured with pins, with little holes of hat-pins. Tell me about the hat-pins. Right off! No, at first, what is it that makes you believe-good G.o.d!-that someone will return by that door? How can you see that, all that, in a poor little hat-pin?"
"Madame, it is not a single hat-pin hole; there are two of them.
"Two hat-pin holes?"
"Yes, two. An old one and a new one. One quite new. Why this second hole? Because the old one was judged a little too narrow and they wished to enlarge it, and in enlarging it they broke off the point of a hat-pin in it. Madame, the point is there yet, filling up the little old hole and the piece of metal is very sharp and very bright."
"Now I understand the examination of the hat-pins. Then it is so easy as that to get through a door with a hat-pin?"
"Nothing easier, especially if the panel is of pine. Sometimes one happens to break the point of a pin in the first hole. Then of necessity one makes a second. In order to commence the second hole, the point of the pin being broken, they have used the point of a pen-knife, then have finished the hole with the hat-pin. The second hole is still nearer the bolt than the first one. Don"t move like that, madame."
"But they are going to come! They are going to come!"
"I believe so."
"But I can"t understand how you can remain so quiet with such a certainty. Great heavens! what proof have you that they have not been there already?"