"We know that only she is here, since no one has been able to enter and since no one has been able to leave."
That, in truth, filled her brain, prevented her from discerning in any corner of her mind the thought of Rouletabille. Then the impossible dialogue resumed.
"I repeat that we do not know but that the person has gone," repeated the reporter, and demanded her keys.
"Foolish," she said. "What do you want them for?"
"To search outside as we have searched inside."
"Why, everything is locked on the inside!"
"Madame, once more, that is no reason that the person may not be outside."
He consumed five minutes opening the door of the veranda, so many were his precautions. She watched him impatiently.
He whispered to her:
"I am going out, but don"t you lose sight of the little sitting-room. At the least movement call me; fire a revolver if you need to."
He slipped into the garden with the same precautions for silence. From the corner that she kept to, through the doors left open, Matrena could follow all the movements of the reporter and watch Natacha"s chamber at the same time. The att.i.tude of Rouletabille continued to confuse her beyond all expression. She watched what he did as if she thought him besotted. The dyernick on guard out in the roadway also watched the young man through the bars of the gate in consternation, as though he thought him a fool. Along the paths of beaten earth or cement which offered no chance for footprints Rouletabille hurried silently. Around him he noted that the gra.s.s of the lawn had not been trodden. And then he paid no more attention to his steps. He seemed to study attentively the rosy color in the east, breathing the delicacy of dawning morning in the Isles, amid the silence of the earth, which still slumbered.
Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been given an electric shock. As soon as he seemed to have recovered from that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path, into which he advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same fixed look that he had had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as if something or someone advised or warned him not to go further. He continually worked back toward the house, and thus he traversed all the paths that led from the villa, but in all these excursions he took pains not to place himself in the field of vision from Natacha"s window, a restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the building. To ascertain about this window he crept on all-fours up to the garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and had sufficient proof that no one had jumped out that way. Then he went to rejoin Matrena in the veranda.
"No one has come into the garden this morning," said he, "and no one has gone out of the villa into the garden. Now I am going to look outside the grounds. Wait here; I"ll be back in five minutes."
He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited some seconds. Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him. Matrena moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha"s door with horror. She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand up under the diabolic thought of such a crime. Ah, that arm, that arm! reaching out, making its way, with a little shining phial in its hand. Pains of Christ! What could there be in the d.a.m.nable books over which Natacha and her companions pored that could make such abominable crimes possible? Ah, Natacha, Natacha! it was from her that she would have desired the answer, straining her almost to stifling on her rough bosom and strangling her with her own strong hand that she might not hear the response. Ah, Natacha, Natacha, whom she had loved so much! She sank to the floor, crept across the carpet to the door, and lay there, stretched like a beast, and buried her head in her arms while she wept over her daughter. Natacha, Natacha, whom she had cherished as her own child, and who did not hear her. Ah, what use that the little fellow had gone to search outside when the whole truth lay behind this door? Thinking of him, she was embarra.s.sed lest he should find her in that animalistic posture, and she rose to her knees and worked her way over to the window that looked out upon the Neva. The angle of the slanting blinds let her see well enough what pa.s.sed outside, and what she saw made her spring to her feet. Below her the reporter was going through the same incomprehensible maneuvers that she had seen him do in the garden. Three pathways led to the little road that ran along the wall of the villa by the bank of the Neva. The young man, still with his hands behind his back and with his face up, took them one after the other. In the first he stopped at the first step. He didn"t take more than two steps in the second. In the third, which cut obliquely toward the right and seemed to run to the bank nearest Krestowsky Ostrow, she saw him advance slowly at first, then more quickly among the small trees and hedges. Once only he stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree against which he seemed to pick out something invisible, and then he continued to the bank. There he sat down on a stone and appeared to reflect, and then suddenly he cast off his jacket and trousers, picked out a certain place on the bank across from him, finished undressing and plunged into the stream. She saw at once that he swam like a porpoise, keeping beneath and showing his head from time to time, breathing, then diving below the surface again. He reached Krestowsky Ostrow in a clump of reeds. Then he disappeared. Below him, surrounded by trees, could be seen the red tiles of the villa which sheltered Boris and Michael. From that villa a person could see the window of the sitting-room in General Treba.s.sof"s residence, but not what might occur along the bank of the river just below its walls. An isvotchick drove along the distant route of Krestowsky, conveying in his carriage a company of young officers and young women who had been feasting and who sang as they rode; then deep silence ensued. Matrena"s eyes searched for Rouletabille, but could not find him. How long was he going to stay hidden like that? She pressed her face against the chill window. What was she waiting for? She waited perhaps for someone to make a move on this side, for the door near her to open and the traitorous figure of The Other to appear.
A hand touched her carefully. She turned.
Rouletabille was there, his face all scarred by red scratches, without collar or neck-tie, having hastily resumed his clothes. He appeared furious as he surprised her in his disarray. She let him lead her as though she were a child. He drew her to his room and closed the door.
"Madame," he commenced, "it is impossible to work with you. Why in the world have you wept not two feet from your step-daughter"s door? You and your Koupriane, you commence to make me regret the Faubourg Poissoniere, you know. Your step-daughter has certainly heard you. It is lucky that she attaches no importance at all to your nocturnal phantasmagorias, and that she has been used to them a long time. She has more sense than you, Mademoiselle Natacha has. She sleeps, or at least she pretends to sleep, which leaves everybody in peace. What reply will you give her if it happens that she asks you the reason to-day for your marching and counter-marching up and down the sitting-room and complains that you kept her from sleeping?"
Matrena only shook her old, old head.
"No, no, she has not heard me. I was there like a shadow, like a shadow of myself. She will never hear me. No one hears a shadow."
Rouletabille felt returning pity for her and spoke more gently.
"In any case, it is necessary, you must understand, that she should attach no more importance to what you have done to-night than to the things she knows of your doing other nights. It is not the first time, is it, that you have wandered in the sitting-room? You understand me? And to-morrow, madame, embrace her as you always have."
"No, not that," she moaned. "Never that. I could not."
"Why not?"
Matrena did not reply. She wept. He took her in his arms like a child consoling its mother.
"Don"t cry. Don"t cry. All is not lost. Someone did leave the villa this morning."
"Oh, little domovoi! How is that? How is that? How did you find that out?"
"Since we didn"t find anything inside, it was certainly necessary to find something outside."
"And you have found it?"
"Certainly."
"The Virgin protect you!"
"SHE is with us. She will not desert us. I will even say that I believe she has a special guardianship over the Isles. She watches over them from evening to morning."
"What are you saying?"
"Certainly. You don"t know what we call in France "the watchers of the Virgin"?"
"Oh, yes, they are the webs that the dear little beasts of the good G.o.d spin between the trees and that..."
"Exactly. You understand me and you will understand further when you know that in the garden the first thing that struck me across the face as I went into it was these watchers of the Virgin spun by the dear little spiders of the good G.o.d. At first when I felt them on my face I said to myself, "Hold on, no one has pa.s.sed this way," and so I went to search other places. The webs stopped me everywhere in the garden. But, outside the garden, they kept out of the way and let me pa.s.s undisturbed down a pathway which led to the Neva. So then I said to myself, "Now, has the Virgin by accident overlooked her work in this pathway? Surely not. Someone has ruined it." I found the shreds of them hanging to the bushes, and so I reached the river."
"And you threw yourself into the river, my dear angel. You swim like a little G.o.d."
"And I landed where the other landed. Yes, there were the reeds all freshly broken. And I slipped in among the bushes."
"Where to?"
"Up to the Villa Krestowsky, madame-where they both live."
"Ah, it was from there someone came?"
There was a silence between them.
She questioned:
"Boris?"
"Someone who came from the villa and who returned there. Boris or Michael, or another. They went and returned through the reeds. But in coming they used a boat; they returned by swimming."
Her customary agitation rea.s.serted itself.
She demanded ardently:
"And you are sure that he came here and that he left here?"
"Yes, I am sure of it."
"How?"
"By the sitting-room window."