The Secret of the Night

“I also,” said Rouletabille, who put a rouble into the honorable functionary’s hand.

“Permit me to precede you.”

Bows and salutes. For two roubles he would have walked obsequiously before him to the end of the world.

“These functionaries are admirable,” thought Rouletabille as he was led to the barracks. He felt he had not paid too much for the services of a personage whose uniform was completely covered with lace. They tramped, they climbed, they descended. Stairways, corridors. Ah, the barracks at last. He seemed to have entered a convent. Beds very white, very narrow, and images of the Virgin and saints everywhere, monastic neatness and the most absolute silence. Suddenly an order sounded in the corridor outside, and the police-guard, who sprang from no one could tell where, stood to attention at the head of their beds. Koupriane and his aide appeared. Koupriane looked at everything closely, spoke to each man in turn, called them by their names, inquired about their needs, and the men stammered replies, not knowing what to answer, reddening like children. Koupriane observed Rouletabille. He dismissed his aide with a gesture. The inspection was over. He drew the young man into a little room just off the dormitory. Rouletabille, frightened, looked about him. He found himself in a chapel. This little chapel completed the effect of the guards’ dormitory. It was all gilded, decorated in marvelous colors, thronged with little ikons that bring happiness, and, naturally, with the portrait of the Tsar, the dear Little Father.

“You see,” said Koupriane, smiling at Rouletabille’s amazement, “we deny them nothing. We give them their saints right here in their quarters.” Closing the door, he drew a chair toward Rouletabille and motioned him to sit down. They sat before the little altar loaded with flowers, with colored paper and winged saints.

“We can talk here without being disturbed,” he said. “Yonder there is such a crowd of people waiting for me. I’m ready to listen.”

“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, “I have come to give you the report of my mission here, and to terminate my connection with it. All that is left for clearing this obscure affair is to arrest the guilty person, with which I have nothing to do. That concerns you. I simply inform you that someone tried to poison the general last night by pouring arsenate of soda into his sleeping-potion, which I bring you in this phial, arsenate which was secured most probably by washing it from grapes brought to General Trebassof by the marshal of the court, and which disappeared without anyone being able to say how.”

“Ah, ah, a family affair, a plot within the family. I told you so,” murmured Koupriane.

“The affair at least has happened within the family, as you think, although the assassin came from outside. Contrary to what you may be able to believe, he does not live in the house.”

“Then how does he get there?” demanded Koupriane.

“By the window of the room overlooking the Neva. He has often come that way. And that is the way he returns also, I am sure. It is there you can take him if you act with prudence.”

“How do you know he often comes that way?”

“You know the height of the window above the little roadway. To reach it he uses a water-trough, whose iron rings are bent, and also the marks of a grappling-iron that he carries with him and uses to hoist himself to the window are distinctly visible on the ironwork of the little balcony outside. The marks are quite obviously of different dates.”

“But that window is closed.”

“Someone opens it for him.”

“Who, if you please?”

“I have no desire to know.”

“Eh, yes. It necessarily is Natacha. I was sure that the Villa des Iles had its viper. I tell you she doesn’t dare leave her nest because she knows she is watched. Not one of her movements outside escapes us! She knows it. She has been warned. The last time she ventured outside alone was to go into the old quarters of Derewnia. What has she to do in such a rotten quarter? I ask you that. And she turned in her tracks without seeing anyone, without knocking at a single door, because she saw that she was followed. She isn’t able to get to see them outside, therefore she has to see them inside.”

“They are only one, and always the same one.”

“Are you sure?”

“An examination of the marks on the wall and on the pipe doesn’t leave any doubt of it, and it is always the same grappling-iron that is used for the window.”

“The viper!”

“Monsieur Koupriane, Mademoiselle Natacha seems to preoccupy you exceedingly. I did not come here to talk about Mademoiselle Natacha. I came to point out to you the route used by the man who comes to do the murder.”

“Eh, yes, it is she who opens the way.”

“I can’t deny that.”

“The little demon! Why does she take him into her room at night? Do you think perhaps there is some love-affair…?”

“I am sure of quite the opposite.”

“I too. Natacha is not a wanton. Natacha has no heart. She has only a brain. And it doesn’t take long for a brain touched by Nihilism to get so it won’t hesitate at anything.”

Koupriane reflected a minute, while Rouletabille watched him in silence.

“Have we solely to do with Nihilism?” resumed Koupriane. “Everything you tell me inclines me more and more to my idea: a family affair, purely in the family. You know, don’t you, that upon the general’s death Natacha will be immensely rich?”

“Yes, I know it,” replied Rouletabille, in a voice that sounded singular to the ear of the Chief of Police and which made him raise his head.

“What do you know?”

“I? Nothing,” replied the reporter, this time in a firmer tone. “I ought, however, to say this to you: I am sure that we are dealing with Nihilism…”

“What makes you believe it?”

“This.”

And Rouletabille handed Koupriane the message he had received that same morning.

“Oh, oh,” cried Koupriane. “You are under watch! Look out.”

“I have nothing to fear; I’m not bothering myself about anything further. Yes, we have an affair of the revolutionaries, but not of the usual kind. The way they are going about it isn’t like one of their young men that the Central Committee arms with a bomb and who is sacrificed in advance.”

“Where are the tracks that you have traced?”

“Right up to the little Krestowsky Villa.”

Koupriane bounded from his chair.

“Occupied by Boris. Parbleu! Now we have them. I see it all now. Boris, another cracked brain! And he is engaged. If he plays the part of the Revolutionaries, the affair would work out big for him.”

“That villa,” said Rouletabille quietly, “is also occupied by Michael Korosakoff.”

“He is the most loyal, the most reliable soldier of the Tsar.”

“No one is ever sure of anything, my dear Monsieur Koupriane.”

“Oh, I am sure of a man like that.”

“No man is ever sure of any man, my dear Monsieur Koupriane.”

“I am, in every case, for those I employ.”

“You are wrong.”

“What do you say?”

“Something that can serve you in the enterprise you are going to undertake, because I trust you can catch the murderer right in his nest. To do that, I’ll not conceal from you that I think your agents will have to be enormously clever. They will have to watch the datcha des Iles at night, without anyone possibly suspecting it. No more maroon coats with false astrakhan trimmings, eh? But Apaches, Apaches on the wartrail, who blend themselves with the ground, with the trees, with the stones in the roadway. But among those Apaches don’t send that agent of your Secret Service who watched the window while the assassin climbed to it.”

“What?”

“Why, these climbs that you can read the proofs of on the wall and on the iron forgings of the balcony went on while your agents, night and day, were watching the villa. Have you noticed, monsieur, that it was always the same agent who took the post at night, behind the villa, under the window? General Trebassof’s book in which he kept a statement of the exact disposal of each of your men during the period of siege was most instructive on that point. The other posts changed in turn, but the same agent, when he was among the guard, demanded always that same post, which was not disputed by anybody, since it is no fun to pass the hours of the night behind a wall, in an empty field. The others much preferred to roll away the time watching in the villa or in front of the lodge, where vodka and Crimean wine, kwass and pivo, kirsch and tchi, never ran short. That agent’s name is Touman.”

“Touman! Impossible! He is one of the best agents from Kiew. He was recommended by Gounsovski.”

Rouletabille chuckled.

“Yes, yes, yes,” grumbled the Chief of Police. “Someone always laughs when his name is mentioned.”

Koupriane had turned red. He rose, opened the door, gave a long direction in Russian, and returned to his chair.

“Now,” said he, “go ahead and tell me all the details of the poison and the grapes the marshal of the court brought. I’m listening.”

Rouletabille told him very briefly and without drawing any deductions all that we already know. He ended his account as a man dressed in a maroon coat with false astrakhan was introduced. It was the same man Rouletabille had met in General Trebassof’s drawing-room and who spoke French. Two gendarmes were behind him. The door had been closed. Koupriane turned toward the man in the coat.

“Touman,” he said, “I want to talk to you. You are a traitor, and I have proof. You can confess to me, and I will give you a thousand roubles and you can take yourself off to be hanged somewhere else.”

The man’s eyes shrank, but he recovered himself quickly. He replied in Russian.

“Speak French. I order it,” commanded Koupriane.

“I answer, Your Excellency,” said Touman firmly, “that I don’t know what Your Excellency means.”

“I mean that you have helped a man get into the Trebassof villa by night when you were on guard under the window of the little sitting-room. You see that there is no use deceiving us any longer. I play with you frankly, good play, good money. The name of that man, and you have a thousand roubles.”

“I am ready to swear on the ikon of…”

“Don’t perjure yourself.”

“I have always loyally served…”

“The name of that man.”

“I still don’t know yet what Your Excellency means.”

“Oh, you understand me,” replied Koupriane, who visibly held in an anger that threatened to break forth any moment. “A man got into the house while you were watching…”

“I never saw anything. After all, it is possible. There were some very dark nights. I went back and forth.”

“You are not a fool. The name of that man.”

“I assure you, Excellency…”

“Strip him.”

“What are you going to do?” cried Rouletabille.

But already the two guards had thrown themselves on Touman and had drawn off his coat and shirt. The man was bare to the waist.

“What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”

“Leave them alone,” said Koupriane, roughly pushing Rouletabille back.

Seizing a whip which hung at the waist of the guards he struck Touman a blow across the shoulders that drew blood. Touman, mad with the outrage and the pain, shouted, “Yes, it is true! I brag of it!”

Koupriane did not restrain his rage. He showered the unhappy man with blows, having thrown Rouletabille to the end of the room when he tried to interfere. And while he proceeded with the punishment the Chief of Police hurled at the agent who had betrayed him an accompaniment of fearful threats, promising him that before he was hanged he should rot in the bottom-most dungeon of Peter and Paul, in the slimy pits lying under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had spattered all about.

“Monsieur,” said Rouletabille, who supported himself against the wall. “I shall complain to the Tsar.”

“You are right,” Koupriane replied, “but I feel relieved now. You can’t imagine the harm this man can have done to us in the weeks he has been here.”

Touman, across whose shoulders they had thrown his coat and who lay now across a chair, found strength to look up and say:

“It is true. You can’t do me as much harm as I have done you, whether you think so or not. All the harm that can be done me by you and yours is already accomplished. My name is not Touman, but Matiev. Listen. I had a son that was the light of my eyes. Neither my son nor I had ever been concerned with politics. I was employed in Moscow. My son was a student. During the Red Week we went out, my son and I, to see a little of what was happening over in the Presnia quarter. They said everybody had been killed over there! We passed before the Presnia gate. Soldiers called to us to stop because they wished to search us. We opened our coats. The soldiers saw my son’s student waistcoat and set up a cry. They unbuttoned the vest, drew a note-book out of his pocket and they found a workman’s song in it that had been published in the Signal. The soldiers didn’t know how to read. They believed the paper was a proclamation, and they arrested my son. I demanded to be arrested with him. They pushed me away. I ran to the governor’s house. Trebassof had me thrust away from his door with blows from the butt-ends of his Cossacks’ guns. And, as I persisted, they kept me locked up all that night and the morning of the next day. At noon I was set free. I demanded my son and they replied they didn’t know what I was talking about. But a soldier that I recognized as having arrested my son the evening before pointed out a van that was passing, covered with a tarpaulin and surrounded by Cossacks. ‘Your son is there,’ he said; ‘they are taking him to the graves.’ Mad with despair, I ran after the van. It went to the outskirts of Golountrine cemetery. There I saw in the white snow a huge grave, wide, deep. I shall see it to my last minute. Two vans had already stopped near the hole. Each van held thirteen corpses. The vans were dumped into the trench and the soldiers commenced to sort the bodies into rows of six. I watched for my son. At last I recognized him in a body that half hung over the edge of the trench. Horrors of suffering were stamped in the expression of his face. I threw myself beside him. I said that I was his father. They let me embrace him a last time and count his wounds. He had fourteen. Someone had stolen the gold chain that had hung about his neck and held the picture of his mother, who died the year before. I whispered into his ear, I swore to avenge him. Forty-eight hours later I had placed myself at the disposition of the Revolutionary Committee. A week had not passed before Touman, whom, it seems, I resemble and who was one of the Secret Service agents in Kiew, was assassinated in the train that was taking him to St. Petersburg. The assassination was kept a secret. I received all his papers and I took his place with you. I was doomed beforehand and I asked nothing better, so long as I might last until after the execution of Trebassof. Ah, how I longed to kill him with my own hands! But another had already been assigned the duty and my role was to help him. And do you suppose I am going to tell you the name of that other? Never! And if you discover that other, as you have discovered me, another will come, and another, and another, until Trebassof has paid for his crimes. That is all I have to say to you, Koupriane. As for you, my little fellow,” added he, turning to Rouletabille, “I wouldn’t give much for your bones. Neither of you will last long. That is my consolation.”

Koupriane had not interrupted the man. He looked at him in silence, sadly.

“You know, my poor man, you will be hanged now?” he said.

“No,” growled Rouletabille. “Monsieur Koupriane, I’ll bet you my purse that he will not be hanged.”

“And why not?” demanded the Chief of rolice, while, upon a sign from him, they took away the false Touman.

“Because it is I who denounced him.”

“What a reason! And what would you like me to do?”

“Guard him for me; for me alone, do you understand?”

“In exchange for what?”

“In exchange for the life of General Trebassof, if I must put it that way.”

“Eh? The life of General Trebassof! You speak as if it belonged to you, as if you could dispose of it.”

Rouletabille laid his hand on Koupriane’s arm.

“Perhaps that’s so,” said he.

“Would you like me to tell you one thing, Monsieur Rouletabille? It is that General Trebassof’s life, after what has just escaped the lips of this Touman, who is not Touman, isn’t worth any more than—than yours if you remain here. Since you are disposed not to do anything more in this affair, take the train, monsieur, take the train, and go.”

Rouletabille walked back and forth, very much worked up; then suddenly he stopped short.

“Impossible,” he said. “It is impossible. I cannot; I am not able to go yet.”

“Why?”

“Good God, Monsieur Koupriane, because I have to interview the President of the Duma yet, and complete my little inquiry into the politics of the cadets.”

“Oh, indeed!”

Koupriane looked at him with a sour grin.

“What are you going to do with that man?” demanded Rouletabille.

“Have him fixed up first.”

“And then?”

“Then take him before the judges.”

“That is to say, to the gallows?”

“Certainly.”

“Monsieur Koupriane, I offer it to you again. Life for life. Give me the life of that poor devil and I promise you General Trebassof’s.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Not at all. Do you promise me that you will maintain silence about the case of that man and that you will not touch a hair of his head?”

Koupriane looked at Rouletabille as he had looked at him during the altercation they had on the edge of the Gulf. He decided the same way this time.

“Very well,” said he. “You have my word. The poor devil!”

“You are a brave man, Monsieur Koupriane, but a little quick with the whip…”

“What would you expect? One’s work teaches that.”

“Good morning. No, don’t trouble to show me out. I am compromised enough already,” said Rouletabille, laughing.

“Au revoir, and good luck! Get to work interviewing the President of the Duma,” added Koupriane knowingly, with a great laugh.

But Rouletabille was already gone.

“That lad,” said the Chief of Police aloud to himself, “hasn’t told me a bit of what he knows.”

IX. ANNOUCHKA

“And now it’s between us two, Natacha,” murmured Rouletabille as soon as he was outside. He hailed the first carriage that passed and gave the address of the datcha des Iles. When he got in he held his head between his hands; his face burned, his jaws were set. But by a prodigious effort of his will he resumed almost instantly his calm, his self-control. As he went back across the Neva, across the bridge where he had felt so elated a little while before, and saw the isles again he sighed heavily. “I thought I had got it all over with, so far as I was concerned, and now I don’t know where it will stop.” His eyes grew dark for a moment with somber thoughts and the vision of the Lady in Black rose before him; then he shook his head, filled his pipe, lighted it, dried a tear that had been caused doubtless by a little smoke in his eye, and stopped sentimentalizing. A quarter of an hour later he gave a true Russian nobleman’s fist-blow in the back to the coachman as an intimation that they had reached the Trebassof villa. A charming picture was before him. They were all lunching gayly in the garden, around the table in the summer-house. He was astonished, however, at not seeing Natacha with them. Boris Mourazoff and Michael Korsakoff were there. Rouletabille did not wish to be seen. He made a sign to Ermolai, who was passing through the garden and who hurried to meet him at the gate.

“The Barinia,” said the reporter, in a low voice and with his finger to his lips to warn the faithful attendant to caution.

In two minutes Matrena Petrovna joined Rouletabille in the lodge.

“Well, where is Natacha?” he demanded hurriedly as she kissed his hands quite as though she had made an idol of him.

“She has gone away. Yes, out. Oh, I did not keep her. I did not try to hold her back. Her expression frightened me, you can understand, my little angel. My, you are impatient! What is it about? How do we stand? What have you decided? I am your slave. Command me. Command me. The keys of the villa?”

“Yes, give me a key to the veranda; you must have several. I must be able to get into the house to-night if it becomes necessary.”

She drew a key from her gown, gave it to the young man and said a few words in Russian to Ermolai, to enforce upon him that he must obey the little domovoi-doukh in anything, day or night.

“Now tell me where Natacha has gone.”

“Boris’s parents came to see us a little while ago, to inquire after the general. They have taken Natacha away with them, as they often have done. Natacha went with them readily enough. Little domovoi, listen to me, listen to Matrena Petrovna—Anyone would have said she was expecting it!”

“Then she has gone to lunch at their house?”

“Doubtless, unless they have gone to a cafe. I don’t know. Boris’s father likes to have the family lunch at the Barque when it is fine. Calm yourself, little domovoi. What ails you? Bad news, eh? Any bad news?”

“No, no; everything is all right. Quick, the address of Boris’s family.”

“The house at the corner of La Place St. Isaac and la rue de la Poste.”

“Good. Thank you. Adieu.”

He started for the Place St. Isaac, and picked up an interpreter at the Grand Morskaia Hotel on the way. It might be useful to have him. At the Place St. Isaac he learned the Morazoffs and Natacha Trebassof had gone by train for luncheon at Bergalowe, one of the nearby stations in Finland.

“That is all,” said he, and added apart to himself, “And perhaps that is not true.”

He paid the coachman and the interpreter, and lunched at the Brasserie de Vienne nearby. He left there a half-hour later, much calmer. He took his way to the Grand Morskaia Hotel, went inside and asked the schwitzar:

“Can you give me the address of Mademoiselle Annouchka?”

“The singer of the Krestowsky?”

“That is who I mean.”

“She had luncheon here. She has just gone away with the prince.”

Without any curiosity as to which prince, Rouletabille cursed his luck and again asked for her address.

“Why, she lives in an apartment just across the way.”

Rouletabille, feeling better, crossed the street, followed by the interpreter that he had engaged. Across the way he learned on the landing of the first floor that Mademoiselle Annouchka was away for the day. He descended, still followed by his interpreter, and recalling how someone had told him that in Russia it was always profitable to be generous, he gave five roubles to the interpreter and asked him for some information about Mademoiselle Annouchka’s life in St. Petersburg. The interpreter whispered:

“She arrived a week ago, but has not spent a single night in her apartment over there.”

He pointed to the house they had just left, and added:

“Merely her address for the police.”

“Yes, yes,” said Rouletabille, “I understand. She sings this evening, doesn’t she?”

“Monsieur, it will be a wonderful debut.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Thanks.”

All these frustrations in the things he had undertaken that day instead of disheartening him plunged him deep into hard thinking. He returned, his hands in his pockets, whistling softly, to the Place St. Isaac, walked around the church, keeping an eye on the house at the corner, investigated the monument, went inside, examined all its details, came out marveling, and finally went once again to the residence of the Mourazoffs, was told that they had not yet returned from the Finland town, then went and shut himself in his room at the hotel, where he smoked a dozen pipes of tobacco. He emerged from his cloud of smoke at dinner-time.

At ten that evening he stepped out of his carriage before the Krestowsky. The establishment of Krestowsky, which looms among the Isles much as the Aquarium does, is neither a theater, nor a music-hall, nor a cafe-concert, nor a restaurant, nor a public garden; it is all of these and some other things besides. Summer theater, winter theater, open-air theater, hall for spectacles, scenic mountain, exercise-ground, diversions of all sorts, garden promenades, cafes, restaurants, private dining-rooms, everything is combined here that can amuse, charm, lead to the wildest orgies, or provide those who never think of sleep till toward three or four o’clock of a morning the means to await the dawn with patience. The most celebrated companies of the old and the new world play there amid an enthusiasm that is steadily maintained by the foresight of the managers: Russian and foreign dancers, and above all the French chanteuses, the little dolls of the cafes-concerts, so long as they are young, bright, and elegantly dressed, may meet their fortune there. If there is no such luck, they are sure at least to find every evening some old beau, and often some officer, who willingly pays twenty-five roubles for the sole pleasure of having a demoiselle born on the banks of the Seine for his companion at the supper-table. After their turn at the singing, these women display their graces and their eager smiles in the promenades of the garden or among the tables where the champagne-drinkers sit. The head-liners, naturally, are not driven to this wearying perambulation, but can go away to their rest if they are so inclined. However, the management is appreciative if they accept the invitation of some dignitary of the army, of administration, or of finance, who seeks the honor of hearing from the chanteuse, in a private room and with a company of friends not disposed to melancholy, the Bohemian songs of the Vieux Derevnia. They sing, they loll, they talk of Paris, and above all they drink. If sometimes the little fete ends rather roughly, it is the friendly and affectionate champagne that is to blame, but usually the orgies remain quite innocent, of a character that certainly might trouble the temperance societies but need not make M. le Senateur Berenger feel involved.