“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.
A war whose powder fumes reeked still, a revolution whose last defeated
growls had not died away at the period of these events, had not at all
diminished the nightly gayeties of Kretowsky. Many of the young men who
displayed their uniforms that evening and called their “Nichevo” along
the brilliantly lighted paths of the public gardens, or filled the
open-air tables, or drank vodka at the buffets, or admired the figures
of the wandering soubrettes, had come here on the eve of their departure
for the war and had returned with the same child-like, enchanted smile,
the same ideal of futile joy, and kissed their passing comrades as gayly
as ever. Some of them had a sleeve lying limp now, or walked with a
crutch, or even on a wooden leg, but it was, all the same, “Nichevo!”
The crowd this evening was denser than ordinarily, because there was the
chance to hear Annouchka again for the first time since the somber days
of Moscow. The students were ready to give her an ovation, and no one
opposed it, because, after all, if she sang now it was because the
police were willing at last. If the Tsar’s government had granted her
her life, it was not in order to compel her to die of hunger. Each
earned a livelihood as was possible. Annouchka only knew how to sing and
dance, and so she must sing and dance!
When Rouletabille entered the Krestowsky Gardens, Annouchka had
commenced her number, which ended with a tremendous “Roussalka.”
Surrounded by a chorus of male and female dancers in the national
dress and with red boots, striking tambourines with their fingers, then
suddenly taking a rigid pose to let the young woman’s voice, which
was of rather ordinary register, come out, Annouchka had centered the
attention of the immense audience upon herself. All the other parts
of the establishment were deserted, the tables had been removed, and a
panting crowd pressed about the open-air theater. Rouletabille stood up
on his chair at the moment tumultuous “Bravos” sounded from a group of
students. Annouchka bowed toward them, seeming to ignore the rest of
the audience, which had not dared declare itself yet. She sang the old
peasant songs arranged to present-day taste, and interspersed them with
dances. They had an enormous success, because she gave her whole soul
to them and sang with her voice sometimes caressing, sometimes menacing,
and sometimes magnificently desperate, giving much significance to words
which on paper had not aroused the suspicions of the censor. The
taste of the day was obviously still a taste for the revolution, which
retained its influence on the banks of the Neva. What she was doing was
certainly very bold, and apparently she realized how audacious she was,
because, with great adroitness, she would bring out immediately after
some dangerous phrase a patriotic couplet which everybody was anxious to
applaud. She succeeded by such means in appealing to all the divergent
groups of her audience and secured a complete triumph for herself. The
students, the revolutionaries, the radicals and the cadets acclaimed the
singer, glorifying not only her art but also and beyond everything else
the sister of the engineer Volkousky, who had been doomed to perish with
her brother by the bullets of the Semenovsky regiment. The friends of
the Court on their side could not forget that it was she who, in front
of the Kremlin, had struck aside the arm of Constantin Kochkarof,
ordered by the Central Revolutionary Committee to assassinate the Grand
Duke Peter Alexandrovitch as he drove up to the governor’s house in
his sleigh. The bomb burst ten feet away, killing Constantin Kochkarof
himself. It may be that before death came he had time to hear
Annouchka cry to him, “Wretch! You were told to kill the prince, not to
assassinate his children.” As it happened, Peter Alexandrovitch held
on his knees the two little princesses, seven and eight years old. The
Court had wished to recompense her for that heroic act. Annouchka had
spit at the envoy of the Chief of Police who called to speak to her
of money. At the Hermitage in Moscow, where she sang then, some of
her admirers had warned her of possible reprisals on the part of the
revolutionaries. But the revolutionaries gave her assurance at once that
she had nothing to fear. They approved her act and let her know that
they now counted on her to kill the Grand Duke some time when he was
alone; which had made Annouchka laugh. She was an enfant terrible,
whose friends no one knew, who passed for very wise, and whose lines of
intrigue were inscrutable. She enjoyed making her hosts in the private
supper-rooms quake over their meal. One day she had said bluntly to one
of the most powerful tchinovnicks of Moscow: “You, my old friend, you
are president of the Black Hundred. Your fate is sealed. Yesterday you
were condemned to death by the delegates of the Central Committee at
Presnia. Say your prayers.” The man reached for champagne. He never
finished his glass. The dvornicks carried him out stricken with
apoplexy. Since the time she saved the little grand-duchesses the police
had orders to allow her to act and talk as she pleased. She had been
mixed up in the deepest plots against the government. Those who lent
the slightest countenance to such plottings and were not of the police
simply disappeared. Their friends dared not even ask for news of them.
The only thing not in doubt about them was that they were at hard labor
somewhere in the mines of the Ural Mountains. At the moment of
the revolution Annouchka had a brother who was an engineer on the
Kasan-Moscow line. This Volkousky was one of the leaders on the Strike
Committee. The authorities had an eye on him. The revolution started.
He, with the help of his sister, accomplished one of those formidable
acts which will carry their memory as heroes to the farthest posterity.
Their work accomplished, they were taken by Trebassof’s soldiers. Both
were condemned to death. Volkousky was executed first, and the sister
was taking her turn when an officer of the government arrived on
horseback to stop the firing. The Tsar, informed of her intended fate,
had sent a pardon by telegraph. After that she disappeared. She was
supposed to have gone on some tour across Europe, as was her habit,
for she spoke all the languages, like a true Bohemian. Now she had
reappeared in all her joyous glory at Krestowsky. It was certain,
however, that she had not forgotten her brother. Gossips said that if
the government and the police showed themselves so long-enduring they
found it to their interest to do so. The open, apparent life Annouchka
led was less troublesome to them than her hidden activities would be.
The lesser police who surrounded the Chief of the St. Petersburg Secret
Service, the famous Gounsovski, had meaning smiles when the matter
was discussed. Among them Annouchka had the ignoble nickname,
“Stool-pigeon.”
Rouletabille must have been well aware of all these particulars
concerning Annouchka, for he betrayed no astonishment at the great
interest and the strong emotion she aroused. From the corner where he
was he could see only a bit of the stage, and he was standing on tiptoes
to see the singer when he felt his coat pulled. He turned. It was
the jolly advocate, well known for his gastronomic feats, Athanase
Georgevitch, along with the jolly Imperial councilor, Ivan Petrovitch,
who motioned him to climb down.
“Come with us; we have a box.”
Rouletabille did not need urging, and he was soon installed in the front
of a box where he could see the stage and the public both. Just then the
curtain fell on the first part of Annouchka’s performance. The friends
were soon rejoined by Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, the great timber-merchant,
who came from behind the scenes.
“I have been to see the beautiful Onoto,” announced the Lithuanian with
a great satisfied laugh. “Tell me the news. All the girls are sulking
over Annouchka’s success.”
“Who dragged you into the Onoto’s dressing-room then?" demanded Athanase.
“Oh, Gounsovski himself, my dear. He is very amateurish, you know.”
“What! do you knock around with Gounsovski?”
“On my word, I tell you, dear friends, he isn’t a bad acquaintance. He
did me a little service at Bakou last year. A good acquaintance in these
times of public trouble.”
“You are in the oil business now, are you?”
“Oh, yes, a little of everything for a livelihood. I have a little well
down Bakou way, nothing big; and a little house, a very small one for my
small business.”
“What a monopolist Thaddeus is,” declared Athanase Georgevitch, hitting
him a formidable slap on the thigh with his enormous hand. “Gounsovski
has come himself to keep an eye on Annouchka’s debut, eh? Only he goes
into Onoto’s dressing-room, the rogue.”
“Oh, he doesn’t trouble himself. Do you know who he is to have supper
with? With Annouchka, my dears, and we are invited.”
“How’s that?” inquired the jovial councilor.
“It seems Gounsovski influenced the minister to permit Annouchka’s
performance by declaring he would be responsible for it all. He required
from Annouchka solely that she have supper with him on the evening of
her debut.”
“And Annouchka consented?”
“That was the condition, it seems. For that matter, they say that
Annouchka and Gounsovski don’t get along so badly together. Gounsovski
has done Annouchka many a good turn. They say he is in love with her.”
“He has the air of an umbrella merchant,” snorted Athanase Georgevitch.
“Have you seen him at close range?” inquired Ivan.
“I have dined at his house, though it is nothing to boast of, on my
word.”
“That is what he said,” replied Thaddeus. “When he knew we were here
together, he said to me: ‘Bring him, he is a charming fellow who plies
a great fork; and bring that dear man Ivan Petrovitch, and all your
friends.’”
“Oh, I only dined at his house,” grumbled Athanase, “because there was a
favor he was going to do me.”
“He does services for everybody, that man,” observed Ivan Petrovitch.
“Of course, of course; he ought to,” retorted Athanase. “What is a chief
of Secret Service for if not to do things for everybody? For everybody,
my dear friends, and a little for himself besides. A chief of Secret
Service has to be in with everybody, with everybody and his father,
as La Fontaine says (if you know that author), if he wants to hold his
place. You know what I mean.”
Athanase laughed loudly, glad of the chance to show how French he could
be in his allusions, and looked at Rouletabille to see if he had been
able to catch the tone of the conversation; but Rouletabille was too
much occupied in watching a profile wrapped in a mantilla of black lace,
in the Spanish fashion, to repay Athanase’s performance with a knowing
smile.
“You certainly have naive notions. You think a chief of Secret Police
should be an ogre,” replied the advocate as he nodded here and there to
his friends.
“Why, certainly not. He needs to be a sheep in a place like that, a
thorough sheep. Gounsovski is soft as a sheep. The time I dined with him
he had mutton streaked with fat. He is just like that. I am sure he is
mainly layers of fat. When you shake hands you feel as though you
had grabbed a piece of fat. My word! And when he eats he wags his jaw
fattishly. His head is like that, too; bald, you know, with a cranium
like fresh lard. He speaks softly and looks at you like a kid looking to
its mother for a juicy meal.”
“But--why--it is Natacha!” murmured the lips of the young man.
“Certainly it is Natacha, Natacha herself,” exclaimed Ivan Petrovitch,
who had used his glasses the better to see whom the young French
journalist was looking at. “Ah, the dear child! she has wanted to see
Annouchka for a long time.”
“What, Natacha! So it is. So it is. Natacha! Natacha!” said the others.
“And with Boris Mourazoff’s parents.”
“But Boris is not there,” sniggered Thaddeus Tehitchnikoff.
“Oh, he can’t be far away. If he was there we would see Michael
Korsakoff too. They keep close on each other’s heels.”
“How has she happened to leave the general? She said she couldn’t bear
to be away from him.”
“Except to see Annouchka,” replied Ivan. “She wanted to see her, and
talked so about it when I was there that even Feodor Feodorovitch was
rather scandalized at her and Matrena Petrovna reproved her downright
rudely. But what a girl wishes the gods bring about. That’s the way.”
“That’s so, I know,” put in Athanase. “Ivan Petrovitch is right. Natacha
hasn’t been able to hold herself in since she read that Annouchka was
going to make her debut at Krestowsky. She said she wasn’t going to die
without having seen the great artist.”
“Her father had almost drawn her away from that crowd,” affirmed Ivan,
“and that was as it should be. She must have fixed up this affair with
Boris and his parents.”
“Yes, Feodor certainly isn’t aware that his daughter’s idea was to
applaud the heroine of Kasan station. She is certainly made of stern
stuff, my word,” said Athanase.
“Natacha, you must remember, is a student,” said Thaddeus, shaking his
head; “a true student. They have misfortunes like that now in so many
families. I recall, apropos of what Ivan said just now, how today she
asked Michael Korsakoff, before me, to let her know where Annouchka
would sing. More yet, she said she wished to speak to that artist if it
were possible. Michael frowned on that idea, even before me. But Michael
couldn’t refuse her, any more than the others. He can reach Annouchka
easier than anyone else. You remember it was he who rode hard and
arrived in time with the pardon for that beautiful witch; she ought not
to forget him if she cared for her life.”
“Anyone who knows Michael Nikolaievitch knows that he did his duty
promptly,” announced Athanase Georgevitch crisply. “But he would not
have gone a step further to save Annouchka. Even now he won’t compromise
his career by being seen at the home of a woman who is never from
under the eyes of Gounsovski’s agents and who hasn’t been nicknamed
‘Stool-pigeon’ for nothing.”
“Then why do we go to supper tonight with Annouchka?” asked Ivan.
“That’s not the same thing. We are invited by Gounsovski himself. Don’t
forget that, if stories concerning it drift about some day, my friends,”
said Thaddeus.
“For that matter, Thaddeus, I accept the invitation of the honorable
chief of our admirable Secret Service because I don’t wish to slight
him. I have dined at his house already. By sitting opposite him at a
public table here I feel that I return that politeness. What do you say
to that?”
“Since you have dined with him, tell us what kind of a man he is aside
from his fattish qualities,” said the curious councilor. “So many things
are said about him. He certainly seems to be a man it is better to stand
in with than to fall out with, so I accept his invitation. How could you
manage to refuse it, anyway?”
“When he first offered me hospitality,” explained the advocate, “I
didn’t even know him. I never had been near him. One day a police agent
came and invited me to dinner by command--or, at least, I understood it
wasn’t wise to refuse the invitation, as you said, Ivan Petrovitch. When
I went to his house I thought I was entering a fortress, and inside I
thought it must be an umbrella shop. There were umbrellas everywhere,
and goloshes. True, it was a day of pouring rain. I was struck by there
being no guard with a big revolver in the antechamber. He had a little,
timid schwitzar there, who took my umbrella, murmuring ‘barine’ and
bowing over and over again. He conducted me through very ordinary rooms
quite unguarded to an average sitting-room of a common kind. We dined
with Madame Gounsovski, who appeared fattish like her husband, and three
or four men whom I had never seen anywhere. One servant waited on us. My
word!
“At dessert Gounsovski took me aside and told me I was unwise to ‘argue
that way.’ I asked him what he meant by that. He took my hands between
his fat hands and repeated, ‘No, no, it is not wise to argue like that.’
I couldn’t draw anything else out of him. For that matter, I understood
him, and, you know, since that day I have cut out certain side passages
unnecessary in my general law pleadings that had been giving me a
reputation for rather too free opinions in the papers. None of that
at my age! Ah, the great Gounsovski! Over our coffee I asked him if he
didn’t find the country in pretty strenuous times. He replied that he
looked forward with impatience to the month of May, when he could go for
a rest to a little property with a small garden that he had bought at
Asnieres, near Paris. When he spoke of their house in the country Madame
Gounsovski heaved a sigh of longing for those simple country joys. The
month of May brought tears to her eyes. Husband and wife looked at one
another with real tenderness. They had not the air of thinking for one
second: to-morrow or the day after, before our country happiness comes,
we may find ourselves stripped of everything. No! They were sure of
their happy vacation and nothing seemed able to disquiet them under
their fat. Gounsovski has done everybody so many services that no one
really wishes him ill, poor man. Besides, have you noticed, my dear old
friends, that no one ever tries to work harm to chiefs of Secret
Police? One goes after heads of police, prefects of police, ministers,
grand-dukes, and even higher, but the chiefs of Secret Police are never,
never attacked. They can promenade tranquilly in the streets or in the
gardens of Krestowsky or breathe the pure air of the Finland country or
even the country around Paris. They have done so many little favors for
this one and that, here and there, that no one wishes to do them the
least injury. Each person always thinks, too, that others have been less
well served than he. That is the secret of the thing, my friends, that
is the secret. What do you say?”
The others said: “Ah, ah, the good Gounsovski. He knows. He knows.
Certainly, accept his supper. With Annouchka it will be fun.”
“Messieurs,” asked Rouletabille, who continued to make discoveries in
the audience, “do you know that officer who is seated at the end of a
row down there in the orchestra seats? See, he is getting up.”
“He? Why, that is Prince Galitch, who was one of the richest lords of
the North Country. Now he is practically ruined.”
“Thanks, gentlemen; certainly it is he. I know him,” said Rouletabille,
seating himself and mastering his emotion.
“They say he is a great admirer of Annouchka,” hazarded Thaddeus. Then
he walked away from the box.
“The prince has been ruined by women,” said Athanase Georgevitch, who
pretended to know the entire chronicle of gallantries in the empire.
“He also has been on good terms with Gounsovski,” continued Thaddeus.
“He passes at court, though, for an unreliable. He once made a long
visit to Tolstoi.”
“Bah! Gounsovski must have rendered some signal service to that
imprudent prince,” concluded Athanase. “But for yourself, Thaddeus, you
haven’t said what you did with Gounsovski at Bakou.”
(Rouletabille did not lose a word of what was being said around him,
although he never lost sight of the profile hidden in the black mantle
nor of Prince Galitch, his personal enemy,* who reappeared, it seemed
to him, at a very critical moment.)
* as told in “The Lady In Black.”
“I was returning from Balakani in a drojki,” said Thaddeus
Tchitchnikoff, “and I was drawing near Bakou after having seen the
debris of my oil shafts that had been burned by the Tartars, when I met
Gounsovski in the road, who, with two of his friends, found themselves
badly off with one of the wheels of their carriage broken. I stopped.
He explained to me that he had a Tartar coachman, and that this coachman
having seen an Armenian on the road before him, could find nothing
better to do than run full tilt into the Armenian’s equipage. He had
reached over and taken the reins from him, but a wheel of the carriage
was broken.” (Rouletabille quivered, because he caught a glance of
communication between Prince Galitch and Natacha, who was leaning over
the edge of her box.) “So I offered to take Gounsovski and his friends
into my carriage, and we rode all together to Bakou after Gounsovski,
who always wishes to do a service, as Athanase Georgevitch says, had
warned his Tartar coachman not to finish the Armenian.” (Prince Galitch,
at the moment the orchestra commenced the introductory music for
Annouchka’s new number, took advantage of all eyes being turned toward
the rising curtain to pass near Natacha’s seat. This time he did not
look at Natacha, but Rouletabille was sure that his lips had moved as he
went by her.)
Thaddeus continued: “It is necessary to explain that at Bakou my little
house is one of the first before you reach the quay. I had some Armenian
employees there. When arrived, what do you suppose I saw? A file of
soldiers with cannon, yes, with a cannon, on my word, turned against my
house and an officer saying quietly, ‘there it is. Fire!’” (Rouletabille
made yet another discovery--two, three discoveries. Near by, standing
back of Natacha’s seat, was a figure not unknown to the young reporter,
and there, in one of the orchestra chairs, were two other men whose
faces he had seen that same morning in Koupriane’s barracks. Here was
where a memory for faces stood him in good stead. He saw that he was not
the only person keeping close watch on Natacha.) “When I heard what the
officer said,” Thaddeus went on, “I nearly dropped out of the drojki.
I hurried to the police commissioner. He explained the affair promptly,
and I was quick to understand. During my absence one of my Armenian
employees had fired at a Tartar who was passing. For that matter, he had
killed him. The governor was informed and had ordered the house to be
bombarded, for an example, as had been done with several others. I found
Gounsovski and told him the trouble in two words. He said it wasn’t
necessary for him to interfere in the affair, that I had only to talk
to the officer. ‘Give him a good present, a hundred roubles, and he will
leave your house. I went back to the officer and took him aside; he said
he wanted to do anything that he could for me, but that the order was
positive to bombard the house. I reported his answer to Gounsovski, who
told me: ‘Tell him then to turn the muzzle of the cannon the other way
and bombard the building of the chemist across the way, then he can
always say that he mistook which house was intended.’ I did that, and he
had them turn the cannon. They bombarded the chemist’s place, and I got
out of the whole thing for the hundred roubles. Gounsovski, the good
fellow, may be a great lump of fat and be like an umbrella merchant, but
I have always been grateful to him from the bottom of my heart, you can
understand, Athanase Georgevitch.”
“What reputation has Prince Galitch at the court?” inquired Rouletabille
all at once.
“Oh, oh!” laughed the others. “Since he went so openly to visit Tolstoi
he doesn’t go to the court any more.”
“And--his opinions? What are his opinions?”
“Oh, the opinions of everybody are so mixed nowadays, nobody knows.”
Ivan Petrovitch said, “He passes among some people as very advanced and
very much compromised.”
“Yet they don’t bother him?” inquired Rouletabille.
“Pooh, pooh,” replied the gay Councilor of Empire, “it is rather he who
tries to mix with them.”
Thaddeus stooped down and said, “They say that he can’t be reached
because of the hold he has over a certain great personage in the court,
and it would be a scandal--a great scandal.”
“Be quiet, Thaddeus,” interrupted Athanase Georgevitch, roughly. “It
is easy to see that you are lately from the provinces to speak so
recklessly, but if you go on this way I shall leave.”
“Athanase Georgevitch is right; hang onto your mouth, Thaddeus,”
counseled Ivan Petrovitch.
The talkers all grew silent, for the curtain was rising. In the audience
there were mysterious allusions being made to this second number of
Annouchka, but no one seemed able to say what it was to be, and it was,
as a matter of fact, very simple. After the whirl-wind of dances and
choruses and all the splendor with which she had been accompanied the
first time, Annouchka appeared as a poor Russian peasant in a scene
representing the barren steppes, and very simply she sank to her knees
and recited her evening prayers. Annouchka was singularly beautiful.
Her aquiline nose with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of
her eyebrows, her look that now was almost tender, now menacing, always
unusual, her pale rounded cheeks and the entire expression of her face
showed clearly the strength of new ideas, spontaneity, deep resolution
and, above all, passion. The prayer was passionate. She had an admirable
contralto voice which affected the audience strangely from its very
first notes. She asked God for daily bread for everyone in the immense
Russian land, daily bread for the flesh and for the spirit, and she
stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party they belonged.
And when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe and she rose
and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a delirious
audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused. Little
Rouletabille, who, not understanding the words, nevertheless caught the
spirit of that prayer, wept. Everybody wept. Ivan Petrovitch, Athanase
Georgevitch, Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff were standing up, stamping their
feet and clapping their hands like enthusiastic boys. The students, who
could be easily distinguished by the uniform green edging they wore on
their coats, uttered insensate cries. And suddenly there rose the first
strains of the national hymn. There was hesitation at first, a wavering.
But not for long. Those who had been dreading some counter-demonstration
realized that no objection could possibly be raised to a prayer for
the Tsar. All heads uncovered and the Bodje Taara Krari mounted,
unanimously, toward the stars.
Through his tears the young reporter never gave up his close watch on
Natacha. She had half risen, and, sinking back, leaned on the edge of
the box. She called, time and time again, a name that Rouletabille
could not hear in the uproar, but that he felt sure was “Annouchka!
Annouchka!” “The reckless girl,” murmured Rouletabille, and, profiting
by the general excitement, he left the box without being noticed.
He made his way through the crowd toward Natacha, whom he had sought
futilely since morning. The audience, after clamoring in vain for a
repetition of the prayer by Annouchka, commenced to disperse, and the
reporter was swept along with them for a few moments. When he reached
the range of boxes he saw that Natacha and the family she had been
with were gone. He looked on all sides without seeing the object of his
search and like a madman commenced to run through the passages, when a
sudden idea struck his blood cold. He inquired where the exit for the
artists was and as soon as it was pointed out, he hurried there. He
was not mistaken. In the front line of the crowd that waited to see
Annouchka come out he recognized Natacha, with her head enveloped in the
black mantle so that none should see her face. Besides, this corner of
the garden was in a half-gloom. The police barred the way; he could not
approach as near Natacha as he wished. He set himself to slip like a
serpent through the crowd. He was not separated from Natacha by more
than four or five persons when a great jostling commenced. Annouchka
was coming out. Cries rose: “Annouchka! Annouchka!” Rouletabille threw
himself on his knees and on all-fours succeeded in sticking his head
through into the way kept by the police for Annouchka’s passage.
There, wrapped in a great red mantle, his hat on his arm, was a man
Rouletabille immediately recognized. It was Prince Galitch. They were
hurrying to escape the impending pressure of the crowd. But Annouchka as
she passed near Natacha stopped just a second--a movement that did not
escape Rouletabille--and, turning toward her said just the one word,
“Caracho.” Then she passed on. Rouletabille got up and forced his way
back, having once more lost Natacha. He searched for her. He ran to the
carriage-way and arrived just in time to see her seated in a carriage
with the Mourazoff family. The carriage started at once in the direction
of the datcha des Iles. The young man remained standing there, thinking.
He made a gesture as though he were ready now to let luck take its
course. “In the end,” said he, “it will be better so, perhaps,” and
then, to himself, “Now to supper, my boy.”
He turned in his tracks and soon was established in the glaring light
of the restaurant. Officers standing, glass in hand, were saluting from
table to table and waving a thousand compliments with grace that was
almost feminine.
He heard his name called joyously, and recognized the voice of Ivan
Petrovitch. The three boon companions were seated over a bottle of
champagne resting in its ice-bath and were being served with tiny pates
while they waited for the supper-hour, which was now near.
Rouletabille yielded to their invitation readily enough, and accompanied
them when the head-waiter informed Thaddeus that the gentlemen were
desired in a private room. They went to the first floor and were
ushered into a large apartment whose balcony opened on the hall of
the winter-theater, empty now. But the apartment was already occupied.
Before a table covered with a shining service Gounsovski did the honors.
He received them like a servant, with his head down, an obsequious
smile, and his back bent, bowing several times as each of the guests
were presented to him. Athanase had described him accurately enough, a
mannikin in fat. Under the vast bent brow one could hardly see his eyes,
behind the blue glasses that seemed always ready to fall as he inclined
too far his fat head with its timid and yet all-powerful glance. When he
spoke in his falsetto voice, his chin dropped in a fold over his collar,
and he had a steady gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right
hand to retain the glasses from sliding down his short, thick nose.
Behind him there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch. He
had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper
only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could
not be further compromised by this affair, as they were already
under the eye of the Okrana (Secret Police) despite their high birth.
Gounsovski had seen them come with a sinister chuckle and had lavished
upon them his marks of devotion.
He loved Annouchka. It would have sufficed to have surprised just once
the jealous glance he sent from beneath his great blue glasses when he
gazed at the singer to have understood the sentiments that actuated him
in the presence of the beautiful daughter of the Black Land.
Annouchka was seated, or, rather, she lounged, Oriental fashion, on the
sofa which ran along the wall behind the table. She paid attention to
no one. Her attitude was forbidding, even hostile. She indifferently
allowed her marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her
shoulder to be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto,
who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself
with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist
too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka’s success could not
last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut.
“Come to supper,” Annouchka had said to her.
“With whom?” inquired the Spanish artist.
“With Gounsovski.”
“Never.”
“Do come. You will help me pay my debt and perhaps he will be useful to
you as well. He is useful to everybody.”
Decidedly Onoto did not understand this country, where the worst enemies
supped together.
Rouletabille had been monopolized at once by Prince Galitch, who took
him into a corner and said:
“What are you doing here?”
“Do I inconvenience you?” asked the boy.
The other assumed the amused smile of the great lord.
“While there is still time,” he said, “believe me, you ought to start,
to quit this country. Haven’t you had sufficient notice?”
“Yes,” replied the reporter. “And you can dispense with any further
notice from this time on.”
He turned his back.
“Why, it is the little Frenchman from the Trebassof villa,” commenced
the falsetto voice of Gounsovski as he pushed a seat towards the young
man and begged him to sit between him and Athanase Georgevitch, who was
already busy with the hors-d’oeuvres.
“How do you do, monsieur?” said the beautiful, grave voice of Annouchka.
Rouletabille saluted.
“I see that I am in a country of acquaintances,” he said, without
appearing disturbed.
He addressed a lively compliment to Annouchka, who threw him a kiss.
“Rouletabille!” cried la belle Onoto. “Why, then, he is the little
fellow who solved the mystery of the Yellow Room.”
“Himself.”
“What are you doing here?”
“He came to save the life of General Trebassof,” sniggered Gounsovski.
“He is certainly a brave little young man.”
“The police know everything,” said Rouletabille coldly. And he asked for
champagne, which he never drank.
The champagne commenced its work. While Thaddeus and the officers
told each other stories of Bakou or paid compliments to the women,
Gounsovski, who was through with raillery, leaned toward Rouletabille
and gave that young man fatherly counsel with great unction.
“You have undertaken, young man, a noble task and one all the more
difficult because General Trebassof is condemned not only by his enemies
but still more by the ignorance of Koupriane. Understand me thoroughly:
Koupriane is my friend and a man whom I esteem very highly. He is good,
brave as a warrior, but I wouldn’t give a kopeck for his police. He has
mixed in our affairs lately by creating his own secret police, but
I don’t wish to meddle with that. It amuses us. It’s the new style,
anyway; everybody wants his secret police nowadays. And yourself, young
man, what, after all, are you doing here? Reporting? No. Police work?
That is our business and your business. I wish you good luck, but I
don’t expect it. Remember that if you need any help I will give it you
willingly. I love to be of service. And I don’t wish any harm to befall
you.”
“You are very kind, monsieur,” was all Rouletabille replied, and he
called again for champagne.
Several times Gounsovski addressed remarks to Annouchka, who concerned
herself with her meal and had little answer for him.
“Do you know who applauded you the most this evening?”
“No,” said Annouchka indifferently.
“The daughter of General Trebassof.”
“Yes, that is true, on my word,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“Yes, yes, Natacha was there,” joined in the other friends from the
datcha des Iles.
“For me, I saw her weep,” said Rouletabille, looking at Annouchka
fixedly.
But Annouchka replied in an icy tone:
“I do not know her.”
“She is unlucky in having a father...” Prince Galitch commenced.
“Prince, no politics, or let me take my leave,” clucked Gounsovski.
“Your health, dear Annouchka.”
“Your health, Gounsovski. But you have no worry about that.”
“Why?” demanded Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff in equivocal fashion.
“Because he is too useful to the government,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.
“No,” replied Annouchka; “to the revolutionaries.”
All broke out laughing. Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by
his usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat
boiling in the pot:
“So they say. And it is my strength.”
“His system is excellent,” said the prince. “As he is in with everybody,
everybody is in with the police, without knowing it.”
“They say... ah, ah... they say...” (Athanase was choking over a little
piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) “they say that he has
driven away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of
Kasan.”
Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans,
street-thieves who since the recent political troubles had infested St.
Petersburg and whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.
Athanase Georgevitch said:
“There are hooligans that ought to have existed even if they never have.
One of them stopped a young girl before Varsovie station. The girl,
frightened, immediately held out her purse to him, with two roubles and
fifty kopecks in it. The hooligan took it all. ‘Goodness,’ cried she,
‘I have nothing now to take my train with.’ ‘How much is it?’ asked the
hooligan. ‘Sixty kopecks.’ ‘Sixty kopecks! Why didn’t you say so?’ And
the bandit, hanging onto the two roubles, returned the fifty-kopeck
piece to the trembling child and added a ten-kopeck piece out of his own
pocket.”
“Something quite as funny happened to me two winters ago, at Moscow,”
said la belle Onoto. “I had just stepped out of the door when I was
stopped by a hooligan. ‘Give me twenty kopecks,’ said the hooligan. I
was so frightened that I couldn’t get my purse open. ‘Quicker,’ said he.
Finally I gave him twenty kopecks. ‘Now,’ said he then, ‘kiss my hand.’
And I had to kiss it, because he held his knife in the other.”
“Oh, they are quick with their knives,” said Thaddeus. “As I was
leaving Gastinidvor once I was stopped by a hooligan who stuck a huge
carving-knife under my nose. ‘You can have it for a rouble and a half,’
he said. You can believe that I bought it without any haggling. And
it was a very good bargain. It was worth at least three roubles. Your
health, belle Onoto.”
“I always take my revolver when I go out,” said Athanase. “It is more
prudent. I say this before the police. But I would rather be arrested by
the police than stabbed by the hooligans.”
“There’s no place any more to buy revolvers,” declared Ivan Petrovitch.
“All such places are closed.”
Gounsovski settled his glasses, rubbed his fat hands and said:
“There are some still at my locksmith’s place. The proof is that to-day
in the little Kaniouche my locksmith, whose name is Smith, went into the
house of the grocer at the corner and wished to sell him a revolver. It
was a Browning. ‘An arm of the greatest reliability,’ he said to him,
‘which never misses fire and which works very easily.’ Having pronounced
these words, the locksmith tried his revolver and lodged a ball in the
grocer’s lung. The grocer is dead, but before he died he bought the
revolver. ‘You are right,’ he said to the locksmith; ‘it is a terrible
weapon.’ And then he died.”
The others laughed heartily. They thought it very funny. Decidedly this
great Gounsovski always had a funny story. Who would not like to be
his friend? Annouchka had deigned to smile. Gounsovski, in recognition,
extended his hand to her like a mendicant. The young woman touched it
with the end of her fingers, as if she were placing a twenty-kopeck
piece in the hand of a hooligan, and withdrew from it with disgust. Then
the doors opened for the Bohemians. Their swarthy troupe soon filled the
room. Every evening men and women in their native costumes came from old
Derevnia, where they lived all together in a sort of ancient patriarchal
community, with customs that had not changed for centuries; they
scattered about in the places of pleasure, in the fashionable
restaurants, where they gathered large sums, for it was a fashionable
luxury to have them sing at the end of suppers, and everyone showered
money on them in order not to be behind the others. They accompanied on
guzlas, on castanets, on tambourines, and sang the old airs, doleful and
languorous, or excitable and breathless as the flight of the earliest
nomads in the beginnings of the world.
When they had entered, those present made place for them, and
Rouletabille, who for some moments had been showing marks of fatigue and
of a giddiness natural enough in a young man who isn’t in the habit
of drinking the finest champagnes, profited by the diversion to get a
corner of the sofa not far from Prince Galitch, who occupied the place
at Annouchka’s right.
“Look, Rouletabaille is asleep,” remarked la belle Onoto.
“Poor boy!” said Annouchka.
And, turning toward Gounsovski:
“Aren’t you soon going to get him out of our way? I heard some of our
brethren the other day speaking in a way that would cause pain to those
who care about his health.”
“Oh, that,” said Gounsovski, shaking his head, “is an affair I have
nothing to do with. Apply to Koupriane. Your health, belle Annouchka.”
But the Bohemians swept some opening chords for their songs, and the
singers took everybody’s attention, everybody excepting Prince Galitch
and Annouchka, who, half turned toward one another, exchanged some
words on the edge of all this musical uproar. As for Rouletabille, he
certainly must have been sleeping soundly not to have been waked by
all that noise, melodious as it was. It is true that he
had--apparently--drunk a good deal and, as everyone knows, in Russia
drink lays out those who can’t stand it. When the Bohemians had sung
three times Gounsovski made a sign that they might go to charm other
ears, and slipped into the hands of the chief of the band a twenty-five
rouble note. But Onoto wished to give her mite, and a regular collection
commenced. Each one threw roubles into the plate held out by a little
swarthy Bohemian girl with crow-black hair, carelessly combed, falling
over her forehead, her eyes and her face, in so droll a fashion that one
would have said the little thing was a weeping-willow soaked in ink. The
plate reached Prince Galitch, who futilely searched his pockets.
“Bah!” said he, with a lordly air, “I have no money. But here is my
pocket-book; I will give it to you for a souvenir of me, Katharina.”
Thaddeus and Athanase exclaimed at the generosity of the prince, but
Annouchka said:
“The prince does as he should, for my friends can never sufficiently
repay the hospitality that that little thing gave me in her dirty hut
when I was in hiding, while your famous department was deciding what to
do about me, my dear Gounsovski.”
“Eh,” replied Gounsovski, “I let you know that all you had to do was to
take a fine apartment in the city.”
Annouchka spat on the ground like a teamster, and Gounsovski from yellow
turned green.
“But why did you hide yourself that way, Annouchka?” asked Onoto as she
caressed the beautiful tresses of the singer.
“You know I had been condemned to death, and then pardoned. I had been
able to leave Moscow, and I hadn’t any desire to be re-taken here and
sent to taste the joys of Siberia.”
“But why were you condemned to death?”
“Why, she doesn’t know anything!” exclaimed the others.
“Good Lord, I’m just back from London and Paris--how should I know
anything! But to have been condemned to death! That must have been
amusing.”
“Very amusing,” said Annouchka icily. “And if you have a brother whom
you love, Onoto, think how much more amusing it must be to have him shot
before you.”
“Oh, my love, forgive me!”
“So you may know and not give any pain to your Annouchka in the future,
I will tell you, madame, what happened to our dear friend,” said Prince
Galitch.
“We would do better to drive away such terrible memories,” ventured
Gounsovski, lifting his eyelashes behind his glasses, but he bent his
head as Annouchka sent him a blazing glance.
“Speak, Galitch.”
The Prince did as she said.
“Annouchka had a brother, Vlassof, an engineer on the Kasan line, whom
the Strike Committee had ordered to take out a train as the only means
of escape for the leaders of the revolutionary troops when Trebassof’s
soldiers, aided by the Semenowsky regiment, had become masters of the
city. The last resistance took place at the station. It was necessary
to get started. All the ways were guarded by the military. There were
soldiers everywhere! Vlassof said to his comrades, ‘I will save you;’
and his comrades saw him mount the engine with a woman. That woman
was--well, there she sits. Vlassof’s fireman had been killed the evening
before, on a barricade; it was Annouchka who took his place. They busied
themselves and the train started like a shot. On that curved line,
discovered at once, easy to attack, under a shower of bullets, Vlassof
developed a speed of ninety versts an hour. He ran the indicator up to
the explosion point. The lady over there continued to pile coal into the
furnace. The danger came to be less from the military and more from
an explosion at any moment. In the midst of the balls Vlassof kept his
usual coolness. He sped not only with the firebox open but with the
forced draught. It was a miracle that the engine was not smashed against
the curve of the embankment. But they got past. Not a man was hurt. Only
a woman was wounded. She got a ball in the chest.”
“There!” cried Annouchka.
With a magnificent gesture she flung open her white and heaving chest,
and put her finger on a scar that Gounsovski, whose fat began to melt in
heavy drops of sweat about his temples, dared not look at.
“Fifteen days later,” continued the prince, “Vlassof entered an inn
at Lubetszy. He didn’t know it was full of soldiers. His face never
altered. They searched him. They found a revolver and papers on him.
They knew whom they had to do with. He was a good prize. Vlassof was
taken to Moscow and condemned to be shot. His sister, wounded as she
was, learned of his arrest and joined him. ‘I do not wish,’ she said
to him, ‘to leave you to die alone.’ She also was condemned. Before the
execution the soldiers offered to bandage their eyes, but both refused,
saying they preferred to meet death face to face. The orders were to
shoot all the other condemned revolutionaries first, then Vlassof,
then his sister. It was in vain that Vlassof asked to die last. Their
comrades in execution sank to their knees, bleeding from their death
wounds. Vlassof embraced his sister and walked to the place of death.
There he addressed the soldiers: ‘Now you have to carry out your duty
according to the oath you have taken. Fulfill it honestly as I have
fulfilled mine. Captain, give the order.’ The volley sounded. Vlassof
remained erect, his arms crossed on his breast, safe and sound. Not a
ball had touched him. The soldiers did not wish to fire at him. He had
to summon them again to fulfill their duty, and obey their chief. Then
they fired again, and he fell. He looked at his sister with his eyes
full of horrible suffering. Seeing that he lived, and wishing to appear
charitable, the captain, upon Annouchka’s prayers, approached and cut
short his sufferings by firing a revolver into his ear. Now it was
Annouchka’s turn. She knelt by the body of her brother, kissed his
bloody lips, rose and said, ‘I am ready.’ As the guns were raised, an
officer came running, bearing the pardon of the Tsar. She did not
wish it, and she whom they had not bound when she was to die had to be
restrained when she learned she was to live.”
Prince Galitch, amid the anguished silence of all there, started to
add some words of comment to his sinister recital, but Annouchka
interrupted:
“The story is ended,” said she. “Not a word, Prince. If I asked you
to tell it in all its horror, if I wished you to bring back to us the
atrocious moment of my brother’s death, it is so that monsieur” (her
fingers pointed to Gounsovski) “shall know well, once for all, that if
I have submitted for some hours now to this promiscuous company that has
been imposed upon me, now that I have paid the debt by accepting this
abominable supper, I have nothing more to do with this purveyor of
bagnios and of hangman’s ropes who is here.”
“She is mad,” he muttered. “She is mad. What has come over her? What has
happened? Only to-day she was so, so amiable.”
And he stuttered, desolately, with an embarrassed laugh:
“Ah, the women, the women! Now what have I done to her?”
“What have you done to me, wretch? Where are Belachof, Bartowsky and
Strassof? And Pierre Slutch? All the comrades who swore with me to
revenge my brother? Where are they? On what gallows did you have them
hung? What mine have you buried them in? And still you follow your
slavish task. And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my
artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any
other crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who
believed they could talk freely in my dressing-room--where are they?
Why have they left me, one by one? Why have they disappeared? It is you,
wretch, who watched them, who spied on them, making me, I haven’t any
doubt, your horrible accomplice, mixing me up in your beastly work, you
dog! You knew what they call me. You have known it for a long time, and
you may well laugh over it. But I, I never knew until this evening; I
never learned until this evening all I owe to you. ‘Stool pigeon! Stool
pigeon!’ I! Horror! Ah, you dog, you dog! Your mother, when you were
brought into the world, your mother...” Here she hurled at him the most
offensive insult that a Russian can offer a man of that race.
She trembled and sobbed with rage, spat in fury, and stood up ready to
go, wrapped in her mantle like a great red flag. She was the statue of
hate and vengeance. She was horrible and terrible. She was beautiful.
At the final supreme insult, Gounsovski started and rose to his feet as
though he had received an actual blow in the face. He did not look at
Annouchka, but fixed his eyes on Prince Galitch. His finger pointed him
out:
“There is the man,” he hissed, “who has told you all these fine things.”
“Yes, it is I,” said the Prince, tranquilly.
“Caracho!” barked Gounsovski, instantaneously regaining his coolness.
“Ah, yes, but you’ll not touch him,” clamored the spirited girl of the
Black Land; “you are not strong enough for that.”
“I know that monsieur has many friends at court,” agreed the chief of
the Secret Service with an ominous calm. “I don’t wish ill to monsieur.
You speak, madame, of the way some of your friends have had to be
sacrificed. I hope that some day you will be better informed, and that
you will understand I saved all of them I could.”
“Let us go,” muttered Annouchka. “I shall spit in his face.”
“Yes, all I could,” replied the other, with his habitual gesture of
hanging on to his glasses. “And I shall continue to do so. I promise you
not to say anything more disagreeable to the prince than as regards his
little friend the Bohemian Katharina, whom he has treated so generously
just now, doubtless because Boris Mourazoff pays her too little for the
errands she runs each morning to the villa of Krestowsky Ostrow.”
At these words the Prince and Annouchka both changed countenance. Their
anger rose. Annouchka turned her head as though to arrange the folds
of her cloak. Galitch contented himself with shrugging his shoulders
impatiently and murmuring:
“Still some other abomination that you are concocting, monsieur, and
that we don’t know how to reply to.”
After which he bowed to the supper-party, took Annouchka’s arm and had
her move before him. Gounsovski bowed, almost bent in two. When he rose
he saw before him the three astounded and horrified figures of Thaddeus
Tchitchnikoff, Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch.
“Messieurs,” he said to them, in a colorless voice which seemed not to
belong to him, “the time has come for us to part. I need not say that we
have supped as friends and that, if you wish it to be so, we can forget
everything that has been said here.”
The three others, frightened, at once protested their discretion.
He added, roughly this time, “Service of the Tsar,” and the three
stammered, “God save the Tsar!” After which he saw them to the door.
When the door had closed after them, he said, “My little Annouchka,
you mustn’t reckon without me.” He hurried toward the sofa, where
Rouletabille was lying forgotten, and gave him a tap on the shoulder.
“Come, get up. Don’t act as though you were asleep. Not an instant
to lose. They are going to carry through the Trebassof affair this
evening.”
Rouletabille was already on his legs.
“Oh, monsieur,” said he, “I didn’t want you to tell me that. Thanks all
the same, and good evening.”
He went out.
Gounsovski rang. A servant appeared.
“Tell them they may now open all the rooms on this corridor; I’ll not
hold them any longer.” Thus had Gounsovski kept himself protected.
Left alone, the head of the Secret Service wiped his brow and drank a
great glass of iced water which he emptied at a draught. Then he said:
“Koupriane will have his work cut out for him this evening; I wish him
good luck. As to them, whatever happens, I wash my hands of them.”
And he rubbed his hands.