"You ask a frightful thing of me."
"It is necessary to grant it to me," said the young girl with singular energy. "You understand, Boris Alexandrovitch! It is necessary."
Her gaze, after she had glanced penetratingly all around her and discovered nothing suspicious, rested tenderly on the young officer, while she murmured, "My Boris!" The young man could not resist either the sweetness of that voice, nor the captivating charm of that glance. He took the hand she extended toward him and kissed it passionately. His eyes, fixed on Natacha, proclaimed that he granted everything that she wished and admitted himself vanquished. Then she said, always with that adorable gaze upon him, "This evening!" He replied, "Yes, yes. This evening! This evening!" upon which Natacha withdrew her hand and made a sign to the officer to leave, which he promptly obeyed. Natacha remained there still a long time, plunged in thought. Rouletabille had already taken the road back to the villa. Matrena Petrovna was watching for his return, seated on the first step of the landing on the great staircase which ran up from the veranda. When she saw him she ran to him. He had already reached the diningroom.
"Anyone in the house?" he asked.
"No one. Natacha has not returned, and"
"Your stepdaughter is coming in now. Ask her where she has been, if she has seen the orderlies, and if they said they would return this evening, in case she answers that she has seen them."
"Very well, little domovoi doukh. The orderlies left without my seeing when they went."
"Ah," interrupted Rouletabille, "before she arrives, give me all her hatpins."
"What!"
"I say, all her hatpins. Quickly!"
Matrena ran to Natacha's chamber and returned with three enormous hatpins with beautifullycut stones in them.
"These are all?"
"They are all I have found. I know she has two others. She has one on her head, or two, perhaps; I can't find them."
"Take these back where you found them," said the reporter, after glancing at them.
Matrena returned immediately, not understanding what he was doing.
"And now, your hatpins. Yes, your hatpins."
"Oh, I have only two, and here they are," said she, drawing them from the toque she had been wearing and had thrown on the sofa when she reentered the house.
Rouletabille gave hers the same inspection.
"Thanks. Here is your stepdaughter."
Natacha entered, flushed and smiling.
"Ah, well," said she, quite breathless, "you may boast that I had to search for you. I made the entire round, clear past the Barque. Has the promenade done papa good?"
"Yes, he is asleep," replied Matrena. "Have you met Boris and Michael?"
She appeared to hesitate a second, then replied:
"Yes, for an instant."
"Did they say whether they would return this evening?"
"No," she replied, slightly troubled. "Why all these questions?"
She flushed still more.
"Because I thought it strange," parried Matrena, "that they went away as they did, without saying goodby, without a word, without inquiring if the general needed them. There is something stranger yet. Did you see Kaltsof with them, the grandmarshal of the court?"
"No."
"Kaltsof came for a moment, entered the garden and went away again without seeing us, without saying even a word to the general."
"Ah," said Natacha.
With apparent indifference, she raised her arms and drew out her hatpins. Rouletabille watched the pin without a word. The young girl hardly seemed aware of their presence. Entirely absorbed in strange thoughts, she replaced the pin in her hat and went to hang it in the veranda, which served also as vestibule. Rouletabille never quitted her eyes. Matrena watched the reporter with a stupid glance. Natacha crossed the drawingroom and entered her chamber by passing through her little sittingroom, through which all entrance to her chamber had to be made. That little room, though, had three doors. One opened into Natacha's chamber, one into the drawingroom, and the third into the little passage in a corner of the house where was the stairway by which the servants passed from the kitchens to the groundfloor and the upper floor. This passage had also a door giving directly upon the drawingroom. It was certainly a poor arrangement for serving the diningroom, which was on the other side of the drawingroom and behind the veranda, such a chance layingout of a house as one often sees in the offhand planning of many places in the country.
Alone again with Rouletabille, Matrena noticed that he had not lost sight of the corner of the veranda where Natacha had hung her hat. Beside this hat there was a toque that Ermolai had brought in. The old servant had found it in some corner of the garden or the conservatory where he had been. A hatpin stuck out of that toque also.
"Whose toque is that?" asked Rouletabille. "I haven't seen it on the head of anyone here."
"It is Natacha's," replied Matrena.
She moved toward it, but the young man held her back, went into the veranda himself, and, without touching it, standing on tiptoe, he examined the pin. He sank back on his heels and turned toward Matrena. She caught a glimpse of fleeting emotion on the face of her little friend.
"Explain to me," she said.
But he gave her a glance that frightened her, and said low:
"Go and give orders right away that dinner be served in the veranda. All through dinner it is absolutely necessary that the door of Natacha's sittingroom, and that of the stairway passage, and that of the veranda giving on the drawingroom remain open all the time. Do you understand me? As soon as you have given your orders go to the general's chamber and do not quit the general's bedside, keep it in view. Come down to dinner when it is announced, and do not bother yourself about anything further."
So saying, he filled his pipe, lighted it with a sort of sigh of relief, and, after a final order to Matrena, "Go," he went into the garden, puffing great clouds. Anyone would have said he hadn't smoked in a week. He appeared not to be thinking but just idly enjoying himself. In fact, he played like a child with Milinki, Matrena's pet cat, which he pursued behind the shrubs, up into the little kiosque which, raised on piles, lifted its steep thatched roof above the panorama of the isles that Rouletabille settled down to contemplate like an artist with ample leisure.
The dinner, where Matrena, Natacha and Rouletabille were together again, was lively. The young man having declared that he was more and more convinced that the mystery of the bomb in the bouquet was simply a play of the police, Natacha reinforced his opinion, and following that they found themselves in agreement on about everything else. For himself, the reporter during that conversation hid a real horror which had seized him at the cynical and inappropriate tranquillity with which the young lady received all suggestions that accused the police or that assumed the general no longer ran any immediate danger. In short, he worked, or at least believed he worked, to clear Natacha as he had cleared Matrena, so that there would develop the absolute necessity of assuming a third person's intervention in the facts disclosed so clearly by Koupriane where Matrena or Natacha seemed alone to be possible agents. As he listened to Natacha Rouletabille commenced to doubt and quake just as he had seen Matrena do. The more he looked into the nature of Natacha the dizzier he grew. What abysmal obscurities were there in her nature!
Nothing interesting happened during dinner. Several times, in spite of Rouletabille's obvious impatience with her for doing it, Matrena went up to the general. She returned saying, "He is quiet. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't wish anything. He has asked me to prepare his narcotic. It is too bad. He has tried in vain, he cannot get along without it."
Nothing interesting happened during dinner. Several times, in spite of Rouletabille's obvious impatience with her for doing it, Matrena went up to the general. She returned saying, "He is quiet. He doesn't sleep. He doesn't wish anything. He has asked me to prepare his narcotic. It is too bad. He has tried in vain, he cannot get along without it."
"You, too, mamma, ought to take something to make you sleep. They say morphine is very good."
"As for me," said Rouletabille, whose head for some few minutes had been dropping now toward one shoulder and now toward another, "I have no need of any narcotic to make me sleep. If you will permit me, I will get to bed at once."
"Eh, my little domovoi doukh, I am going to carry you there in my arms."
Matrena extended her large round arms ready to take Rouletabille as though he had been a baby.
"No, no. I will get up there all right alone," said Rouletabille, rising stupidly and appearing ashamed of his excessive sleepiness.
"Oh, well, let us both accompany him to his chamber," said Natacha, "and I will wish papa goodnight. I'm eager for bed myself. We will all make a good night of it. Ermolai and Gniagnia will watch with the schwitzar in the lodge. Things are reasonably arranged now."
They all ascended the stairs. Rouletabille did not even go to see the general, but threw himself on his bed. Natacha got onto the bed beside her father, embraced him a dozen times, and went downstairs again. Matrena followed behind her, closed doors and windows, went upstairs again to close the door of the landingplace and found Rouletabille seated on his bed, his arms crossed, not appearing to have any desire for sleep at all. His face was so strangely pensive also that the anxiety of Matrena, who had been able to make nothing out of his acts and looks all day, came back upon her instantly in greater force than ever. She touched his arm in order to be sure that he knew she was there.
"My little friend," she said, "will you tell me now?"
"Yes, madame," he replied at once. "Sit in that chair and listen to me. There are things you must know at once, because we have reached a dangerous hour."
"The hatpins first. The hatpins!"
Rouletabille rose lightly from the bed and, facing her, but watching something besides her, said:
"It is necessary you should know that someone almost immediately is going to renew the attempt of the bouquet."
Matrena sprang to her feet as quickly as though she had been told there was a bomb in the seat of her chair. She made herself sit down again, however, in obedience to Rouletabile's urgent look commanding absolute quiet.
"Renew the attempt of the bouquet!" she murmured in a stifled voice. "But there is not a flower in the general's chamber."
"Be calm, madame. Understand me and answer me: You heard the ticktack from the bouquet while you were in your own chamber?"
"Yes, with the doors open, naturally."
"You told me the persons who came to say goodnight to the general. At that time there was no noise of ticktack?"
"No, no."
"Do you think that if there had been any ticktack then you would have heard it, with all those persons talking in the room?"
"I hear everything. I hear everything."
"Did you go downstairs at the same time those people did?"
"No, no; I remained near the general for some time, until he was sound asleep."
"And you heard nothing?"
"Nothing."
"You closed the doors behind those persons?"
"Yes, the door to the great staircase. The door of the servants' stairway was condemned a long time ago; it has been locked by me, I alone have the key and on the inside of the door opening into the general's chamber there is also a bolt which is always shot. All the other doors of the chambers have been condemned by me. In order to enter any of the four rooms on this floor it is necessary now to pass by the door of my chamber, which gives on the main staircase."
"Perfect. Then, no one has been able to enter the apartment. No one had been in the apartment for at least two hours excepting you and the general, when you heard the clockwork. From that the only conclusion is that only the general and you could have started it going."
"What are you trying to say?" Matrena demanded, astounded.
"I wish to prove to you by this absurd conclusion, madame, that it is necessary nevernever, you understand? Neverto reason solely upon even the most evident external evidence when those seeminglyconclusive appearances are in conflict with certain moral truths that also are clear as the light of day. The light of day for me, madame, is that the general does not desire to commit suicide and, above all, that he would not choose the strange method of suicide by clockwork. The light of day for me is that you adore your husband and that you are ready to sacrifice your life for his."
"Now!" exclaimed Matrena, whose tears, always ready in emotional moments, flowed freely. "But, Holy Mary, why do you speak to me without looking at me? What is it? What is it?"
"Don't turn! Don't make a movement! You hearnot a move! And speak low, very low. And don't cry, for the love of God!"
"But you say at oncethe bouquet! Come to the general's room!"
"Not a move. And continue listening to me without interrupting," said he, still inclining his ear, and still without looking at her. "It is because these things were as the light of day to me that I say to myself, 'It is impossible that it should be impossible for a third person not to have placed the bomb in the bouquet. Someone is able to enter the general's chamber even when the general is watching and all the doors are locked.'"
"Oh, no. No one could possibly enter. I swear it to you."
As she swore it a little too loudly, Rouletabille seized her arm so that she almost cried out, but she understood instantly that it was to keep her quiet.
"I tell you not to interrupt me, once for all."
"But, then, tell me what you are looking at like that."
"I am watching the corner where someone is going to enter the general's chamber when everything is locked, madame. Do not move!"
Matrena, her teeth chattering, recalled that when she entered Rouletabille's chamber she had found all the doors open that communicated with the chain of rooms: the young man's chamber with hers, the dressingroom and the general's chamber. She tried, under Rouletabille's look, to keep calm, but in spite of all the reporter's exhortations she could not hold her tongue.
"But which way? Where will they enter?"
"By the door."
"Which door?"
"That of the chamber giving on the servants' stairway."
"Why, how? The key! The bolt!"
"They have made a key."
"But the bolt is drawn this side."
"They will draw it back from the other side."
"What! That is impossible."
Rouletabille laid his two hands on Matrena's strong shoulders and repeated, detaching each syllable, "They will draw it back from the other side."
"It is impossible. I repeat it."
"Madame, your Nihilists haven't invented anything. It is a trick much in vogue with sneak thieves in hotels. All it needs is a little hole the size of a pin bored in the panel of the door above the bolt."
"God!" quavered Matrena. "I don't understand what you mean by your little hole. Explain to me, little domovoi."
"Follow me carefully, then," continued Rouletabille, his eyes all the time fixed elsewhere. "The person who wishes to enter sticks through the hole a brass wire that he has already given the necessary curve to and which is fitted on its end with a light point of steel curved inward. With such an instrument it is child's play, if the hole has been made where it ought to be, to touch the bolt on the inside from the outside, pick the knob on it, withdraw it, and open the door if the bolt is like this one, a small doorbolt."