"Oh, papa, you know that I love Boris, that I love him with all my heart, and that I would never belong to anyone but him."
"Then, then, then.speak!"
The young girl had reached the crisis.
"Ah, Father, Father, do not question me! You, you above all, do not question me now. I can say nothing! There is nothing I can tell you. Excepting that I am suresure, you understandthat Michael Nikolaievitch did not come here last night."
"He did come," insisted Rouletabille in a slightly troubled voice.
"He came here with poison. He came here to poison your father, Natacha," moaned Matrena Petrovna, who twined her hands in gestures of sincere and naive tragedy.
"And I," replied the daughter of Feodor ardently, with an accent of conviction which made everyone there vibrate, and particularly Rouletabille, "and I, I tell you it was not he, that it was not he, that it could not possibly be he. I swear to you it was another, another."
"But then, this other, did you let him in as well?" said Koupriane.
"Ah, yes, yes. It was I. It was I. It was I who left the window and blinds open. Yes, it is I who did that. But I did not wait for the other, the other who came to assassinate. As to Michael Nikolaievitch, I swear to you, my father, by all that is most sacred in heaven and on earth, that he could not have committed the crime that you say. And nowkill me, for there is nothing more I can say."
"The poison," replied Koupriane coldly, "the poison that he poured into the general's potion was that arsenate of soda which was on the grapes the Marshal of the Court brought here. Those grapes were left by the Marshal, who warned Michael Nikolaievitch and Boris Alexandrovitch to wash them. The grapes disappeared. If Michael is innocent, do you accuse Boris?"
Natacha, who seemed to have suddenly lost all power for defending herself, moaned, begged, railed, seemed dying.
"No, no. Don't accuse Boris. He has nothing to do with it. Don't accuse Michael. Don't accuse anyone so long as you don't know. But these two are innocent. Believe me. Believe me. Ah, how shall I say it, how shall I persuade you! I am not able to say anything to you. And you have killed Michael. Ah, what have you done, what have you done!"
"We have suppressed a man," said the icy voice of Koupriane, "who was merely the agent for the base deeds of Nihilism."
She succeeded in recovering a new energy that in her depths of despair they would have supposed impossible. She shook her fists at Koupriane:
"It is not true, it is not true. These are slanders, infamies! The inventions of the police! Papers devised to incriminate him. There is nothing at all of what you said you found at his house. It is not possible. It is not true."
"Where are those papers?" demanded the curt voice of Feodor. "Bring them here at once, Koupriane; I wish to see them."
Koupriane was slightly troubled, and this did not escape Natacha, who cried:
"Yes, yes, let him give us them, let him bring them if he has them. But he hasn't," she clamored with a savage joy. "He has nothing. You can see, papa, that he has nothing. He would already have brought them out. He has nothing. I tell you he has nothing. Ah, he has nothing! He has nothing!"
And she threw herself on the floor, weeping, sobbing, "He has nothing, he has nothing!" She seemed to weep for joy.
"Is that true?" demanded Feodor Feodorovitch, with his most somber manner. "Is it true, Koupriane, that you have nothing?"
"It is true, General, that we have found nothing. Everything had already been carried away."
But Natacha uttered a veritable torrent of glee:
"He has found nothing! Yet he accuses him of being allied with the revolutionaries. Why? Why? Because I let him in? But I, am I a revolutionary? Tell me. Have I sworn to kill papa? I? I? Ah, he doesn't know what to say. You see for yourself, papa, he is silent. He has lied. He has lied."
"Why have you made this false statement, Koupriane?"
"Oh, we have suspected Michael for some time, and truly, after what has just happened, we cannot have any doubt."
"Yes, but you declared you had papers, and you have not. That is abominable procedure, Koupriane," replied Feodor sternly. "I have heard you condemn such expedients many times."
"General! We are sure, you hear, we are absolutely sure that the man who tried to poison you yesterday and the man today who is dead are one and the same."
"And what reason have you for being so sure? It is necessary to tell it," insisted the general, who trembled with distress and impatience.
"Yes, let him tell now."
"Ask monsieur," said Koupriane.
They all turned to Rouletabille.
The reporter replied, affecting a coolness that perhaps he did not entirely feel:
"I am able to state to you, as I already have before Monsieur the Prefect of Police, that one, and only one, person has left the traces of his various climbings on the wall and on the balcony."
"Idiot!" interrupted Natacha, with a passionate disdain for the young man. "And that satisfies you?"
The general roughly seized the reporter's wrist:
"Listen to me, monsieur. A man came here this night. That concerns only me. No one has any right to be astonished excepting myself. I make it my own affair, an affair between my daughter and me. But you, you have just told us that you are sure that man is an assassin. Then, you see, that calls for something else. Proofs are necessary, and I want the proofs at once. You speak of traces; very well, we will go and examine those traces together. And I wish for your sake, monsieur, that I shall be as convinced by them as you are."
Rouletabille quietly disengaged his wrist and replied with perfect calm:
"Now, monsieur, I am no longer able to prove anything to you."
"Why?"
"Because the ladders of the police agents have wiped out all my proofs, monsieur.
"So now there remains for us only your word, only your belief in yourself. And if you are mistaken?"
"He would never admit it, papa," cried Natacha. "Ah, it is he who deserves the fate Michael Nikolaievitch has met just now. Isn't it so? Don't you know it? And that will be your eternal remorse! Isn't there something that always keeps you from admitting that you are mistaken? You have had an innocent man killed. Now, you know well enough, you know well that I would not have admitted Michael Nikolaievitch here if I had believed he was capable of wishing to poison my father."
"Mademoiselle," replied Rouletabille, not lowering his eyes under Natacha's thunderous regard, "I am sure of that."
He said it in such a tone that Natacha continued to look at him with incomprehensible anguish in her eyes. Ah, the baffling of those two regards, the mute scene between those two young people, one of whom wished to make himself understood and the other afraid beyond all other things of being thoroughly understood. Natacha murmured:
"How he looks at me! See, he is the demon; yes, yes, the little domovoi, the little domovoi. But look out, poor wretch; you don't know what you have done."
She turned brusquely toward Koupriane:
"Where is the body of Michael Nikolaievitch?" said she. "I wish to see it. I must see it."
Feodor Feodorovitch had fallen, as though asleep, upon a chair. Matrena Petrovna dared not approach him. The giant appeared hurt to the death, disheartened forever. What neither bombs, nor bullets, nor poison had been able to do, the single idea of his daughter's cooperation in the work of horror plotted about himor rather the impossibility he faced of understanding Natacha's attitude, her mysterious conduct, the chaos of her explanations, her insensate cries, her protestations of innocence, her accusations, her menaces, her prayers and all her disorder, the avowed fact of her share in that tragic nocturnal adventure where Michael Nikolaievitch found his death, had knocked over Feodor Feodorovitch like a straw. One instant he sought refuge in some vague hope that Koupriane was less assured than he pretended of the orderly's guilt. But that, after all, was only a detail of no importance in his eyes. What alone mattered was the significance of Natacha's act, and the unhappy girl seemed not to be concerned over what he would think of it. She was there to fight against Koupriane, Rouletabille and Matrena Petrovna, defending her Michael Nikolajevitch, while he, the father, after having failed to overawe her just now, was there in a corner suffering agonizedly.
Koupriane walked over to him and said:
"Listen to me carefully, Feodor Feodorovitch. He who speaks to you is Head of the Police by the will of the Tsar, and your friend by the grace of God. If you do not demand before us, who are acquainted with all that has happened and who know how to keep any necessary secret, if you do not demand of your daughter the reason for her conduct with Michael Nikolaievitch, and if she does not tell you in all sincerity, there is nothing more for me to do here. My men have already been ordered away from this house as unworthy to guard the most loyal subject of His Majesty; I have not protested, but now I in my turn ask you to prove to me that the most dangerous enemy you have had in your house is not your daughter."
These words, which summed up the horrible situation, came as a relief for Feodor. Yes, they must know. Koupriane was right. She must speak. He ordered his daughter to tell everything, everything.
Natacha fixed Koupriane again with her look of hatred to the death, turned from him and repeated in a firm voice:
"I have nothing to say."
"There is the accomplice of your assassins," growled Koupriane then, his arm extended.
Natacha uttered a cry like a wounded beast and fell at her father's feet. She gathered them within her supplicating arms. She pressed them to her breasts. She sobbed from the bottom of her heart. And he, not comprehending, let her lie there, distant, hostile, somber. Then she moaned, distractedly, and wept bitterly, and the dramatic atmosphere in which she thus suddenly enveloped Feodor made it all sound like those cries of an earlier time when the allpowerful, punishing father appeared in the women's apartments to punish the culpable ones.
"My father! Dear Father! Look at me! Look at me! Have pity on me, and do not require me to speak when I must be silent forever. And believe me! Do not believe these men! Do not believe Matrena Petrovna. And am I not your daughter? Your very own daughter! Your Natacha Feodorovna! I cannot make things dear to you. No, no, by the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus I cannot explain. By the holy ikons, it is because I must not. By my mother, whom I have not known and whose place you have taken, oh, my father, ask me nothing more! Ask me nothing more! But take me in your arms as you did when I was little; embrace me, dear father; love me. I never have had such need to be loved. Love me! I am miserable. Unfortunate me, who cannot even kill myself before your eyes to prove my innocence and my love. Papa, Papa! What will your arms be for in the days left you to live, if you no longer wish to press me to your heart? Papa! Papa!"
She laid her head on Feodor's knees. Her hair had come down and hung about her in a magnificent disorderly mass of black.
"Look in my eyes! Look in my eyes! See how they love you, Batouchka! Batouchka! My dear Batouchka!"
Then Feodor wept. His great tears fell upon Natacha's tears. He raised her head and demanded simply in a broken voice:
"You can tell me nothing now? But when will you tell me?"
Natacha lifted her eyes to his, then her look went past him toward heaven, and from her lips came just one word, in a sob:
"Never."
Matrena Petrovna, Koupriane and the reporter shuddered before the high and terrible thing that happened then. Feodor had taken his daughter's face between his hands. He looked long at those eyes raised toward heaven, the mouth which had just uttered the word "Never," then, slowly, his rude lips went to the tortured, quivering lips of the girl. He held her close. She raised her head wildly, triumphantly, and cried, with arm extended toward Matrena Petrovna:
"He believes me! He believes me! And you would have believed me also if you had been my real mother."
Her head fell back and she dropped unconscious to the floor. Feodor fell to his knees, tending her, deploring her, motioning the others out of the room.
"Go away! All of you, go! All! You, too, Matrena Petrovna. Go away!"
They disappeared, terrified by his savage gesture.
In the little datcha across the river at Krestowsky there was a body. Secret Service agents guarded it while they waited for their chief. Michael Nikolaievitch had come there to die, and the police had reached him just at his last breath. They were behind him as, with the deathrattle in his throat, he pulled himself into his chamber and fell in a heap. Katharina the Bohemian was there. She bent her quickwitted, puzzled head over his death agony. The police swarmed everywhere, ransacking, forcing locks, pulling drawers from the bureau and tables, emptying the cupboards. Their search took in everything, even to ripping the mattresses, and not respecting the rooms of Boris Mourazoff, who was away this night. They searched thoroughly, but they found absolutely nothing they were looking for in Michael's rooms. But they accumulated a multitude of publications that belonged to Boris: Western books, essays on political economy, a history of the French Revolution, and verses that a man ought to hang for. They put them all under seal. During the search Michael died in Katharina's arms. She had held him close, after opening his clothes over the chest, doubtless to make his last breaths easier. The unfortunate officer had received a bullet at the back of the head just after he had plunged into the Neva from the rear of the Trebassof datcha and started to swim across. It was a miracle that he had managed to keep going. Doubtless he hoped to die in peace if only he could reach his own house. He apparently had believed he could manage that once he had broken through his human bloodhounds. He did not know he was recognized and his place of retreat therefore known.
Now the police had gone from cellar to garret. Koupriane came from the Trebassof villa and joined them, Rouletabille followed him. The reporter could not stand the sight of that body, that still had a lingering warmth, of the great open eyes that seemed to stare at him, reproaching him for this violent death. He turned away in distaste, and perhaps a little in fright. Koupriane caught the movement.
"Regrets?" he queried.
"Yes," said Rouletabille. "A death always must be regretted. None the less, he was a criminal. But I'm sincerely sorry he died before he had been driven to confess, even though we are sure of it."
"Being in the pay of the Nihilists, you mean? That is still your opinion?" asked Koupriane.
"Yes."
"You know that nothing has been found here in his rooms. The only compromising papers that have been found belong to Boris Mourazoff."
"Why do you say that?"
"Ohnothing."
Koupriane questioned his men further. They replied categorically. No, nothing had been found that directly incriminated anybody; and suddenly Rouletabille noted that the conversation of the police and their chief had grown more animated. Koupriane had become angry and was violently reproaching them. They excused themselves with vivid gesture and rapid speech.
Koupriane started away. Rouletabille followed him. What had happened?
As he came up behind Koupriane, he asked the question. In a few curt words, still hurrying on, Koupriane told the reporter he had just learned that the police had left the little Bohemian Katharina alone for a moment with the expiring officer. Katharina acted as housekeeper for Michael and Boris. She knew the secrets of them both. The first thing any novice should have known was to keep a constant eye upon her, and now no one knew where she was. She must be searched for and found at once, for she had opened Michael's shirt, and therein probably lay the reason that no papers were found on the corpse when the police searched it. The absence of papers, of a portfolio, was not natural.