Rouletabille must have been well aware of all these particulars concerning Annoucbka, 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: tomorrow 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, granddukes, 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.)
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* as told in “The Lady In Black.”
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“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.”
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