Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  And now here was Priemkof to look after! Priemkof after Matiew! It seemed to the young man that he had to contend against all the revolutionaries not only, but all the Russian police as well — and Gounsovski himself, and Koupriane! Everybody, everybody! But most urgent was Priemkof and his living bombs. What a strange and almost incomprehensible and harassing adventure this was between Nihilism and the Russian police. Koupriane and Gounsovski both employed a man they knew to be a revolutionary and the friend of revolutionaries. Nihilism, on its side, considered this man of the police force as one of its own agents. In his turn, this man, in order to maintain his perilous equilibrium, had to do work for both the police and the revolutionaries, and accept whatever either gave him to do as it came, because it was necessary he should give them assurances of his fidelity. Only imbeciles, like Gapone, let themselves be hanged or ended by being executed, like Azef, because of their awkward slips. But a Priemkof, playing both branches of the police, had a good chance of living a long time, and a Gounsovski would die tranquilly in his bed with all the solaces of religion.

  However, the young hearts hot with sincerity, sheathed with dynamite, are mysteriously moved in the atrocious darkness of Holy Russia, and they do not know where they will be sent, and it is all one to them, because all they ask is to die in a mad spiritual delirium of hate and love — living bombs!*

  * In the trial after the revolt at Cronstadt two young women

  were charged with wearing bombs as false bosoms.

  At the corner of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok Rouletabille came in the way of Koupriane, who was leaving for Pere Alexis’s place and, seeing the reporter, stopped his carriage and called that he was going immediately to the datcha.

  “You have seen Pere Alexis?”

  “Yes,” said Koupriane. “And this time I have it on you. What I told you, what I foresaw, has happened. But have you any news of the sufferers? Apropos, rather a curious thing has happened. I met Kister on the Nevsky just now.”

  “The physician?”

  “Yes, one of Trebassof’s physicians whom I had sent an inspector to his house to fetch to the datcha, as well as his usual associate, Doctor Litchkof. Well, neither Litchkof nor he had been summoned. They didn’t know anything had happened at the datcha. They had not seen my inspector. I hope he has met some other doctor on the way and, in view of the urgency, has taken him to the datcha.”

  “That is what has happened,” replied Rouletabille, who had turned very pale. “Still, it is strange these gentlemen had not been notified, because at the datcha the Trebassofs were told that the general’s usual doctors were not at home and so the police had summoned two others who would arrive at once.”

  Koupriane jumped up in the carriage.

  “But Kister and Litchkof had not left their houses. Kister, who had just met Litchkof, said so. What does this mean?”

  “Can you tell me,” asked Rouletabille, ready now for the thunder-clap that his question invited, “the name of the inspector you ordered to bring them?”

  “Priemkof, a man with my entire confidence.”

  Koupriane’s carriage rushed toward the Isles. Late evening had come. Alone on the deserted route the horses seemed headed for the stars; the carriage behind seemed no drag upon them. The coachman bent above them, arms out, as though he would spring into the ether. Ah, the beautiful night, the lovely, peaceful night beside the Neva, marred by the wild gallop of these maddened horses!

  “Priemkof! Priemkof! One of Gounsovski’s men! I should have suspected him,” railed Koupriane after Rouletabille’s explanations. “But now, shall we arrive in time?”

  They stood up in the carriage, urging the coachman, exciting the horses: “Scan! Scan! Faster, douriak!” Could they arrive before the “living bombs”? Could they hear them before they arrived? Ah, there was Eliaguine!

  They rushed from the one bank to the other as though there were no bridges in their insensate course. And their ears were strained for the explosion, for the abomination now to come, preparing slyly in the night so hypocritically soft under the cold glance of the stars. Suddenly, “Stop, stop!” Rouletabille cried to the coachman.

  “Are you mad!” shouted Koupriane.

  “We are mad if we arrive like madmen. That would make the catastrophe sure. There is still a chance. If we wish not to lose it, then we must arrive easily and calmly, like friends who know the general is out of danger.”

  “Our only chance is to arrive before the bogus doctors. Either they aren’t there, or it already is all over. Priemkof must have been surprised at the affair of the poisoning, but he has seized the opportunity; fortunately he couldn’t find his accomplices immediately.”

  “Here is the datcha, anyway. In the name of heaven, tell your driver to stop the horses here. If the ‘doctors’ are already there it is we who shall have killed the general.”

  “You are right.”

  Koupriane moderated his excitement and that of his driver and horses, and the carriage stopped noiselessly, not far from the datcha. Ermolai came toward them.

  “Priemkof?” faltered Koupriane.

  “He has gone again, Excellency.”

  “How — gone again?”

  “Yes, but he has brought the doctors.”

  Koupriane crushed Rouletabille’s wrist. The doctors were there!

  “Madame Trebassof is better,” continued Ermolai, who understood nothing of their emotion. “The general is going to meet them and take them to his wife himself.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They are waiting in the drawing-room.”

  “Oh, Excellency, keep cool, keep cool, and all is not lost,” implored the reporter.

  Rouletabille and Koupriane slipped carefully into the garden. Ermolai followed them.

  “There?” inquired Koupriane.

  “There,” Ermolai replied.

  From the corner where they were, and looking through the veranda, they could see the “doctors” as they waited.

  They were seated in chairs side by side, in a corner of the drawing-room from where they could see every-thing in the room and a part of the garden, which they faced, and could hear everything. A window of the first-floor was open above their heads, so that they could hear any noise from there. They could not be surprised from any side, and they held every door in view. They were talking softly and tranquilly, looking straight before them. They appeared young. One had a pleasant face, pale but smiling, with rather long, curly hair; the other was more angular, with haughty bearing and grave face, an eagle nose and glasses. Both wore long black coats buttoned over their calm chests.

  Koupriane and the reporter, followed by Ermolai, advanced with the greatest precaution across the lawn. Screened by the wooden steps leading to the veranda and by the vine-clad balustrade, they got near enough to hear them. Koupriane gave eager ear to the words of these two young men, who might have been so rich in the many years of life that naturally belonged to them, and who were about to die so horrible a death in destroying all about them. They spoke of what time it was, of the softness of the night and the beauty of the sky; they spoke of the shadows under the birch-trees, of the gulf shining in the late evening’s fading golden light, of the river’s freshness and the sweetness of springtime in the North. That is what they talked about. Koupriane murmured, “The assassins!”

  Now it was necessary to decide on action, and that necessity was horrible. A false movement, an awkwardness, and the “doctors” would be warned, and everything lost. They must have the bombs under their coats; there were certainly at least two “living bombs.” Their chests, as they breathed, must heave to and fro and their hearts beat against an impending explosion.

  Above on the bedroom floor, they heard the rapid arranging of the room, steps on the floor and a confusion of voices; shadows passed across the window-space. Koupriane rapidly interrogated Ermolai and learned that all the general’s friends were there. The two doctors had arrived only a couple of minutes before the Prefect of Police and the r
eporter. The little doctor of Vassili-Ostrow had already gone, saying there was nothing more for him to do when two such celebrated specialists had arrived. However, in spite of their celebrity, no one had ever heard the names they gave. Koupriane believed the little doctor was an accomplice. The most necessary thing was to warn those in the room above. There was immediate danger that someone would come downstairs to find the doctors and take them to the general, or that the general would come down himself to meet them. Evidently that was what they were waiting for. They wished to die in his arms, to make sure that this time he did not escape them! Koupriane directed Ermolai to go into the veranda and speak in a commonplace way to them at the threshold of the drawing-room door, saying that he would go upstairs and see if he might now escort them to Madame Trebassof’s room. Once in the room above, he could warn the others not to do anything but wait for Koupriane; then Ermolai was to come down and say to the men, “In just a moment, if you please.”

  Ermolai crept back as far as the lodge, and then came quite normally up the path, letting the gravel crunch under his countrified footsteps. He was an intelligent man, and grasped with extraordinary coolness the importance of the plan of campaign. Easily and naturally he mounted the veranda steps, paused at the threshold of the drawing-room, made the remark he had been told to make, and went upstairs. Koupriane and Rouletabille now watched the bedroom windows. The flitting shadows there suddenly became motionless. All moving about ceased; no more steps were heard, nothing. And that sudden silence made the two “doctors” raise their faces toward the ceiling. Then they exchanged an aroused glance. This change in the manner of things above was dangerous. Koupriane muttered, “The idiots!” It was such a blow for those upstairs to learn they walked over a mine ready to explode that it evidently had paralyzed their limbs. Happily Ermolai came down almost immediately and said to the “doctors” in his very best domestic manner:

  “Just a second, messieurs, if you please.”

  He did it still with utter naturalness. And he returned to the ledge before he rejoined Koupriane and Rouletabille by way of the lawn. Rouletabille, entirely cool, quite master of himself, as calm now as Koupriane was nervous, said to the Prefect of Police:

  “We must act now, and quickly. They are commencing to be suspicious. Have you a plan?”

  “Here is all I can see,” said Koupriane. “Have the general come down by the narrow servants’ stairway, and slip out of the house from the window of Natacha’s sitting-room, with the aid of a twisted sheet. Matrena Petrovna will come to speak to them during this time; that will keep them patient until the general is out of danger. As soon as Matrena has withdrawn into the garden, I will call my men, who will shoot them from a distance.”

  “And the house itself? And the general’s friends?”

  “Let them try to get away, too, by the servants’ stairway and jump from the window after the general. We must try something. Say that I have them at the muzzle of my revolver.”

  “Your plan won’t work,” said Rouletabille, “unless the door of Natacha’s sitting-room that opens on the drawing-room is closed.”

  “It is. I can see from here.”

  “And unless the door of the little passage-way before that staircase that opens into the drawing-room is closed also, and you cannot see it from here.”

  “That door is open,” said Ermolai.

  Koupriane swore. But he recovered himself promptly.

  “Madame Trebassof will close the door when she speaks to them.”

  “It’s impracticable,” said the reporter. “That will arouse their suspicions more than ever. Leave it to me; I have a plan.”

  “What?”

  “I have time to execute it, but not to tell you about it. They have already waited too long. I shall have to go upstairs, though. Ermolai will need to go with me, as with a friend of the family.”

  “I’ll go too.”

  “That would give the whole show away, if they saw you, the Prefect of Police.”

  “Why, no. If they see me — and they know I ought to be there — as soon as I show myself to them they will conclude I don’t know anything about it.”

  “You are wrong.”

  “It is my duty. I should be near the general to defend him until the last.”

  Rouletabille shrugged his shoulders before this dangerous heroism, but he did not stop to argue. He knew that his plan must succeed at once, or in five minutes at the latest there would be only ruins, the dead and the dying in the datcha des Iles.

  Still he remained astonishingly calm. In principle he had admitted that he was going to die. The only hope of being saved which remained to them rested entirely upon their keeping perfectly cool and upon the patience of the living bombs. Would they still have three minutes’ patience?

  Ermolai went ahead of Koupriane and Rouletabille. At the moment they reached the foot of the veranda steps the servant said loudly, repeating his lesson:

  “Oh, the general is waiting for you, Excellency. He told me to have you come to him at once. He is entirely well and Madame Trebassof also.”

  When they were in the veranda, he added:

  “She is to see also, at once, these gentlemen, who will be able to tell her there is no more danger.”

  And all three passed while Koupriane and Rouletabille vaguely saluted the two conspirators in the drawing-room. It was a decisive moment. Recognizing Koupriane, the two Nihilists might well believe themselves discovered, as the reporter had said, and precipitate the catastrophe. However, Ermolai, Koupriane and Rouletabille climbed the stairs to the bedroom like automatons, not daring to look behind them, and expecting the end each instant. But neither stirred. Ermolai went down again, by Rouletabille’s order, normally, naturally, tranquilly. They went into Matrena Petrovna’s chamber. Everybody was there. It was a gathering of ghosts.

  Here was what had happened above. That the “doctors” still remained below, that they had not been received instantly, in brief, that the catastrophe had been delayed up to now was due to Matrena Petrovna, whose watchful love, like a watch-dog, was always ready to scent danger. These two “doctors” whose names she did not know, who arrived so late, and the precipitate departure of the little doctor of Vassili-Ostrow aroused her watchfulness. Before allowing them to come upstairs to the general she resolved to have a look at them herself downstairs. She arose from her bed for that; and now her presentiment was justified. When she saw Ermolai, sober and mysterious, enter with Koupriane’s message, she knew instinctively, before he spoke, that there were bombs in the house. When Ermolai did speak it was a blow for everybody. At first she, Matrena Perovna, had been a frightened, foolish figure in the big flowered dressing-gown belonging to Feodor that she had wrapped about her in her haste. When Ermolai left, the general, who knew she only trembled for him, tried to reassure her, and, in the midst of the frightened silence of all of them, said a few words recalling the failure of all the previous attempts. But she shook her head and trembled, shaking with fear for him, in agony at the thought that she could do nothing there above those living bombs but wait for them to burst. As to the friends, already their limbs were ruined, absolutely ruined, in very truth. For a moment they were quite incapable of moving. The jolly Councilor of Empire, Ivan Petrovitch, had no longer a lively tale to tell, and the abominable prospect of “this horrible mix-up” right at hand rendered him much less gay than in his best hours at Cubat’s place. And poor Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff was whiter than the snow that covers old Lithuania’s fields when the winter’s chase is on. Athanase Georgevitch himself was not brilliant, and his sanguine face had quite changed, as though he had difficulty in digesting his last masterpiece with knife and fork. But, in justice to them, that was the first instantaneous effect. No one could learn like that, all of a sudden, that they were about to die in an indiscriminate slaughter without the heart being stopped for a little. Ermolai’s words had turned these amiable loafers into waxen statues, but, little by little, their hearts commenced to beat again and each
suggested some way of preventing the disaster — all of them sufficiently incoherent — while Matrena Petrovna invoked the Virgin and at the same time helped Feodor Feodorovitch adjust his sword and buckle his belt; for the general wished to die in uniform.

  Athanase Georgevitch, his eyes sticking out of his head and his body bent as though he feared the Nihlists just below him might perceive his tall form — through the floor, no doubt — proposed that they should throw themselves out of the window, even at the cost of broken legs. The saddened Councilor of Empire declared that project simply idiotic, for as they fell they would be absolutely at the disposal of the Nihilists, who would be attracted by the noise and would make a handful of dust of them with a single gesture through the window. Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, who couldn’t think of anything at all, blamed Koupriane and the rest of the police for not having devised something. Why hadn’t they already got rid of these Nihilists? After the frightened silence they had kept at first, now they all spoke at once, in low voices, hoarse and rapid, with shortened breath, making wild movements of the arms and head, and walked here and there in the chamber quite without motive, but very softly on tiptoe, going to the windows, returning, listening at the doors, peering through the key-holes, exchanging absurd suggestions, full of the wildest imaginings. “If we should... if... if,” — everybody speaking and everybody making signs for the others to be quiet. “Lower! If they hear us, we are lost.” And Koupriane, who did not come, and his police, who themselves had brought two assassins into the house, and were not able now to make them leave without having everybody jump! They were certainly lost. There was nothing left but to say their prayers. They turned to the general and Matrena Petrovna, who were wrapped in a close embrace. Feodor had taken the poor disheveled head of the good Matrena between his hands and pressed it upon his shoulders as he embraced her. He said, “Rest quietly against my heart, Matrena Petrovna. Nothing can happen to us except what God wills.”

  At that sight and that remark the others grew ashamed of their confusion. The harmony of that couple embracing in the presence of death restored them to themselves, to their courage, and their “Nitchevo.” Athanase Georgevitch, Ivan Petrovitch and Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff repeated after Matrena Petrovna, “As God wills.” And then they said “Nitchevo! Nitchevo!* We will all die with you, Feodor Feodorovitch.” And they all kissed one another and clasped one another in their arms, their eyes dim with love one for another, as at the end of a great banquet when they had eaten and drunk heavily in honor of one another.