第34章

"But I can't understand how you can remain so quiet with such a certainty.Great heavens! what proof have you that they have not been there already?""Just an ordinary pin, madame, not a hat-pin this time.Don't confuse the pins.I will show you in a little while.""He will drive me distracted with his pins, dear light of my eyes!

Bounty of Heaven! God's envoy! Dear little happiness-bearer!"In her transport she tried to take him in her trembling arms, but he waved her back.She caught her breath and resumed:

"Did the examination of all the hat-pins tell you anything?""Yes.The fifth hat-pin of Mademoiselle Natacha's, the one in the toque out in the veranda, has the tip newly broken off.""0 misery!" cried Matrena, crumpling in her chair.

Rouletabille raised her.

"What would you have? I have examined your own hat-pins.Do you think I would have suspected you if I had found one of them broken?

I would simply have thought that someone had used your property for an abominable purpose, that is all.""Oh, that is true, that is true.Pardon me.Mother of Christ, this boy crazes me! He consoles me and he horrifies me.He makes me think of such dreadful things, and then he reassures me.He does what he wishes with me.What should I become without him?"And this time she succeeded in taking his head in her two hands and kissing him passionately.Rouletabille pushed her back roughly.

"You keep me from seeing," he said.

She was in tears over his rebuff.She understood now.Rouletabille during all this conversation had not ceased to watch through the open doors of Matrena's room and the dressing-room the farther fatal door whose brass bolt shone in the yellow light of the night-lamp.

At last he made her a sign and the reporter, followed by Matrena, advanced on tip-toe to the threshold of the general's chamber, keeping close to the wall.Feodor Feodorovitch slept.They heard his heavy breath, but he appeared to be enjoying peaceful sleep.

The horrors of the night before had fled.Matrena was perhaps right in attributing the nightmares to the narcotic prepared for him each night, for the glass from which he drank it when he felt he could not sleep was still full and obviously had not been touched.The bed of the general was so placed that whoever occupied it, even if they were wide awake, could not see the door giving on the servants'

stairway.The little table where the glass and various phials were placed and which had borne the dangerous bouquet, was placed near the bed, a little back of it, and nearer the door.Nothing would have been easier than for someone who could open the door to stretch an arm and place the infernal machine among the wild flowers, above all, as could easily be believed, if he had waited for that treachery until the heavy breathing of the general told them outside that he was fast asleep, and if, looking through the key-hole, he had made sure Matrena was occupied in her own chamber.Rouletabille, at the threshold, glided to one side, out of the line of view from the hole, and got down on all fours.He crawled toward the door.