第54章

She indifferently allowed her marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her shoulder to be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number.Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka's success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut."Come to supper,"Annouchka had said to her.

"With whom?" inquired the Spanish artist.

"With Gounsovski."

"Never."

"Do come.You will help me pay my debt and perhaps he will be useful to you as well.He is useful to everybody."Decidedly Onoto did not understand this country, where the worst enemies supped together.

Rouletabille had been monopolized at once by Prince Galitch, who took him into a corner and said:

"What are you doing here?"

"Do I inconvenience you?" asked the boy.

The other assumed the amused smile of the great lord.

"While there is still time," he said, "believe me, you ought to start, to quit this country.Haven't you had sufficient notice?""Yes," replied the reporter."And you can dispense with any further notice from this time on."He turned his back.

"Why, it is the little Frenchman from the Trebassof villa," commenced the falsetto voice of Gounsovski as he pushed a seat towards the young man and begged him to sit between him and Athanase Georgevitch, who was already busy with the hors-doeuvres.

"How do you do, monsieur?" said the beautiful, grave voice of Annouchka.

Rouletabille saluted.

"I see that I am in a country of acquaintances," he said, without appearing disturbed.

He addressed a lively compliment to Annouchka, who threw him a kiss.

"Rouletabille!" cried la belle Onoto."Why, then, he is the little fellow who solved the mystery of the Yellow Room.""Himself."

"What are you doing here?"

"He came to save the life of General Trebassof," sniggered Gounsovski."He is certainly a brave little young man.""The police know everything," said Rouletabille coldly.And he asked for champagne, which he never drank.

The champagne commenced its work.While Thaddeus and the officers told each other stories of Bakou or paid compliments to the women, Gounsovski, who was through with raillery, leaned toward Rouletabille and gave that young man fatherly counsel with great unction.

"You have undertaken, young man, a noble task and one all the more difficult because General Trebassof is condemned not only by his enemies but still more by the ignorance of Koupriane.Understand me thoroughly: Koupriane is my friend and a man whom I esteem very highly.He is good, brave as a warrior, but I wouldn't give a kopeck for his police.He has mixed in our affairs lately by creating his own secret police, but I don't wish to meddle with that.

It amuses us.It's the new style, anyway; everybody wants his secret police nowadays.And yourself, young man, what, after all, are you doing here? Reporting? No.Police work? That is our business and your business.I wish you good luck, but I don't expect it.

Remember that if you need any help I will give it you willingly.Ilove to be of service.And I don't wish any harm to befall you.""You are very kind, monsieur," was all Rouletabille replied, and he called again for champagne.

Several times Gounsovski addressed remarks to Annouchka, who concerned herself with her meal and had little answer for him.

"Do you know who applauded you the most this evening?""No," said Annouchka indifferently.

"The daughter of General Trebassof."

"Yes, that is true, on my word," cried Ivan Petrovitch.

"Yes, yes, Natacba was there," joined in the other friends from the datcha des Iles.

"For me, I saw her weep," said Rouletabille, looking at Annouchka fixedly.

But Annouchka replied in an icy tone:

"I do not know her."

"She is unlucky in having a father..." Prince Galitch commenced.

"Prince, no politics, or let me take my leave," clucked Gounsovski.

"Your health, dear Annouchka."

"Your health, Gounsovski.But you have no worry about that.""Why?" demanded Thaddeus Tchitcbnikoff in equivocal fashion.

"Because he is too useful to the government," cried Ivan Petrovitch.

"No," replied Annouchka; "to the revolutionaries."All broke out laughing.Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by his usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat boiling in the pot:

"So they say.And it is my strength."

"His system is excellent," said the prince."As he is in with everybody, everybody is in with the police, without knowing it.""They say...ah,ah...they say..." (Athanase was choking over a little piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) "they say that he has driven away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of Kasan."Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans, street-thieves who since the recent political troubles had infested St.Petersburg and whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.

Athanase Georgevitch said:

"There are hooligans that ought to have existed even if they never have.One of them stopped a young girl before Varsovie station.

The girl, frightened, immediately held out her purse to him, with two roubles and fifty kopecks in it.The hooligan took it all.

'Goodness,' cried she, 'I have nothing now to take my train with.'

'How much is it?' asked the hooligan.'Sixty kopecks.' 'Sixty kopecks! Why didn't you say so?' And the bandit, hanging onto the two roules, returned the fifty-kopeck piece to the trembling child and added a ten-kopeck piece out of his own pocket.""Something quite as funny happened to me two winters ago, at Moscow,"said la belle Onoto."I had just stepped out of the door when I was stopped by a hooligan.'Give me twenty kopecks,' said the hooligan.

I was so frightened that I couldn't get my purse open.'Quicker,'