第59章

Suddenly he felt the blood pound at his temples, for the line of the open window grew larger, increased, and the shadow of a man gradually rose on the balcony.Rouletabille drew his revolver.

The man stood up immediately behind one of the shutters and struck a light blow on the glass.Placed as he was now he could be seen no more.His shadow mixed with the shadow of the shutter.At the noise on the glass Natacha's door had opened cautiously, and she entered the sitting-room.On tiptoe she went quickly to the window and opened it.The man entered.The little light that by now was commencing to dawn was enough to show Rouletabille that Natacha still wore the toilette in which he had seen her that same evening at Krestowsky.As for the man, he tried in vain to identify him;he was only a dark mass wrapped in a mantle.He leaned over and kissed Natacha's hand.She said only one word: "Scan!" (Quickly).

But she had no more than said it before, under a vigorous attack, the shutters and the two halves of the window were thrown wide, and silent shadows jumped rapidly onto the balcony and sprang into the villa.Natacha uttered a shrill cry in which Rouletabille believed still he heard more of despair than terror, and the shadows threw themselves on the man; but he, at the first alarm, had thrown himself upon the carpet and had slipped from them between their legs.He regained the balcony and jumped from it as the others turned toward him.At least, it was so that Rouletabille believed he saw the mysterious struggle go in the half-light, amid most impressive silence, after that frightened cry of Natacha's.The whole affair had lasted only a few seconds, and the man was still hanging over the balcony, when from the bottom of the hall a new person sprang.It was Matrena Petrovna.

Warned by Koupriane that something would happen that night, and foreseeing that it would happen on the ground-floor where she was forbidden to be, she had found nothing better to do than to make her faithful maid go secretly to the bedroom floor, with orders to walk about there all night, to make all think she herself was near the general, while she remained below, hidden in the dining-room.

Matrena Petrovna now threw herself out onto the balcony, crying in Russian, "Shoot! Shoot!" In just that moment the man was hesitating whether to risk the jump and perhaps break his neck, or descend less rapidly by the gutter-pipe.A policeman fired and missed him, and the man, after firing back and wounding the policeman, disappeared.

It was still too far from dawn for them to see clearly what happened below, where the barking of Brownings alone was heard.And there could be nothing more sinister than the revolver-shots unaccompanied by cries in the mists of the morning.The man, before he disappeared, had had only time by a quick kick to throw down one of the two ladders which had been used by the police in climbing; down the other one all the police in a bunch, even to the wounded one, went sliding, falling, rising, running after the shadow which fled still, discharging the Browning steadily; other shadows rose from the river-bank, hovering in the mist.Suddenly Koupniane's voice was heard shouting orders, calling upon his agents to take the quarry alive or dead.From the balcony Matrena Petrovna cried out also, like a savage, and Rouletabille tried in vain to keep her quiet.She was delirious at the thought "The Other" might escape yet.She fired a revolver, she also, into the group, not knowing whom she might wound.Rouletabille grabbed her arm and as she turned on him angrily she observed Natacha, who, leaning until she almost fell over the balcony, her lips trembling with delirious utterance, followed as well as she could the progress of the struggle, trying to understand what happened below, under the trees, near the Neva, where the tumult by now extended.Matrena Petrovna pulled her back by the arms.Then she took her by the neck and threw her into the drawing-room in a heap.When she had almost strangled her step-daughter, Matrena Petrovna saw that the general was there.He appeared in the pale glimmerings of dawn like a specter.By what miracle had Feodor Feodorovitch been able to descend the stairs and reach there? How had it been brought about?

She saw him tremble with anger or with wretchedness under the folds of the soldier's cape that floated about him.He demanded in a hoarse voice, "What is it?"Matrena Petrovna threw herself at his feet, made the orthodox sign of the Cross, as if she wished to summon God to witness, and then, pointing to Natacha, she denounced his daughter to her husband as she would have pointed her out to a judge.

"The one, Feodor Feodorovitch, who has wished more than once to assassinate you, and who this night has opened the datcha to your assassin is your daughter."The general held himself up by his two hands against the wall, and, looking at Matrena and Natacha, who now were both upon the floor before him like suppliants, he said to Matrena:

"It is you who assassinate me."

"Me! By the living God!" babbled Matrena Petrovna desperately.

"If I had been able to keep this from you, Jesus would have been good! But I say no more to crucify you.Feodor Feodorovitch, question your daughter, and if what I have said is not true, kill me, kill me as a lying, evil beast.I will say thank you, thank you, and I will die happier than if what I have said was true.Ah, I long to be dead! I Kill me!"Feodor Feodorovitch pushed her back with his stick as one would push a worm in his path.Without saying anything further, she rose from her knees and looked with her haggard eyes, with her crazed face, at Rouletabille, who grasped her arm.If she had had her hands still free she would not have hesitated a second in wreaking justice upon herself under this bitter fate of alienating Feodor.