第62章

"I am able to state to you, as I already have before Monsieur the Prefect of Police, that one, and only one, person has left the traces of his various climbings on the wall and on the balcony.""Idiot!" interrupted Natacha, with a passionate disdain for the young man."And that satisfies you?"The general roughly seized the reporter's wrist:

"Listen to me, monsieur.A man came here this night.That concerns only me.No one has any right to be astonished excepting myself.Imake it my own affair, an affair between my daughter and me.But you, you have just told us that you are sure that man is an assassin.

Then, you see, that calls for something else.Proofs are necessary, and I want the proofs at once.You speak of traces; very well, we will go and examine those traces together.And I wish for your sake, monsieur, that I shall be as convinced by them as you are."Rouletabille quietly disengaged his wrist and replied with perfect calm:

"Now, monsieur, I am no longer able to prove anything to you.""Why?"

"Because the ladders of the police agents have wiped out all my proofs, monsieur.

"So now there remains for us only your word, only your belief in yourself.And if you are mistaken?""He would never admit it, papa," cried Natacha."Ah, it is he who deserves the fate Michael Nikolaievitch has met just now.Isn't it so? Don't you know it? And that will be your eternal remorse! Isn't there something that always keeps you from admitting that you are mistaken? You have had an innocent man killed.Now, you know well enough, you know well that I would not have admitted Michael Nikolaievitch here if I had believed he was capable of wishing to poison my father.""Mademoiselle," replied Rouletabille, not lowering his eyes under Natacha's thunderous regard, "I am sure of that."He said it in such a tone that Natacha continued to look at him with incomprehensible anguish in her eyes.Ah, the baffling of those two regards, the mute scene between those two young people, one of whom wished to make himself understood and the other afraid beyond all other things of being thoroughly understood.Natacha murmured:

"How he looks at me! See, he is the demon; yes, yes, the little domovoi, the little domovoi.But look out, poor wretch; you don't know what you have done."She turned brusquely toward Koupriane:

"Where is the body of Michael Nikolaievitch?" said she."I wish to see it.I must see it."Feodor Feodorovitch had fallen, as though asleep, upon a chair.

Matrena Petrovna dared not approach him.The giant appeared hurt to the death, disheartened forever.What neither bombs, nor bullets, nor poison had been able to do, the single idea of his daughter's co-operation in the work of horror plotted about him - or rather the impossibility he faced of understanding Natacha's attitude, her mysterious conduct, the chaos of her explanations, her insensate cries, her protestations of innocence, her accusations, her menaces, her prayers and all her disorder, the avowed fact of her share in that tragic nocturnal adventure where Michael Nikolaievitch found his death, had knocked over Feodor Feodorovitch like a straw.One instant he sought refuge in some vague hope that Koupriane was less assured than he pretended of the orderly's guilt.But that, after all, was only a detail of no importance in his eyes.What alone mattered was the significance of Natacha's act, and the unhappy girl seemed not to be concerned over what he would think of it.

She was there to fight against Koupriane, Rouletabille and Matrena Petrovna, defending her Michael Nikolajevitch, while he, the father, after having failed to overawe her just now, was there in a corner suffering agonizedly.

Koupriane walked over to him and said:

"Listen to me carefully, Feodor Feodorovitch.He who speaks to you is Head of the Police by the will of the Tsar, and your friend by the grace of God.If you do not demand before us, who are acquainted with all that has happened and who know how to keep any necessary secret, if you do not demand of your daughter the reason for her conduct with Michael Nikolaievitch, and if she does not tell you in all sincerity, there is nothing more for me to do here.My men have already been ordered away from this house as unworthy to guard the most loyal subject of His Majesty; I have not protested, but now I in my turn ask you to prove to me that the most dangerous enemy you have had in your house is not your daughter."These words, which summed up the horrible situation, came as a relief for Feodor.Yes, they must know.Koupriane was right.She must speak.He ordered his daughter to tell everything, everything.

Natacha fixed Koupriane again with her look of hatred to the death, turned from him and repeated in a firm voice:

"I have nothing to say."

"There is the accomplice of your assassins," growled Koupriane then, his arm extended.

Natacha uttered a cry like a wounded beast and fell at her father's feet.She gathered them within her supplicating arms.She pressed them to her breasts.She sobbed from the bottom of her heart.And he, not comprehending, let her lie there, distant, hostile, somber.

Then she moaned, distractedly, and wept bitterly, and the dramatic atmosphere in which she thus suddenly enveloped Feodor made it all sound like those cries of an earlier time when the all-powerful, punishing father appeared in the women's apartments to punish the culpable ones.

"My father! Dear Father! Look at me! Look at me! Have pity on me, and do not require me to speak when I must be silent forever.

And believe me! Do not believe these men! Do not believe Matrena Petrovna.And am I not your daughter? Your very own daughter! Your Natacha Feodorovna! I cannot make things dear to you.No, no, by the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus I cannot explain.By the holy ikons, it is because I must not.By my mother, whom I have not known and whose place you have taken, oh, my father, ask me nothing more!