第74章

THE LIVING BOMBS

At random - because now he could only act at random - he returned to the datcha.Great disorder reigned there.The guard had been doubled.The general's friends, summoned by Trebassof, surrounded the two poisoned sufferers and filled the house with their bustling devotion and their protestations of affection.However, an insignificant doctor from the common quarter of the Vasili-Ostrow, brought by the police, reassured everybody.The police had not found the general's household physician at home, but promised the immediate arrival of two specialists, whom they had found instead.

In the meantime they had picked up on the way this little doctor, who was gay and talkative as a magpie.He had enough to do looking after Matrena Petrovna, who had been so sick that her husband, Feodor Feodorovitch, still trembled, "for the first time in his life," as the excellent Ivan Petrovitch said.

The reporter was astonished at not finding Natacha either in Matrena's apartment or Feodor's.He asked Matrena where her step-daughter was.Matrena turned a frightened face toward him.

When they were alone, she said:

"We do not know where she is.Almost as soon as you left she disappeared, and no one has seen her since.The general has asked for her several times.I have had to tell him Koupriane took her with him to learn the details from her of what happened.""She is not with Koupriane," said Rouletabille.

"Where is she? This disappearance is more than strange at the moment we were dying, when her father - O God! Leave me, my child;I am stifling; I am stifling."

Rouletabille called the temporary doctor and withdrew from the chamber.He had come with the idea of inspecting the house room by room, corner by corner, to make sure whether or not any possibility of entrance existed that he had not noticed before, an entrance would-be poisoners were continuing to use.But now a new fact confronted him and overshadowed everything: the disappearance of Natacha.How he lamented his ignorance of the Russian language - and not one of Koupriane's men knew French.He might draw something out of Ermolai.

Ermolai said he had seen Natacha just outside the gate for a moment, looking up and down the road.Then he had been called to the general, and so knew nothing further.

That was all the reporter could gather from the gestures rather than the words of the old servant.

An additional difficulty now was that twilight drew on, and it was impossible for the reporter to discern Natacha's foot-prints.Was it true that the young girl had fled at such a moment, immediately after the poisoning, before she knew whether her father and mother were entirely out of danger? If Natacha were innocent, as Rouletabille still wished to believe, such an attitude was simply incomprehensible.And the girl could not but be aware she would increase Koupriane's suspicions.The reporter had a vital reason for seeing her immediately, a vital reason for all concerned, above all in this moment when the Nihilists were culminating their plans, a vital reason for her and for him, equally menaced with death, to talk with her and to renew the propositions he had made a few minutes before the poisoning and which she had not wished to hear him talk about, in fearful pity for him or in defiance of him.

Where was Natacha? He thought maybe she was trying to rejoin Annouchka, and there were reasons for that, both if she were innocent and if she were guilty.But where was Annouchka? Who could say!

Gounsovski perhaps.Rouletabille jumped into an isvo, returning from the Point empty, and gave Gounsovski's address.He deigned then to recall that he had been invited that same day to dine with the Gounsovskis.They would no longer be expecting him.He blamed himself.

They received him, but they had long since finished dinner.

Monsieur and Madame Gounsovski were playing a game of draughts under the lamp.Rouletabille as he entered the drawing-room recognized the shining, fattish bald head of the terrible man.

Gounsovski came to him, bowing, obsequious, his fat hands held out.

He was presented to Madame Gounsovski, who was besprinkled with jewels over her black silk gown.She had a muddy skin and magnificent eyes.She also was tentatively effusive."We waited for you, monsieur," she said, smirking timidly, with the careful charm of a woman a little along in years who relies still on infantine graces.As the recreant young man offered his apologies, "Oh, we know you are much occupied, Monsieur Rouletabille.My husband said that to me only a moment ago.But he knew you would come finally.In the end one always accepts my husband's invitation." She said this with a fat smile of importance.

Rouletabille turned cold at this last phrase.He felt actual fear in the presence of these two figures, so actrociously commonplace, in their horrible, decent little drawing-room.

Madame continued:

"But you have had rather a bad dinner already, through that dreadful affair at General Trebassof's.Come into the dining-room.""Ah, so someone has told you?" said Rouletabille."No, no, thanks;I don't need anything more.You know what has happened?""If you had come to dinner, perhaps nothing would have happened at all, you know," said Gounsovski tranquilly, seating himself again on the cushions and considering his game of draughts through his glasses."Anyway, congratulations to Koupriane for being away from there through his fear."For Gounsovski there was only Koupriane! The life or death of Trebassof did not occupy his mind.Only the acts and movements of the Prefect of Police had power to move him.He ordered a waiting-maid who glided into the apartment without making more noise than a shadow to bring a small stand loaded with zakouskis and bottles of champagne close to the game-table, and he moved one of his pawns, saying, "You will permit me? This move is mine.I don't wish to lose it."Rouletabille ventured to lay his hand on the oily, hairy fist which extended from a dubious cuff.