The Secret of the Night by Gaston Leroux (best free ebook reader .txt) 📖

Natacha desperately shook her head.

“And if I order you?”

“You can kill me, Father, but I will not pronounce that name.”

“Wretch!”

He raised his stick toward her. Thus Ivan the Terrible had killed his son with a blow of his boar-spear.

But Natacha, instead of bowing her head beneath the blow that menaced her, turned toward Koupriane and threw at him in accents of triumph:

“He is not dead. If you had succeeded in taking him, dead or alive, you would already have his name.”

Koupriane took two steps toward her, put his hand on her shoulder and said:

“Michael Nikolaievitch.”

“Michael Korsakoff!” cried the general.

Matrena Petrovna, as if revolted by that suggestion, stood upright to repeat:

“Michael Korsakoff!”

The general could not believe his ears, and was about to protest when he noticed that his daughter had turned away and was trying to flee to her room. He stopped her with a terrible gesture.

“Natacha, you are going to tell us what Michael Korsakoff came here to do to-night.”

“Feodor Feodorovitch, he came to poison you.”

It was Matrena who spoke now and whom nothing could have kept silent, for she saw in Natacha’s attempt at flight the most sinister confession. Like a vengeful fury she told over with cries and terrible gestures what she had experienced, as if once more stretched before her the hand armed with the poison, the mysterious hand above the pillow of her poor invalid, her dear, rigorous tyrant; she told them about the preceding night and all her terrors, and from her lips, by her voluble staccato utterance that ominous recital had grotesque emphasis. Finally she told all that she had done, she and the little Frenchman, in order not to betray their suspicions to The Other, in order to take finally in their own trap all those who for so many days and nights schemed for the death of Feodor Feodorovitch. As she ended she pointed out Rouletabille to Feodor and cried, “There is the one who has saved you.”

Natacha, as she listened to this tragic recital, restrained herself several times in order not to interrupt, and Rouletabille, who was watching her closely, saw that she had to use almost superhuman efforts in order to achieve that. All the horror of what seemed to be to her as well as to Feodor a revelation of Michael’s crime did not subdue her, but seemed, on the contrary, to restore to her in full force all the life that a few seconds earlier had fled from her. Matrena had hardly finished her cry, “There is the one who has saved you,” before Natacha cried in her turn, facing the reporter with a look full of the most frightful hate, “There is the one who has been the death of an innocent man!” She turned to her father. “Ah, papa, let me, let me say that Michael Nikolaievitch, who came here this evening, I admit, and whom, it is true, I let into the house, that Michael Nikolaievitch did not come here yesterday, and that the man who has tried to poison you is certainly someone else.”

At these words Rouletabille turned pale, but he did not let himself lose self-control. He replied simply:

“No, mademoiselle, it was the same man.”

And Koupriane felt compelled to add:

“Anyway, we have found the proof of Michael Nikolaievitch’s relations with the revolutionaries.”

“Where have you found that?” questioned the young girl, turning toward the Chief of Police a face ravished with anguish.

“At Krestowsky, mademoiselle.”

She looked a long time at him as though she would penetrate to the bottom of his thoughts.

“What proofs?” she implored.

“A correspondence which we have placed under seal.”

“Was it addressed to him? What kind of correspondence?”

“If it interests you, we will open it before you.”

“My God! My God!” she gasped. “Where have you found this correspondence? Where? Tell me where!”

“I will tell you. At the villa, in his chamber. We forced the lock of his bureau.”

She seemed to breathe again, but her father took her brutally by the arm.

“Come, Natacha, you are going to tell us what that man was doing here to-night.”

“In her chamber!” cried Matrena Petrovna.

Natacha turned toward Matrena:

“What do you believe, then? Tell me now.”

“And I, what ought I to believe?” muttered Feodor. “You have not told me yet. You did not know that man had relations with my enemies. You are innocent of that, perhaps. I wish to think so. I wish it, in the name of Heaven I wish it. But why did you receive him? Why? Why did you bring him in here, as a robber or as a...”

“Oh, papa, you know that I love Boris, that I love him with all my heart, and that I would never belong to anyone but him.”

“Then, then, then.—speak!”

The young girl had reached the crisis.

“Ah, Father, Father, do not question me! You, you above all, do not question me now. I can say nothing! There is nothing I can tell you. Excepting that I am sure—sure, you understand—that Michael Nikolaievitch did not come here last night.”

“He did come,” insisted Rouletabille in a slightly troubled voice.

“He came here with poison. He came here to poison your father, Natacha,” moaned Matrena Petrovna, who twined her hands in gestures of sincere and naive tragedy.

“And I,” replied the daughter of Feodor ardently, with an accent of conviction which made everyone there vibrate, and particularly Rouletabille, “and I, I tell you it was not he, that it was not he, that it could not possibly be he. I swear to you it was another, another.”

“But then, this other, did you let him in as well?” said Koupriane.

“Ah, yes, yes. It was I. It was I. It was I who left the window and blinds open. Yes, it is I who did that. But I did not wait for the other, the other who came to assassinate. As to Michael Nikolaievitch, I swear to you, my father, by all that is most sacred in heaven and on earth, that he could not have committed the crime that you say. And now—kill me, for there is nothing more I can say.”

“The poison,” replied Koupriane coldly, “the poison that he poured into the general’s potion was that arsenate of soda which was on the grapes the Marshal of the Court