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

“Well,” continued the general, “do you want to know, Matrena Petrovna, what a constitution is? There! That is the Constitution.”

The general, with a swoop of his hand, mixed all the matches. Rouletabille laughed, but the good Matrena said:

“I don’t understand, Feodor.”

“Find the Emperor now.”

Then Matrena understood. She laughed heartily, she laughed violently, and Natacha laughed also. Delighted with his success, Feodor Feodorovitch took up one of the little glasses that Natacha had filled with the vodka she brought.

“Listen, my children,” said he. “We are going to commence the zakouskis. Koupriane ought to have been here before this.”

Saying this, holding still the little glass in his hand, he felt in his pocket with the other for his watch, and drew out a magnificent large watch whose ticking was easily heard.

“Ah, the watch has come back from the repairer,” Rouletabille remarked smilingly to Matrena Petrovna. “It looks like a splendid one.”

“It has very fine works,” said the general. “It was bequeathed to me by my grandfather. It marks the seconds, and the phases of the moon, and sounds the hours and half-hours.”

Rouletabille bent over the watch, admiring it.

“You expect M. Koupriane for dinner?” inquired the young man, still examining the watch.

“Yes, but since he is so late, we’ll not delay any longer. Your healths, my children,” said the general as Rouletabille handed him back the watch and he put it in his pocket.

“Your health, Feodor Feodorovitch,” replied Matrena Petrovna, with her usual tenderness.

Rouletabille and Natacha only touched their lips to the vodka, but Feodor Feodorovitch and Matrena drank theirs in the Russian fashion, head back and all at a draught, draining it to the bottom and flinging the contents to the back of the throat. They had no more than performed this gesture when the general uttered an oath and tried to expel what he had drained so heartily. Matrena Petrovna spat violently also, looking with horror at her husband.

“What is it? What has someone put in the vodka?” cried Feodor.

“What has someone put in the vodka?” repeated Matrena Petrovna in a thick voice, her eyes almost starting from her head.

The two young people threw themselves upon the unfortunates. Feodor’s face had an expression of atrocious suffering.

“We are poisoned,” cried the general, in the midst of his chokings. “I am burning inside.”

Almost mad, Natacha took her father’s head in her hands. She cried to him:

“Vomit, papa; vomit!”

“We must find an emetic,” cried Rouletabille, holding on to the general, who had almost slipped from his arms.

Matrena Petrovna, whose gagging noises were violent, hurried down the steps of the kiosk, crossed the garden as though wild-fire were behind her, and bounded into the veranda. During this time the general succeeded in easing himself, thanks to Rouletabille, who had thrust a spoon to the root of his tongue. Natacha could do nothing but cry, “My God, my God, my God!” Feodor held onto his stomach, still crying, “I’m burning, I’m burning!” The scene was frightfully tragic and funny at the same time. To add to the burlesque, the general’s watch in his pocket struck eight o’clock. Feodor Feodorovitch stood up in a final supreme effort. “Oh, it is horrible!” Matrena Petrovna showed a red, almost violet face as she came back; she distorted it, she choked, her mouth twitched, but she brought something, a little packet that she waved, and from which, trembling frightenedly, she shook a powder into the first two empty glasses, which were on her side of the table and were those she and the general had drained. She still had strength to fill them with water, while Rouletabille was almost overcome by the general, whom he still had in his arms, and Natacha concerned herself with nothing but her father, leaning over him as though to follow the progress of the terrible poison, to read in his eyes if it was to be life or death. “Ipecac,” cried Matrena Petrovna, and she made the general drink it. She did not drink until after him. The heroic woman must have exerted superhuman force to go herself to find the saving antidote in her medicine-chest, even while the agony pervaded her vitals.

Some minutes later both could be considered saved. The servants, Ermolai at their head, were clustered about. Most of them had been at the lodge and they had not, it appeared, heard the beginning of the affair, the cries of Natacha and Rouletabille. Koupriane arrived just then. It was he who worked with Natacha in getting the two to bed. Then he directed one of his agents to go for the nearest doctors they could find.

This done, the Prefect of Police went toward the kiosk where he had left Rouletabille. But Rouletabille was not to be found, and the flask of vodka and the glasses from which they had drunk were gone also. Ermolai was near-by, and he inquired of the servant for the young Frenchman. Ermolai replied that he had just gone away, carrying the flask and the glasses. Koupriane swore. He shook Ermolai and even started to give him a blow with the fist for permitting such a thing to happen before his eyes without making a protest.

Ermolai, who had his own haughtiness, dodged Koupriane’s fist and replied that he had wished to prevent the young Frenchman, but the reporter had shown him a police-paper on which Koupriane himself had declared in advance that the young Frenchman was to do anything he pleased.