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

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 atrociously 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.

“What is this you tell me? How could you have foreseen it?”

“It was easy to foresee everything,” replied Gounsovski, offering cigars, “to foresee everything from the moment Matiew’s place was filled by Priemkof.”

“Well?” questioned Rouletabille, recalling with some inquietude the sight of the whipping in the guards’ chapel.

“Well, this Priemkof, between ourselves,” (and he bent close to the reporter’s ear) “is no better, as a police-guard for Koupriane than Matiew himself. Very dangerous. So when I learned that he took Matiew’s place at the datcha des Iles, I thought there was sure to be some unfortunate happening. But it was no affair of mine, was it? Koupriane would have been able to say to me, ‘Mind your own business.’ I had gone far enough in warning him of the ‘living bombs.’ They had been denounced to us by the same agency that enabled us to seize the two living bombs (women, if you please!) who were going to the military tribunal at Cronstadt after the rebellion in the fleet. Let him recall that. That ought to make him reflect. I am a brave man. I know he speaks ill of me; but I don’t wish him any harm. The interests of the Empire before all else between us! I wouldn’t talk to you as I do if I didn’t know the Tsar honors you with his favor. Then I invited you to dinner. As one dines one talks. But you did not come. And, while you were dining down there and while Priemkof was on guard at the datcha, that annoying affair Madame Gounsovski has spoken about happened.”

Rouletabille had not sat down, in spite of Madame Gounsovski’s insistences. He took the box of cigars brusquely out of the hand of the Chief of the Secret Service, who had continued tendering them, for this detail of hospitality only annoyed his mood, which had been dark enough for hours and was now deepened by what the other had just said. He comprehended only one thing, that a man named Priemkof, whom he had never heard spoken of, as determined as Matiew to destroy the general, had been entrusted by Koupriane with the guard of the datcha des Iles. It was necessary to warn Koupriane instantly.

“How is it that you have not done so already, yourself, Monsieur Gounsovski? Why wait to speak about it to me? It is unimaginable.”

“Pardon, pardon,” said Gounsovski, smiling softly behind his goggles; “it is not the same thing.”

“No, no, it is not the same thing,” seconded the lady with the black silk, brilliant jewels and flabby chin. “We speak here to a friend in the course of dinner-talk, to a friend who is not of the police. We never denounce anybody.”

“We must tell you. But sit down now,” Gounsovski still insisted, lighting his cigar. “Be reasonable. They have just tried to poison him, so they will take time to breathe before they try something else. Then, too, this poison makes me think they may have given up the idea of living bombs. Then, after all, what is to be will be.”

“Yes, yes,” approved the ample dame. “The police never have been able to prevent what was bound to happen. But, speaking of this Priemkof, it remains between us, eh? Between just us?”

“Yes, we must tell you now,” Gounsovski slipped in softly, “that it will be much better not to let Koupriane know that you got the information from me. Because then, you understand, he would not believe you; or, rather, he would not believe me. That is why we take these precautions of dining and smoking a cigar. We speak of one thing and another and you do as you please with what we say. But, to make them useful, it is absolutely necessary, I repeat, to be silent about their source.” (As he said that, Gounsovski gave Rouletabille a piercing glance through his goggles, the first time Rouletabille had seen such a look in his eyes. He never would have suspected him capable of such fire.) “Priemkof,” continued Gounsovski in a low voice, using his handkerchief vigorously, “was employed here in my home and we separated on bad terms, through his fault, it is necessary to say. Then he got into Koupriane’s confidence by saying the worst he could of us, my dear little monsieur.”