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

haven’t overlooked anything, if Natacha is innocent!” Having literally scoured the plate, he struck the table a great blow with his fist and said: “She is!”

Just then the door opened. Rouletabille supposed the proprietor of the place was entering.

It was Koupriane.

He rose, startled. He could not imagine by what mystery the Prefect of Police had made his way there, but he rejoiced from the bottom of his heart, for if he was trying to rescue Natacha from the hands of the revolutionaries Koupriane would be a valuable ally. He clapped the Prefect on the shoulder.

“Well, well!” he said, almost joyfully. “I certainly did not expect you here. How is your wound?”

“Nitchevo! Not worth speaking about; it’s nothing.”

“And the general and—! Ah, that frightful night! And those two unfortunates who—?”

“Nitchevo! Nitchevo!”

“And poor Ermolai!”

“Nitchevo! Nitchevo! It is nothing.”

Rouletabille looked him over. The Prefect of Police had an arm in a sling, but he was bright and shining as a new ten-rouble piece, while he, poor Rouletabille, was so abominably soiled and depressed. Where did he come from? Koupriane understood his look and smiled.

“Well, I have just come from the Finland train; it is the best way.”

“But what can you have come here to do, Excellency?”

“The same thing as you.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Rouletabille, “do you mean to say that you have come here to save Natacha?”

“How—to save her! I come to capture her.”

“To capture her?”

“Monsieur Rouletabille, I have a very fine little dungeon in Saints Peter and Paul fortress that is all ready for her.”

“You are going to throw Natacha into a dungeon!”

“The Emperor’s order, Monsieur Rouletabille. And if you see me here in person it is simply because His Majesty requires that the thing be done as respectfully and discreetly as possible.”

“Natacha in prison!” cried the reporter, who saw in horror all obstacles rising before him at one and the same time. “For what reasons, pray?”

“The reason is simple enough. Natacha Feodorovna is the last word in wickedness and doesn’t deserve anybody’s pity. She is the accomplice of the revolutionaries and the instigator of all the crimes against her father.”

“I am sure that you are mistaken, Excellency. But how have you been guided to her?”

“Simply by you.”

“By me?”

“Yes, we lost all trace of Natacha. But, as you had disappeared also, I made up my mind that you could only be occupied in searching for her, and that by finding you I might have the chance to lay my hands on her.”

“But I haven’t seen any of your men?”

“Why, one of them brought you here.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Didn’t you climb onto a telega?”

“Ah, the driver.”

“Exactly. I had arranged to have him meet me at the Sestroriesk station. He pointed out the place where you dropped off, and here I am.”

The reporter bent his head, red with chagrin. Decidedly the sinister idea that he was responsible for the death of an innocent man and all the ills which had followed out of it had paralyzed his detective talents. He recognized it now. What was the use of struggling! If anyone had told him that he would be played with that way sometime, he, Rouletabille! he would have laughed heartily enough—then. But now, well, he wasn’t capable of anything further. He was his own most cruel enemy. Not only was Natacha in the hands of the revolutionaries through his fault, by his abominable error, but worse yet, in the very moment when he wished to save her, he foolishly, naively, had conducted the police to the very spot where they should have been kept away. It was the depth of his humiliation; Koupriane really pitied the reporter.

“Come, don’t blame yourself too much,” said he. “We would have found Natacha without you; Gounsovski notified us that she was going to embark in the Bay of Lachtka this evening with Priemkof.”

“Natacha with Priemkof!” exclaimed Rouletabille. “Natacha with the man who introduced the two living bombs into her father’s house! If she is with him, Excellency, it is because she is his prisoner, and that alone will be sufficient to prove her innocence. I thank the Heaven that has sent you here.”

Koupriane swallowed a glass of vodka, poured another after it, and finally deigned to translate his thought:

“Natacha is the friend of these precious men and we will see them disembark hand in hand.”

“Your men, then, haven’t studied the traces of the struggle that ‘these precious men’ have had on the banks of the Neva before they carried away Natacha?”

“Oh, they haven’t been hoodwinked. As a matter of fact, the struggle was quite too visible not to have been done for appearances’ sake. What a child you are! Can’t you see that Natacha’s presence in the datcha had become quite too dangerous for that charming young girl after the poisoning of her father and step-mother failed and at the moment when her comrades were preparing to send General Trebassof a pleasant little gift of dynamite? She arranged to get away and yet to appear kidnapped. It is too simple.”

Rouletabille raised his head.

“There is something simpler still to imagine than the culpability of Natacha. It is that Priemkof schemed to pour the poison into the flask of vodka, saying to himself that if the poison didn’t succeed at least it would make the occasion for introducing his dynamite into the house in the pockets of the ‘doctors’ that they would go to find.”

Koupriane seized Rouletabille’s wrist and threw some terrible words at him, looking into the depths of his eyes:

“It was not Priemkof who poured the poison, because there was no poison in the flask.”

Rouletabille, as he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, more startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling campaign.

If there was no poison in the flask, the poison must have been poured directly into the glasses by a person who was in the kiosk! Now, there were only four persons in the kiosk: the two who were poisoned and Natacha and himself, Rouletabille. And that kiosk was so perfectly isolated that it was impossible for any other persons than the four who were there to pour poison upon the table.