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"Why, why," she said, with her voice entirely changed and quite indifferent, as if she wished to be merely 'the daughter of the house' in conversation with the young man, "the vodka is not in the wine chest, after all. What has Ermolai done with it, then?" She ran over to the buffet and found the flask. "Oh, here it is. Papa shan't be without it, after all."
Koupriane and the reporter, followed by Ermolai, advanced with the greatest precaution across the lawn. Screened by the wooden steps leading to the veranda and by the vine-clad balustrade, they got near enough to hear them.
I have brought an old gniagnia who watched me grow up, Ermolai, and the Orel servants. In the meantime, two months later, the third attempt suddenly occurred. It is certainly of them all the most frightening, because it is so mysterious, a mystery that has not yet, alas, been solved." But Athanase Georgevitch had told a "good story" which raised so much hubbub that nothing else could be heard.
"He has gone again, Excellency." "How gone again?" "Yes, but he has brought the doctors." Koupriane crushed Rouletabille's wrist. The doctors were there! "Madame Trebassof is better," continued Ermolai, who understood nothing of their emotion. "The general is going to meet them and take them to his wife himself." "Where are they?" "They are waiting in the drawing-room."
"Here is the datcha, anyway. In the name of heaven, tell your driver to stop the horses here. If the 'doctors' are already there it is we who shall have killed the general." "You are right." Koupriane moderated his excitement and that of his driver and horses, and the carriage stopped noiselessly, not far from the datcha. Ermolai came toward them. "Priemkof?" faltered Koupriane.
Ermolai conducted his mistress to the drawing-room and pointed across to a door that he had left open, which led to the sitting-room before Natacha's chamber. "He is there," said Ermolai in a low voice.
The keys of the villa?" "Yes, give me a key to the veranda; you must have several. I must be able to get into the house to-night if it becomes necessary." She drew a key from her gown, gave it to the young man and said a few words in Russian to Ermolai, to enforce upon him that he must obey the little domovoi-doukh in anything, day or night. "Now tell me where Natacha has gone."
When Ermolai left, the general, who knew she only trembled for him, tried to reassure her, and, in the midst of the frightened silence of all of them, said a few words recalling the failure of all the previous attempts. But she shook her head and trembled, shaking with fear for him, in agony at the thought that she could do nothing there above those living bombs but wait for them to burst.
He fell back lightly onto his feet, mounted the veranda steps and opened the door, then closed it so lightly that Ermolai, who watched him from outside not two feet away, did not hear the slightest grinding of the hinges. Inside the villa Rouletabille advanced on tiptoe. He found the door of the drawing-room open. The door of the sitting-room had not been closed, or else had been reopened.
He slept like a child and did not touch his potion." "And my leg is almost well." "All the same, it is singular that those grapes should have disappeared," insisted the marshal, following his fixed idea. "Ermolai," called Matrena. The old servant appeared. "Yesterday evening, after these gentlemen had left the house, did you notice a small white box on the garden table?" "No, Barinia."
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