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When she saw Ermolai, sober and mysterious, enter with Koupriane's message, she knew instinctively, before he spoke, that there were bombs in the house. When Ermolai did speak it was a blow for everybody. At first she, Matrena Perovna, had been a frightened, foolish figure in the big flowered dressing-gown belonging to Feodor that she had wrapped about her in her haste.
But I will let them all rot in prison until I learn which one fired that shot." "You needn't look far for that," said Rouletabille. "I did it." "You! Then you must have gone outside the touba?" "Yes, in order to warn them. But still I was a little late, since you did take Natacha." Koupriane's eyes blazed.
Truly I have been awkward. Of that, and that alone, I accuse myself." "It was you, with your revolver, who gave the signal to Koupriane's agents! You have done the dirty work for the police." Rouletabille tried vainly to protest, to explain, to say that his revolver shot, on the contrary, had saved the revolutionaries. But no one cared to listen and no one believed him.
For Rouletabille to doubt, and in an affair where already there was one man dead through his agency, was torment worse than death. When they arrived at police-headquarters, Rouletabille jumped from Koupriane's carriage and without saying a word hailed an empty isvotchick that was passing. He had himself driven back to Pere Alexis. His doubt mastered his will; he could not bear to wait away.
How he lamented his ignorance of the Russian language and not one of Koupriane's men knew French. He might draw something out of Ermolai. Ermolai said he had seen Natacha just outside the gate for a moment, looking up and down the road. Then he had been called to the general, and so knew nothing further.
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." Then he got into Koupriane's confidence by saying the worst he could of us, my dear little monsieur."
"Monsieur Rouletabille," said Matrena, who visibly strove to regain her self-control, "I am not of Koupriane's opinion and I am not" here she lowered her trembling voice "of the opinion His Majesty holds. It is better for me to tell you at once, so that you may not regret intervening in an affair where there are where there are risks terrible risks to run. No, this is not a family drama.
Rouletabille rapidly wrote a message to Koupriane's address, which the messenger was directed to have delivered without a moment's delay, under the pain of death! The manager humbly promised and the reporter did not explain that by "pain of death" he referred to his own.
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. Koupriane jumped into his carriage and hurried toward St. Petersburg.
The second warning will be the last." It was signed: "The Central Revolutionary Committee." "So, ho!" said Rouletabille, slipping the paper into his pocket, "that's the line it takes, is it! Happily I have nothing more to occupy myself with at all. It is Koupriane's turn now! Now to go to Koupriane's!"
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