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Once she turned her head slightly toward Rouletabille. The reporter then looked towards her with increased eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he would say: "Surely, Natacha, you are not the accomplice of your father's assassins; surely it was not you who poured the poison!" But Natacha's glance passed the reporter coldly over.
Beside this hat there was a toque that Ermolai had brought in. The old servant had found it in some corner of the garden or the conservatory where he had been. A hat-pin stuck out of that toque also. "Whose toque is that?" asked Rouletabille. "I haven't seen it on the head of anyone here." "It is Natacha's," replied Matrena.
That little room, though, had three doors. One opened into Natacha's chamber, one into the drawing-room, and the third into the little passage in a corner of the house where was the stairway by which the servants passed from the kitchens to the ground-floor and the upper floor. This passage had also a door giving directly upon the drawing-room.
"And I hope you will not have further disputing," he cried, looking over Natacha's shoulder. "We promise you that, General," declared Boris. "Our lives belong to you." "You did well, my love. Let us all do as well. I have passed an excellent night, messieurs. Real sleep! I have had just one long sleep." "That is so," said Matrena slowly. "The general had no need of narcotic.
As for the man, he tried in vain to identify him; he was only a dark mass wrapped in a mantle. He leaned over and kissed Natacha's hand. She said only one word: "Scan!" But she had no more than said it before, under a vigorous attack, the shutters and the two halves of the window were thrown wide, and silent shadows jumped rapidly onto the balcony and sprang into the villa.
"And the house itself? And the general's friends?" "Let them try to get away, too, by the servants' stairway and jump from the window after the general. We must try something. Say that I have them at the muzzle of my revolver." "Your plan won't work," said Rouletabille, "unless the door of Natacha's sitting-room that opens on the drawing-room is closed." "It is. I can see from here."
He ought to have wind of what is being plotted, and as for me, I don't know where Annouchka has gone. I have more to learn from him than he has from me. Besides, as Athanase Georgevitch said, one may regret not accepting the Head of the Okrana's pleasant invitation." From six o'clock to seven he still waited vainly for Natacha's response. At seven o'clock, he decided to dress for the dinner.
If Matrena had been a monster the occasion was too good. Natacha's absence, her solitary presence for a quarter of an hour in the empty villa, all would have urged Matrena, whom I sent alone to search under the carpet in the dining-room, to draw the last nails from the board if she was really guilty of having drawn the others. Natacha would have been lost then!
Wait here; I'll be back in five minutes." He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited some seconds. Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him. Matrena moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha's door with horror. She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand up under the diabolic thought of such a crime.
Between these two hypotheses, which I alone took the trouble to examine, I did not hesitate long, because Natacha's every attitude proclaimed her innocence: and her eyes, Sire, in which one read purity and love, prevailed always with me against all the passing appearances of disgrace and crime. "I saw that Natacha negotiated with them.
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