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Rouletabille did not wish to be seen. He made a sign to Ermolai, who was passing through the garden and who hurried to meet him at the gate. "The Barinia," said the reporter, in a low voice and with his finger to his lips to warn the faithful attendant to caution. In two minutes Matrena Petrovna joined Rouletabille in the lodge.
Madame Matrena rose, after lightly stroking the hair of her step-daughter Natacha, whose eyes followed her to the door, indifferent apparently to the tender manifestations of her father's orderly, the soldier-poet, Boris Mourazoff, who had written beautiful verses on the death of the Moscow students, after having shot them, in the way of duty, on their barricades.
"Because I thought it strange," parried Matrena, "that they went away as they did, without saying goodby, without a word, without inquiring if the general needed them. There is something stranger yet. Did you see Kaltsof with them, the grand-marshal of the court?" "No."
"I will tell you. `At the villa, in his chamber. We forced the lock of his bureau." She seemed to breathe again, but her father took her brutally by the arm. "Come, Natacha, you are going to tell us what that man was doing here to-night." "In her chamber!" cried Matrena Petrovna. Natacha turned toward Matrena: "What do you believe, then? Tell me now."
And Matrena reddened, for she loathed a lie and it was in tribulation of spirit that she used this fable under Rouletabille's directions. "Oh, well, all the better," said the general. "It will give me pleasure to see my home ridded for a while of such people."
Poor Matrena could not imagine what had come to me, nor why I so desired to buy books. But, oh horror of horrors!
"If you see him," said Rouletabille, "it is unnecessary to tell him that the general will go for a long promenade among the isles this afternoon, because without fail he would send us an escort of gendarmes." "Papa! A promenade among the islands? Truly? Oh, that is going to be lovely!" Matrena Petrovna sprang to her feet. "Are you mad, my dear little domovoi, actually mad?" "Why? Why? It is fine.
Natacha could very well have been warned by the too great care with which Madame Matrena watched the floor. My opinion, since I saw Matrena lift the carpet the first time without any real precaution, is that they have definitely abandoned the preparation of that attack and are trying to account for the secret becoming known.
I found in the court where I was to be hanged the same number of steps that there were from the kiosk to the steps of the veranda, and, as the staircase of the revolutionaries had fewer steps, I lengthened my journey a few steps by walking around a chair. Finally, I attended to the opening and closing of the doors that Matrena would have had to do. I had looked at a watch when I started.
Someone is coming up the stairs," whispered Matrena, with her keen ear, and she slipped from the restraint of her husband. Breathless, they all hurried to the door opening on the landing, but with steps as light "as though they walked on eggs." All four of them were leaning over there close by the door, hardly daring to breathe. They heard two men on the stairs.
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