“You will go,” said he, “and take your mattress into the corner of the dressing-room where you can still see the door but no one can see you by looking through the key-hole. Do that quite naturally, and then go to your rest. I will pass the night on the mattress, and I beg you to believe that I will be more comfortable there than on a bed of staircase wood where I spent the night last night, behind the door.”
“Yes, but you will fall asleep. I don’t wish that.”
“What are you thinking, madame?”
“I don’t wish it. I don’t wish it. I don’t wish to quit the door where the eye is. And since I’m not able to sleep, let me watch.”
He did not insist, and they crouched together on the mattress. Rouletabille was squatted like a tailor at work; but Matrena remained on all-fours, her jaw out, her eyes fixed, like a bulldog ready to spring. The minutes passed by in profound silence, broken only by the irregular breathing and puffing of the general. His face stood out pallid and tragic on the pillow; his mouth was open and, at times, the lips moved. There was fear at any moment of nightmare or his awakening. Unconsciously he threw an arm over toward the table where the glass of narcotic stood. Then he lay still again and snored lightly. The night-lamp on the mantelpiece caught queer yellow reflections from the corners of the furniture, from the gilded frame of a picture on the wall and from the phials and glasses on the table. But in all the chamber Matrena Petrovna saw nothing, thought of nothing but the brass bolt which shone there on the door. Tired of being on her knees, she shifted, her chin in her hands, her gaze steadily fixed. As time passed and nothing happened she heaved a sigh. She could not have said whether she hoped for or dreaded the coming of that something new which Rouletabille had indicated. Rouletabille felt her shiver with anguish and impatience.
As for him, he had not hoped that anything would come to pass until toward dawn, the moment, as everyone knows, when deep sleep is most apt to vanquish all watchfulness and all insomnia. And as he waited for that moment he had not budged any more than a Chinese ape or the dear little porcelain domovoi doukh in the garden. Of course it might be that it was not to happen this night.
Suddenly Matrena’s hand fell on Rouletabille’s. His imprisoned hers so firmly that she understood she was forbidden to make the least movement. And both, with necks extended, ears erect, watched like beasts, like beasts on the scent.
Yes, yes, there had been a slight noise in the lock. A key turned, softly, softly, in the lock, and then--silence; and then another little noise, a grinding sound, a slight grating of wire, above, then on the bolt; upon the bolt which shone in the subdued glow of the night-lamp. The bolt softly, very softly, slipped slowly.
Then the door was pushed slowly, so slowly. It opened.
Through the opening the shadow of an arm stretched, an arm which held in its fingers something which shone. Rouletabille felt Matrena ready to bound. He encircled her, he pressed her in his arms, he restrained her in silence, and he had a horrible fear of hearing her suddenly shout, while the arm stretched out, almost touched the pillow on the bed where the general continued to sleep a sleep of peace such as he had not known for a long time.
VII. ARSENATE OF SODA
The mysterious hand held a phial and poured the entire contents into the potion. Then the hand withdrew as it had come, slowly, prudently, slyly, and the key turned in the lock and the bolt slipped back into place.
Like a wolf, Rouletabille, warning Matrena for a last time not to budge, gained the landing-place, bounded towards the stairs, slid down the banister right to the veranda, crossed the drawing-room like a flash, and reached the little sitting-room without having jostled a single piece of furniture. He noticed nothing, saw nothing. All around was undisturbed and silent.
The first light of dawn filtered through the blinds. He was able to make out that the only closed door was the one to Natacha’s chamber. He stopped before that door, his heart beating, and listened. But no sound came to his ear. He had glided so lightly over the carpet that he was sure he had not been heard. Perhaps that door would open. He waited. In vain. It seemed to him there was nothing alive in that house except his heart. He was stifled with the horror that he glimpsed, that he almost touched, although that door remained closed. He felt along the wall in order to reach the window, and pulled aside the curtain. Window and blinds of the little room giving on the Neva were closed. The bar of iron inside was in its place. Then he went to the passage, mounted and descended the narrow servants’ stairway, looked all about, in all the rooms, feeling everywhere with silent hands, assuring himself that no lock had been tampered with. On his return to the veranda, as he raised his head, he saw at the top of the main staircase a figure wan as death, a spectral apparition amid the shadows of the passing night, who leaned toward him. It was Matrena Petrovna. She came down, silent as a phantom and he no longer recognized her voice when she demanded of him, “Where? I require that you tell me. Where?”
“I have looked everywhere,” he said, so low that Matrena had to come nearer to understand his whisper. “Everything is shut tight. And there is no one about.”
Matrena looked at Rouletabille with all the power of her eyes, as though she would discover his inmost thoughts, but his clear glance did not waver, and she saw there was nothing he wished to hide. Then Matrena pointed her finger at Natacha’s chamber.
“You have not gone in there?” she inquired.
He replied, “It is not necessary to enter there.”
“I will enter there, myself, nevertheless,” said she, and she set her teeth.
He barred her way with his arms spread out.
“If you hold the life of someone dear,” said he, “don’t go a step farther.”
“But the person is in that chamber. The person is there! It is there you will find out!” And she waved him aside with a gesture as though she were sleepwalking.
To recall her to the reality of what he had said to her and to make her understand what he desired, he had to grip her wrist in the vice of his nervous hand.
“The person is not there, perhaps,” he said, shaking his head. “Understand me now.”
But she did not understand him. She said:
“Since the person is nowhere else, the person must be there.”
But Rouletabille continued obstinately:
“No, no. Perhaps he is gone.”
“Gone! And everything locked on the inside!”
“That is not a reason,” he replied.
But she could not follow his thoughts any further. She wished absolutely to make her way into Natacha’s chamber. The obsession of that was upon her.
“If you enter there,” said he, “and if (as is most probable) you don’t find what you seek there, all is lost! And as to me, I give up the whole thing.”
She sank in a heap onto a chair.
“Don’t despair,” he murmured. “We don’t know for sure yet.”
She shook her poor old head dejectedly.
“We know that only she is here, since no one has been able to enter and since no one has been able to leave.”
That, in truth, filled her brain, prevented her from discerning in any corner of her mind the thought of Rouletabille. Then the impossible dialogue resumed.
“I repeat that we do not know but that the person has gone,” repeated the reporter, and demanded her keys.
“Foolish,” she said. “What do you want them for?”
“To search outside as we have searched inside.”
“Why, everything is locked on the inside!”
“Madame, once more, that is no reason that the person may not be outside.”
He consumed five minutes opening the door of the veranda, so many were his precautions. She watched him impatiently.
He whispered to her:
“I am going out, but don’t you lose sight of the little sitting-room. At the least movement call me; fire a revolver if you need to.”
He slipped into the garden with the same precautions for silence. From the corner that she kept to, through the doors left open, Matrena could follow all the movements of the reporter and watch Natacha’s chamber at the same time. The attitude of Rouletabille continued to confuse her beyond all expression. She watched what he did as if she thought him besotted. The dyernick on guard out in the roadway also watched the young man through the bars of the gate in consternation, as though he thought him a fool. Along the paths of beaten earth or cement which offered no chance for footprints Rouletabille hurried silently. Around him he noted that the grass of the lawn had not been trodden. And then he paid no more attention to his steps. He seemed to study attentively the rosy color in the east, breathing the delicacy of dawning morning in the Isles, amid the silence of the earth, which still slumbered.
Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been given an electric shock. As soon as he seemed to have recovered from that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path, into which he advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same fixed look that he had had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as if something or someone advised or warned him not to go further. He continually worked back toward the house, and thus he traversed all the paths that led from the villa, but in all these excursions he took pains not to place himself in the field of vision from Natacha’s window, a restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the building. To ascertain about this window he crept on all-fours up to the garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and had sufficient proof that no one had jumped out that way. Then he went to rejoin Matrena in the veranda.