“What do you want? You haven’t started
for the Orel yet?”
“Monsieur, I am going, but I will be very grateful
if you will take these things yourself to —
to Natacha.” He showed him, still with
despairing mien, the two ikons from Mount Athos, and
Rouletabille took them from him, thrust them in his
pocket, and hurried on, crying, “I understand.”
Outside, Rouletabille tried to get hold of himself,
to recover his coolness a little. Was it possible
that he had made a mortal error? Alas, alas,
how could he doubt it now! The arsenate of soda
continued. He made, a superhuman effort to ward
off the horror of that, even momentarily — the
death of innocent Michael Nikolaievitch - and to think
of nothing except the immediate consequences, which
must be carefully considered if he wished to avoid
some new catastrophe. Ah, the assassin was not
discouraged. And that time, what a piece of
work he had tried! What a hecatomb if he had
succeeded! The general, Matrena Petrovna, Natacha
and Rouletabille himself (who almost regretted, so
far as he was concerned, that it had not succeeded)
— and Koupriane! Koupriane, who should
have been there for luncheon. What a bag for
the Nihilists! That was it, that was it.
Rouletabille understood now why they had not hesitated
to poison everybody at once: Koupriane was among
them.
Michael Nikolaievitch would have been avenged!
The attempt had failed this time, but what might they
not expect now! From the moment he believed
Michael Nikolaievitch no longer guilty, as he had
imagined, Rouletabille fell into a bottomless abyss.
Where should he go? After a few moments he made
the circuit of the Rotunda, which serves as the market
for this quarter and is the finest ornament of Aptiekarski-Pereoulok.
He made the circuit without knowing it, without stopping
for anything, without seeing or understanding anything.
As a broken-winded horse makes its way in the treadmill,
so he walked around with the thought that he also
was lost in a treadmill that led him nowhere.
Rouletabille was no longer Rouletabille.
THE LIVING BOMBS
At random — because now he could only act at
random — he returned to the datcha. Great
disorder reigned there. The guard had been doubled.
The general’s friends, summoned by Trebassof,
surrounded the two poisoned sufferers and filled the
house with their bustling devotion and their protestations
of affection. However, an insignificant doctor
from the common quarter of the Vasili-Ostrow, brought
by the police, reassured everybody. The police
had not found the general’s household physician
at home, but promised the immediate arrival of two
specialists, whom they had found instead. In
the meantime they had picked up on the way this little
doctor, who was gay and talkative as a magpie.
He had enough to do looking after Matrena Petrovna,
who had been so sick that her husband, Feodor Feodorovitch,
still trembled, “for the first time in his life,”
as the excellent Ivan Petrovitch said.
