"Assassinated Ermolai!"
"I have seen his body lying in the middle of the drawing–room as I leaned over the top of the banister. But they were not in the room, and I was afraid you would run into them, for they may well be hidden in the servants' stairway."
"Then open the window, Koupriane, and call your men to deliver us."
"I am quite willing," replied Koupriane coldly, "but it is the signal for our deaths."
"Well, why do they wait so to make us die?" muttered Feodor Feodorovitch. "I find them very tedious about it, for myself. What are you doing, Ivan Petrovitch?"
The spectral figure of Ivan Petrovitch, bent beside the door of the stairway, seemed to be hearing things the others could not catch, but which frightened them so that they fled from the general's chamber in disorder. Ivan Petrovitch was close on them, his eyes almost sticking from his head, his mouth babbling:
"They are there! They are there!"
Athanase Georgevitch open a window wildly and said:
"I am going to jump."
But Thaddeus Tchitchnikofl' stopped him with a word. "For me, I shall not leave Feodor Feodorovitch."
Athanase and Ivan both felt ashamed, and trembling, but brave, they gathered round the general and said, "We will die together, we will die together. We have lived with Feodor Feodorovitch, and we will die with him."
"What are they waiting for? What are they waiting for?" grumbled the general.
Matrena Petrovna's teeth chattered. "They are waiting for us to go down," said Koupraine.
"Very well, let us do it. This thing must end," said Feodor.
"Yes, yes," they all said, for the situation was becoming intolerable; "enough of this. Go on down. Go on down. God, the Virgin and Saints Peter and Paul protect us. Let us go."
The whole group, therefore, went to the main staircase, with the movements of drunken men, fantastic waving of the arms, mouths speaking all together, saying things no one but themselves understood. Rouletabille had already hurriedly preceded them, was down the staircase, had time to throw a glance into the drawing–room, stepped over Ermolai's huge corpse, entered Natacha's sitting–room and her chamber, found all these places deserted and bounded back into the veranda at the moment the others commenced to descend the steps around Feodor Feodorovitch. The reporter's eyes searched all the dark corners and had perceived nothing suspicious when, in the veranda, he moved a chair. A shadow detached itself from it and glided under the staircase. Rouletabille cried to the group on the stairs.
"They are under the staircase!"
Then Rouletabille confronted a sight that he could never forget all his life.
At this cry, they all stopped, after an instinctive move to go back. Feodor Feodorovitch, who was still in Matrena Petrovna's arms, cried:
"Vive le Tsar!"
And then, those whom the reporter half expected to see flee, distracted, one way and another, or to throw themselves madly from the height of the steps, abandoning Feodor and Matrena, gathered themselves instead by a spontaneous movement around the general, like a guard of honor, in battle, around the flag. Koupriane marched ahead. And they insisted also upon descending the terrible steps slowly, and sang the Bodje tsara Krani, the national anthem!
With an overwhelming roar, which shocked earth and sky and the ears of Rouletabille, the entire house seemed lifted in the air; the staircase rose amid flame and smoke, and the group which sang the Bodje tsara Krani disappeared in a horrible apotheosis.
XIV
The Marshes
They ascertained the next day that there had been two explosions, almost simultaneous, one under each staircase. The two Nihilists, when they felt themselves discovered, and watched by Ermolai, had thrown themselves silently on him as he turned his back in passing them, and strangled him with a piece of twine. Then they separated each to watch one of the staircases, reasoning that Koupriane and General Trebassof would have to decide to descend.
The datcha des Iles was nothing now but a smoking ruin. But from the fact that the living bombs had exploded separately the destructive effect was diffused, and although there were numerous wounded, as in the case of the attack on the Stolypine datcha, at least no one was killed outright; that is, excepting the two Nihilists, of whom no trace could be found save a few rags.
Rouletabille had been hurled into the garden and he was glad enough to escape so, a little shaken, but without a scratch. The group composed of Feodor and his friends were strangely protected by the lightness of the datcha's construction. The iron staircase, which, so to speak, almost hung to the two floors, being barely attached at top and bottom, raised under them and then threw them off as it broke into a thousand pieces, but only after, by its very yielding, it had protected them from the first force of the bomb. They had risen from the ruins without mortal wounds. Koupriane had a hand badly burned, Athanase Georgevitch had his nose and cheeks seriously hurt, Ivan Petrovitch lost an ear; the most seriously injured was Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, both of whose legs were broken. Extraordinarily enough, the first person who appeared, rising from the midst of the wreckage, was Matrena Petrovna, still holding Feodor in her arms. She had escaped with a few burns and the general, saved again by the luck of the soldier whom Death does not want, was absolutely uninjured. Feodor gave shouts of joy. They strove to quiet him, because, after all, around him some poor wretches had been badly hurt, as well as poor Ermolai, who lay there dead. The domestics in the basement had been more seriously wounded and burned because the main force of the explosion had gone downwards; which had probably saved the personages above.
Rouletabille had been taken with the other victims to a neighboring datcha; but as soon as he had shaken himself free of that terrible nightmare he escaped from the place. He really regretted that he was not dead. These successive waves of events had swamped him; and he accused himself alone of all this disaster. With acutest anxiety he had inquired about the condition of each of "his victims." Feodor had not been wounded, but now he was almost delirious, asking every other minute as the hours crept on for Natacha, who had not reappeared. That unhappy girl Rouletabille had steadily believed innocent. Was she a culprit? "Ah, if she had only chosen to! If she had had confidence," he cried, raising anguished hands towards heaven, "none of all this need have happened. No one would have attacked and no one would ever again attack the life of Trebassof. For I was not wrong in claiming before Koupriane that the general's life was in my hand, and I had the right to say to him, 'Life for life! Give me Matiew's and I will give you the general's.' And now there has been one more fruitless attempt to kill Feodor Feodorovitch and it is Natacha's fault—that I swear, because she would not listen to me. And is Natacha implicated in it? O my God" Rouletabille asked this vain question of the Divinity, for he expected no more help in answering it on earth.
Natacha! Innocent or guilty, where was she? What was she doing? to know that! To know if one were right or wrong—and if one were wrong, to disappear, to die!
Thus the unhappy Rouletabille muttered as he walked along the bank of the Neva, not far from the ruins of the poor datcha, where the joyous friends of Feodor Feodorovitch would have no more good dinners, never; so he soliloquized, his head on fire.
And, all at once, he recovered trace of the young girl, that trace lost earlier, a trace left at her moment of flight, after the poisoning and before the explosion. And had he not in that a terrible coincidence? Because the poison might well have been only in preparation for the final attack, the pretext for the tragic arrival of the two false doctors. Natacha, Natacha, the living mystery surrounded already by so many dead!
Not far from the ruins of the datcha Rouletabille soon made sure that a group of people had been there the night before, coming from the woods near–by, and returning to them. He was able to be sure of this because the boundaries of the datcha had been guarded by troops and police as soon as the explosion took place, under orders to keep back the crowd that hurried to Eliaguine. He looked attentively at the grass, the ferns, the broken and trampled twigs. Certainly a struggle had occurred there. He could distinguish clearly in the soft earth of a narrow glade the prints of Natacha's two little boots among all the large footprints.