Now it was necessary to decide on action, and that necessity was horrible.  A false movement, an awkwardness, and the “doctors” would be warned, and everything lost.  They must have the bombs under their coats; there were certainly at least two “living bombs.”  Their chests, as they breathed, must heave to and fro and their hearts beat against an impending explosion.

Above on the bedroom floor, they heard the rapid arranging of the room, steps on the floor and a confusion of voices; shadows passed across the window-space.  Koupriane rapidly interrogated Ermolai and learned that all the general’s friends were there.  The two doctors had arrived only a couple of minutes before the Prefect of Police and the reporter.  The little doctor of Vassili-Ostrow had already gone, saying there was nothing more for him to do when two such celebrated specialists had arrived.  However, in spite of their celebrity, no one had ever heard the names they gave.  Koupriane believed the little doctor was an accomplice.  The most necessary thing was to warn those in the room above.  There was immediate danger that someone would come downstairs to find the doctors and take them to the general, or that the general would come down himself to meet them.  Evidently that was what they were waiting for.  They wished to die in his arms, to make sure that this time he did not escape them!  Koupriane directed Ermolai to go into the veranda and speak in a commonplace way to them at the threshold of the drawing-room door, saying that he would go upstairs and see if he might now escort them to Madame Trebassof’s room.  Once in the room above, he could warn the others not to do anything but wait for Koupriane; then Ermolai was to come down and say to the men, “In just a moment, if you please.”

Ermolai crept back as far as the lodge, and then came quite normally up the path, letting the gravel crunch under his countrified footsteps.  He was an intelligent man, and grasped with extraordinary coolness the importance of the plan of campaign.  Easily and naturally he mounted the veranda steps, paused at the threshold of the drawing-room, made the remark he had been told to make, and went upstairs.  Koupriane and Rouletabille now watched the bedroom windows.  The flitting shadows there suddenly became motionless.  All moving about ceased; no more steps were heard, nothing.  And that sudden silence made the two “doctors” raise their faces toward the ceiling.  Then they exchanged an aroused glance.  This change in the manner of things above was dangerous.  Koupriane muttered, “The idiots!” It was such a blow for those upstairs to learn they walked over a mine ready to explode that it evidently had paralyzed their limbs.  Happily Ermolai came down almost immediately and said to the “doctors” in his very best domestic manner: 

“Just a second, messieurs, if you please.”

He did it still with utter naturalness.  And he returned to the ledge before he rejoined Koupriane and Rouletabille by way of the lawn.  Rouletabille, entirely cool, quite master of himself, as calm now as Koupriane was nervous, said to the Prefect of Police: