“They are no longer in the drawing-room.”

“Not in the drawing-room!  Where are they, then?”

Rouletabille pointed to the door they were about to open.

“Perhaps behind that door.  Take care!”

All drew back.

“But Ermolai ought to know where they are,” exclaimed Koupriane.  “Perhaps they have gone, finding out they were discovered.”

“They have assassinated Ermolai.”

“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.