Finally, Koupriane’s frenzy wore itself out and he made a sign.  The men filed out in dismal silence.  Two of them remained to guard Natacha.  From outside came the sounds of a carriage from Sestroriesk ready to convey the girl to the Dungeons of Sts.  Peter and Paul.  A final gesture from the Prefect of Police and the rough bands of the two guards seized the prisoner’s frail wrists.  They hustled her along, thrust her outside, jamming her against the doorway, venting thus their anger at the reproaches of their chief.  A few seconds later the carriage departed, not to stop until the fortress was reached with the trickling tombs under the bed of the river where young girls about to die are confined — who have read too much, without entirely understanding, as Monsieur Kropotkine says.

Koupriane prepared to leave in turn.  Rouletabille stopped him.

“Excellency, I wish you to tell me why you have shown such anger to your men just now.”

“They are brute beasts,” cried the Chief of Police, quite beside himself again.  “They have made me miss the biggest catch of my life.  They threw themselves on the group two minutes too early.  Some of them fired a gun that they took for the signal and that served to warn the Nihilists.  But I will let them all rot in prison until I learn which one fired that shot.”

“You needn’t look far for that,” said Rouletabille.  “I did it.”

“You!  Then you must have gone outside the touba?”

“Yes, in order to warn them.  But still I was a little late, since you did take Natacha.”

Koupriane’s eyes blazed.

“You are their accomplice in all this,” he hurled at the reporter, “and I am going to the Tsar for permission to arrest you.”

“Hurry, then, Excellency,” replied the reporter coldly, “because the Nihilists, who also think they have a little account to settle with me, may reach me before you.”

And he saluted.

XV

“I have been waiting for you”

At the hotel a note from Gounsovski:  “Don’t forget this time to come to-morrow to have luncheon with me.  Warmest regards from Madame Gounsovski.”  Then a horrible, sleepless night, shaken with echoes of explosions and the clamor of the wounded; and the solemn shade of Pere Alexis, stretching out toward Rouletabille a phial of poison and saying, “Either Natacha or you!” Then, rising among the shades the bloody form of Michael Nikolaievitch the Innocent!

In the morning a note from the Marshal of the Court.