Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “Yet they don’t bother him?” inquired Rouletabille.

  “Pooh, pooh,” replied the gay Councilor of Empire, “it is rather he who tries to mix with them.”

  Thaddeus stooped down and said, “They say that he can’t be reached because of the hold he has over a certain great personage in the court, and it would be a scandal — a great scandal.”

  “Be quiet, Thaddeus,” interrupted Athanase Georgevitch, roughly. “It is easy to see that you are lately from the provinces to speak so recklessly, but if you go on this way I shall leave.”

  “Athanase Georgevitch is right; hang onto your mouth, Thaddeus,” counseled Ivan Petrovitch.

  The talkers all grew silent, for the curtain was rising. In the audience there were mysterious allusions being made to this second number of Annouchka, but no one seemed able to say what it was to be, and it was, as a matter of fact, very simple. After the whirl-wind of dances and choruses and all the splendor with which she had been accompanied the first time, Annouchka appeared as a poor Russian peasant in a scene representing the barren steppes, and very simply she sank to her knees and recited her evening prayers. Annouchka was singularly beautiful. Her aquiline nose with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of her eyebrows, her look that now was almost tender, now menacing, always unusual, her pale rounded cheeks and the entire expression of her face showed clearly the strength of new ideas, spontaneity, deep resolution and, above all, passion. The prayer was passionate. She had an admirable contralto voice which affected the audience strangely from its very first notes. She asked God for daily bread for everyone in the immense Russian land, daily bread for the flesh and for the spirit, and she stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party they belonged. And when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe and she rose and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a delirious audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused. Little Rouletabille, who, not understanding the words, nevertheless caught the spirit of that prayer, wept. Everybody wept. Ivan Petrovitch, Athanase Georgevitch, Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff were standing up, stamping their feet and clapping their hands like enthusiastic boys. The students, who could be easily distinguished by the uniform green edging they wore on their coats, uttered insensate cries. And suddenly there rose the first strains of the national hymn. There was hesitation at first, a wavering. But not for long. Those who had been dreading some counter-demonstration realized that no objection could possibly be raised to a prayer for the Tsar. All heads uncovered and the Bodje Taara Krari mounted, unanimously, toward the stars.

  Through his tears the young reporter never gave up his close watch on Natacha. She had half risen, and, sinking back, leaned on the edge of the box. She called, time and time again, a name that Rouletabille could not hear in the uproar, but that he felt sure was “Annouchka! Annouchka!” “The reckless girl,” murmured Rouletabille, and, profiting by the general excitement, he left the box without being noticed. He made his way through the crowd toward Natacha, whom he had sought futilely since morning. The audience, after clamoring in vain for a repetition of the prayer by Annouchka, commenced to disperse, and the reporter was swept along with them for a few moments. When he reached the range of boxes he saw that Natacha and the family she had been with were gone. He looked on all sides without seeing the object of his search and like a madman commenced to run through the passages, when a sudden idea struck his blood cold. He inquired where the exit for the artists was and as soon as it was pointed out, he hurried there. He was not mistaken. In the front line of the crowd that waited to see Annouchka come out he recognized Natacha, with her head enveloped in the black mantle so that none should see her face. Besides, this corner of the garden was in a half-gloom. The police barred the way; he could not approach as near Natacha as he wished. He set himself to slip like a serpent through the crowd. He was not separated from Natacha by more than four or five persons when a great jostling commenced. Annouchka was coming out. Cries rose: “Annouchka! Annouchka!” Rouletabille threw himself on his knees and on all-fours succeeded in sticking his head through into the way kept by the police for Annouchka’s passage. There, wrapped in a great red mantle, his hat on his arm, was a man Rouletabille immediately recognized. It was Prince Galitch. They were hurrying to escape the impending pressure of the crowd. But Annouchka as she passed near Natacha stopped just a second — a movement that did not escape Rouletabille — and, turning toward her said just the one word, “Caracho.” Then she passed on. Rouletabille got up and forced his way back, having once more lost Natacha. He searched for her. He ran to the carriage-way and arrived just in time to see her seated in a carriage with the Mourazoff family. The carriage started at once in the direction of the datcha des Iles. The young man remained standing there, thinking. He made a gesture as though he were ready now to let luck take its course. “In the end,” said he, “it will be better so, perhaps,” and then, to himself, “Now to supper, my boy.”

  He turned in his tracks and soon was established in the glaring light of the restaurant. Officers standing, glass in hand, were saluting from table to table and waving a thousand compliments with grace that was almost feminine.

  He heard his name called joyously, and recognized the voice of Ivan Petrovitch. The three boon companions were seated over a bottle of champagne resting in its ice-bath and were being served with tiny pates while they waited for the supper-hour, which was now near.

  Rouletabille yielded to their invitation readily enough, and accompanied them when the head-waiter informed Thaddeus that the gentlemen were desired in a private room. They went to the first floor and were ushered into a large apartment whose balcony opened on the hall of the winter-theater, empty now. But the apartment was already occupied. Before a table covered with a shining service Gounsovski did the honors.

  He received them like a servant, with his head down, an obsequious smile, and his back bent, bowing several times as each of the guests were presented to him. Athanase had described him accurately enough, a mannikin in fat. Under the vast bent brow one could hardly see his eyes, behind the blue glasses that seemed always ready to fall as he inclined too far his fat head with its timid and yet all-powerful glance. When he spoke in his falsetto voice, his chin dropped in a fold over his collar, and he had a steady gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right hand to retain the glasses from sliding down his short, thick nose.

  Behind him there was the fine, haughty silhouette of Prince Galitch. He had been invited by Annouchka, for she had consented to risk this supper only in company with three or four of her friends, officers who could not be further compromised by this affair, as they were already under the eye of the Okrana (Secret Police) despite their high birth. Gounsovski had seen them come with a sinister chuckle and had lavished upon them his marks of devotion.

  He loved Annouchka. It would have sufficed to have surprised just once the jealous glance he sent from beneath his great blue glasses when he gazed at the singer to have understood the sentiments that actuated him in the presence of the beautiful daughter of the Black Land.

  Annouchka was seated, or, rather, she lounged, Oriental fashion, on the sofa which ran along the wall behind the table. She paid attention to no one. Her attitude was forbidding, even hostile. She indifferently allowed her marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her shoulder to be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka’s success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut. “Come to supper,” Annouchka had said to her.

  “With whom?” inquired the Spanish artist.

  “With Gounsovski.”

  “Never.”

  “Do come. You will help me pay my debt and perhaps he will be useful to you as well. He is useful to everybody.”

  Decidedly Onoto did not understa
nd this country, where the worst enemies supped together.

  Rouletabille had been monopolized at once by Prince Galitch, who took him into a corner and said:

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Do I inconvenience you?” asked the boy.

  The other assumed the amused smile of the great lord.

  “While there is still time,” he said, “believe me, you ought to start, to quit this country. Haven’t you had sufficient notice?”

  “Yes,” replied the reporter. “And you can dispense with any further notice from this time on.”

  He turned his back.

  “Why, it is the little Frenchman from the Trebassof villa,” commenced the falsetto voice of Gounsovski as he pushed a seat towards the young man and begged him to sit between him and Athanase Georgevitch, who was already busy with the hors-d’oeuvres.

  “How do you do, monsieur?” said the beautiful, grave voice of Annouchka.

  Rouletabille saluted.

  “I see that I am in a country of acquaintances,” he said, without appearing disturbed.

  He addressed a lively compliment to Annouchka, who threw him a kiss.

  “Rouletabille!” cried la belle Onoto. “Why, then, he is the little fellow who solved the mystery of the Yellow Room.”

  “Himself.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “He came to save the life of General Trebassof,” sniggered Gounsovski. “He is certainly a brave little young man.”

  “The police know everything,” said Rouletabille coldly. And he asked for champagne, which he never drank.

  The champagne commenced its work. While Thaddeus and the officers told each other stories of Bakou or paid compliments to the women, Gounsovski, who was through with raillery, leaned toward Rouletabille and gave that young man fatherly counsel with great unction.

  “You have undertaken, young man, a noble task and one all the more difficult because General Trebassof is condemned not only by his enemies but still more by the ignorance of Koupriane. Understand me thoroughly: Koupriane is my friend and a man whom I esteem very highly. He is good, brave as a warrior, but I wouldn’t give a kopeck for his police. He has mixed in our affairs lately by creating his own secret police, but I don’t wish to meddle with that. It amuses us. It’s the new style, anyway; everybody wants his secret police nowadays. And yourself, young man, what, after all, are you doing here? Reporting? No. Police work? That is our business and your business. I wish you good luck, but I don’t expect it. Remember that if you need any help I will give it you willingly. I love to be of service. And I don’t wish any harm to befall you.”

  “You are very kind, monsieur,” was all Rouletabille replied, and he called again for champagne.

  Several times Gounsovski addressed remarks to Annouchka, who concerned herself with her meal and had little answer for him.

  “Do you know who applauded you the most this evening?”

  “No,” said Annouchka indifferently.

  “The daughter of General Trebassof.”

  “Yes, that is true, on my word,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.

  “Yes, yes, Natacha was there,” joined in the other friends from the datcha des Iles.

  “For me, I saw her weep,” said Rouletabille, looking at Annouchka fixedly.

  But Annouchka replied in an icy tone:

  “I do not know her.”

  “She is unlucky in having a father...” Prince Galitch commenced.

  “Prince, no politics, or let me take my leave,” clucked Gounsovski. “Your health, dear Annouchka.”

  “Your health, Gounsovski. But you have no worry about that.”

  “Why?” demanded Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff in equivocal fashion.

  “Because he is too useful to the government,” cried Ivan Petrovitch.

  “No,” replied Annouchka; “to the revolutionaries.”

  All broke out laughing. Gounsovski recovered his slipping glasses by his usual quick movement and sniggered softly, insinuatingly, like fat boiling in the pot:

  “So they say. And it is my strength.”

  “His system is excellent,” said the prince. “As he is in with everybody, everybody is in with the police, without knowing it.”

  “They say... ah, ah... they say...” (Athanase was choking over a little piece of toast that he had soaked in his soup) “they say that he has driven away all the hooligans and even all the beggars of the church of Kasan.”

  Thereupon they commenced to tell stories of the hooligans, street-thieves who since the recent political troubles had infested St. Petersburg and whom nobody, could get rid of without paying for it.

  Athanase Georgevitch said:

  “There are hooligans that ought to have existed even if they never have. One of them stopped a young girl before Varsovie station. The girl, frightened, immediately held out her purse to him, with two roubles and fifty kopecks in it. The hooligan took it all. ‘Goodness,’ cried she, ‘I have nothing now to take my train with.’ ‘How much is it?’ asked the hooligan. ‘Sixty kopecks.’ ‘Sixty kopecks! Why didn’t you say so?’ And the bandit, hanging onto the two roubles, returned the fifty-kopeck piece to the trembling child and added a ten-kopeck piece out of his own pocket.”

  “Something quite as funny happened to me two winters ago, at Moscow,” said la belle Onoto. “I had just stepped out of the door when I was stopped by a hooligan. ‘Give me twenty kopecks,’ said the hooligan. I was so frightened that I couldn’t get my purse open. ‘Quicker,’ said he. Finally I gave him twenty kopecks. ‘Now,’ said he then, ‘kiss my hand.’ And I had to kiss it, because he held his knife in the other.”

  “Oh, they are quick with their knives,” said Thaddeus. “As I was leaving Gastinidvor once I was stopped by a hooligan who stuck a huge carving-knife under my nose. ‘You can have it for a rouble and a half,’ he said. You can believe that I bought it without any haggling. And it was a very good bargain. It was worth at least three roubles. Your health, belle Onoto.”

  “I always take my revolver when I go out,” said Athanase. “It is more prudent. I say this before the police. But I would rather be arrested by the police than stabbed by the hooligans.”

  “There’s no place any more to buy revolvers,” declared Ivan Petrovitch. “All such places are closed.”

  Gounsovski settled his glasses, rubbed his fat hands and said:

  “There are some still at my locksmith’s place. The proof is that to-day in the little Kaniouche my locksmith, whose name is Smith, went into the house of the grocer at the corner and wished to sell him a revolver. It was a Browning. ‘An arm of the greatest reliability,’ he said to him, ‘which never misses fire and which works very easily.’ Having pronounced these words, the locksmith tried his revolver and lodged a ball in the grocer’s lung. The grocer is dead, but before he died he bought the revolver. ‘You are right,’ he said to the locksmith; ‘it is a terrible weapon.’ And then he died.”

  The others laughed heartily. They thought it very funny. Decidedly this great Gounsovski always had a funny story. Who would not like to be his friend? Annouchka had deigned to smile. Gounsovski, in recognition, extended his hand to her like a mendicant. The young woman touched it with the end of her fingers, as if she were placing a twenty-kopeck piece in the hand of a hooligan, and withdrew from it with disgust. Then the doors opened for the Bohemians. Their swarthy troupe soon filled the room. Every evening men and women in their native costumes came from old Derevnia, where they lived all together in a sort of ancient patriarchal community, with customs that had not changed for centuries; they scattered about in the places of pleasure, in the fashionable restaurants, where they gathered large sums, for it was a fashionable luxury to have them sing at the end of suppers, and everyone showered money on them in order not to be behind the others. They accompanied on guzlas, on castanets, on tambourines, and sang the old airs, doleful and languorous, or excitable and breathless as the flight of the earliest nomads in the beginnings of the world.

>   When they had entered, those present made place for them, and Rouletabille, who for some moments had been showing marks of fatigue and of a giddiness natural enough in a young man who isn’t in the habit of drinking the finest champagnes, profited by the diversion to get a corner of the sofa not far from Prince Galitch, who occupied the place at Annouchka’s right.

  “Look, Rouletabaille is asleep,” remarked la belle Onoto.

  “Poor boy!” said Annouchka.

  And, turning toward Gounsovski:

  “Aren’t you soon going to get him out of our way? I heard some of our brethren the other day speaking in a way that would cause pain to those who care about his health.”

  “Oh, that,” said Gounsovski, shaking his head, “is an affair I have nothing to do with. Apply to Koupriane. Your health, belle Annouchka.”

  But the Bohemians swept some opening chords for their songs, and the singers took everybody’s attention, everybody excepting Prince Galitch and Annouchka, who, half turned toward one another, exchanged some words on the edge of all this musical uproar. As for Rouletabille, he certainly must have been sleeping soundly not to have been waked by all that noise, melodious as it was. It is true that he had — apparently — drunk a good deal and, as everyone knows, in Russia drink lays out those who can’t stand it. When the Bohemians had sung three times Gounsovski made a sign that they might go to charm other ears, and slipped into the hands of the chief of the band a twenty-five rouble note. But Onoto wished to give her mite, and a regular collection commenced. Each one threw roubles into the plate held out by a little swarthy Bohemian girl with crow-black hair, carelessly combed, falling over her forehead, her eyes and her face, in so droll a fashion that one would have said the little thing was a weeping-willow soaked in ink. The plate reached Prince Galitch, who futilely searched his pockets.

  “Bah!” said he, with a lordly air, “I have no money. But here is my pocket-book; I will give it to you for a souvenir of me, Katharina.”

  Thaddeus and Athanase exclaimed at the generosity of the prince, but Annouchka said: