"Ah, the women, the women! Now what have I done to her?""What have you done to me, wretch? Where are Belachof, Bartowsky and Strassof? And Pierre Slutch? All the comrades who swore with me to revenge my brother? Where are they? On what gallows did you have them hung? What mine have you buried them in? And still you follow your slavish task.And my friends, my other friends, the poor comrades of my artist life, the inoffensive young men who have not committed any other crime than to come to see me too often when I was lively, and who believed they could talk freely in my dressing-room - where are they? Why have they left me, one by one?
Why have they disappeared? It is you, wretch, who watched them, who spied on them, making me, I haven't any doubt, your horrible accomplice, mixing me up in your beastly work, you dog! You knew what they call me.You have known it for a long time, and you may well laugh over it.But I, I never knew until this evening; Inever learned until this evening all I owe to you.'Stool pigeon!
Stool pigeon!' I! Horror! Ah, you dog, you dog! Your mother, when you were brought into the world, your mother..." Here she hurled at him the most offensive insult that a Russian can offer a man of that race.
She trembled and sobbed with rage, spat in fury, and stood up ready to go, wrapped in her mantle like a great red flag.She was the statue of hate and vengeance.She was horrible and terrible.She was beautiful.At the final supreme insult, Gounsovski started and rose to his feet as though he had received an actual blow in the face.He did not look at Annouchka, but fixed his eyes on Prince Galitch.His finger pointed him out:
"There is the man," he hissed, "who has told you all these fine things.""Yes, it is I," said the Prince, tranquilly.
"Caracho!" barked Gounsovski, instantaneously regaining his coolness.
"Ah, yes, but you'll not touch him," clamored the spirited girl of the Black Land; "you are not strong enough for that.""I know that monsieur has many friends at court," agreed the chief of the Secret Service with an ominous calm."I 'don't wish ill to monsieur.You speak, madame, of the way some of your friends have had to be sacrificed.I hope that some day you will be better informed, and that you will understand I saved all of them I could.""Let us go," muttered Annouchka."I shall spit in his face.""Yes, all I could," replied the other, with his habitual gesture of hanging on to his glasses."And I shall continue to do so.Ipromise you not to say anything more disagreeable to the prince than as regards his little friend the Bohemian Katharina, whom he has treated so generously just now, doubtless because Boris Mourazoff pays her too little for the errands she runs each morning to the villa of Krestowsky Ostrow."At these words the Prince and Annouchka both changed countenance.
Their anger rose.Annouchka turned her head as though to arrange the folds of her cloak.Galitch contented himself with shrugging his shoulders impatiently and murmuring:
"Still some other abomination that you are concocting, monsieur, and that we don't know how to reply to."After which he bowed to the supper-party, took Annouchka's arm and had her move before him.Gounsovski bowed, almost bent in two.
When he rose he saw before him the three astounded and horrified figures of Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, Ivan Petrovitch and Athanase Georgevitch.
"Messieurs," he said to them, in a colorless voice which seemed not to belong to him, "the time has come for us to part.I need not say that we have supped as friends and that, if you wish it to be so, we can forget everything that has been said here.
The three others, frightened, at once protested their discretion.
He added, roughly this time, "Service of the Tsar," and the three stammered, "God save the Tsar!" After which he saw them to the door.When the door had closed after them, he said, "My little Annouchka, you mustn't reckon without me." He hurried toward the sofa, where Rouletabille was lying forgotten, and gave him a tap on the shoulder.
"Come, get up.Don't act as though you were asleep.Not an instant to lose.They are going to carry through the Trebassof affair this evening.
Rouletabille was already on his legs.
"Oh, monsieur," said he, "I didn't want you to tell me that.Thanks all the same, and good evening."He went out.
Gounsovski rang.A servant appeared.
"Tell them they may now open all the rooms on this corridor; I'll not hold them any longer." Thus had Gounsovski kept himself protected.
Left alone, the head of the Secret Service wiped his brow and drank a great glass of iced water which he emptied at a draught.Then he said:
"Koupriane will have his work cut out for him this evening; I wish him good luck.As to them, whatever happens, I wash my hands of them."And he rubbed his hands.
