Chapter 3 - Page 2

man.

Matrena Petrovna did as she was told, returned to the house, spoke
to the schwitzar, who removed to the lodge with Ermolai, and their
mistress closed the outside door. She had closed long before the
door of the kitchen stair which allowed the domestics to enter the
villa from below. Down there each night the devoted gniagnia and
the faithful Ermolai watched in turn.

Within the villa, now closed, there were on the ground-floor only
Matrena herself and her step-daughter Natacha, who slept in the
chamber off the sitting-room, and, above on the first floor, the
general asleep, or who ought to be asleep if he had taken his
potion. Matrena remained in the darkness of the drawing-room,
her dark-lantern in her hand. All her nights passed thus, gliding
from door to door, from chamber to chamber, watching over the watch
of the police, not daring to stop her stealthy promenade even to
throw herself on the mattress that she had placed across the
doorway of her husband's chamber. Did she ever sleep? She herself
could hardly say. Who else could, then? A tag of sleep here and
there, over the arm of a chair, or leaning against the wall, waked
always by some noise that she heard or dreamed, some warning,
perhaps, that she alone had heard. And to-night, to-night there is
Rouletabille's alert guard to help her, and she feels a little less
the aching terror of watchfulness, until there surges back into her
mind the recollection that the police are no longer there. Was he
right, this young man? Certainly she could not deny that some way
she feels more confidence now that the police are gone. She does
not have to spend her time watching their shadows in the shadows,
searching the darkness, the arm-chairs, the sofas, to rouse them,
to appeal in low tones to all they held binding, by their own name
and the name of their father, to promise them a bonus that would
amount to something if they watched well, to count them in order to
know where they all were, and, suddenly, to throw full in their
face the ray of light from her little dark-lantern in order to be
sure, absolutely sure, that she was face to face with them, one of
the police, and not with some other, some other with an infernal
machine under his arm. Yes, she surely had less work now that she
had no longer to watch the police. And she had less fear!

She thanked the young reporter for that. Where was he? Did he
remain in the pose of a porcelain statue all this time out there
on the lawn? She peered through the lattice of the veranda shutters
and looked anxiously out into the darkened garden. Where could
he be? Was that he, down yonder, that crouching black heap with an
unlighted pipe in his mouth? No, no. That, she knew well, was the
dwarf