Chapter 11 - Page 2

not receive any word
from either Natacha or Koupriane, and tried in vain to see them.
He made a trip for a few hours to Finland, going as far as Pergalovo,
an isolated town said to be frequented by the revolutionaries, then
returned, much disturbed, to his hotel, after having written a last
letter to Natacha imploring an interview. The minutes passed very
slowly for him in the hotel's vestibule, where he had seemed to have
taken up a definite residence.

Installed on a bench, he seemed to have become part of the hotel
staff, and more than one traveler took him for an interpreter.
Others thought he was an agent of the Secret Police appointed to
study the faces of those arriving and departing. What was he
waiting for, then? Was it for Annouchka to return for a luncheon
or dinner in that place that she sometimes frequented? And did he
at the same time keep watch upon Annouchka's apartments just across
the way? If that was so, he could only bewail his luck, for
Annouchka did not appear either at her apartments or the hotel, or
at the Krestowsky establishment, which had been obliged to suppress
her performance. Rouletabille naturally thought, in the latter
connection, that some vengeance by Gounsovski lay back of this,
since the head of the Secret Service could hardly forget the way he

had been treated. The reporter could see already the poor singer,
in spite of all her safeguards and the favor of the Imperial family,
on the road to the Siberian steppes or the dungeons of Schlusselbourg.

"My, what a country!" he murmured.

But his thoughts soon quit Annouchka and returned to the object of
his main preoccupation. He waited for only one thing, and for that
as soon as possible - to have a private interview with Natacha. He
had written her ten letters in two days, but they all remained
unanswered. It was an answer that he waited for so patiently in
the vestibule of the hotel - so patiently, but so nervously, so
feverishly.

When the postman entered, poor Rouletabille's heart beat rapidly.
On that answer he waited for depended the formidable part he meant
to play before quitting Russia. He had accomplished nothing up to
now, unless he could play his part in this later development.

But the letter did not come. The postman left, and the schwitzar,
after examining all the mail, made him a negative sign. Ah, the
servants who entered, and the errand-boys, how he looked at them!
But they never came for him. Finally, at six o'clock in the evening
of the second day, a man in a frock-coat, with a false astrakhan
collar, came in and handed the concierge a letter for Joseph
Rouletabille. The reporter jumped up. Before the man was out the
door he had torn open the letter and read it. The