Chapter 13

XIII

THE LIVING BOMBS

At random - because now he could only act at random - he returned
to the datcha. Great disorder reigned there. The guard had been
doubled. The general's friends, summoned by Trebassof, surrounded
the two poisoned sufferers and filled the house with their bustling
devotion and their protestations of affection. However, an
insignificant doctor from the common quarter of the Vasili-Ostrow,
brought by the police, reassured everybody. The police had not
found the general's household physician at home, but promised the
immediate arrival of two specialists, whom they had found instead.
In the meantime they had picked up on the way this little doctor,
who was gay and talkative as a magpie. He had enough to do looking
after Matrena Petrovna, who had been so sick that her husband,
Feodor Feodorovitch, still trembled, "for the first time in his
life," as the excellent Ivan Petrovitch said.

The reporter was astonished at not finding Natacha either in
Matrena's apartment or Feodor's. He asked Matrena where her
step-daughter was. Matrena turned a frightened face toward him.
When they were alone, she said:

"We do not know where she is. Almost as soon as you left she
disappeared, and no one has seen her since. The general has asked
for her several times. I have had to tell him Koupriane took her
with him to learn the details from her of what happened."

"She is not with Koupriane," said Rouletabille.

"Where is she? This disappearance is more than strange at the
moment we were dying, when her father - O God! Leave me, my child;
I am stifling; I am stifling."

Rouletabille called the temporary doctor and withdrew from the
chamber. He had come with the idea of inspecting the house room by
room, corner by corner, to make sure whether or not any possibility
of entrance existed that he had not noticed before, an entrance
would-be poisoners were continuing to use. But now a new fact
confronted him and overshadowed everything: the disappearance of
Natacha. How he lamented his ignorance of the Russian language
- and not one of Koupriane's men knew French. He might draw
something out of Ermolai.

Ermolai said he had seen Natacha just outside the gate for a moment,
looking up and down the road. Then he had been called to the
general, and so knew nothing further.

That was all the reporter could gather from the gestures rather than
the words of the old servant.

An additional difficulty now was that twilight drew on, and it was
impossible for the reporter to discern Natacha's foot-prints. Was
it true that the young girl had fled at such a moment, immediately
after the poisoning, before she knew whether her father and mother
were