Chapter 14 - Page 2

almost delirious, asking
every other minute as the hours crept on for Natacha, who had not
reappeared. That unhappy girl Rouletabille had steadily believed
innocent. Was she a culprit? "Ah, if she had only chosen to! If
she had had confidence," he cried, raising anguished hands towards
heaven, 'none of all this need have happened. No one would have
attacked and no one would ever again attack the life of Trebassof.
For I was not wrong in claiming before Koupriane that the general's
life was in my hand, and I had the right to say to him, 'Life for
life! Give me Matiew's and I will give you the general's.' And now
there has been one more fruitless attempt to kill Feodor
Feodorovitch and it is Natacha's fault - that I swear, because she
would not listen to me. And is Natacha implicated in it? 0 my God"
Rouletabille asked this vain question of the Divinity, for he
expected no more help in answering it on earth.

Natacha! Innocent or guilty, where was she? What was she doing?
to know that! To know if one were right or wrong - and if one were
wrong, to disappear, to die!

Thus the unhappy Rouletabille muttered as he walked along the bank
of the Neva, not far from the ruins of the poor datcha, where the
joyous friends of Feodor Feodorovitch would have no more good
dinners, never; so he soliloquized, his head on fire.

And, all at once, he recovered trace of the young girl, that trace
lost earlier, a trace left at her moment of flight, after the
poisoning and before the explosion. And had he not in that a
terrible coincidence? Because the poison might well have been only
in preparation for the final attack, the pretext for the tragic
arrival of the two false doctors. Natacha, Natacha, the living
mystery surrounded already by so many dead!

Not far from the ruins of the datcha Rouletabille soon made sure
that a group of people had been there the night before, coming
from the woods near-by, and returning to them. He was able to be
sure of this because the boundaries of the datcha had been guarded
by troops and police as soon as the explosion took place, under
orders to keep back the crowd that hurried to Eliaguine. He looked
attentively at the grass, the ferns, the broken and trampled twigs.
Certainly a struggle had occurred there. He could distinguish
clearly in the soft earth of a narrow glade the prints of Natacha's
two little boots among all the large footprints.

He continued his search with his heart heavier and heavier, he had
a presentiment that he was on the point of discovering a new
misfortune. The footprints passed steadily under the branches along
the side of the Neva. From a bush he picked a shred of white cloth,
and it seemed to him a veritable battle had taken place