“Bah! Gounsovski must have rendered some signal service to that imprudent prince,” concluded Athanase. “But for yourself, Thaddeus, you haven’t said what you did with Gounsovski at Bakou.”
(Rouletabille did not lose a word of what was being said around him, although he never lost sight of the profile hidden in the black mantle nor of Prince Galitch, his personal enemy,* who reappeared, it seemed to him, at a very critical moment.)
* as told in “The Lady In Black.”
“I was returning from Balakani in a drojki,” said Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff, “and I was drawing near Bakou after having seen the debris of my oil shafts that had been burned by the Tartars, when I met Gounsovski in the road, who, with two of his friends, found themselves badly off with one of the wheels of their carriage broken. I stopped. He explained to me that he had a Tartar coachman, and that this coachman having seen an Armenian on the road before him, could find nothing better to do than run full tilt into the Armenian’s equipage. He had reached over and taken the reins from him, but a wheel of the carriage was broken.” (Rouletabille quivered, because he caught a glance of communication between Prince Galitch and Natacha, who was leaning over the edge of her box.) “So I offered to take Gounsovski and his friends into my carriage, and we rode all together to Bakou after Gounsovski, who always wishes to do a service, as Athanase Georgevitch says, had warned his Tartar coachman not to finish the Armenian.” (Prince Galitch, at the moment the orchestra commenced the introductory music for Annouchka’s new number, took advantage of all eyes being turned toward the rising curtain to pass near Natacha’s seat. This time he did not look at Natacha, but Rouletabille was sure that his lips had moved as he went by her.)
Thaddeus continued: “It is necessary to explain that at Bakou my little house is one of the first before you reach the quay. I had some Armenian employees there. When arrived, what do you suppose I saw? A file of soldiers with cannon, yes, with a cannon, on my word, turned against my house and an officer saying quietly, ‘there it is. Fire!’” (Rouletabille made yet another discovery—two, three discoveries. Near by, standing back of Natacha’s seat, was a figure not unknown to the young reporter, and there, in one of the orchestra chairs, were two other men whose faces he had seen that same morning in Koupriane’s barracks. Here was where a memory for faces stood him in good stead. He saw that he was not the only person keeping close watch on Natacha.) “When I heard what the officer said,” Thaddeus went on, “I nearly dropped out of the drojki. I hurried to the police commissioner. He explained the affair promptly, and I was quick to understand. During my absence one of my Armenian employees had fired at a Tartar who was passing. For that matter, he had killed him. The governor was informed and had ordered the house to be bombarded, for an example, as had been done with several others. I found Gounsovski and told him the trouble in two words. He said it wasn’t necessary for him to interfere in the affair, that I had only to talk to the officer. ‘Give him a good present, a hundred roubles, and he will leave your house. I went back to the officer and took him aside; he said he wanted to do anything that he could for me, but that the order was positive to bombard the house. I reported his answer to Gounsovski, who told me: ‘Tell him then to turn the muzzle of the cannon the other way and bombard the building of the chemist across the way, then he can always say that he mistook which house was intended.’ I did that, and he had them turn the cannon. They bombarded the chemist’s place, and I got out of the whole thing for the hundred roubles. Gounsovski, the good fellow, may be a great lump of fat and be like an umbrella merchant, but I have always been grateful to him from the bottom of my heart, you can understand, Athanase Georgevitch.”
“What reputation has Prince Galitch at the court?” inquired Rouletabille all at once.
“Oh, oh!” laughed the others. “Since he went so openly to visit Tolstoi he doesn’t go to the court any more.”
“And—his opinions? What are his opinions?”
“Oh, the opinions of everybody are so mixed nowadays, nobody knows.”
Ivan Petrovitch said, “He passes among some people as very advanced and very much compromised.”