“Ah!-you, lad!”
“‘Well?”
“Oh, nothing so quick. Still, I have already analyzed the two napkins, you know.”
“Yes? The stains? Tell me, for the love of God!”
“Well, my boy, it is arsenate of soda again.”
Rouletabille, stricken to the heart, uttered a low cry and everything seemed to dance around him. Pere Alexis in the midst of all the strange laboratory instruments seemed Satan himself, and he repulsed the kindly arms stretched forth to sustain him; in the gloom, where danced here and there the little blue flames from the crucibles, lively as flickering tongues, he believed he saw Michael Nikolaievitch’s ghost come to cry, “The arsenate of soda continues, and I am dead.” He fell against the door, which swung open, and he rolled as far as the counter, and struck his face against it. The shock, that might well have been fatal, brought him out of his intense nightmare and made him instantly himself again. He rose, jumped over the heap of boots and fol-de-rols, and leaped to the court. There Boris grabbed him by his coat. Rouletabille turned, furious:
“What do you want? You haven’t started for the Orel yet?”
“Monsieur, I am going, but I will be very grateful if you will take these things yourself to—to Natacha.” He showed him, still with despairing mien, the two ikons from Mount Athos, and Rouletabille took them from him, thrust them in his pocket, and hurried on, crying, “I understand.”
Outside, Rouletabille tried to get hold of himself, to recover his coolness a little. Was it possible that he had made a mortal error? Alas, alas, how could he doubt it now! The arsenate of soda continued. He made, a superhuman effort to ward off the horror of that, even momentarily—the death of innocent Michael Nikolaievitch—and to think of nothing except the immediate consequences, which must be carefully considered if he wished to avoid some new catastrophe. Ah, the assassin was not discouraged. And that time, what a piece of work he had tried! What a hecatomb if he had succeeded! The general, Matrena Petrovna, Natacha and Rouletabille himself (who almost regretted, so far as he was concerned, that it had not succeeded)—and Koupriane! Koupriane, who should have been there for luncheon. What a bag for the Nihilists! That was it, that was it. Rouletabille understood now why they had not hesitated to poison everybody at once: Koupriane was among them.
Michael Nikolaievitch would have been avenged!