The Secret of the Night, Gaston Leroux [best book recommendations .TXT] 📗

“Ah, but—wait a little. What the devil! Now that I am sure I have not been mistaken and that I have been myself, Rouletabille, all the time I cling to life a little—oh, very much!”

A hostile murmur showed the condemned man that the patience of his judges was getting near its limit.

“Monsieur,” interposed the president, “we know that you do not belong to the orthodox religion; nevertheless, we will bring a priest if you wish it.”

“Yes, yes, that is it, go for the priest,” cried Rouletabille.

And he said to himself, “It is so much time gained.”

One of the revolutionaries started over to a little cabin that had been transformed into a chapel, while the rest of them looked at the reporter with a good deal less sympathy than they had been showing. If his bravado had impressed them agreeably in the trial room, they were beginning to be rather disgusted by his cries, his protestations and all the maneuvers by which he so apparently was trying to hold off the hour of his death.

But all at once Rouletabille jumped up onto the fatal stool. They believed he had decided finally to make an end of the comedy and die with dignity; but he had mounted there only to give them a discourse.

“Messieurs, understand me now. If it is true that you are not suppressing me in order to avenge Michael Nikolaievitch, then why do you hang me? Why do you inflict this odious punishment on me? Because you accuse me of causing Natacha Feodorovna’s arrest? Truly I have been awkward. Of that, and that alone, I accuse myself.”

“It was you, with your revolver, who gave the signal to Koupriane’s agents! You have done the dirty work for the police.”

Rouletabille tried vainly to protest, to explain, to say that his revolver shot, on the contrary, had saved the revolutionaries. But no one cared to listen and no one believed him.

“Here is the priest, monsieur,” said the gentleman of the Neva.

“One second! These are my last words, and I swear to you that after this I will pass the rope about my neck myself! But listen to me! Listen to me closely! Natacha Feodorovna was the most precious recruit you had, was she not?”

“A veritable treasure,” declared the president, his voice more and more impatient.

“It was a terrible blow, then,” continued the reporter, “a terrible blow for you, this arrest?”

“Terrible,” some of them ejaculated.

“Do not interrupt me! Very well, then, I am going to say this to you: ‘If I ward off this blow—if, after having been the unintentional cause of Natacha’s arrest, I have the daughter of General Trebassof set at liberty, and that within twenty-four hours,—what do you say? Would you still hang me?’”

The president, he who had the Christ-like countenance, said:

“Messieurs, Natacha Feodorovna has fallen the victim of terrible machinations whose mystery we so far have not been able to penetrate. She is accused of trying to poison her father and her step-mother, and under such conditions that it seems impossible for human reason to demonstrate the contrary. Natacha Feodorovna herself, crushed by the tragic occurrence, was not able to answer her accusers at all, and her silence has been taken for a confession of guilt. Messieurs, Natacha Feodorovna will be started for Siberia to-morrow. We can do nothing for her. Natacha Feodorovna is lost to us.”

Then, with a gesture to those who surrounded Rouletabille:

“Do your duty, messieurs.”

“Pardon, pardon. But if I do prove the innocence of Natacha? Just wait, messieurs. There is only I who can prove that innocence! You lose Natacha by killing me!”

“If you had been able to prove that innocence, monsieur, the thing would already be done. You would not have waited.”

“Pardon, pardon. It is only at this moment that I have become able to do it.”

“How is that?”

“It is because I was sick, you see—very seriously sick. That affair of Michael Nikolaievitch and the poison that still continued after he was dead simply robbed me of all my powers. Now that I am sure I have not been the means of killing an innocent man—I am Rouletabille again! It is not possible that I shall not find the way, that I shall not see through this mystery.”

The terrible voice of the Christ-like figure said monotonously:

“Do your duty, messieurs.”

“Pardon, pardon. This is of great importance to you—and the proof is that you have not yet hanged me. You were not so procrastinating with my predecessor, were you? You have listened to me because you have hoped! Very well, let me think, let me consider. Oh, the devil! I was there myself at the fatal luncheon, and I know better than anyone else all that happened there. Five minutes! I demand five minutes of you; it is not much. Five little minutes!”

These last words of the condemned man seemed to singularly influence the revolutionaries. They looked at one another in silence.

Then the president took out his watch and said:

“Five minutes. We grant them to you.”

“Put your watch here. Here on this nail. It is five minutes to seven, eh? You will give me until the hour?”

“Yes, until the hour. The watch itself will strike when the hour has come.”

“Ah, it strikes! Like the general’s watch, then. Very well, here we are.”

Then there was the curious spectacle of Rouletabille standing on the hangman’s stool, the fatal rope hanging above his head, his legs crossed, his elbow on his knees in that eternal attitude which Art has always given to human thought, his fists under his jaws, his eyes fixed—all around him, all those young men intent on his silence, not moving a muscle, turned into statues themselves that they might not disturb the statue which thought and thought.