and drew out her
hat-pins. Rouletabille watched the pin without a word. The young girl
hardly seemed aware of their presence. Entirely absorbed in strange
thoughts, she replaced the pin in her hat and went to hang it in the
veranda, which served also as vestibule. Rouletabille never quitted her
eyes. Matrena watched the reporter with a stupid glance. Natacha crossed
the drawing-room and entered her chamber by passing through her little
sitting-room, through which all entrance to her chamber had to be made.
That little room, though, had three doors. One opened into Natacha's
chamber, one into the drawing-room, and the third into the little
passage in a corner of the house where was the stairway by which the
servants passed from the kitchens to the ground-floor and the
upper floor. This passage had also a door giving directly upon the
drawing-room. It was certainly a poor arrangement for serving the
dining-room, which was on the other side of the drawing-room and behind
the veranda, such a chance laying-out of a house as one often sees in
the off-hand planning of many places in the country.

Alone again with Rouletabille, Matrena noticed that he had not lost
sight of the corner of the veranda where Natacha had hung her hat.
Beside this hat there was a toque that Ermolai had brought in. The old
servant had found it in some corner of the garden or the conservatory
where he had been. A hat-pin stuck out of that toque also.

"Whose toque is that?" asked Rouletabille. "I haven't seen it on the
head of anyone here."

"It is Natacha's," replied Matrena.

She moved toward it, but the young man held her back, went into the
veranda himself, and, without touching it, standing on tiptoe, he
examined the pin. He sank back on his heels and turned toward Matrena.
She caught a glimpse of fleeting emotion on the face of her little
friend.

"Explain to me," she said.

But he gave her a glance that frightened her, and said low:

"Go and give orders right away that dinner be served in the veranda.
All through dinner it is absolutely necessary that the door of Natacha's
sitting-room, and that of the stairway passage, and that of the veranda
giving on the drawing-room remain open all the time. Do you understand
me? As soon as you have given your orders go to the general's chamber
and do not quit the general's bedside, keep it in view. Come down to
dinner when it is announced, and do not bother yourself about anything
further."

So