t kept
aloof either from prudence or dismay.

"Ah, my friend, a little of this fine smoked Hamburg beef?"

But the young man was already pouring out fresh yellow beer.

"There," said he. "Now, madame, I am listening. Tell me first about the
earliest attack."

"Now," said Matrena, "we must go to dinner."

Rouletabille looked at her wide-eyed.

"But, madame, what have I just been doing?"

Madame Matrena smiled. All these strangers were alike. Because they
had eaten some hors-d'oeuvres, some zakouskis, they imagined their host
would be satisfied. They did not know how to eat.

"We will go to the dining-room. The general is expecting you. They are
at table."

"I understand I am supposed to know him."

"Yes, you have met in Paris. It is entirely natural that in passing
through St. Petersburg you should make him a visit. You know him
very well indeed, so well that he opens his home to you. Ah, yes, my
step-daughter also"--she flushed a little--"Natacha believes that her
father knows you."

She opened the door of the drawing-room, which they had to cross in
order to reach the dining-room.

From his present position Rouletabille could see all the corners of
the drawing-room, the veranda, the garden and the entrance lodge at the
gate. In the veranda the man in the maroon frock-coat trimmed with false
astrakhan seemed still to be asleep on the sofa; in one of the corners
of the drawing-room another individual, silent and motionless as a
statue, dressed exactly the same, in a maroon frock-coat with false
astrakhan, stood with his hands behind his back seemingly struck with
general paralysis at the sight of a flaring sunset which illumined as
with a torch the golden spires of Saints Peter and Paul. And in the
garden and before the lodge three others dressed in maroon roved
like souls in pain over the lawn or back and forth at the entrance.
Rouletabille motioned to Madame Matrena, stepped back into the
sitting-room and closed the door.

"Police?" he asked.

Matrena Petrovna nodded her head and put her finger to her mouth in a
naive way, as one would caution a child to silence. Rouletabille smiled.

"How many are there?"

"Ten, relieved every six hours."

"That makes forty unknown men around your house each day."

"Not unknown," she replied. "Police."

"Yet, in spite of them, you have had the affair of the bouquet in the
general's chamber."

"No, there were only three then. It is since the affair of the bou