and wounding the policeman, disappeared. It was
still too far from dawn for them to see clearly what happened below,
where the barking of Brownings alone was heard. And there could be
nothing more sinister than the revolver-shots unaccompanied by cries in
the mists of the morning. The man, before he disappeared, had had only
time by a quick kick to throw down one of the two ladders which had been
used by the police in climbing; down the other one all the police in a
bunch, even to the wounded one, went sliding, falling, rising, running
after the shadow which fled still, discharging the Browning steadily;
other shadows rose from the river-bank, hovering in the mist. Suddenly
Koupniane's voice was heard shouting orders, calling upon his agents to
take the quarry alive or dead. From the balcony Matrena Petrovna cried
out also, like a savage, and Rouletabille tried in vain to keep her
quiet. She was delirious at the thought "The Other" might escape yet.
She fired a revolver, she also, into the group, not knowing whom she
might wound. Rouletabille grabbed her arm and as she turned on him
angrily she observed Natacha, who, leaning until she almost fell over
the balcony, her lips trembling with delirious utterance, followed as
well as she could the progress of the struggle, trying to understand
what happened below, under the trees, near the Neva, where the tumult
by now extended. Matrena Petrovna pulled her back by the arms. Then she
took her by the neck and threw her into the drawing-room in a heap. When
she had almost strangled her step-daughter, Matrena Petrovna saw that
the general was there. He appeared in the pale glimmerings of dawn like
a specter. By what miracle had Feodor Feodorovitch been able to descend
the stairs and reach there? How had it been brought about? She saw him
tremble with anger or with wretchedness under the folds of the soldier's
cape that floated about him. He demanded in a hoarse voice, "What is
it?"

Matrena Petrovna threw herself at his feet, made the orthodox sign of
the Cross, as if she wished to summon God to witness, and then, pointing
to Natacha, she denounced his daughter to her husband as she would have
pointed her out to a judge.

"The one, Feodor Feodorovitch, who has wished more than once to
assassinate you, and who this night has opened the datcha to your
assassin is your daughter."

The general held himself up by his two hands against the wall, and,
looking at Matrena and Natacha,