ssured
everybody. The police had not found the general's household physician at
home, but promised the immediate arrival of two specialists, whom they
had found instead. In the meantime they had picked up on the way this
little doctor, who was gay and talkative as a magpie. He had enough
to do looking after Matrena Petrovna, who had been so sick that her
husband, Feodor Feodorovitch, still trembled, "for the first time in his
life," as the excellent Ivan Petrovitch said.

The reporter was astonished at not finding Natacha either in Matrena's
apartment or Feodor's. He asked Matrena where her step-daughter was.
Matrena turned a frightened face toward him. When they were alone, she
said:

"We do not know where she is. Almost as soon as you left she
disappeared, and no one has seen her since. The general has asked for
her several times. I have had to tell him Koupriane took her with him to
learn the details from her of what happened."

"She is not with Koupriane," said Rouletabille.

"Where is she? This disappearance is more than strange at the moment we
were dying, when her father--O God! Leave me, my child; I am stifling; I
am stifling."

Rouletabille called the temporary doctor and withdrew from the chamber.
He had come with the idea of inspecting the house room by room, corner
by corner, to make sure whether or not any possibility of entrance
existed that he had not noticed before, an entrance would-be poisoners
were continuing to use. But now a new fact confronted him and
overshadowed everything: the disappearance of Natacha. How he lamented
his ignorance of the Russian language--and not one of Koupriane's men
knew French. He might draw something out of Ermolai.

Ermolai said he had seen Natacha just outside the gate for a moment,
looking up and down the road. Then he had been called to the general,
and so knew nothing further.

That was all the reporter could gather from the gestures rather than the
words of the old servant.

An additional difficulty now was that twilight drew on, and it was
impossible for the reporter to discern Natacha's foot-prints. Was it
true that the young girl had fled at such a moment, immediately after
the poisoning, before she knew whether her father and mother were
entirely out of danger? If Natacha were innocent, as Rouletabille still
wished to believe, such an attitude was simply incomprehensible. And the
girl could not but be aware she would increase Koupriane's suspicions.
Th