ith him, Excellency, it is because she is his prisoner, and that alone
will be sufficient to prove her innocence. I thank the Heaven that has
sent you here."

Koupriane swallowed a glass of vodka, poured another after it, and
finally deigned to translate his thought:

"Natacha is the friend of these precious men and we will see them
disembark hand in hand."

"Your men, then, haven't studied the traces of the struggle that 'these
precious men' have had on the banks of the Neva before they carried away
Natacha?"

"Oh, they haven't been hoodwinked. As a matter of fact, the struggle was
quite too visible not to have been done for appearances' sake. What a
child you are! Can't you see that Natacha's presence in the datcha
had become quite too dangerous for that charming young girl after the
poisoning of her father and step-mother failed and at the moment when
her comrades were preparing to send General Trebassof a pleasant little
gift of dynamite? She arranged to get away and yet to appear kidnapped.
It is too simple."

Rouletabille raised his head.

"There is something simpler still to imagine than the culpability of
Natacha. It is that Priemkof schemed to pour the poison into the flask
of vodka, saying to himself that if the poison didn't succeed at least
it would make the occasion for introducing his dynamite into the house
in the pockets of the 'doctors' that they would go to find."

Koupriane seized Rouletabille's wrist and threw some terrible words at
him, looking into the depths of his eyes:

"It was not Priemkof who poured the poison, because there was no poison
in the flask."

Rouletabille, as he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, more
startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling campaign.

If there was no poison in the flask, the poison must have been poured
directly into the glasses by a person who was in the kiosk! Now, there
were only four persons in the kiosk: the two who were poisoned and
Natacha and himself, Rouletabille. And that kiosk was so perfectly
isolated that it was impossible for any other persons than the four who
were there to pour poison upon the table.

"But it is not possible!" he cried.

"It is so possible that it is so. Pere Alexis dedared that there is no
poison in the flask, and I ought to tell you that an analysis I had
made after his bears him out. There was no poison, either, in the small
bottle you took to Pere Alexis and into which you yourself