. "I have won,"
he said, and threw himself with a happy thrill upon the fatal scaffold.
They surrounded him, and he read the liveliest curiosity in all their
faces. Panting still from his mad rush, he asked for two words apart
with the chief of the Secret committee.

The man who had pronounced judgment and who had the bearing of Jesus
advanced, and there was a brief exchange of words between the two
young men. The others drew back and waited at a distance, in impressive
silence, the outcome of this mysterious colloquy, which certainly would
settle Rouletabille's fate.

"Messieurs," said the chief, "the young Frenchman is going to be allowed
to leave. We give him twenty-four hours to set Natacha Feodorovna free.
In twenty-four hours, if he has not succeeded, he will return here to
give himself up."

A happy murmur greeted these words. The moment their chief spoke thus,
they felt sure of Natacha's fate.

The chief added:

"As the liberation of Natacha Feodorovna will be followed, the young
Frenchman says, by that of our companion Matiew, we decide that, if
these two conditions are fulfilled, M. Joseph Rouletabille is allowed to
return in entire security to France, which he ought never to have left."

Two or three only of the group said, "That lad is playing with us; it is
not possible."

But the chief declared:

"Let the lad try. He accomplishes miracles."

XIX. THE TSAR

"I have escaped by remarkable luck," cried Rouletabille, as he found
himself, in the middle of the night, at the corner of the Katharine and
the Aptiekarski Pereoulok Canals, while the mysterious carriage which
had brought him there returned rapidly toward the Grande Ecurie. "What a
country! What a country!"

He ran a little way to the Grand Morskaia, which was near, entered the
hotel like a bomb, dragged the interpreter from his bed, demanded that
his bill be made out and that he be told the time of the next train for
Tsarskoie-Coelo. The interpreter told him that he could not have his
bill at such an hour, that he could not leave town without his passport
and that there was no train for Tsarskoie-Coelo, and Rouletabille made
an outcry that woke the whole hotel. The guests, fearing always "une
scandale," kept close to their rooms. But Monsieur le directeur came
down, trembling. When he found all that it was about he was inclined to
be peremptory, but Rouletabille, who had seen "Michael Strogoff" played,
cried, "Service of the Tsar