cac on her, even when she went
to look for it."

"Young Rouletabille, I hardly breathe," said the Tsar.

"Breathe, Sire. The proof is here. Matrena Petrovna necessarily had the
ipecac on her, because after the sickness she had not the time for going
to find it. Do you understand, Sire? Between the moment when she fled
from the kiosk and when she returned there, she had not the actual time
to go to her medicine-closet to find the ipecac."

"How have you been able to compute the time?" asked the Emperor.

"Sire, the Lord God directed, Who made me admire Feodor Feodorovitch's
watch just when we went to read, and to read on the dial of that watch
two minutes to the hour, and the Lord God directed yet, Who, after the
scene of the poison, at the time Matrena returned carrying the ipecac
publicly, made the hour strike from that watch in the general's pocket.

"Two minutes. It was impossible for Matrena to have covered that
distance in two minutes. She could only have entered the deserted datcha
and left it again instantly. She had not taken the trouble to mount to
the floor above, where, she told us and repeated when she returned, the
ipecac was in the medicine-closet. She lied! And if she lied, all is
explained.

"It was the striking of a watch, Sire, with a striking apparatus and a
sound like the general's, there in the quarters of the revolutionaries,
that roused my memory and indicated to me in a second this argument of
the time.

"I got down from my gallows-scaffold, Your Majesty, to experiment on
that time-limit. Oh, nothing and nobody could have prevented my making
that experiment before I died, to prove to myself that Rouletabille had
all along been right. I had studied the grounds around the datcha enough
to be perfectly exact about the distances. I found in the court where I
was to be hanged the same number of steps that there were from the
kiosk to the steps of the veranda, and, as the staircase of the
revolutionaries had fewer steps, I lengthened my journey a few steps by
walking around a chair. Finally, I attended to the opening and closing
of the doors that Matrena would have had to do. I had looked at a watch
when I started. When I returned, Sire, and looked at the watch again, I
had taken three minutes to cover the distance--and it is not for me to
boast, but I am a little livelier than the excellent Matrena.

"Matrena had lied. Matrena had simulated the poisoning of the general.
Matrena had coolly pou