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Title: The shears of destiny

Author: Leroy Scott

Illustrator: Alexander Popini

Release date: June 10, 2024 [eBook #73803]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHEARS OF DESTINY ***



[Illustration: _Her eyes swept the room with cold hauteur_]




  The Shears of Destiny

  By
  Leroy Scott

  Author of
  “To Him That Hath,” “The Walking Delegate”

  [Illustration]

  _Illustrated by Alexander Popini_

  New York
  Doubleday, Page & Company
  1910




  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
  INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

  COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, BY THE SUCCESS COMPANY
  COPYRIGHT, 1910, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
  PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1910




CHARACTERS


  HENRY DREXEL, a young American business man.

  PRINCESS OLGA VALENKO.

  GENERAL VALENKO, her father, Military Governor of St. Petersburg.

  JOHN HOWARD, Drexel’s uncle, an American capitalist.

  MRS. HOWARD.

  ALICE HOWARD, their daughter, engaged to Prince Berloff.

  PRINCE BERLOFF, a powerful Russian nobleman.

  COUNTESS BARONOVA, a fair young widow.

  JAMES FREEMAN, an American correspondent.

  CAPTAIN NADSON, of the political police.

  THE WHITE ONE, the hidden leader of the revolutionists.

  RAZOFF,      }
  SABATOFF,    } of the revolutionists’ Central Committee
  PESTEL,      }

  IVAN,        }
  NICOLAI,     } revolutionists.

  COLONEL DELWIG, governor of the fortress-prison Sts. Peter and Paul.

  COLONEL KAVELIN, his successor.

  BORODIN, a prisoner of State.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                       PAGE

       I. THE WOMAN IN BROWN                       3

      II. CAUGHT IN THE CURRENT                   11

     III. A LONG JOURNEY THAT WAS SOON ENDED      23

      IV. THE PRISONER OF THE WHITE ONE           31

       V. THE HOUSE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT        44

      VI. THE KING AND THE BEGGAR MAID            54

     VII. CONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF A PRINCE      63

    VIII. THE PRINCESS OF HEARTS                  74

      IX. ONE WOMAN--OR TWO?                      86

       X. “YOU AND I--AGAINST THE WORLD!”         99

      XI. A BARGAIN IS RENEWED                   109

     XII. IN THE PRINCE’S STUDY                  124

    XIII. BETWEEN THREE FIRES                    135

     XIV. THE FLIGHT WITH THE COUNTESS           146

      XV. THE MAN IN THE SHEEPSKIN COAT          161

     XVI. THE WHITE ONE                          172

    XVII. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE                  180

   XVIII. FOR A BROTHER’S LIFE                   192

     XIX. THE BATTLE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT      202

      XX. THE SPY                                217

     XXI. THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAINS            227

    XXII. A VICE-CZAR DOES HIS DUTY              240

   XXIII. THE LAST CARD                          253

    XXIV. THE PRINCE PLAYS TRUMPS                268

     XXV. A DESPERATE PLAN                       277

    XXVI. THE JAWS OF DEATH                      288

   XXVII. THE GODDESS OF VENGEANCE               303

  XXVIII. THE DAY AFTER                          311

    XXIX. TO-MORROW?                             327




ILLUSTRATIONS


  Her eyes swept the room with cold
    hauteur                             _Frontispiece_

                                           FACING PAGE
  “John, dear,” she said in purest English,
    “that bothersome passport must have
    been packed among your things”                  16

  Triumph glittered in the officer’s eye. “I
    believe I have seen madame before,”
    he said                                        136

  A huge, ferocious fellow vaulted the barricade.
    He died in mid air                             212




THE SHEARS OF DESTINY




THE SHEARS OF DESTINY




CHAPTER I

THE WOMAN IN BROWN


Instead of the week Drexel had thought his business would keep him in
Moscow, two days sufficed. They were a pleasant two days, rich with
promise of future profit, and it was with regret that he settled down
in his compartment of the day express to St. Petersburg. He would have
been glad had his business denied him a little longer the company of
his aunt and his cousin Alice and the polished Prince Berloff.

Drexel gave little heed to the country through which his train shrieked
and rumbled. And there was small reason that he should, for the land
was monotonously flat, and made more monotonous by its vast blanket of
sunless snow, beneath which it had been asleep these two months and
which it would not throw aside with the awakening gesture of Spring for
three long months to come. As far as the eye could reach there was only
this gray-white, frozen desert--desolate emptiness, save where forests
of spruce and hemlock lifted their myriad whited peaks toward the
sullen sky, or a distant peasant village huddled low as if shivering
with the bitter cold.

The pictures before his inward eye were far more interesting than this
unvaried panorama unrolled by the snowbound land of his exile. He had
reserved an entire compartment that he might think uninterrupted, and
as the white miles flew behind him new visions of fortune, of power, of
position, shaped and reshaped themselves in his rapid incisive mind. He
longed impatiently to be back in Chicago--back with his uncle in the
midst of things!

Running through all his thoughts and visions was his last talk with his
uncle. That talk had risen from this very business of his coming to
Russia. While in Paris the preceding summer Alice and her mother had
met Prince Berloff, then in France on a secret diplomatic mission. He
was one of Russia’s greatest titles, Alice one of America’s greatest
fortunes, so the engagement that followed was possibly pre-ordained.
Alice’s mother had written her husband that she desired to see the
country where her daughter was to be so exalted a figure, and had
declared that they would be perfectly safe, even though smouldering
revolutions did threaten to flame forth, under the protection of so
great a nobleman as Prince Berloff. But old John Howard would not
permit their visit without a nearer escort; and since he himself could
not leave the great traction deal which then engrossed him, he had
shunted his duties upon his convenient nephew.

Drexel had rebelled. He protested against leaving the traction deal
and the other vast interests his uncle was drawing him into. And on
another ground he protested with even greater vehemence. He had thought
himself in love with his pretty cousin, and he now urged to his uncle
the ironic incongruity of the rejected suitor being compelled to escort
his inamorata about the land, and among the honours, of his successful
rival.

His uncle had put a hand upon his arm. “See here, Henry,” he said with
brusque affection, “you don’t really care for Alice, and never did
care. You just thought you did.”

“We’ll pass that. But even if I cared, you would have turned me down
just the same.” His tone was bitter, for the thing still rankled. “Of
course I realize that your sister’s son is a poor man.”

“No poorer than my son would be, if I had one, if I had died
twenty-five years ago like your father. In this marriage business, it
wasn’t that you haven’t any money. It was because your aunt--well, you
know as well as I do how keen she was about a title. But forget all
that, my lad. I like you just as if you were my own boy. And I’m proud
of you. Ten years from now, you’ll be the biggest young business man in
America!”

Drexel gave a dry laugh. “I don’t look much like that picture at
present. What have I got? Only the little my mother left me!”

And then his uncle had said the great words. “Eh, but, boy, you’re
only twenty-six; and so far you’ve just been in training! In training
to take my place when I step out. Your training is over; when you come
back from Russia, your real career begins--and a big one, too! Oh, your
fifty thousand is nothing”--he brushed it aside with a contemptuous
hand--“but you know you’re coming in for a good part of what I have and
you’re going to manage the whole pile. One of these princes may be all
right for a son-in-law, but he don’t get control of my business! The
things I’ve spent my life in building up, I’m not going to have sold,
or ruined by mismanagement. No, sir!”

The old man had brought the flat of his hand down upon the table. “See
here, Henry--forget your grouch--look me straight in the eye. That’s
right. Now, down in the bottom of your heart, don’t you know that
you’ve got the biggest business chance of any young fellow in America?”

The keen young gray eyes looked steadily into the keen old gray eyes.
“I do,” he admitted.

“And is there anything you’d like better than to control great
industries--to make millions on millions--to know that though you don’t
live in Washington you’ve got as big a say-so in running things as any
man that does?”

The young man’s face had glowed, his voice had rung with perfect
confidence. “I’m going to be all that, uncle. I feel it in me! It’s the
dream of my life!”

And it was about this great future that Drexel’s thoughts revolved as
his train roared onward across the snow. His ironic duty was all but
done. For three months he had grimly played his part, and now in two
weeks Alice would be Princess Berloff. Originally the marriage was to
have taken place in Chicago, but the disturbed state of affairs would
not permit the prince to leave his country, so it had been decided that
the wedding should be in St. Petersburg--and Mr. Howard, set free by a
business lull, was now lunging through wintry seas to be present at the
ceremony. Two more weeks, and Drexel and his uncle would be speeding
back to Chicago--back to giant affairs.

But some of his business thoughts centred here in Russia; for,
after all, his banishment from business promised to be a fortunate
misfortune. Drexel had not been in Russia two days before he had seen
the tremendous opportunities the future would offer capital in this
the most undeveloped of civilized countries. He had begun to project
great schemes--schemes to be inaugurated years hence, when the success
of the Czar or the revolutionists had given the country that stability
necessary for business enterprise. And it was characteristic of his
energy, and of the way he prepared for distant eventualities, that he
had applied himself to the study of the Russian tongue the better to
fit himself for these dim-seen Russian successes.

At Bolgoîé his meditations were interrupted by the pause of the
express for lunch. The platform was crowded with soldiers and
gendarmes, and standing about in attitudes of exaggerated indifference
were men whose furtive watchfulness betrayed them as spies of
an inferior grade. At Drexel’s table in the station dining-room
sat several officers of the gendarmerie, to whom he mechanically
listened. They were discussing the greatest of the Government’s recent
triumphs--the arrest a week before of Borodin, one of the chief
revolutionary leaders, who immediately following his seizure had been
secretly whisked away, no one knew whither save only the head of the
spy system and a few other high officials. In what prison the great
leader was held was a question all Russia was then asking.

“Ah,” exclaimed the officers, “if the same prison only held The White
One!”

That was a name to arouse even such indifferent ears as Drexel’s, for
he felt the same curiosity as did the rest of Russia concerning the
person concealed behind this famous sobriquet. The little that he knew
had served only to quicken his interest. He joined in the officers’
conversation, but they could add nothing to his meagre knowledge. The
White One was the great general who planned and directed the outbursts
from the underworld of revolution--a master of daring strategy--the
shrewdest, keenest brain in the Empire. That was all. For the rest The
White One was shrouded in complete mystery. To Russia at large The
White One was just a great, invisible, impersonal power, and to the
Czar the name most dreaded in all his realm.

Back in his compartment, Drexel renewed his eager planning, and his
mind did not again turn from business till St. Petersburg was but some
two hours ahead, and the short, dull-hued day had long since deepened
into night. He heard a voice in the corridor of his coach remark that
near the station at which the train had just paused was the great
estate of Prince Berloff. He peered through the double-glazed window
out of casual interest in the place he knew from several visits. But
he could see nothing but a long shed of a station building and a few
shaggy peasants in sheepskin coats, so as the train started up he
settled back and his brain returned to its schemes.

A few moments later he became aware that the portière at the door of
his compartment had been drawn aside. Irritated that anyone should
intrude upon the privacy he had paid high to secure himself, he looked
up. In the doorway stood a young woman, twenty-two or three perhaps,
slender but not too slender, with hair of the colour of midnight,
long black eyelashes and a smooth dark skin faintly flushed with the
cold. The eyes were of that deep clear blue that is sometimes given a
brunette. She wore a long loose fur coat of a rich dark brown, and a
cap of the same dark fur, and she carried a brown muff, and over her
wrist a leather bag.

For only an instant did she pause, with the portière in one hand.
Then without a word to Drexel, who had half risen, she entered the
compartment and took the opposite seat.




CHAPTER II

CAUGHT IN THE CURRENT


With her chin in one slender, exquisitely gloved hand, she stared out
into the flying darkness. As for Drexel, not another thought went to
America or to fortune-building. The moment he had seen that darkly
beautiful figure a thrill had gone through him and a dizzying something
that choked him had risen into his throat.

Her fixed gaze into the outward blackness gave him his chance and he
was not the man to squander it. He eyed her steadily, noticed that she
breathed quickly, as though she had hurried for the train--noticed how
white and even were the teeth between her barely parted lips--noticed
again how smooth was the texture of her skin and how like rich old
marble was its colour--noticed how finely chiselled were all her
features, how small the ear that nestled up in her dark hair. He
wondered who she was, and what. But who, or what, she was decidedly a
Russian, and decidedly the most beautiful woman he had seen in all the
Czar’s wide realm.

Once he gazed out the window, with the purpose that he might look back
upon her with the freshness of a first glance. When he turned, it was
to give a start. She was gazing straight at him. And her eyes did not
fall or turn when met by his. She continued to gaze straight into his
face, with those black-lashed blue eyes of hers, such a blue as he had
never before seen--with no overture in her look, no invitation, no whit
of coquetry--continued peering, peering, as though studying the very
fibre of his soul.

What her outward eye saw was a figure of lithe strength, built as the
man should be built who had been his university’s greatest tackle, and
a dark-mustached, square-chinned, steady-eyed face that bespoke power
and one used to recognition and authority.

Drexel met her gaze with held breath, in suspense as to what remarkable
event this remarkable look would the next minute lead to. But it led to
none. She merely turned her eyes back into the darkness.

He noticed now that she seemed a little tense, as though mastering
some emotion. But other things claimed his thoughts above this. He
wanted to speak to her--wondered if he dared; but, despite that long
direct look, despite her walking into his private compartment, he knew
she was not the woman with whom one could pick up acquaintance on a
train. He saw what was going to happen; they would ride on thus to St.
Petersburg--part without a word--never see each other again.

The train sped on. At length they neared the environs of the capital.
They stopped at a station where lay a train from St. Petersburg, then
started up again. It seemed to Drexel that her tensity was deepening.

“Pardon,” suddenly said a voice at the door.

Both Drexel and the girl looked about. There stood a big-bodied,
bearded man in the long gray coat of a captain of gendarmes.

“What is it?” Drexel curtly demanded in his broken Russian. The young
woman said nothing.

The captain entered. He had the deference which the political police
show the well-dressed and the obviously well-born, but can never spare
the poor.

“Excuse me,” said he, “I must examine madame.”

The young woman paled, but her voice rang with indignation. “What do
you mean?”

It was a distinct surprise to Drexel that her Russian was also
broken--but little better than his own.

“It is my duty, madame,” returned the officer. “I am sorry, but I must
discharge my duty.”

She rose in her superb beauty and flashed a look at the captain that
made Drexel’s heart leap, so much of fire and spirit did it reveal.

“Duty or no duty, I shall accept no indignity at your hands!” she cried.

The officer hesitated. “My orders are my orders, as madame must know.
What I do here I must do through all the train; no woman can leave
till she has been examined. But I shall go no farther than necessary.
Perhaps madame’s passport will be sufficient. That, madame knows, she
must always show upon request.”

The young woman’s indignation subsided, and she sat down and reached
for her leather bag. Drexel had been in Russia long enough to know
this searching of a train meant that something had happened. And he
knew how formidable was this officer--not in himself, but in what he
represented, what was massed behind him: a quarter of a million of
political police and spies, hundreds of prisons, Siberian exile, the
scaffold, blindfolded death from rifle volleys.

Both Drexel and the captain closely watched the young woman. She went
through the notes and few articles for the toilet in the little bag;
and then a look of annoyance came over her face. Drexel’s heart beat
high. He knew what faced the person who had no passport.

She went through the little bag again--and again found nothing.

The captain’s eyes had grown suspicious. “Well, your passport, madame!”
he cried roughly. “Or you come with me!”

Drexel knew she was in danger, and in a flash he thought of a dozen
wild things that he might do to aid her. But he thought of nothing so
wild as what next occurred.

She looked up from her bag and turned those wonderful eyes straight
into his face--and smiled! The intimate, domestic, worried smile that
a wife might give her husband.

“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport
must have been packed in among your things.”

Henry Drexel may have been unconscious for some portion of an instant.
But the captain, who had turned to him, saw never a blink, never a
falter.

“Why, perhaps it was, Mary,” said he, and he reached for his bag.

The world whizzed about him as he went through the form of searching
his suit-case; but he showed only a perplexed, annoyed face when he
looked up.

“We must have left it out altogether, Mary,” he said, speaking in
Russian for the sake of the captain.

“How provoking!” cried she, likewise in Russian.

But this play-acting, good though it was, was not enough to
counterbalance “orders.” “I’ve got nothing to do with forgotten
passports,” said the captain. He seized her arm. “You’ll have to come
with me!”

She gave Drexel a quick look. But he did not need it. Already he was on
his feet.

“Don’t you dare touch my wife!” he cried, and he furiously flung the
captain’s hand away.

The captain glared. “I’ll do what--”

“You won’t!” snapped Drexel. He pressed his chest squarely against
that of the officer. “You dare touch my wife--the wife of an American
citizen--and see what happens to you when I make my complaint! It will
be the worst mistake of your life! As for this passport business,
as soon as we get to Petersburg I shall fix it up with the chief of
police.” He pointed at the door. “Now--you leave us!”

The captain looked at the broad-shouldered young fellow, with the
determined face and the flashing eyes. Looked and hesitated, for
Drexel’s dominant bearing was not only the bearing of wrathful
innocence, but it was eloquent of power to carry out his threat.

The captain wavered, then broke. “I hope monsieur will excuse----”

“Good-bye!” said Drexel sharply.

The captain bowed and stumbled out. When Drexel turned the young woman
was breathing rapidly and her face spoke many sensations--relief,
excitement, gratitude, perhaps a glint of admiration.

She gave him that direct gaze of hers and held out her hand. “Thank
you--very much,” she said simply, in English.

“I’m afraid I was rather melodramatic,” returned Drexel, somewhat
lamely.

“You could not have done it better. Thank you.”

[Illustration: _“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that
bothersome passport must have been packed among your things”_]

They sat down and for a moment looked at each other in silence. Her
breath still came sharply. He was eager to know the meaning of all
this; he was sure she would explain; but he said nothing, leaving it
to her to speak or keep silent, as she would.

She saw his curiosity. “You are surprised?”

“I confess it.”

“I am sorry so poorly to reward what you have done. But I cannot
explain.”

He inclined his head. “As you please.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

If Drexel had thought this incident was to establish them at once in
close acquaintance, that hope soon began to suffer disappointment.
There was no lack of courtesy, of gratitude, in her manner; he was
already so far in her confidence that she dropped her mask of perfect
control, and let him see that she was palpitantly alert and fearful;
but she spoke to him no more than a bare monosyllable or two. Her
fear spread to him. Mixed with his wonderment as to who she was, and
what was this mysterious danger that menaced her, was a trembling
apprehension lest the captain, recovered from his intimidation, should
reappear in the compartment.

But the captain did not reappear, and they rode on in their strange,
strained silence. When the train drew into the Nicholayevsky Station in
St. Petersburg, Drexel started to help her from the coach. She tried to
check him, but he had her out upon the platform before she could say a
word.

She quickly held out her hand. “Good-bye,” she said hurriedly.

“Good-bye?” he cried in dismay.

“Yes. We shall not meet again.”

An icy chill swept through him. “Not meet again! Why, I had hoped that
you would let me come--”

“You cannot come,” she went on swiftly. “And you must not try to follow
me.”

That was the plan that had instantly shot into his head. “But--” he
pleaded.

“You must not!”

He hesitated.

A look from those blue eyes, straight into his own. “You will not. I
trust you.”

He bowed his head. “I shall not.”

“Good-bye--and thank you,” said she.

He gripped her hand. “Good-bye,” he said. And he gathered in his last
look of her.

But suddenly, when he thought he had lost her, her hand slipped through
his arm--slipped through it as with wifely habit--and she was saying to
him in a hurried whisper:

“Don’t look back. That gendarme captain is working this way. I think
he’s not wholly satisfied. I must at least leave with you. Come.”

Again Drexel did not blink. Instantly he was leading her along the
platform, arm in arm, with the easy manner of four or five married
years. In the open square before the station scores of bearded
drivers, swathed in blankets till they looked like bulky mummies,
were clamorously shouting, “_Isvochtchik! Isvochtchik!_” One of these
Drexel signalled. He was helping her into the little sleigh when he
saw her give a calm, steady look to some one behind him. Turning, he
saw the captain, for whom a sleigh was drawing up to the curb. Drexel
gave him a curt nod, stepped into the foot-high sleigh and drew the fur
robe about them. The driver cracked his whip and the horse sprang away.

“After a few blocks you can set me down,” she whispered.

For even that respite Drexel was grateful.

“Where shall I take my lord?” came over the driver’s shoulder.

“Up Nevsky Prospect,” Drexel ordered.

They turned into bright-lit Nevsky Prospect, thronged with flashing
sleighs, and glided without speech over the polished snow. After a few
moments she glanced back. She clutched his arm.

“He is behind us!”

He did not need to be told not to turn his head. “The captain?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he is following us?”

“Perhaps he is only taking the same direction by chance. Let us stop a
few times. That will show us.”

Drexel gave the necessary orders. They made a stop at a fruit store,
another at a confectioner’s--but when she looked back, there, at a
distance, was the captain jogging in their tracks.

“He is following--that’s certain!” she breathed.

“He is suspicious, but hesitates to do anything, and thinks it wisest
to watch us. Apparently there is no shaking him.”

Suddenly a new idea rushed into Drexel’s head. He looked down into her
face; he tried to speak steadily--tried to keep his joy out of his
voice.

“Do you remember what we told that officer--that we were husband and
wife?”

“Yes.”

“Till we can get rid of him, our only safety is in keeping up that
pretence. If we make one suspicious move he will pounce upon us. You
and I, we must stay together.”

She was silent.

“Don’t you see that?” he asked.

“Yes. But the danger to you?”

“That? That is nothing!” he cried. “Will you come with me?”

She looked steadily at him a moment.

“I will come,” she said.

For an instant he considered at what hotel there was least
danger of his being recognized. “_Isvochtchik_, to the Hotel
Metropole--straight!” he ordered.

Ten minutes later they were standing in the hotel lobby, her arm in
his, two porters industriously brushing the snow off their long fur
coats, and a gold-braided major-domo before them.

“I suppose,” said Drexel, “you have a room for myself and wife?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the bowing major-domo.

“Ah--say two rooms, with a connecting door?”

“Certainly. I will show you.”

Drexel followed, and the young woman, with perfect poise, with a grace
that made him marvel, swept up the stairway at his side. The two rooms
were large, each with a great white-tiled stove filling one corner from
floor to ceiling, with long windows looking out upon the street--and
with, between the two, the required door.

Were the rooms satisfactory? Entirely so. Would madame or monsieur
desire anything for their comfort? If they did they would order it
later.

When the major-domo and the porter who had brought up Drexel’s
suit-case were gone, and Drexel was left standing alone in the larger
room with that brilliantly beautiful creature, he was swept with a
desire that this marriage game they played--a game involving life and
death, and far, far more, for aught he knew--were not a game at all,
but a reality.

But he mastered himself. It was only a game--and he had to see the game
through to the end.

“This room will be yours,” said he.

“Very well,” said she.

He stepped to the connecting door and changed the key to her side of
the lock. She thanked him with a look.

“Perhaps you would like something to eat?” he suggested.

“Nothing.”

He wanted to remain and talk with her, yet the situation was such
that the suggestion had to come from her. He hesitated near the door,
waiting--but the invitation did not come.

“I shall put out my light,” he said, “but I shall not go to bed. If you
need me, just call. Good-night.”

Suddenly she came across the room to him, her hand outstretched, her
dark face glowing.

“Forgive me if I seem unthankful,” she said in her rich low voice. “I
am not. And forgive me because I can say so little. Perhaps the time
will come when I can tell you all, and thank you as you deserve. But
please understand that I understand, and that I appreciate, what you
have done for me, and the danger you are now incurring in being here.”

As he looked into her glowing eyes, his words burst out of their own
accord. “I would rather be here than any place else in the world!”

She flushed slightly under his gaze. “Good-night--” and she pressed his
hand.

“Good-night,” said he.

He stepped into the other room, and the next moment the key turned in
the lock.




CHAPTER III

A LONG JOURNEY THAT WAS SOON ENDED


Drexel walked to one of the long windows and gazed down into the bright
street through which those absurd-looking yet comfortable little
sleighs, the winter cabs of Russia, were still whizzing to and fro.
Less than three hours had passed since the young woman had entered
his compartment, and hardly more than a quarter since this strange
adventure had taken a new turn by sending them together to the Hotel
Metropole. Dazed, tingling, he began dimly to wonder what they would do
on the morrow, and what was to be the outcome of it all.

But his thoughts were not to be completed. He had been in the room no
more than a couple of minutes when a rap sounded at his hall door. He
opened it and there stood a hotel porter.

The porter held out a pad of paper. “Will monsieur please write his and
madame’s name for the registry?”

Drexel took the pad. She had called him John. So without hesitation
he wrote, “Mr. and Mrs. John Davis, New York, U. S. A.” As he wrote
he heard the rasping of the lock of the connecting door, and looking
about he saw that “Mrs. John Davis” had entered.

He handed back the pad. “Thank you,” said the porter. “And will
monsieur oblige us with his and madame’s passports?”

For a moment Drexel stood nonplussed. In the excitement of the last
fifteen minutes he had completely forgotten one great essential
fact--that no person can stay over night in a Russian hotel, or sleep
as a guest in a private house, without sending his passport to police
headquarters to be registered.

For the moment he knew not what to say. It was the young woman who
saved the situation. She came forward calmly.

“Our passports are in our bag,” she said in her broken Russian,
motioning to Drexel’s suit-case. “As soon as we have unpacked, monsieur
will bring down our passports in person.”

“Very well,” said the porter, and closed the door.

Drexel looked at her in dismay. “I had forgotten all about passports!”

“So had I. But I thought of them the instant you left me. I knew what
was wanted the moment I heard the knock.”

“If we only had a passport for you!”

“I had unexpectedly to turn mine over as a credential to gain admission
to--to--a certain place this afternoon. I had no time to get it back.”

“They have your passport! Can’t they trace you through that?”

She shook her head. “It was a false passport.”

“What can we do now?”

“I must leave, somehow.”

“Then I leave, too!” cried Drexel.

“I cannot let you risk yourself further.”

“You cannot prevent me!”

“But you must have guessed that that gendarme captain is not the only
man searching for me.”

“I don’t care if there are a hundred!” he cried recklessly.

She looked at him queerly a moment.

“By this time,” she remarked quietly, “I dare say there are fifty
thousand.”

“Fifty thousand!” he slowly ejaculated, and stared at her. “Then,”
cried he, “all the greater is your need for passing as an American!
They have a description of you?”

“I’m sure they cannot have a clear one.”

He began to pace the room. “What shall we do?” he asked himself. “What
shall we do?”

Suddenly he paused. “I have it. Passports are not required for
travelling on trains. Except in such rare cases as this afternoon. We
shall go upon a trip--as Americans--one lasting for days, or till we
can think of something better. If any trouble rises, I’ll bluff it out.
Are you willing?”

“It is I who should ask the question of you.”

“Then it is settled!” He was fairly swept out of himself by the
prospect of days spent in her company. The danger--that was nothing!

“But how can we leave the hotel, without its looking queer?” she asked.
“There is your bag, you know.”

“We’ll not take it. Luckily there’s nothing about it to reveal my
identity. The things in it we really need I can put in the big pockets
of my shuba,” and he pointed at his great loose fur coat. “We’ll simply
saunter out with the air of going for a stroll. A bag and anything else
we want we can buy at some little shop.”

She nodded. “And I noticed there was a side entrance, out of which we
might slip without being seen.”

“Yes. One minute, and we’ll be off!”

He slipped on his shuba, threw open the bag, stuffed his pockets, then
closed the bag again.

“Come now,” he cried, almost gaily, starting for the door.

“But wait.” He looked at her with a quizzical smile. “Don’t you think
it’s--er--rather nice for a husband and wife to know one another’s
name?”

She smiled back. “Why yes, it would be a convenience.”

“Well--?”

“You called me Mary.”

“Yes, but that--”

“My name is Mary Davis,” she said. And for all that she still smiled,
he knew he would get no other name.

“Then I’m to remain John Davis, I suppose. But in my case there’s no
reason you should not know my real name. It’s Henry Drexel.”

At his name the smile faded from her face, and one hand slowly reached
out and caught the back of a chair.

“Henry Drexel!” she breathed.

“You seem to know it.”

“You are--ah--the American who has been here as the guest of Prince
Berloff? Whose cousin is going to marry the prince?”

“Yes.”

She was quite calm again. “Yes, I have heard of you. That’s only
natural, for the marriage has been much talked about. Shall we start?”

They were at the door, when she stopped him with a hand upon his arm.

“Something just occurs to me. Would it not be wiser to learn about the
trains before we leave? We can better regulate our actions then.”

“Of course. I should have thought of that. I can make inquiries down at
the hotel office--as though I were finding out in advance about trains
for to-morrow or the next day.” He laid aside his cap and coat. “I’ll
be back immediately.”

It was perhaps a dozen minutes since Drexel had entered the hotel. He
strolled coolly enough down the stairway, but, the lobby gained, it was
only with an effort that he maintained his calm exterior. Near the desk
where he could see all who went and came, was the burly captain of
gendarmes, his bearded face still ruddy with the outer cold. Reciting
some story to him stood the major-domo. Upon the instant Drexel had to
alter his plans.

“Pardon me,” he said to the major-domo, giving the captain a short nod.

“Yes, monsieur.” The major-domo turned to him.

“Through some oversight my wife’s passport was left behind when we
threw a few things together to run up here for a day. I suppose if I
make explanations directly to the police department, there will be no
trouble. I am quite willing to pay.”

“It can be arranged, monsieur.”

“I am tired and do not feel inclined to go out,” he went on with
haughty indolence. “Would you please, when you get time, get the proper
official on the telephone, explain, and ask him to come here? My wife
is resting now; let him come in an hour. You can say to him that it
will be worth his trouble.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said the major-domo, who surmised this rich
American would also make it worth his own trouble. “Anything else,
monsieur?”

“Send me the head waiter.”

A porter went scurrying for that functionary. Drexel half turned away,
and the major-domo resumed his recital to the captain.

“The report says, Captain Nadson, that the woman gained admittance on
the pretext of having an engagement. The servants could not clearly
make out her face, for the light was dim and she was veiled; but her
dress and manner made them believe her a lady of importance, and they
told her to wait.” Drexel pricked up his ears. “It is certain she knew
he was away, and chose her time accordingly, and it is certain she must
have known the house well, for she slipped into his study and got into
his private papers. When Prince Berloff--”

“Prince Berloff!” exclaimed Drexel. He saw Captain Nadson give him a
sharp look. Instantly he was under control. “He came in and found her?”
he queried casually.

“Yes,” said the major-domo. “But she fired two shots at him.”

“Kill him?” Drexel nonchalantly asked.

“No. She did not even touch him. And in the hubbub, she got away. The
report says it was probably a plot of The White One.”

“The White One!” A shiver crept through Drexel at that dread name.

“The White One--yes,” nodded the major-domo. “Obviously a scheme to
get some State papers which were temporarily in Prince Berloff’s
possession. But the young woman failed. I wonder if they’ll capture
her?”

“I wonder,” Drexel repeated indifferently.

To the head waiter, who just then appeared, he gave an order for an
elaborate supper that would be a good hour in preparing. Then he
casually inquired about the trains for the morrow, and learned that he
could get a train for the south of Russia in half an hour.

All the while Drexel had kept Captain Nadson in the corner of his eye.
He perceived that his cool front had had its effect; the officer was
half reassured, and plainly was afraid to take any immediate action
lest it might prove a mistake disastrous to himself. Drexel nodded
curtly at the captain and walked away, feeling that suspicion was
rendered inactive till the police official should arrive upon the
business of the passport. By that time they would be miles out of St.
Petersburg.

As he sauntered up the stairway he wore the same cool, careless
front; but within him was turmoil. How about the story the major-domo
had told? But that, even were it true, that was nothing! The great
thing, the only thing, was that for days he was to be constantly near
the wonderful woman awaiting him above. It went through him with a
thrilling sweep; and it was with a tense eagerness such as he never
before had felt that he threw open the door.

But she was not in the room where he had left her. Nor in the other
room. He rushed from one to the other, looking even into the closets.
There was no doubt of it. She was gone.




CHAPTER IV

THE PRISONER OF THE WHITE ONE


As Drexel realized that she was gone, a pang of dizzy agony shot
him through. What his uncle had said about his liking for Alice
was perfectly true; it had been but a boy-and-girl affair at its
best, never warmed by the least fervour; and it had been weakly,
sentimentally cherished by him only because no true love had ever come
to show him what thin moonshine stuff it was. But this was different--a
thousand times different! The danger he had stood in, mortal danger
perhaps, had been nothing to him in his anticipation of days of
companionship with her. That he had seen her for the first time but
three hours before, that she was an unknown personage to him, that she
was hunted by the police, that the report said she had tried to shoot
his cousin-to-be, Prince Berloff--these things counted also as nothing.

Shrewd, cool-headed, imperturbable, with such an eye for the main
chance as insured his getting it--thus was Drexel already widely known
in Chicago. His uncle had more than once remarked to him in his blunt
fashion, “Henry, you’ll never let your heart boss your brain cells!”

And yet this was exactly what his heart was doing. He was wildly,
recklessly in love!

From the first he realised she must have gone wholly of her own
accord--slipped out by the second staircase--and slipped out, to
face alone what dangers? And why had she gone? This puzzled him for
several moments, for she had seemed glad of the refuge offered by the
plan of travelling as his wife. Then suddenly he bethought him of the
instant-long change in her manner when he had told her his name, and
the truth flashed home. She was afraid of Henry Drexel, and her sending
him down to inquire about the train was but a ruse to give her a chance
to escape him.

Why she should hold him in equal fear with the police and throw away
the aid he was so eager to give, was a mystery his excited mind did not
even try to solve. It was plain she did not want to see him, yet his
sudden, overmastering love, made reckless by his loss of her, roused in
him one resistless impulse--to try to find her again. What he should do
when she was found he did not pause to consider.

Putting on his big overcoat and fur cap, and assuming his best air
of composure, he sallied forth into the hall and descended the minor
stairway that led to the side entrance. That he knows he is on a
wild-goose chase, is no check to the search of a frantic man. Every
bit of sense told Drexel he would not find her he sought, yet he
cautiously glanced into such side-street shops as were still open; he
scrutinised each woman who hurried through the bitter cold on foot and
the robe-buried occupants of the tiny whizzing sleighs; he watched each
prowling group of gendarmes to see if they held her in their midst;
he peered in at the doors of cafes--into poor ones where only tea was
drunk--into rich ones, dazzlingly bright, where jewelled gowns and
brilliant uniforms were feasting on Europe’s richest foods and wines.
But it was as his sense had foretold. No sight of her was anywhere.

Toward midnight the thought came to him that it was barely possible she
had left the hotel for but a moment, and that she had returned and was
perhaps in distress because of his desertion. He turned back toward
the Metropole. But as he drew near it, his steps slowed. He remembered
the dinner he had ordered, the police official he had sent for; both
had doubtless arrived long since and found him gone. The danger ahead
cleared his mind, and, going hesitatingly forward, he was pondering
whether he should risk himself anew on so slight a chance of giving
aid, when the matter was decided in a wholly unexpected manner.

As he was passing a street lamp, a young fellow with a few papers
under his arm stepped before him. “Buy a paper, Your Excellency,” he
snuffled, shooting a keen upward glance at Drexel.

“Don’t want any,” Drexel curtly returned, and pushed by him.

“Mr. Drexel?” the young fellow called in a cautious voice.

Startled, Drexel pivoted about. His interceptor was perhaps nineteen or
twenty, squat of build and very poorly dressed.

“See here--what do you want?”

“Don’t go back to the Metropole.”

“Why?”

“You’ll be arrested.”

This warning might be intended as a service, and again it might be a
new trap. “How do you know?” Drexel asked suspiciously.

“I, and others, have been on the watch for two hours.”

“What for?”

“To warn you. We were afraid you might not understand your danger and
might try to come back.”

Drexel stepped nearer. “What do you know about this?”

“That you went to the Hotel Metropole with a girl, as your wife--that
she ran away--that you went out to hunt her--that the disappearance of
you both has aroused the police.”

Drexel stared, and in the dim light he could see that the shivering
ragamuffin was grinning at his mystification. Was there some link
between this lad and the young woman?

“What do you want?”

“I want you to come with me.”

“Go with you!”

“Yes. A description of you has gone to all the police. Everywhere they
are looking for you. You are safe only if you come with me.”

The young fellow certainly did know a lot; but when Drexel looked over
his poor five feet four inches, and thought of him as a protector, his
suspicion was all alive. He was in one danger, no doubt--but it would
be foolishness to let himself be duped into another.

“I’m not so certain I want to go with you. Who told you to do this?”

“A woman.”

“A woman! Do--do I know her?”

“You do.”

The chance to find the young woman swept for the moment all suspicious
fear aside. “Will I see her?”

“Maybe.” The young fellow grinned and winked. “I’ll ask Mary Davis.”

“Come on!” cried Drexel.

With the young fellow leading the way they worked about in a
semi-circle, that had the hotel as its centre, till at length his guide
thrust Drexel into a dark doorway.

“Wait here, while I get my comrade; he was watching the other entrance
of the hotel,” he said, and disappeared.

Two minutes later he was back, with him a slender figure of medium
height. “This is Nicolai; my name’s Ivan,” whispered the young fellow.
He threw his newspapers into the blackness of the doorway. “Come
on--we must hurry.”

They walked rapidly through by-streets, Ivan chattering in a low voice
all the time, calling Nicolai “comrade” whenever he addressed him.
Drexel took close notice of his two conductors by the light of the
infrequent gas lamps. The one called Nicolai was pale, with regular
and refined features and a soft, thin, boyish beard; he was silent,
but there was a set to his face that made Drexel feel that though Ivan
talked the more, he did not dominate the pair. Compared to Nicolai,
Ivan was something of a grotesque. He was pock-marked, his large ears
stood flappingly out, his mouth was wide and lopsided and showed very
brown and jagged teeth; his hair was light and close-cropped, and he
had no more eyebrows than if his forehead had just been soaped and
razored. His eyes were small and had a snapping brightness, and they
flashed in all directions, watching always for policemen or squads of
man-hunting gendarmes, seeing a spy in that shifty-eyed cabman waiting
for a fare, or that little shopkeeper who at this late hour had not yet
put up his shutters.

They crossed the broad and frozen Neva and zigzagged through obscure
and narrow streets. Presently they passed through a gateway and crossed
a cobble-paved court with houses vaguely outlining its sides. At a
door at the court’s farther end Nicolai gave three low raps; the door
opened, they slipped quickly in, and it closed and locked behind them.

A lighted candle revealed a big brown-bearded man, who gave Drexel a
searching look. “All’s well, I see,” he said.

“Yes,” said Ivan.

The man silently turned over the candle to Nicolai and disappeared.
“Who is he?” Drexel asked, as they mounted a flight of stairs.

“The keeper of this boarding-house,” answered Ivan.

Nicolai unlocked a door. They entered and crossed to another door,
Drexel seeing nothing of the room save that it was almost bare.
This second door entered and locked behind them, and an oil lamp
with blackened chimney lighted, Drexel found himself in a square,
low-ceilinged room furnished with a hunchbacked couch on one side, a
bed of dubious comfort on the other, a wooden table in the centre with
a battered and tarnished brass samovar upon it, three chairs--and that
was all.

“Here we are at last,” said Ivan, rubbing his cold bare hands. “Now for
a bite to eat. I’ll fix the samovar, comrade. Mr. Drexel, sit down.”

“But,” said Drexel, “I thought you were going to bring me to--to--Mary
Davis.”

“It’s not time for her to come yet,” returned Ivan. “You’ll have to
wait.”

It occurred to Drexel that this was a strange place to meet such a
woman, but he brushed the thought aside. Afire with eagerness as he
was, he realised that there was nothing for him but to command such
patience as he could. So he took one of the rickety chairs and watched
Ivan start the charcoal going in the samovar, and Nicolai take paper
bags from the sill of the one window and from these bags take big sour
pickles, a loaf of black bread and a roll of sausage, which last two he
proceeded to slice. Presently the tea was brewed, and Drexel was asked
to draw his chair to the table.

In all his life Drexel had never tasted such uninviting fare. “I’m not
hungry, thank you,” he said.

But the sharp eyes of Ivan read him. “Hah! Bring out the caviar and the
champagne, comrade. What nine-tenths of the world eats always is too
poor for the rich American to eat once!”

“Is it!” said Drexel. He pulled his chair forward, seized a chunk of
the sausage and a slab of the black bread, and filled his mouth with a
huge bite from each.

Ivan clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s right!” said he, through his
gag of bread and meat. “Either I like a man, or I want to fight him.
Come--let’s be friends while we’re together!”

Drexel smiled amusedly at the bristling, excited little fellow, and
took the outstretched hand. “All right. Since you know who I am, you
might tell me who you are.”

“You already know we’re revolutionists,” said Ivan in his rapid,
choppy way. “We’re fighters for freedom--hey, comrade? Down with
Autocracy!--on come that glorious day when there’ll be a chance for
every man! Hey, comrade?”

Nicolai nodded.

“But,” said Drexel, “that doesn’t tell me who you are personally.”

“Ah, you want to be introduced!” Ivan sprang up, a hunk of bread in
one hand and of sausage in the other, and his little eyes gleamed with
a wild, humorous twinkle. “Allow me to present myself”--he bowed low,
the hand with the sausage to his heart--“Ivan, the son of I don’t know
who, cradled in the gutter, rocked to sleep on the toe of a policeman’s
boot, schooled with the dogs, my income the luxurious sum of 60 kopeks
a day drawn from my stock in a lace factory. Glad to meet me, hey?”

He grinned lopsidedly at Drexel. “That’s me,” he nodded. “But with
Nicolai”--his sausaged hand made a wave toward his comrade--“it’s
another story. He’s educated--he was rich--he--but tell him, comrade.”

“Do,” urged Drexel.

“Very well,” said the other with his quiet shrug; “but it’s little
more than Ivan’s story. My parents were well-to-do, yes--but very
conservative. While I was in the gymnasium preparing for the
university, all the country became excited about gaining freedom. I was
loyal enough to the Czar at that time, for I was only seventeen and had
been shielded by my parents from liberal opinions. But I was caught by
the general spirit and took part in a meeting of the students to demand
a constitution. Several of us were arrested and exiled to Siberia.”

“Been sent to Siberia! Think of that!” cried Ivan proudly, and half
envious of the distinction of his friend. Then his tone changed to
fierce hatred. “Think of exiling a schoolboy--and for that!” His brown
teeth clenched.

“But it did me good,” went on Nicolai’s quiet voice. “I wasn’t a
revolutionist before, but that made me one. After six months I managed
to escape, and came back, and----”

“And then we met each other,” broke in Ivan. “And ever since we’ve been
brothers. Hey, comrade?” And in an instant he was skipping nimbly about
the table patting Nicolai affectionately on the shoulder. But the next
instant he was talking again to Drexel. “We’re always together, we two,
both lace-makers--The Inséparables they call us. Oh, and what a lot he
knows! Me, I only know this!”

Instantly he had whipped out a big pistol and was flourishing it in the
air. “That’s the only argument that will ever win us liberty”--lovingly
patting the black chamber of the weapon. “The Duma--bah! We’ve got to
fight--to die!”

The pocked-marked little fellow began excitedly to pace the low room, a
chunk of sausage in one hand, the pistol in the other. Nicolai quietly
filled himself another glass of tea. Now that there was no speech for
a few moments the purpose of his being here came again to the fore of
Drexel’s mind. He looked at his watch.

“It’s one o’clock,” he said. “Are you sure she is coming?”

Ivan glanced at Nicolai. “You must have patience,” answered Nicolai.

Drexel’s burning curiosity could not refrain from a question concerning
this woman that he loved. “You know her?”

Both nodded.

“Do you mind telling me about her--anything, that is, you don’t object
to telling?”

“I don’t object to telling you everything we know,” said Nicolai. “We
are comrades. We have met a few times. As for her personality, you know
that as well as we do. That is all.”

“All!” exclaimed Drexel in disappointment. But he saw that Nicolai was
speaking the truth. The story he had heard the major-domo tell came
back to his mind. “Then you do not know what her mission was?”

“No. We are only privates. We obey the orders that are given us.”

“Then she is something more than a private?”

Nicolai nodded.

Time ticked on. Drexel became restless with the suspense of waiting;
then his first thought on entering the shabby room, that this was
a strange place to meet such a woman, began to grow into a vague
suspicion.

There was a little intermittent talk. More time dragged on. He grew
more restless and suspicious. At length he rose and drew on his coat.
Instinctively his hand slipped into one of the coat’s outside pockets
and gripped the pistol there.

“I think I’ll walk around a bit,” he said.

“Better not,” advised the quiet voice of Nicolai. “You know the police
are looking for you.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid.” The thought rose that, once out of here, his
wisest course would be to make a quick dash for the Hotel Europe where
were staying his aunt and cousin. Once there, the police would never
suspect the relative-to-be of Prince Berloff, and in no danger from
them he could continue his search for the young woman. “She may be here
when I get back,” he added easily to Nicolai, and turned toward the
door.

“Ivan!” snapped out the voice of Nicolai.

But Ivan was already at the door, his back against it, and pointing at
Drexel was Ivan’s big revolver.

Drexel started to jerk out his own pistol.

“Move that hand, and he’ll shoot!” said the sharp voice of Nicolai.

“Oh, I know when a man has the drop on me,” said Drexel. “What do you
want?”

“First, your pistol,” said Nicolai, and himself took it from Drexel’s
overcoat pocket.

When Ivan saw the black compact weapon, his eyes shone enviously. “A
Browning!” he cried. “What a beauty!”

“What does this mean?” demanded Drexel.

“That you are going to stay here,” said Nicolai.

“A prisoner?”

“A prisoner.”

“What for?”

“That we were not told when the order was given us,” said Nicolai.

“Then I am being held at some one’s order?” demanded Drexel.

“Yes.”

“By whose order?”

“By the order of The White One,” said Nicolai.




CHAPTER V

THE HOUSE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT


“By order of The White One!” Drexel repeated--and the name of that
great, impersonal, hidden leader went through him with a thrill of awed
consternation. This was a serious situation indeed! He looked from the
quiet, tense Nicolai, to the gleaming-eyed, alert Ivan.

“So I am the prisoner of The White One?”

They nodded.

“But why? What have I done?”

“I have already said we do not know,” returned Nicolai. “We have merely
done what we were told.”

Drexel’s poise began to return to him. He took off his shuba and tossed
it upon the crookbacked couch.

“All right, boys,” he said drily. “Just as you say. It’s a rule of my
life to be obliging to the man who’s got the drop on me.”

“Will you be quiet, or”--Nicolai motioned toward a few pieces of rope
in a corner.

“Oh, I’ll be quiet--for the present.” He sat down. “By the way--who is
this White One?”

“We do not know,” said Nicolai. “We have never seen him. Our orders
came through a second person.”

Ivan moved from the door across to Nicolai, begged Drexel’s Browning
pistol with a mute look, and gave in exchange the big revolver. “That
was really Nicolai’s, but he let me carry it,” he explained to Drexel.
He patted the black, fearsome weapon, his face glowing on Nicolai. “Ah,
comrade, what a beauty!”

Suddenly Drexel leaned back and roared with laughter. That he should
on the one hand be searched for by the police, and on the other hand
be held prisoner by the revolutionists--the absurdity of the situation
was too much for him. And the situation seemed all the more absurd
as he considered the personality of his captors--two starveling,
threadbare lads. Yet even as he laughed he did not forget the grimness
of his state--the prey of both contending parties. And ere his humour
had subsided, he was beginning to rate his guards a little higher;
for Ivan, hunched up on the floor with his back to the door, Drexel’s
weapon on his knees, was as watchful as a terrier, and there was a high
and purposeful determination in Nicolai’s pale face that could but
command respect.

It was a quality of Drexel’s, one of the several on which his uncle
based his predictions of his nephew’s business success, that when in a
plight where he could not help himself, he could easily throw off all
strength-exhausting thought and worry. He now stretched himself on the
sofa, whose bones all painfully protruded through its starved skin, and
drew his coat over him. “You fellows can make a night of it if you want
to, but I’m going to sleep,” said he, and a few minutes later he was
peacefully unconscious.

When he awoke the niggardly light of a leaden-hued Russian morning was
creeping through the single window. For a time he walked restlessly
up and down the room. Then he paused before the double-glazed window,
which was curtained at the bottom, and looked out.

“You see the pavement is of cobblestones, so to jump would be
dangerous,” commented the quiet voice of Nicolai.

Drexel glanced back. “Huh!” he grunted. But all the same he was
startled at the keenness with which Nicolai had read his mind.

“Besides,” Nicolai went on, “the windows are screwed down. And even if
you burst them and got safely to the ground you would only be arrested
by the police.”

Drexel shrugged his shoulders and continued gazing out into the court.
It was a dreary enough area, with a few snow-capped houses huddling
frozenly about it, its monotony relieved only by a little stuccoed
church adjoining, with five dingy blue domes spangled with stars of
weather-worn gilt--five tarnished counterfeits of heaven. Ivan, who
had come to his side, volunteered that it was called The Church of
the Three Saints, and that this court, by virtue of its adjacency, was
known as Three Saints’ Court.

Drexel resumed his pacing of the room. “This is a pretty stupid party
you have invited me to,” he yawned at length--whereupon Ivan got out
an old deck of cards, remarking that they never had time to play these
days, and proceeded to teach him sixty-six, Nicolai keeping a steady
eye on them all the while. The game was too simple to be of much
interest, but what with it, and eating, and more chatter from Ivan,
the short dim day faded into sullen dusk, then deepened into the long
northern night.

Around eight o’clock footsteps were heard in the adjoining room.
Presently there was a knock and on Ivan opening the door there entered
two men, one about thirty and the other possibly forty, in caps,
high boots and belted blouses beneath their coats. Despite their
workingmen’s dress, Drexel could tell by the deference given them by
his guards (though they all called one another “comrade”) that they
were not what their clothes pronounced them. The older might be a
doctor, or a lawyer, or a professor. They informed Ivan and Nicolai
that there would be a little meeting in the next room, and that they
might have a couple of hours off duty. The two lads went out, and after
them the two men, and locked the door behind them.

By this time Drexel had guessed that this place, which hid from the
police behind the mask of a workingmen’s boarding-house, was in
reality a conspirative headquarters of the revolutionists. His first
thought, on being left alone, was of escape. But after a little
thinking he realised that what Nicolai had said of the window was quite
true, that his only avenue of escape was through the next room, and
that he was quite as securely guarded as if the men were in this room
beside him.

He was wondering what all this strange business was about, grimly
smiling at the situation in which he found himself, when the sound of
low voices in the next room set him on a new train of thought. Perhaps
in that talk he might learn something that would explain the mystery,
and would aid his escape.

The nicest etiquette could hardly require that a prisoner of war should
not eavesdrop upon his captors. He put out his oil lamp for a moment.
From over the top of the door a thin knife’s edge of light cut into
his darkness. He lit his lamp, drew a chair noiselessly to the door,
and got upon it. Yes, fortunately for him, the house was old, the door
sagged, and he had a very sufficient crack. At the table, on which
stood a single candle, the room’s only light, sat the two men, and, her
back to him, a woman of whom he could see nothing but that she wore
the shapeless, quilted jacket, and the brown, coarse-knit shawl wound
tightly about her head, which he had grown accustomed to seeing on
workingwomen.

“What time was the American coming?” the woman whispered.

“At about nine, Sonya,” one of the men replied.

Their voices as they went on were low--so low that Drexel caught only
fragments of sentences amid blanks of hushed unintelligibility. But
from these fragments he pieced together two series of facts. First,
that the revolutionists he had met, and hundreds of others, guided by
the brain of the great invisible White One, were trying to learn in
what prison Borodin was confined, as the first step in an endeavour to
bring about his escape. His capture was a paralyzing blow to freedom’s
cause, for he was the revolutionists’ greatest statesman; his brain
was needed now, and, once the Autocracy was overthrown, there was none
who could rebuild as he. Thus far the Government knew him only as
Borodin, and the charge on which he was arrested, writing revolutionary
articles, would mean no worse than a few years in prison or exile
to Siberia; but at any moment the Government might discover that he
was also Borski, the sought-after leader of the uprising in Southern
Russia, and this discovery would be followed by instant execution. So
immediate rescue was imperatively necessary.

Second, the young woman of his last night’s adventure had made the bold
attempt in Prince Berloff’s house because it was believed the prince
had in his possession some document revealing Borodin’s whereabouts.

Presently there was a knock at the outer door. “That must be the
American,” said one of the men.

Drexel could hardly restrain an exclamation of surprise as the door
opened and his eyes lighted upon the newcomer. For this third man in
workingman’s clothes he knew. He was an American correspondent, James
Freeman, whom Drexel had met several times in St. Petersburg cafés.
He was a rather tall, black-bearded man of thirty-five, with a lean
suppleness of body, piercing black eyes and a daring face. Drexel had
always felt an uncanny shrinking when in company with Freeman, so cold,
sinister and cynical did he seem; here was a man, his instinct told
him, who respected nothing, who feared neither God, nor man, nor devil.

Freeman apparently knew the two men well, and after being introduced to
the woman, he sat down. “We received your word that you had something
to propose,” began the older of the men. “We are ready to hear what it
is.”

“You know me, Dr. Razoff, and you can guess its nature.” Drexel could
see the correspondent’s black eyes glitter.

“If it is one of your terroristic plans, you could have saved us all
the trouble of this meeting,” returned Razoff. “You know we do not
approve of such action.”

“And that’s one reason you have not succeeded better! The only way
you can move these despots is by fear. Fear of immediate and awful
annihilation! Blow enough of them up, and you can’t get a man bold
enough to hold office. Then the Government is yours!”

“You have been directing terroristic plots for two years; you are the
most implacable terrorist----”

“And the most successful,” put in Freeman.

“And the most successful that Russia has known. And what have you
gained?”

“Ah, but what am I, and the few that gather around me, and the few
executions that we carry out, among a myriad of despots? Let there be a
thousand terroristic groups, and then you shall see!”

Razoff shook his head. “But since we are here, we might as well hear
what you have to propose.”

“They have Borodin, and most likely we cannot free him. Well--make
them afraid to arrest another leader. An eye for an eye--a leader for
a leader. They have removed one of our men; as a lesson, let us remove
one of theirs.”

“Which one?”

“The highest possible. The Czar himself, if the coward had not
imprisoned himself in his palace and surrounded himself with an army.
Since not the Czar, then his highest representative in St. Petersburg.
Let’s kill the military governor.”

“Kill Prince Valenko!” the three ejaculated together.

“Aye, Prince Valenko, the very arch-foe of freedom!” cried the
terrorist. “That will teach them it is not safe to go too far!”

There was a short silence. “What do you say, Sonya?” Razoff asked the
woman.

She shook her head.

“And you Pestel?”

“I am against terrorism.”

“And that, Mr. Freeman, would be the answer of the entire Central
Committee,” said Razoff. “We would not assist in a terroristic plot.”

“But I do not want your aid. What I want is your sanction. To have the
proper intimidating effect, the death of Prince Valenko should not be
the act of an isolated individual, but the act of a great organization
that stands ready to repeat it.”

“That sanction we cannot give you.”

“But if I could make the proposal direct to The White One, I’m sure he
would see the matter differently. Can you not let me see him?”

“As I have told you on other occasions, we are not allowed to do so.”

An angry look flamed into the terrorist’s lean dark face. “Then you
don’t trust me!” he burst out. “We may differ in methods, but have I
not proved my devotion to our cause?”

“Do not take this refusal as a personal matter, Mr. Freeman. The
circumstances are such that we are not allowed to reveal The White
One’s identity to anyone. We are under oath.”

The terrorist was too keen a man not to see that some slight doubt
of him was lurking in their minds. However, he silently swallowed
his mortification, and took his double rebuff with a philosophic
shrug. He said he would abandon for the present his plan against the
military governor’s life, begged to be considered a willing coöperator
in whatever activity they might devise, and then took his leave. To
Drexel, outside one door, it was a distinct relief when that sinister
figure was outside the other.

“To think of his proposing to _us_ to kill Prince Valenko!” said
Razoff, laughing grimly.

“But he may undertake the plan himself,” said the woman anxiously.

“If he does,” returned Razoff, “we will warn the governor ourselves.”

All this while the woman had been seated, her back to Drexel; but now
she rose and went around the table to snuff the spluttering candle. At
the graceful ease of her walk, which even her shapeless garments could
not obliterate, a wild and sudden possibility leaped up in Drexel; and
when the candlelight fell upon her face, though forehead and chin and
cheeks were hidden by the shawl, the possibility became a breath-taking
certainty. Nose, mouth, eyes, were the same!

She snuffed the candle. “Excuse me for a few minutes,” she said to the
men, and crossed straight toward Drexel’s door.




CHAPTER VI

THE KING AND THE BEGGAR MAID


Drexel slipped down and was standing at the table when the bolt shot
back and she entered. She closed the door, and stood looking a moment
at him, and he gazed back at her. Despite those beauty-murdering
clothes, the spell of her personality was more sovereign even than
yesternight.

She was the first to speak. “I have come,” said she in that low
rich voice that set his every nerve to vibrating, “to thank you and
apologize.”

He could only incline his head.

“To thank you for what you so gallantly did for me last night.”

Drexel found his voice, and he could not keep a little irony out of his
words. “Your thanks seem rather oddly expressed.” He motioned about the
imprisoning room.

“It is for that I would apologize. I am sorry. But it seemed to us
necessary.”

“Necessary! Why?”

She looked him straight in the face. “Because I did not wholly trust
you.”

“Not trust me?”

“You had seen me--you guessed what I had done--you could have
identified me had you seen me again, and could have turned me over to
the police. That would possibly have meant my death; certainly the
destruction of all my plans.”

“Then you really tried to shoot Prince Berloff?”

“I did not. He fired the shots; so that he could say I fired and bring
against me the charge of attempted assassination.”

“But,” said Drexel, reverting to her preceding statement, “you seemed
to trust me at first.”

“Yes.”

“And then you did not?”

“Frankly--no.”

“You feared me as much as you did the police. Why?”

She did not answer.

“I am completely at a loss,” said he. “Come--why did you not trust me?”

“That,” said she steadily, “I cannot tell.”

He rubbed his forehead. “Well, of all situations a sane man ever got
into!” he muttered. When he next spoke there was again a touch of
irony in his voice. “At least,” he drawled, “would it be considered an
intrusion into matters which are none of my concern, if I asked what is
going to happen to me?”

“You will merely be detained till we feel it is safe to release you.
Ivan and Nicolai are treating you all right? We had to act instantly,
and they were the only persons we could upon the instant command.”

“Oh, they’re nice enough boys, I guess,” said Drexel. “But I wish they
lived at a better hotel. The janitor here doesn’t know it is winter
yet, and keeps the steam heat turned off; my bed, that sofa there, is
upholstered with soft coal and soup-bones; and the chef--well, the
chef’s repertoire is limited to tea and bologna. But I guess I can
stand it.”

She smiled slightly, but the smile was instantly gone. “Your
inconvenience is being suffered to render more secure a great cause.”

“And to render more secure your life?”

“And my life,” she added.

She held out her hand. “Again I apologize, and again I thank you.
Good-bye.”

“You are not going!” cried Drexel--but he did not miss the opportunity
of taking her hand. “Not yet--please! There is something I want to ask
you.”

“Yes?”

He looked straight into her eyes. “It is this: Who are you?”

She drew her hand away. “You do not need to know.”

“Perhaps not,” said he. “But I wish to.”

“Well--I am one of a thousand girls”--there came a flush into her
face and a ring into her voice--“ten thousand girls, yes, a hundred
thousand! who are doing the same work.”

“Yes, I know now that you are a revolutionist. But who are you
personally?”

“Any one of the hundred thousand.”

“But you are not just any one,” he persisted. “That’s plain. You are
educated, refined, have had advantages far above the ordinary.”

“Do you not know,”--and her voice swelled with a more vibrant
ring--“that our universities are filled with poor, obscure young
women--poor, yet great souls just the same! who starve themselves,
literally starve themselves, that they may gain an education, that they
may become broad, cultured women? And do this that they may bring light
and help and hope to their down-trodden people?”

But Drexel was seeing her as she appeared upon the train. “That may be
so; but you are not of that kind,” he said confidently. “That kind does
not look as you did last night.”

“But how do you know,” she cried, stretching wide her arms the better
to display her clumsy garments, “that last night’s clothes are any
truer index of my station than to-night’s?”

She saw the question struck home. “We revolutionists work in hourly
danger from the police. Safety compels us to assume disguises, and we
fit our disguises to our missions. My mission of yesterday required
that I should seem what you call a lady.”

“You mean that your yesterday’s clothes were only a disguise?”

“Only a disguise.”

He pondered for a moment. No, a woman of position, which he had half
guessed her to be, would have no reason for discontent; no reason
for risking comfort, wealth, life even, in this struggle for better
conditions. After all, she was probably one of those rarely beautiful,
rare-spirited women who now and again flower among the common people.

“Then this is all I am to know?” he asked slowly.

“That I am just one of the hundred thousand--that is all.”

She started toward the door.

“Wait!” he cried. “Wait! Surely I shall see you again.”

She shook her head. “You are not to be released till after my mission
has been accomplished. By that time I shall have disappeared. This is
the last time we shall meet. Good-bye.”

Her hand was on the knob, when Drexel sprang forward and threw himself
between her and the door.

“No! No! No!” his words burst forth. “I can’t lose you forever like
this! I can’t! I can’t!”

She drew back and gazed at him with a flashing, imperious manner. “What
does this mean?”

“It means I love you!” he cried. “It means I do not care who you
are--what you are. I love you. I love you! With all my heart--with all
my soul!”

At the sight of his big, strong, quivering body, his tense, working
face, the hauteur all slipped out of her bearing.

“You are in earnest?” she asked slowly, in amazement.

“God strike me dead if I am not! And as never before in all my life!”

“I am sorry--sorry,” she said with true sympathy. “Even if I cared--it
could not be. The liberty of my country has first place in my heart.
That is my husband.”

“Then you refuse me?” cried Drexel.

“I must.”

“And this is final?”

“It is.”

“No! No! No!” he cried, inflamed with love and the danger of the loved
one’s eternal loss, and seizing at every argument. “Listen!” He stepped
nearer her. “Listen, before you speak finally. I can take you out of
this poverty, this turmoil, this oppression! I can give you peace, and
comfort, and position!”

“Ah!” she breathed. “Again the king stoops to the beggar maid.”

Swept madly on by his desire to win her, his dreams for a towering
financial future rushed into the form of argument. He stood before her
the impassioned embodiment of the American hero--the strong, masterful
man of affairs, flashing forth an all-conquering confidence.

“Yes!” cried he, and he glowed dominantly down upon her. “You shall
have everything! Everything! You and I, side by side, shall go breast
to breast with the foremost. I tell you, with your beauty, you shall
queen it over every woman in Chicago!”

He had not noted the strange, quiet look that had come into her face.
“In substance, you mean to tell me that you can give me position.”

“I can give you the very highest!”

“You are of an old family, then?”

“None older in Chicago!”

She did not speak.

“Come!” he went on with the mighty rush of his schemes. “Mine is to
be no trifling million-dollar success. I do not mean to boast--but
I feel the power in me! No young man in America has a chance like
mine! I shall become one of the first business men of America! It is
sure--sure as that the years roll round. I shall become the master of
railroads, of mines, of factories. All--all!--are going to yield me
their wealth. And that means power, and more power--and position, and
greater position. And this wealth, this power, this position, shall all
be yours!”

As he spoke she had slowly unwound the shawl that tightly bound her
head; and the beauty of her face, with its crown of rich dark hair, was
before him unobscured, unconfined. She had drawn herself up, her breath
was coming and going with slow tensity, and her eyes--those wonderful
blue eyes--were blazing full upon him. But she did not speak.

“Well,” demanded Drexel, “what do you say?”

“I say,” said she, and her words came with slow, sharp distinctness,
“that you are the most despicable man I ever met!”

“What!” he cried. And he stepped back against the door, as though she
had struck him in the face.

The eyes still blazed with awful contempt into his own, and the slow
words went on:

“You are a man of great gifts. I see that. Genius, maybe--perhaps great
genius. And doubtless you will achieve all you say. But for a man
with divine gifts, to devote those divine gifts to gigantic schemes
for selfish gain, which means to the despoilment, to the misery, to
the crushing down, of his fellows--I repeat, such a man is the most
despicable man I ever met!”

The paleness of Drexel’s face began to redden with anger.

“I see,” said he grimly, “that you are one of these socialists!”

“Perhaps,” said she, steadily.

“Yes”--between his angry, clenched teeth. “There are some of your
kind even in my country. Disappointed, snivelling failures, snarling
at people who have succeeded!” His anger blazed fiercer. “Let me tell
you this, young lady. You would not be so contemptuous of people with
position, if you had a little of position yourself! Nor of wealth, if
you had ever tasted a little of wealth’s comforts!”

But she did not quail before his fire. “Perhaps not,” she returned,
quietly.

There was a moment of silence between the two.

“And now, will you please allow me to pass?” she said.

Her words sent all the anger out of him.

“But,” he besought desperately, “surely sometime I may meet you again?”

“This is the last time,” said she with quiet finality.

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

He leaned against the door and stared at her with dizzy pain; till she
recalled him by repeating,

“Will you please allow me to pass?”

He dumbly stood aside and opened the door. She hesitated, then gave him
her hand.

“Thank you once more. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said he.

She passed out. And the door closed and the bolt clicked into place.




CHAPTER VII

CONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF A PRINCE


It was a dull room, Drexel’s prison, and Drexel’s presence did not
brighten it. To have met and loved and lost a girl all within the space
of twenty-four hours, was hardly an experience to make a man enlivening
company. Most of the time he lay upon the old sofa, gruffly refusing
when Ivan drew out the cards with the purpose of easing his tedium,
paying no heed to the young fellow’s chatter, and no heed to the pair’s
going and coming. His every nerve throbbed with the anguish of her
loss, an anguish that he felt would never leave him.

And added to that anguish was the bitterness of humiliation. Brought
up as one among the most exclusive and powerful, he could not escape
a pride in his position; nor could he escape the knowledge that in
Chicago those wise mothers who could calculate what a man would grow to
be in a decade or two considered him the catch of the city. Yet he had
been refused by an unknown girl, a girl whose rich clothes, possibly
the only good ones she had ever worn, had been admittedly supplied her
as a disguise. And more, this girl he loved with all his being had
scorned him in scathing words--him and his giant projects.

Certainly enough to gloom any man. But Drexel had yet a further reason
for despair. Many a man, refused, even scorned as he had been, had
stuck grimly to his suit and in the end won her he loved. But, in
faith, how was a lover stubbornly to persevere when there was no loved
one against whom to aim his perseverance? Ah, that was the worst of it
all--he was never to see her again.

Four more days he lived in this gloomy aloofness, and during this time
Ivan and Nicolai settled into a routine management of their task; one
would sleep and the other guard, and on two occasions one or the other
had left the house for his period off duty. During these days, though
there was no abatement of the anguish, Drexel thought often of the
utter uselessness of his being held a prisoner. What intention had he
of giving the slightest aid toward the capture of Sonya? Would she not
be just as safe if he were free?

Plans for escape haunted his mind. But escape was not so easy. True,
the one hundred and thirty pounds of either of his captors would have
been nothing to his one hundred ninety, but Ivan or Nicolai, whichever
it was, always had the black pistol in readiness, and always had his
quick eyes upon him. Before he could leap upon his guard, or before
he could burst the window and spring out or shout for the police,
there would be a deadly bullet in him. Besides, leaping from the
window, even should he escape the bullet, would probably mean serious
injury upon the cobblestones below; and shouting for help would mean
his capture, and the capture of Ivan and Nicolai. He did not wish to
involve them in trouble, for he liked the queer pair. And, moreover,
this move might endanger the safety of Sonya. No, if he escaped, his
escape must bring no risk upon these hostile friends; it had to be an
escape from the police as well as from revolutionists.

In the end his escape proved to be a comparatively simple matter. In
the afternoon of the fifth day of his captivity Nicolai turned over the
watch to Ivan and sallied forth. It had been part of Drexel’s craft to
lie upon his couch, appearing to nap much of the time, thinking that
thus he could best watch his jailers and throw them off their guard. He
was now stretched upon the sofa, his semblance that of a sleeping man.
Ivan looked at him, looked at the table which needed clearing after
their late lunch, a chore which he could easily do if the prisoner
slept--then tip-toed to Drexel’s side, gazed at him with his sharp
eyes, then bent low to make certain.

Suddenly Drexel’s arms shot up. His left hand, with a powerful
wrench, tore the pistol from Ivan’s grasp, the right closed upon the
little fellow’s throat. Drexel had some knowledge of anatomy, and
with all his force he pressed his thumb up under the jaw against
the pneumogastric nerve. Ivan struggled convulsively beneath this
paralyzing pressure--weakened--then quieted into limp unconsciousness.
Instantly Drexel thrust his handkerchief into Ivan’s mouth, tied this
gag securely, and by the time Ivan’s eyes fluttered open had him bound
hand and foot with the ropes prepared for his own confinement.

“Excuse me, comrade,” said he, gazing down at his late captor. “But I
did not want to impose upon your hospitality any longer, and I did not
see any other way to leave. I really am sorry if I hurt you--for I like
you, Ivan.”

As he slipped into his big coat, Ivan tugged impotently at his bonds.
“Well--good-bye, my lad,” said Drexel. “And tell your people they have
nothing in the world to fear from me. I’m as safe outside as I would be
in here with your guns against my chest.”

He picked up his Browning and was putting it in his pocket when he
caught a look of longing in Ivan’s eyes. He laid the pistol on the
table.

“Keep it as a little souvenir,” he said, and with a friendly wave of
the hand he unlocked the door and went out.

But misfortune was not yet done with him. As he started to creep down
the stairway a step creaked and the boarding-house keeper came into the
hall. “The devil!” he ejaculated and barred the foot of the stairs with
his powerful body.

“Ivan! Nicolai!” he shouted.

For an instant Drexel regretted the pistol he had given Ivan, but
there was no time to return for it. He plunged down at his big
antagonist; the man set his body and opened his arms to grapple
with the escaping prisoner. But Drexel was not minded to get into
that detaining clutch. He sent his fist into the other’s chest; the
boarding-house keeper, true Russian that he was, knew nothing of the
art of boxing, and in the instant that he gasped and floundered Drexel
drove a blow into his unguarded solar plexis. He went down in a heap,
and Drexel sprang by him and out into the court.

Ahead of him lay danger from arrest by the police. But he knew that if
once he could get back to the Hotel Europe he would be safe, for no
police official would dream of identifying the hunted American with the
cousin-to-be of Prince Berloff. Though but little after three, night
had already fallen. The darkness was an aid, and with the shawl collar
of his shuba turned up so that only nose and eyes were visible, he
slipped across and out of the court, and hailed the first swift-looking
sleigh he met. He offered the driver double fare, the driver laid
on his whip, and half an hour later he walked nonchalantly into the
official-filled Hotel Europe.

He found his uncle had arrived from America only that morning. The old
man was overjoyed to see him, and Drexel would have felt a pleasure no
less than his uncle’s had it not been for the pain of his love.

John Howard was a sturdy, upstanding old man of close upon seventy,
with a shaggy-browed, clean-shaven face, and shrewd gray eyes that
could twinkle humorously or glint like steel; a man feared and admired
by his friends, feared and hated by his enemies. He had made his great
fortune as America’s great fortunes have been made, by his superior
might, by thinking solely of his own gain, and thinking little or
none about such matters as law, or ethics, or the other fellow, or
the public; and he believed his methods just and proper. There was no
surface suavity about him, no hypocritical pretense; he was bluff and
outspoken--he was just what he was.

Uncle and nephew went down to the cafe together, as Mrs. Howard
and Alice were out making calls. Mr. Howard was full of the great
traction deal--the deal that was to be his climatic exit, and Drexel’s
triumphant entrance, as a great financial figure--and he rapidly
sketched a summary of the developments of the three months that Drexel
had been in Russia. They had practically got control of all the
street-railway franchises of Chicago for a long term; and had acted
so quietly that the city had not a guess of what was going on. They
expected to break up the system into separate lines and discontinue
the transfers, and thus get millions of extra nickels a year from the
people; and to reorganize, and in that process to net some fifteen
million dollars from unsophisticated investors by the everyday miracle
of turning water into stock; and to perform some of the other feats
of financial legerdemain by which kings of business win and maintain
their sovereignty. All of which astute and mighty brigandage seemed
as proper and legitimate to Drexel as it did to his uncle. One was
a founder of a business school, the other an apt pupil; and the
fundamental idea of that school was that one’s business concerned no
one but one’s self.

“Now tell me about things here,” said Mr. Howard. “I’ve talked
with your aunt, but I want to hear from you. You’ve quite got over
that--eh--little feeling for Alice?”

“Quite,” said Drexel.

“I knew you would.” He nodded his head. “And Alice? You remember when
the news of the engagement came to us in Chicago, you spoke of an
affair--not like yours, but a real one--between her and Jack Hammond.
Has she been acting much like the romantic damsel with a broken heart?”

Visions of his pretty cousin rose before Drexel’s mind--at balls
splendid with brilliant uniforms and glittering gowns--at grand dinners
where sat none but those of proud and noble lineage; and at all he saw
Alice dazzled, happy, exulting with girlish pride that her place was
soon to be among the highest of these.

“Much of a heartbreak?” persisted the old man.

“I must admit,” Drexel acknowledged slowly, “that Jack Hammond doesn’t
seem to trouble her much.”

“Just as I told you it would be!”

They were silent a moment, during which Drexel bowed to a woman sitting
at a near-by table; and he gave an inward start as he saw the tall,
well-dressed man with a swart Mephistophelian handsomeness, who sat at
table with her. It was Freeman, the terrorist.

Mr. Howard’s sharp eyes had followed his nephew’s glance. “Say, but
she’s a stunner!” he ejaculated.

And she was--a superb compromise between blond and brunette, in
the first fulness of womanhood, with the ease and grace and rather
confident smile of the acknowledged beauty, and gowned in a green robe
that had all the richness and distinction that the Parisian modistes of
French St. Petersburg could give it.

“Who is she?” Mr. Howard asked.

“Countess Baronova. She’s a widow. Her husband was killed in the
Japanese war.”

Mr. Howard looked the young man straight in the face. “Bevare o’
vidders, my boy,” he said solemnly.

“Needn’t worry--nothing doing there,” Drexel returned; but he did not
see fit to add that it was not from lack of encouragement from the
widow.

“Yes, sir, a stunner!” his uncle repeated. “And now, tell me,
Henry--what do you think of our prince?”

“You have not seen him yet?”

“No. He had an audience with the Czar to-day, Alice told me. How do you
size him up?”

Drexel’s eyes fell to the cloth and he hesitated. “As a prince? Or as a
man?”

“Both. First as a prince. O. K., isn’t he? You remember that as soon
as your aunt cabled me from Paris about the engagement, I cabled the
proper parties to investigate him. They said he was the real thing.”

“Oh, he’s the real thing all right. He belongs to the highest
nobility--hasn’t played the deuce with his fortune--is a man of great
political power.”

“Good! Agrees exactly with the reports sent me. Just what sort of an
official is he?”

“There you have me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t know.”

“Don’t know! And been knocking around with him for three months!”

“Oh, I have asked him, once or twice. But he answered he did not
exactly know himself. He said he guessed he was a sort of consulting
attorney to the Government. He is frequently closeted with this general
and that governor, with the minister of this and the minister of that,
and is summoned every now and then to see the Czar. That’s all I know,
and the few people I’ve discreetly quizzed about him seem to know no
more.”

“A sort of mystery, eh?”

“In a way--yes; though he makes light of there being anything
mysterious in his position. He says he really has no official status at
all, that he is no more than a private gentleman. In fact, if he were
an official he’d have to be in St. Petersburg more than he is; most of
his time he spends on an estate about fifty miles away.”

“Yes, Alice spoke of that estate; she said we were going out there to
a house party day after to-morrow. The prince part of him sounds all
right. How about the man?”

“He will doubtless call when he returns from the Czar. That will answer
your question.”

The shrewd old eyes looked deep. “I see you don’t like him.”

“Put it the other way.”

“Don’t like you--eh? Why?”

“I can only give you a guess.”

“Your guess is as good as most men’s certainties. Go on.”

“Well--the fact is, he found out about--about Alice and me, you know.”

The uncle nodded. “And he’s a little suspicious--jealous. That’s one
reason. What else?”

“Well, you know of course what he is marrying Alice for. Money. Not
that he’s hard up. But he’s ambitious--terrifically ambitious. He
dreams of becoming the greatest man in the empire, next to the Czar.
He----”

“It sounds to me like we’d picked out a good one!” broke in his uncle.

“He knows that in this poverty-stricken country nothing will help him
forward like money--for he already has birth and brains. Well, he has
learned from aunt about the arrangement you have been so good as to
make for me--about your going to give me a part of your fortune, and
your going to leave its management, even when it’s Alice’s, in my
hands. He wants entire control of it all as soon as he can get it; the
use of the lump sum will forward his plans much better than the use of
the income alone. So he looks upon me as an obstacle between him and
his ambition. That’s the other reason for his not loving me.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Well, then--why don’t you like him? Not just because he’s marrying
Alice?”

“I wouldn’t stop liking Jack Hammond if Alice were to marry Jack.”

“What is the reason then?”

Drexel hesitated. “I can’t explain. Nothing definite. He’s rather cold,
and formal, and distant. But that isn’t it. It’s just a sort of uneasy
feeling that I have when with him. I guess that’s really all. In fact--
But there he comes now.”




CHAPTER VIII

THE PRINCESS OF HEARTS


But first came Alice. Snow was upon her light fluffy hair and her
long fur coat, and her cheeks were pink with the cold and her eyes
bright with the excitement of this first meeting between father and
fiancé. Next came her mother, her matronly figure amplified by her
thick Russian coat, exultant satisfaction on her proud face--the sense
of having triumphantly done the thing she had started out to do. And
behind them came the prince, whom the two had met at the entrance of
the hotel.

The great financier took the slender hand of his ancient-blooded
son-in-law. He looked him keenly over, all the while the words of
getting acquainted were being exchanged--looked him over with growing
satisfaction. The prince was a man, despite his forty years, who well
might capture a young girl’s fancy. He was straight, with the easy
grace of a courtier, and wore a dark green uniform of a colonel of the
Czar’s Guards, with a heavy festoon of gold braid across his breast and
with high patent-leather boots. He was the acme of ancient lineage and
high breeding; his face was pale, his lips and nostrils were thin, his
black moustache had just the proper upward lift, his slight baldness
only made more suggestive of power a forehead naturally large, and
the great scar on his left cheek (a Heidelberg scar) that might have
disfigured a coarser man only added to his distinguished air. Diplomat,
soldier, art connoisseur, student, it was said of him that the Czar’s
domain held no more polished gentleman. No wonder Alice admired and
her father was satisfied; this was no mere hang-lipped, chinless,
stuttering, penniless title.

After the formal words natural to the situation had all been said,
the talk ran to other matters--first to the house party the prince
was giving in the Howards’ honour, and then to a ball which they all
expected to attend that night at the palace of Prince Valenko, the
military governor.

Alice turned to Drexel. “You are fortunate, Henry, to get back in time
to meet Princess Valenko.”

“I think I shall not go,” he returned. Only one woman interested him,
and she was of a sort far different from this great lady.

“Not go!” cried his aunt. “You must not miss meeting the princess!”

“No,” added Alice, darting a quick look at the prince, “you must not
fail to meet Princess Valenko.”

“And what is so wonderful about this Princess Valenko?” put in Mr.
Howard.

“She’s the handsomest young woman in St. Petersburg--so they say,”
returned Alice, with a sceptical toss of her head. “We’ve heard
nothing but Princess Valenko ever since we entered Russia.”

Again she darted a look at Berloff. The prince knew well the meaning of
this glance; it was an open secret that he had been a suitor for the
princess, and she had refused him. But he met Alice’s challenging look
with an impassive smile.

“Also she is my cousin,” said he to Mr. Howard. But, he did not add,
cousin on his mother’s side, and so of far older stock than he.

“Her father is the military governor of St. Petersburg,” added Mrs.
Howard. “They say she is the proudest, haughtiest young--I beg your
pardon, prince, but that’s just what people say.” She looked at her
husband. “We haven’t met her yet. She has been travelling in France,
Italy and Germany, and she returned only to-day.”

“I saw her,” Alice announced.

“You were at her house?” asked the prince.

“No. I was out driving this morning and I chanced to go near the Warsaw
Station just after the Berlin Express had arrived. She had just come in
from Berlin. I saw her drive by.”

“Was she as beautiful as people say?” Drexel asked mechanically.

Alice sniffed. “Oh, I suppose some men might think her moderately
good-looking. Judge for yourself when you see her to-night.”

“You will have an even better chance to judge her day after to-morrow,”
said the prince. “She has just written that she is coming to the house
party.”

At this moment Countess Baronova, sweeping past, bowed to them. “And
you are coming, too, countess?” added the prince.

She paused. “Coming to what?”

“To my house party.”

“Of course. Your parties, prince, are the sort one cannot afford to
miss.”

They asked her to join the group, and as Freeman at this moment came
up with her coat upon his arm, they could but include him in the
invitation. Drexel felt a shiver as the lean, dark correspondent sat
down among them; and he could but wonder what these women would think,
what the prince would think, if they knew what he knew. Drexel watched
him covertly. The lean, lithe grace of his figure, the reposeful
alertness of his gleaming eyes, the cool indifference with which he met
the prince’s thinly hid disdain--all these bore it in upon him again
that here was a man who respected no one, who feared no one.

It was not long ere these qualities had exemplification. The three
women presently withdrew, and Mr. Howard began to question the prince
about Russia’s political situation. The prince answered that the Czar
was kindly, that he loved his people and did only what was best for
them; but like a father with an unruly son he had to chastise where
he loved. As for the trouble, that was all made by the country’s
scum--and it would be best for the country if it were exterminated.

Freeman’s eyes had begun to blaze. “Your last statement, prince, is
quite true,” he said quietly. “Yet it is altogether misleading.”

“Misleading?” the prince queried coldly.

“Yes. You neglected to inform Mr. Howard that the trouble-making scum
whose extermination would so benefit the country, is where the scum
always is--at the top.”

“You mean?” said the prince.

“I mean the officials, the nobility--and royalty, if you please.”

The prince gave a start and slowly wet his thin lips. Drexel held his
breath, and waited what should come next. He knew what temper of a man
was the terrorist; and he knew, too, that a man who had merely refused
to rise when the Czar had been toasted in a restaurant had been shot
dead in his chair by an officer opposite--and the officer had been
acquitted.

“Do you not think,” said the prince, with a steel-like edge to his
voice, “that you are speaking a little rashly, considering you are in
Russia?”

The terrorist was leaning insouciantly back in his chair, but his eyes
were flaming. “An American, sir,” said he, “is not afraid to speak the
truth, no matter in what tyrant’s land he finds himself.”

The prince’s face darkened. He again wet his lips, his long
interlocked hands tightened and his eyes gleamed back into the
terrorist’s.

“My advice to you, sir,” and there was an ominous threat in his voice,
“and to all other foreign scribblers, is to keep a quieter tongue in
your head!”

“You think you can cow me?” said Freeman, a contemptuous, defiant sneer
upon his lips. “You can kill me--yes. But let me tell you, all you
blood-sucking officials, all you nation-crushing aristocrats, you, and
your snivelling, cowardly, blood-drenched little Czar----”

Berloff sprang to his feet. “What, you insult the Czar!” and like the
dart of a serpent his hand flashed across the table and struck Freeman
full in the mouth.

Freeman shot up like a released spring, his dark face livid, and made
to hurl himself upon the prince. Drexel seized an arm. Its tense
muscles were like steel wire, and it flung him aside with one violent
sweep, and again the terrorist made for the prince. For an instant
Drexel feared for Berloff’s life; but officers from an adjoining table
threw themselves upon the terrorist, and a moment later he was securely
held by gendarmes. He struggled and hurled fierce defiance at the
prince, who stood erect and impassive, with just the faintest tinge in
his white cheeks.

“You’ll remember this!” cried the terrorist, darkly.

Berloff did not answer--gazed at him with cold contempt as he was
bundled out. Perhaps he did remember--perhaps not. But afterward Drexel
remembered--and remembered well.

This sudden flare-up of passion drew upon them the curious stare of
the dozens of people in the cafe, and the terrorist had not been five
minutes gone before the other three withdrew, the prince going to the
apartment he maintained for his occasional St. Petersburg visits, and
Drexel and his uncle mounting to their rooms above. His uncle asked
about Freeman, and Drexel told what was common knowledge, holding back
the sinister information he had gained in Three Saints’ Court; for he
had decided to say nothing, for the present at least, of his adventure
with the young woman and the experiences into which it had led him.

They had just finished dinner--at which the prince had joined
them--when a card was handed to Drexel. He looked at it, and for a
moment hesitated.

“I’ll see him,” he said to the servant. “Have him shown to my
sitting-room.”

He excused himself and left the Howards’ apartment for his own
quarters. He paced the room excitedly. Perhaps here was a clue through
which he might find the young woman! But he was cool enough when the
visitor entered.

“Will you be seated, Mr. Freeman,” said he calmly.

“Thank you,” said the correspondent, taking the indicated chair.
“I dare say you are surprised to see me at liberty, after what just
happened. Were I a Russian I should not be; but Russia is careful how
she treats citizens of powerful foreign countries.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “But enough of that. I have come on what I
hope will prove an acceptable matter of business to you; on what is to
me a matter of humanity, and-- But we’ll pass my motives. May I trouble
you for two minutes?”

“You may,” said Drexel.

Freeman drew his chair nearer. “I must begin by taking you into my
confidence, a confidence I know you will respect. My real purpose
in Russia is actively to help the revolutionists in their struggle.
Perhaps you wonder at my confiding in a person who is to be the cousin
of Prince Berloff. But I believe I am shrewd enough to have seen that
no love is lost between Prince Berloff and yourself. Am I right?”

“Go on,” said Drexel.

“Well, then--let me tell you that I am in close touch with the
revolutionists. The revolution is bound to succeed. But what it needs
just now is money--money for arms. To gain liberty for their country
the revolutionists can afford to pay a hundred per cent.--yes, a
thousand per cent. Now to come straight to the point: would you
consider undertaking to secure some large sum for the revolutionists,
in return for which an authorized committee would bind themselves to
give you certain business privileges and properties now controlled by
the present Government--land, railroads, mines, and such? Would you
consider it?”

A week before, had Drexel seen definite prospect of the revolutionists’
success, he would have leaped at this as a wonderful business
opportunity. But it was quite another influence that now determined
his reply. Freeman had been in conference with Sonya and her friends;
he was going to be in further conference with them; to enter into this
plan, even if he chose not to carry it out, would mean that somehow he
would again come into contact with Sonya.

“I would consider it,” he answered.

“Would you meet with a duly authorized committee to talk it over?”

“Yes.” He thought of the conference he had witnessed four nights since,
and he wondered if he would come before the same group. “Meet where?”
he asked.

“I am supposed not to give the address, and I would rather not.”

“As you like,” Drexel returned stiffly. “But either I know where I am
going, or I do not go.”

“Oh, very well;” and Freeman gave the address of the house in Three
Saints’ Court. He rose. “This of course has been only a preliminary
talk. I shall see you again in the course of two or three days.
Good-night.”

Drexel, preoccupied with this new chance of his finding again the girl
he loved, returned to the Howards’ apartment, and found them prepared
to start to the ball at Prince Valenko’s. In his present mood he
shrank from that brilliant show. He preferred to remain at home, kept
company by thoughts of a beautiful, spirited young woman in the coarse,
shapeless clothing of a factory girl. He tried to beg off; but Alice
would not hear of losing a convenient cavalier whom she might have need
of--and his uncle demanded, if he did not go, with whom was he to talk,
with nobody around him except people that spoke only French and this
fizz and pin-wheel business that they called Russian? So Drexel could
do nothing but consent and follow to the carriage.

They drove past the Winter Palace, empty of royalty, for the Czar, in
fear of those he ruled, dared not trust his person there--past huge
grand-ducal palaces--and presently they entered a great mansion that
looked forth upon the ice-bound Neva. Drexel was well accustomed to
the luxury of the rich Russian nobility, but even he, with his double
reason for being dull to impressions, could but note that he had been
in no house so rich as this. And he recognized that, save for the Czar
and his immediate family, there were none prouder and higher in all the
empire than these haughty men whose breasts were a blaze of orders and
these haughty women who seemed to walk amid a moving fire of jewels.
And of them all, he well knew, none had lineage older, nobler, than
Princess Valenko.

Drexel did not see the princess upon his entry, for interest in the
famed beauty, long absent abroad, was high, and she had been swept
aside into one of the drawing-rooms by an admiring group and was there
the prisoner of her guests. Drexel ascended to the brilliant ball-room.
A little later, while he was standing with his uncle and Prince
Berloff, General Valenko, recognizing Berloff, paused a moment beside
them. The military governor was straight, gray-haired, gray-bearded,
a splendid figure of a soldier-statesman at sixty-five, his bearing
and every feature marked with that pride which unbends only to equals,
with strength, decision, dominance. There was also that in his face and
bearing which suggested that his character was fibred with pitiless
severity--with that despotic severity which becomes a mere matter of
course after a lifetime of service to the most autocratic and cruel of
Christian governments.

“You would not think to look at him, would you,” said Drexel after the
general had passed on, taking Berloff with him, “that he loves his
daughter more than he does his life? Yet that is what people say.”

Mr. Howard’s glance followed the straight, proud figure. “He looks to
me more like that old Roman party--what do you call him, Brutus--that
ordered his own son executed. The girl must be a wonder.”

“They say half the best young nobility of Russia have proposed to
her--and been refused.”

“A sort of queen of hearts--eh?”

“You guessed close, uncle, to what they call her. She is known as ‘The
Princess of Hearts.’”

“Well,” grumbled his uncle, “I wish she’d step lively. I’m getting
anxious to see her.”

And so was Drexel, a little, even if his heart did belong to a woman of
quite a different station.

But they had not long to wait. Of a sudden there fell a hush, and into
the room through the wide entrance at the farther end, upon the arm of
the gray, erect Prince Valenko, there swept a tall slender young woman
in a shimmering, lacy gown, with gems twinkling from her corsage, from
her throat, from the tiara on her high-done hair. Her chin was held
high, her eyes swept the room with cold hauteur, in her every movement
was knowledge of her ancient princely blood and of her peerless beauty.

“Well, well!” breathed Mr. Howard. “The Princess of Hearts--I should
say so!”

The sudden clutch of Drexel’s hand made him turn. “Hello, there--what’s
wrong?”

Drexel, suddenly cold, stood with bulging eyes fixed upon her. For four
nights before she had worn a factory girl’s shawl and jacket, and he
had told her that he loved her!




CHAPTER IX

ONE WOMAN--OR TWO?


And so this famous beauty, this proud daughter of Russia’s proudest
nobility, was the unknown girl of his strange adventure, was the
working-girl who had talked so passionately of liberty! Now, in this
almost royal circle, she was cold and haughty and disdainful, her
manner as lofty toward all beneath her as could have been the highest
of French noblewomen’s in the days before the Revolution overwhelmed
France with its cataclysm;--and yet, how she had flamed forth in
her love of the people! How it could all be was almost too much for
Drexel’s reeling brain; but that wonderful grace, those wonderful eyes,
that wonderful face--Russia held not their duplicate!

Until this moment it had not occurred to him that there had been
anything unworthy in his proposal of marriage. But now, swift after
the first blow of astonishment, he grew hot with shame through all
his body. He had, in high-born, lofty fashion offered to lift her out
of her poverty and give her wealth; he whose wealth was all yet to be
made, to her one of Russia’s richest heiresses. He had spoken of his
birth, and had offered her position and family; he who barely knew the
name of his grandfather’s father, to her whose forebears were great
nobles when the Norsemen made their storied voyage to America; whose
line went back and back even to the mighty Rurick, and then disappeared
into the mist of legend that hangs over all things Russian before the
ninth century.

But there were too many stirring puzzles here for even shame to
dominate him long. He had been with her in this same St. Petersburg in
her role of working-girl but four evenings ago, yet how was it that
to-day she had arrived in state from abroad? And why had she caused him
to be held a prisoner? And what would be the effect on her, who thought
him safe under guard, suddenly to face him?

But the questions that surged into his mind had no time to complete
themselves, much less to find answers, for the princess had crossed the
ball-room and was now but a few yards distant. He was certain she had
not seen him, and he turned his back to avoid her for a double reason;
because, in his shame he shrunk from the meeting, and because he feared
seeing him there unexpectedly might deeply startle her and even be her
betrayal. But a hand fell upon his arm, and a voice in French--Prince
Berloff’s voice--fell upon his ears:

“Drexel, I want you to meet my cousin, Princess Valenko.”

He would have spared her this public show of her dismay if he could,
but now it was beyond him. Hating himself that it fell to his part
thus to be her undoing, he turned and looked her in the face.

But there was no falling back, no consternation, not so much as a
start. She gave him a straight cold look, in which there was not the
faintest recognition of a previous meeting.

So surprised was he by her self-command that he could only mumble his
way through the introduction, and he only vaguely heard her express
in composed, formal phrases her pleasure at meeting one who was in a
manner to be a relative. Then the others who had surrounded her were
for a moment swept away, and they two were left alone together, face to
face.

The few sentences they had exchanged had been in French. “Princess, I
want to apologize--yes, a thousand times,” Drexel said hurriedly in
English, “for the caddish way I spoke to you four nights ago.”

Her answer was to gaze at him with a puzzled, blank expression.

“I cannot tell you how ashamed I am,” Drexel hurried on. “And I
want to assure you”--this barely above a whisper and with all his
earnestness--“that I shall never breathe a word of your secret.”

Still the puzzled, blank expression.

“Won’t you--after a time--forgive me? And won’t you trust me?”

Still she wore the same non-understanding look.

Suddenly a dazing idea flashed into him. “Perhaps you do not speak
English?” he asked in French.

She smiled faintly, in amused bewilderment. “Yes--a vair leetle,” she
said, in anything but Sonya’s pure and fluent English. “I understand
Meestair Drexel’s words. But what he means--” She shook her head. “I
think you make some meestake.”

She was carried away from him before he could speak again, giving him
a half-friendly nod from her imperious head. After all, had he made a
mistake? After all, was it possible that she was not Sonya? Could it be
that he was the witness and victim of one of those strange caprices of
nature which now and again casts two unrelated persons, perhaps from
the extremes of the social scale, in the same mould? Could it be that
Sonya was merely the double of Princess Valenko? Or was this just an
unparalleled exhibition of nerve on the princess’s part--a marvellous
bit of acting?

Never was a man more mystified than Drexel. All during the ball the
questions ran through his mind, and sometimes the answers were yes, and
sometimes no. Once he danced with the princess, but that relieved his
bewilderment not at all, for she was perfectly at her ease, smilingly
remarked once or twice in her hesitating English upon his mistake, and
accorded him that faintly gracious treatment such a high-born beauty
might naturally bestow upon a relative of a relative-to-be.

Finally, toward two o’clock, Drexel decided he could best think the
matter over in solitude, and he started home, walking for the sake of
the brain-clearing fresh air. He had gone but a hundred yards or so
when he became conscious that two shadowy forms were moving ahead of
him, and one was lurking in the rear. The first two suddenly vanished,
but the events of the last few days had made him alert for danger; his
eyes went everywhere, and he held himself in tense readiness, so that
when the two made a sudden rush at him from a breach in the river-wall,
he quickly side-stepped, and sped along the river till he sighted a
wandering sleigh. Back in the security of his room, he realized that
the revolutionists were not through with him, and that he was in danger
every time he left his four walls.

But he had greater matters to consider than this. During most of
the night, and all the next morning, he was thinking over the many
questions that beset his mind. Foremost, was or was not Sonya
identical with Princess Valenko? He considered their points of
similarity--weighed this against that. But at every turn he was balked
by the fact that Sonya had tried to seize documents from Berloff’s
house, and yet Berloff had last night treated the princess with most
deferential courtesy--by the fact that only the day before she had
arrived in aristocratic splendour from abroad--by her cool, smiling
ignorance of him and what he talked of.

But finally, casting all bewildering pros and cons aside, he concluded
that if such a high-spirited woman as the princess had been leading
such a dangerous double life and had found herself in such a situation
as last night’s, her behaviour would have been identical with the
princess’s--she would have tried to brazen it through and make him
think himself mistaken. They were one and the same, he decided; two
such rare women, so similar, could not exist. And if they were the
same, he could well understand why she had feared him and caused his
capture. He had known her in the role of revolutionist, there was
likelihood of his meeting her as Princess Valenko--and his discovery of
their identicality would, as her fear viewed it, be disaster for her.

He at length shaped a plan, based on his love for her, on his desire to
relieve her of her needless fear, and on the constant danger in which
he stood. That afternoon he drove to the Princess Valenko’s. On the way
he gave a look over his shoulder. A block behind in a sleigh he saw two
men wrapped to the eyes, yet not so bundled up but that he recognized
Ivan and Nicolai; and near them in another sleigh were two other men
whom he instinctively felt to be their confederates.

Before his ring at the Valenko palace had been answered, he saw the two
sleighs draw up across the street half a block ahead. Once admitted, he
had not long to wait, but was ushered up a broad stairway into a great
front drawing-room. He had hoped to find the princess alone; great,
therefore, was his disappointment when he found himself with four
gorgeous young officers and three women, all centring about her.

Without rising she gave him her hand, and smiled with distant,
condescending friendship. “Ah--the American who is almost my relative,”
she said in French; and proceeded with imperious languor to introduce
him to the women and to the immaculate, gilded officers, to all of
whom he bowed--though the latter he inwardly cursed as the brainless
handiwork of tailors and valets.

She smiled amusedly into his face, and then about at the others. “He
thinks, my almost relative”--with a little gesture toward him--“that he
met me a few days ago here in St. Petersburg. And that--in what manner
he has not said--he misconducted himself on that occasion. And that he
shares some great secret of mine.”

Drexel fairly gasped. She had flung away her secret--and there she sat,
easy, unconcerned, smiling.

“But impossible!” cried one of the officers. “The princess has been
abroad since August.”

“Why it is simply absurd, monsieur,” said a stupid-looking,
richly-dressed woman. “You remember, Olga--” this to the
princess--“it’s only two weeks since you and I heard Tannhäuser
together in Berlin. Ugh--what a wretched Elizabeth she was! And we
came back yesterday from Berlin on the same train!”

“Yes,” returned the princess, smiling her slight, amused smile at
Drexel. “But still I would not think of disputing the matter with
Monsieur Drexel. Americans are so clever, you know.”

They all laughed at this. Drexel felt his conclusions going all to
pieces, felt himself plunged again into the old uncertainty.

“Just a stupid mistake on my part, of course,” he said, rather
doggedly. “I hope the princess will pardon me.”

After that the talk ran back to its subject before Drexel had
entered--welcome to the princess--gossip about this person and
that--chat about functions to come. Drexel was left quite out of the
conversation, but this gave him time to form a determination to outstay
all the others and have it out with the princess in private. This plan,
however, was not so easy of achievement. The others, to be sure, took
their leave in ones and pairs, but more callers came in their stead.
He got a polite glance from the princess now and then, which, being
interpreted, meant that he had far exceeded the limits of a call. But
he sat grimly on.

At length he had his reward. But he was certain of having her to
himself for no more than a moment, so the instant the last back was out
of the door he drew his chair before her, leaned forward, and looked
her squarely in the face.

“Princess,” said he in English, “you have the makings of the greatest
poker player in the world.”

“Pokair playair!” returned she in her halting English. Her face was
puzzled. “I not understand.”

“Do you know what a ‘bluffer’ is?”

“‘Bluffair’? Yes, I know. A vair American word.”

“Well, you could make the biggest bluffer in America seem a naïve
child.”

“Excuse”--with a shrug. “What you mean?”

He spoke with sharp decision. “Your pretending not to know me, and all
the rest, is what we would call a bluff. You are the woman I met on the
railroad train six nights ago. You are the woman I talked with five
nights ago. I know! There’s no use denying it!”

Her eyes did not flinch from his determined gaze; rather they took on a
bored look.

“Pardon me,” said she quietly, “perhaps Meestair Drexel is one--what
you call it--one bluffair?”

Drexel was not at all certain he was not just that. But his face showed
none of his doubt.

“You are afraid of me because chance revealed to me your secret,” he
went on. “Now I have come here to tell you that you have no reason to
fear me. To tell you that you can trust me.”

She rose and looked at him haughtily. “You carry your amusement too
far,” she said, lapsing into French. “I am tired. I beg that you will
excuse me.”

She started to sweep out of the room, but Drexel blocked her way.

“I have come to tell you,” he went on doggedly, “that to relieve you of
any sense of danger from me, I am willing, this minute, to yield myself
your prisoner, to be held as long as you desire.”

“Will you let me pass!” said she.

“As soon as you have answered me.”

Her lips curled with contempt. “Even were I what you say, even had I
the wish to take you prisoner, how could I take and hold you in this
house? Again you must excuse me.”

He blocked her way once more. “At least, you will cross with me to the
window?”

“If you will then be so kind--”

“Yes, I will then go, princess. Come!”

He crossed the drawing-room, parted the curtains at one of the windows,
and pointed down to where along the river-wall, through the falling
twilight, could be seen the two sleighs.

“In those sleighs, princess,” said he, “Ivan and Nicolai--you know
them--followed me here. They and two others. See that man lounging
across the street; that is Ivan, waiting for me to come out. I desire
that you shall have no fear of me. So I am going over there to deliver
myself back into their hands. I will send a note to my people saying I
have been called to Moscow on business for an indefinite time. That is
all. I wish you good-afternoon.”

With that he bowed, and not waiting for a reply he strode from the
room. Two minutes later he was across the street and beside one of the
sleighs.

“Hello, comrades!” he cried with a reckless laugh. “Get in. I’m going
with you.”

Nicolai and Ivan eyed him with silent suspicion, but they crawled in,
one on either side. The sleigh was so narrow that Drexel had to sit
upon their knees.

“Now, comrades,” he went on, as they were drawing the robes high about
them, “as I’m going to be a guest at that hotel of yours for some time,
let’s stop along the way and get a mattress that isn’t paved with
cobblestones. I don’t exactly fancy-- Hello! What’s that?”

A blunt object had suddenly been thrust against the middle of his back.

“That,” explained Ivan, “is the muzzle of your Browning.”

“If you’re going to return my property,” said Drexel, “I wish you’d
return it by some less direct route. You might hand it around me, for
instance.”

“We don’t know your game,” said Nicolai, “but if you make one
suspicious move, or one cry, that pistol will go off.”

“All right. But say there, Ivan, be careful, will you! I’ve got used to
that spinal column of mine, and if you spoiled it I might never get
another that suited me as well. Drive on.”

The horse started up. But before it had fairly swung into a trot, some
one running behind cried out, “Wait! Wait!”

They drew up, and a man thrust a piece of paper into Nicolai’s hand and
immediately turned back. Nicolai opened the paper and glanced at it.

“Of all the strange things!” he cried, and turned the paper over to
Ivan.

“The devil!” exclaimed Ivan. “Where did it come from?”

“The man who brought it looks like a servant,” said Nicolai, who was
peering over his shoulder. “He is entering that great house.”

“More wonderful still!” cried Ivan. “But the writing is certainly hers!”

“And the signature! And an order is an order.”

“Yes.”

“See here, boys,” spoke up the mystified Drexel. “What does all this
mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Nicolai, as he threw open the robes. “But the
order says you are to go back to the person you were talking to.”

Drexel sprang from the sleigh. “Good-bye,” he shouted, and made for the
Valenko door.

The footman ushered him up past the drawing-room, where he had so
lately sat, and in which he glimpsed several new callers, and on back
into a small rear drawing-room. Here an open fire was blazing, and
beside it stood the tall slender figure of the princess, the same
haughty, magnificent pride in her bearing. She did not give Drexel a
look. He paused within the door, wondering, palpitant.

“Andrei,” said she to the footman, “give my excuses to any persons
waiting and any who may come, and say that for the present I am
engaged.”

“Yes, princess.”

“And, Andrei--shut the door.”

“Yes, princess.”

As the door closed the pride and hauteur suddenly faded out of her, and
there she was smiling at him brightly, half-mischievously.

“Well, John--” said she, in easy English.




CHAPTER X

“YOU AND I--AGAINST THE WORLD”


He drew slowly near her.

“So after all, you are----”

The smile grew more mischievous. “Mary Davis, of course. Whom did you
think?”

He was pulsing with exultant wildness; but he knew well that he had to
hold himself under control.

“Then,” said he, “you at last trust me?”

“What you were just about to do proved your sincerity. I could not let
you go further with it. But come--please sit down.”

He first pushed a chair for her before the fireplace, then drew one up
beside her. Her smile sobered and she looked at him steadily.

“Yes, I think I can trust you. There are your actions as proof. And
then, had you wanted to betray me, you have had plenty of time to do
so. Our ideals are separated by the width of the world--but I trust
your honour.”

“You can indeed!” was all he could say.

Her smile came back. Till this last minute he had never seen her really
smile, so had never seen but half her beauty.

“If I am not mistaken, you are a little curious?”

“I am dumbfounded!”

“You know so much already, there is no reason you should not know
more--provided it goes no further than yourself. First question?”

“I--I don’t know where to begin. Five days ago I saw you in St.
Petersburg. Yet it seems that all the while you have been in Berlin. I
think I can make a guess at the explanation, but----”

“Yes, it’s simple enough. First let me say that I was supposed to be
abroad for pleasure; in reality I was there on business affairs of the
revolutionists. Two weeks ago I suddenly announced that I was leaving
Berlin to visit a friend in France. I am known as very self-willed;
that explains and excuses much. I secretly entered Russia, as a poor
student, on a false passport. When I left you, five nights ago, I took
a train; three days ago I reappeared in Berlin from my French visit;
the next day I set out for Russia.”

“That’s much as I guessed,” said Drexel.

“I would have remained here in disguise longer,” she continued, “but
last night’s ball had been long arranged for, the invitations had been
out for a month, and I had already once postponed my homecoming. To
postpone it further was impossible.”

“But why did you, and not some less important person, undertake that
dangerous mission at Prince Berloff’s?”

“For two reasons. First, I was best qualified. And then----”

She paused and gazed at him keenly. “Yes, I shall tell you that. You
know the Government does not know who the prisoner Borodin is.”

“So I have been told.”

“And only half a dozen persons do know who he is. You have heard that I
have an older brother?”

“Who became involved with the revolutionists and disappeared four or
five years ago. And how your father--”

“Yes, to have a revolutionist in his family--that almost broke my
father’s proud heart. Well--Borodin is my brother.”

“Your brother!” Drexel ejaculated. “Ah, I see now why you were ready to
risk so many dangers. To save your brother!”

“To save my brother. And to save a leader whom the cause of liberty
cannot spare.”

“You must love him.”

“Dearly!” said she, and her blue eyes lighted up. “He is so noble,
single-hearted, brilliant!”

“But your father does not guess that Borodin is his son?”

“No.”

“And of course he does not know what you are at heart, what you have
done?”

“No. If he knew!” Her face saddened. “And sometime he must know, for I
cannot always successfully play this double part.”

Drexel, remembering the stern, proud old man, and knowing the love that
existed between the two, could but wonder what would happen on that
day when the general should learn the truth.

“It was the news of my brother’s arrest that brought me flying back to
Russia,” she went on. “I was best fitted for the mission of going to
Prince Berloff’s house.”

“But was it necessary for you to go to Berloff’s?” he broke in. “Could
you not have learned, without risk, Borodin’s whereabouts from your
father?”

“My father did not know and does not know. The heads of the secret
police were, for their own purpose, keeping the place of his
imprisonment a close secret. I was best suited for going to Prince
Berloff’s because, while my father was governor of a Siberian province,
Prince Berloff was in a way my guardian. I once lived at his house, and
since then I have visited there much, though not recently. So I knew
his house, and knew it well. I planned my call at a time when I knew he
was expected to be absent for a few hours.”

“Yes, but the servants,” said Drexel. “There was the danger that you
might be recognized by them.”

“But none had ever seen me before. He changes his servants every few
months.”

“Changes them?”

“That they may not learn too much and begin to suspect.”

“Suspect?”

“Yes. Who he is. Rather, what he is.”

“And what is he?”

She gazed at him steadily a moment. “Prince Berloff is the actual head
of Russia’s spy system.”

“What!” cried Drexel. And he sprang to his feet and stared at her.

“The master of Russia’s hundred thousand human bloodhounds,” she went
on with a sudden fierce abhorrence. “The cunningest, cruellest, most
unscrupulous man between Germany and the Pacific Ocean!”

“And this is the man that my cousin--” He looked at her blankly.

“Yes,” said she. “And the man I would have married, too, could my
father have had his way. He was after my money, just as he is after
your cousin’s. His ambition knows no limit--nor his unscrupulousness.
He uses his office to further his own ends. If any stand in the way
of his ambition, his control of the infamous machinery of the secret
police gives him power to do away with them in a dozen ways--by death,
exile, or imprisonment.”

“And he has done that?”

“Again and again. He would wipe me out of existence without a moment’s
hesitation could he safely do it; with my brother outlawed, that would
make him heir to my father’s estate. He will either be Russia’s prime
minister, or else, before then, some terrorist--” The lifting of her
shoulders spoke the rest.

A mystery that had puzzled Drexel for near a week was suddenly
illumined. “I see now why you feared me, that night in the hotel, when
I told you who I was!”

“Yes. The friend, the guest, the kinsman of Prince Berloff seemed
indeed a man to flee from.”

“To think that we have never guessed what he is!”

“Only a very few in the Government know the office he fills, and only
a few of us. He works through one or two trusty subordinates who are
nominally the head of the system.”

“But what are his reasons for this concealment?”

“In the first place, since no one suspects what he is, he can work
more craftily. In the second place--well, you can guess that a chief
of spies is not exactly a popular idol. Von Plevhe spent a million
rubles a year to protect his person, and even with that he died by a
terrorist’s bomb. Instead of defending himself by the vain expenditure
of a million on personal guards, Prince Berloff defends himself by
keeping his hated office a secret.”

“I see. But why have you revolutionists not exposed him?”

“We have kept the matter a secret for much the same reason that he has
kept it secret. So long as he believes himself unsuspected, we can work
all the better against him.”

He stared at her. He remembered how calmly, how haughtily she had stood
beside Prince Berloff, who had never a thought that the woman upon his
arm was his bitter enemy, was fighting him with her very wit. And then,
with a thrill of wonderment, he began to consider what a marvel it was
that this young woman who had everything--great wealth, princely birth,
such homage as was given to but few in a nation--everything that the
world prized, should care so little for them all.

“I cannot understand, princess--” he began slowly.

“Do not call me princess!” she interrupted, her face beginning to glow.
“I hate the word! Since you know me for what I am, call me what my
comrades call me. Call me Sonya.”

“It is hard for me to understand then, how you are willing to risk
position, rank, wealth--”

She rose and stood before him, her beauty heightened by the deepening
glow of her face, by the flash of her eyes.

“My position!” cried she, opening wide her arms. “My position! What won
me my position, my rank, my wealth? I will tell you. A thousand years
ago, and more, one of my ancestors was a strong man. He made himself
great by seizing the rights and property of others. The Government
helped him hold on to what he had seized, and during all the thousand
years since the Government has helped his descendents hold on to that
power and property and keep the disinherited ones, the robbed ones, in
subjection. And to-day it is helping me!

“People call me beautiful, cultured, noble. If this be true, why
is it true? Because for a thousand years thousands of people have
toiled, suffered, starved, been beaten down! I am the product of all
that misery! Not for a day, not for an hour, would I keep my position
were it not for one thing alone. I have a large income, all of which,
except what I need to maintain appearances, is now turned over to the
revolutionists; were I openly to join the revolutionists, that money,
which we need so much, would be confiscated and lost to us. The need of
this money forces me to hold my place; otherwise I would be openly in
the fight to regain the people their lost rights, to gain them rights
they have never had! To win their liberty, and all that liberty will
mean! Ah, the people! Our poor maimed and mourning people!”

As she spoke there was a vague sense in Drexel of the contrast between
them: she the apex of old-world aristocracy, giving her whole soul to
the people; he of the over-night American aristocracy, trampling upon
the people, giving his whole soul to winning that which she would so
gladly throw away. As she finished, standing before him a-tremble with
sympathy and passion, her superb beauty illumined by the inspiration of
her purpose, he felt himself fairly lifted to his feet; and thrilled,
he stretched out an eager hand to her.

“And I--I will help you!” he cried.

“You help?” Her lips half curled with scorn. “You with such ideals as
you expressed the other night!”

“Never mind ideals! I will help!”

Those eyes of blue searched him narrowly.

“If not impelled to help by ideals, then by what?”

He well knew by what; by her spirit, her personality, by his love--but
he cried:

“What impels me matters not, so long as I serve well and ask no reward!”

She considered a space, then said slowly: “No, we have no right to
refuse any trustworthy aid. And I know that I can trust you; and that
you have courage and readiness of wit. But, you have counted the risk?”

“I am ready for the risk!”

She was silent a moment. “You know what we are trying to do now. Our
present endeavour is but an incident of the great struggle; but the
future of the cause, the liberation of the people, depend largely upon
saving my brother from death.”

“I understand.”

“To-morrow I go to Prince Berloff’s house party, and so do you. The
reason I accepted the invitation was the opportunity offered for
continuing the search, interrupted the other day, for some document
revealing the whereabouts of my brother. You could help me, and help me
much.”

She held out her hand. “Shall it be you and I against Prince Berloff?”

He pressed her hand.

“You and I,” he half whispered, “against--” He checked the words that
rushed to his lips, but they sounded through all his being: “Against
the world!”




CHAPTER XI

A BARGAIN IS RENEWED


The next day they all went down to Prince Berloff’s--the Howards, Sonya
and her father, Countess Baronova, Drexel, the prince, and besides
them half a dozen high-born men and women who, Drexel soon discovered,
had the grace and polish of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, and a
paste-jewel sparkle of talk, but who were just narrowness and stupidity
surfaced with fine manners and fine clothes.

As Drexel had anticipated, Sonya wore toward him an air of haughty
negligence--an air that held no faintest hint that they were on terms
of friendship, much less that between them was a secret pact. He could
but compare this cold creature of imperious indifference that the
world saw with the frank, glowing, inspiring and inspired woman who
the afternoon before had opened her soul to him. Though his uncle drew
him aside and talked traction deal, and though he nodded now and then,
Drexel took in hardly one of the fortune-pregnant sentences; his mind
was all with Sonya. But he did not allow himself to think of love,
though all his being tingled with it. After the manner in which he had
proposed to her, offering to lift her to his shining heights out of her
poverty and insignificance, he hardly dare again approach the subject.
Besides, for all his American pride, he felt her to be immeasurably
beyond his reach.

But if Sonya was distant, there was one who was not. In the latter
half of the short journey Mr. Howard was summoned forward by his wife,
and Drexel was following his uncle, when he was met in the corridor by
Countess Baronova.

“I know your uncle was sent for; are you, too, under orders?” she asked
lightly, with a smile.

“No.”

“Then, sir, I put you under orders. Come, talk to me.”

He fell in with her playful spirit, and bowed with an air that mocked
the St. Petersburg courtiers. “Madame, I obey.”

“Come, then.”

She led the way back to a compartment in the rear of the car and they
sat down facing each other. She was in a travelling gown of black
velvet with long sweeping lines, and the black note was repeated with
staccato effect by the studs of jet in her ears, and by her brilliant
eyes; a darkly fascinating being whose gaze was open and direct, whose
clear-skinned beauty was honest, owing not a tittle, as does most noble
St. Petersburg beauty, to the false testimony of bleaching compounds
and rouge-pots.

She leaned back with luxurious grace and smiled at him with frank good
humour. “I know I’m very brazen to capture you in this manner, but
that’s the privilege of an elderly widow.”

“Elderly?”

“Twenty-seven, sir!”

“Then that puts me, too, in the decrepit class.”

“Oh, a single man never grows too old for woman to smile at. He’s
comparatively immortal.”

“Hum. And the moral to that is----”

“No, it isn’t. Be mortal--for some one woman’s sake. Thus the elderly
widow advises. But besides my old age,” she went on, “I have another
excuse for taking you prisoner. For a week or more I’ve been waiting to
have a little chat with you.”

“I’ve--ah--been in Moscow, you know,” explained Drexel.

“Yes, I know. But now at last I have you at my mercy.” Her smile faded
away, her face leaned nearer, and her rallying tone sank to a serious
whisper. “I want to talk on an important matter, Mr. Drexel, and I am
going to speak to you openly, frankly. I can play the diplomat, but
with a man of affairs like you, I know it is best to come straight to
the point.”

Since he had first met the countess, Drexel had known her as a popular
figure in the brilliant society frequented by the high officials
that surround the Czar and fill the ministries, by the smart and
noble officers of the Imperial Guard, by that ever-changing influx
of officers who, after representing for a year or two the Czar’s
autocratic might in some stupid, provincial town, or in some remote
army station, come to St. Petersburg to renew themselves with a few
months of the capital’s thoughtless gaiety. Yet he had guessed there
was something beneath her surface of society devotee. She had piqued
his curiosity, so now he felt a sudden flutter of interest as he said,
“Please go on.”

Her dark, lustrous eyes searched deep into his own for a silent
moment--then the elbow that supported her smooth cheek slipped yet
nearer along the window-sill, and her voice dropped to a yet softer
tone.

“You are a man to be trusted. I put myself, my life, in your hands.”

She glanced quickly at the door and back again. “I am a revolutionist.”

“A revolutionist!” he breathed.

“All my soul is with those who fight the Czar.”

He stared at her. Indeed, there was something beneath the surface! And
that two such women as she and the princess should----

She interrupted his surprise with her rapid, barely audible words.
“There is a noble part open to you, if you will only take it.”

“And that?”

“To help us.”

“How?”

“You have heard about Borodin--his arrest--what he means to the
revolutionary cause?”

“Yes.”

“To rescue him is what at this moment we revolutionists desire most of
all to do. If you would join us in that attempt, our chance of success
would be greatly increased.”

“Increased? How?”

“You are shrewd,” she whispered. “And you could attempt bolder things
than other men, for, your position being what it is, no one would
suspect you. Yes, you could do much--much!”

She took his silence as a wish for something further before he
answered. “If you will be with us I can arrange for you to meet our
active leaders at once, and take part in their secret plannings. I can
see from your face that you are wondering what, in return for all this,
will be your reward. You would have a life-long sense of having helped
a struggling nation to win the light.”

She hesitated--a soft red tinged her cheeks--her eyes fluttered down.

“And if the--the gratitude of a simple woman will mean anything--that
gratitude you would ever have.”

There was no mistaking what she meant. Here was a situation, indeed,
for a man newly in love! In his embarrassment Drexel knew not what to
say that would carry him swiftly and safely by this delicate crisis
in a manner to give no offense to the countess, whom he liked and
admired. He was floundering about in his mind for the proper phrase
when she raised her bright, flushed face and met his gaze frankly.

“If you decide to be with us,” she went on, “I have a definite plan to
suggest--one calling for immediate action. A plan I, personally, am
trying to carry through. I am sure we could make it succeed--you and I.”

All her warm, excited beauty, all her fascination, were directed at
him. He hardly knew how to parry.

“Before I decide,” he temporized, “I should want to know what the plan
is.”

“Lean nearer. It is this. I am trying--s-s-sh! Some one is coming! I’ll
tell you later, when the person goes.”

Her voice and face were all disappointment, but when Mr. Howard walked
into the compartment, she greeted him with an easy, good-humoured
smile. However, her plan Drexel was not then to know, for the journey
ended without giving her an opportunity to finish what she had begun.

At the station were waiting four two-seated sleighs, each with three
splendid blacks hitched abreast. It fell out that Drexel, the countess,
Sonya and Berloff got into one sleigh, Sonya and Berloff in the front
seat. As they flashed over the flat white country, tucked away in
frozen sleep, Drexel involuntarily compared these two women, the one he
did not love and felt sure he could have, and the one he did love and
knew he could not have--both beautiful, both clever, both so different
from what they seemed to the world--both involved in the dangerous
underground struggle against the Czar.

He could but notice with what ease Sonya talked with Berloff, that
powerful antagonist with whom she was in deadly duel. He studied
Berloff anew in the light of her startling revelation, and he saw anew
the power, the resourcefulness, the relentless cunning behind that
pale, refined face. In a struggle of wits against wits, he was an
adversary that only the cleverest could hope to hold his own against.
Moreover, he did not fight alone. Fighting with him, and for him, was
his own army of near a hundred thousand spies, and besides these was
the million of the standing army, and all the vast civil machinery of
the State. Drexel drew a long breath.

The prince’s mansion sat in a great park of snow-drooped evergreens.
It was a big, box-like, sprawling pile, as are most of the older
country seats of the Russian nobility, but the plainness of its
exterior prepared a surprise for him who entered for the first time.
The furnishings were rich and quiet in their tone; the walls of the
main rooms were hung with paintings, studies, etchings, chiefly works
from the hands of the big Frenchmen of the nineteenth century; and
everywhere were exquisite little bronzes, the best private collection
in Russia. Berloff, so said his friends, could have been an eminent
artist himself, had birth not destined him to greater things.

Drexel’s eyes were ever covertly watching Sonya--thrilled with the
sense that he alone of all here knew the double part she played. Sonya
at once became the dominant figure of the party. She did not seek
attention, rather she seemed to disdain it; but, nevertheless, it
focussed upon her, and with a magnificent indifference she accepted it
as her due.

In the evening, when they were all in the music room, the countess
surprised one of Drexel’s surreptitious glances at Sonya. “You seem to
think with the rest of the men, that there is only one woman present,
the princess,” she whispered.

“I had heard so much of her that I was curious,” Drexel returned.

“Allow the elderly widow to tell you that attention paid the princess
is attention wasted. She will smile on nothing less than royal blood.
Since we left Petersburg she has given you one casual glance and two
casual words. Are my statistics correct?”

“They agree with my own.”

Her voice sank to a bare whisper. “And of course you know she has no
sympathy with our movement to gain freedom. She believes in the divine
rights of the high-born--that they are superior and should rule and
have the earth, and that the many should be their footstool.”

He saw it was her wish to draw him into some retired corner and
continue the conversation of the train; but this was not permitted
her, for just then the debonair young lieutenant of the Czar’s Guards
who had been tripping airily among the perfumed heights of tenor arias
from the Italian opera, left the piano, and there arose a demand that
she should sing. In rebuke to these sweet soulless intricacies, so
it seemed to Drexel, she sang several of the folk songs of little
Russia--simple, plaintive airs that were the voice of the people’s
heart speaking its joys and woes and aspirations--and sang them in a
rich and soft contralto charged with feeling.

Drexel, stirred by her voice, felt his heart pulsing in warm sympathy
with the beat of the song. The applauding guests thought she was moved
by mere artistic sentiment. He knew better, and when he had a moment
alone with her after she had finished, he told her how truly splendid
had been her singing. She caught the sympathy in his voice and flashed
at him a quick, bright look. “We’ll have you yet!” she whispered.

Prince Berloff, coming up, reminded her that he had promised to show
her some new etchings that he had shown the other guests in the
afternoon while she had been lying down, and he led her off to the
library.

Could Drexel have only followed her!

The countess bestowed herself in a corner of a great leather divan,
leaning back in luxurious grace, her cheek in one finely modeled hand.
The prince closed the door and drew up a chair in front of her. There
was controlled eagerness in his pale face.

“Well?” he asked in his low voice.

Triumph gleamed through the fringe of her half-closed eyes, but her
manner was languorously reposeful.

“Well, I think we have him!”

“A-a-h!” breathed the prince. “You have definitely involved him in some
plan?”

“Not yet. I’m leading him gently toward one. But he’s ready. He said as
much to-night.”

“Good! And what plan?”

“I thought the one we knew was uppermost in the revolutionists’ minds
would be the best--the freeing of Borodin.”

“You must use haste. Drexel is to be in Russia less than two weeks
longer. When are you going to lead him definitely into the thing?”

“That depends,” she answered.

“On what?”

“On you.”

“On me?”

“On the reply you make to a pair of requests.”

“And what are they?”

“When you arranged with me to undertake this matter, you merely ordered
me to lead Mr. Drexel into some revolutionary plot. You did not tell me
why you wanted him to be involved in a plot, and I did not ask. But I
ask now.”

The prince’s white brows drew together. “Countess, you are going too
far!”

But the menace of his looks did not even ripple the countess’s repose.

“Then you refuse?”

“Most emphatically!”

“Well, anyhow, this first request was of minor importance,” she said
easily. “And besides, for that matter, I know my question’s answer.”

He gave a slight start, then his face was again a cold mask.

“Indeed,” he said calmly. “How?”

“Oh, I could not help doing a little thinking--guessing--putting this
and that together.”

“And my purpose?”

“To get Mr. Drexel out of the way.”

“Well?”

“And get him out of the way so that no suspicion or blame could attach
to you,” she went on. “Get him involved in some revolutionary plot you
were watching, have the gendarmes break in upon the plotters and kill
Mr. Drexel in the struggle, or have him immediately executed with the
others before his identity should be learned. Then when his fate became
known, the Government would be very sorry--but really, you know, no one
would be to blame but Mr. Drexel’s own rashness. And you could be very
sympathetic with his family, and they would never guess that you were
the man behind it. Very safe, prince--and very, very clever!”

The prince’s face was still a cold, impenetrable mask.

“Am I not right?”

“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” he said.

Her head slowly nodded. “Oh, I am right!” She gazed into his face
with keen, analyzing thought. “They say Richard the Third of England
murdered cousins, uncles, all sorts of relatives, to get to the throne.
Our own Catherine the Great had her husband, Czar Paul, killed that
she might become ruler of Russia. You have a family likeness to them,
prince. I should not care to stand between you and anything you desire.”

“I have not noticed any particular strain of tenderness in the Countess
Baronova,” he returned dryly. “You spoke of a second request.”

“Yes. The important one. If I am to go ahead, you must pay me more.”

“Pay you more! I have offered you ten thousand rubles for this above
your regular salary!”

“I know. I must have fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand! Never!”

“You are in earnest?” she asked quietly.

“Of course! I have thousands of persons who will do this for what I
offered you--or a tenth the sum.”

“But do it as well? Anyone else who could draw him into a revolutionary
plot--so that it will be safe for you--so that the blame will all be on
him? Eh, prince?”

“Your demand is absurd!” he said.

“Then I will go no further with Mr. Drexel. You and I are through with
this matter, I suppose. Well, I’m quite as well pleased with your
refusal.” She started to rise. “Let us return to the others.”

“Wait, sit down,” he said sharply. She did so. “Tell me why you are
just as well pleased with my refusal?”

“Perhaps,” said she calmly, “it may be in my mind that by breaking with
you I may get something I prefer above your fifty thousand.”

“And that?”

“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” she said, mimicking his cold
sentence of a moment before.

At this “checkmate” he bit the inner edge of his thin lip.

“Oh, I’d just as soon tell you,” she went on. “The fact is, I’m getting
tired of my work. Not tired of the pleasure of society, nor tired of my
particular friends, the young officers who come to St. Petersburg to
spend their furloughs. But tired of having it whispered about secretly
that I have liberal views, and thereby drawing to me the officers who
hold revolutionary opinions. Tired of sympathetically leading them on,
little by little, to confide in me. Tired of telling you, and having
them disappear--poor fellows!”

“Um. What would have been the position of the widow of the bankrupt
Count Baronoff but for this salary?”

“I have needed the money, yes. But now, I’m tired. Besides, if I’m
found out, or if a few wrinkles come, my usefulness to you is over and
the salary stops. I’ve been doing a little serious thinking, and here’s
what I’ve decided. If I have so infatuated Mr. Drexel that I can lead
him into a plot that will make him your victim, why should I not----”

She stopped, and her eyes gleamed tantalizingly at the prince.

“Well?”

“Well, instead of that, why should I not make myself your cousin?”

“You mean marry him?”

“He’s rich--has a big career before him--and I rather like him. Why
not?”

“Why not?” cried the prince in a low, harsh voice, leaning towards her.
“Because I will not have my plans interfered with! Because I will not
have you for a relative!”

“Thanks for the compliment, prince,” she said dryly. “But how will you
prevent it?”

“By telling him what you are--the cleverest, keenest, most heartless
woman spy in Russia!”

“Perhaps I also might tell something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I might tell Miss Howard who you are--the ruthless, secret----”

He rose and stood above her, his eyes glittering.

“Be careful, countess,” he said slowly, ominously. “You yourself have
said that I would hesitate at nothing. Well, be warned by your own
words!”

Her daring had carried her too far. She knew this man, and knew that
if he but willed it she would mysteriously disappear never to be seen
again. Her face kept its calm, but inwardly she could but flinch before
the dark menace of his look.

After a moment, she spoke again.

“I think we will both go farther, prince, if we go together and in
harmony. Come, which is it to be--fifty thousand--or am I to withdraw
from the affair?”

Berloff did not answer at once; then he said:

“Fifty thousand.”

“So be it,” said she.

“But you must finish this at once.”

“I’ll claim the money within three days.” She rose and took his arm.
“Come, let us go back to the others.”

Two minutes later she was again with Drexel, trying with look and
veiled words to win his sympathy for her cause.




CHAPTER XII

IN THE PRINCE’S STUDY


After several more of the countess’s songs of Little Russia, and more
vocal trapeze work by the lieutenant among his Italian arias, the
company adjourned to the hall, a room so large that a fair-sized house
could have been erected therein. Here tables had been placed, and the
company eagerly set about playing cards, the great pastime of the
_blasé_ Russian nobility. The stakes were moderate, Berloff purposely
announcing a low limit that none might leave his house with feelings of
regret; but nevertheless the play continued with a silent intensity far
into the morning hours.

The countess tried in vain to have a few minutes alone with Drexel
during the evening. The next morning, however, she was more fortunate,
for when she came down at eleven for her tea and two sugared rolls
she found Drexel alone in the breakfast room--no other of the guests
had as yet appeared. She assumed command of the great silver samovar,
which would be steaming all day, and made Drexel a fresh glass of tea.
When she had said the night before to Berloff that she liked Drexel,
she had spoken more of truth than the prince imagined--more, perhaps,
than even she herself was aware of--and this liking lent a peculiar
excitement, a tang, to the game she was now playing.

Before two minutes had passed she had led the talk to Borodin. To
shrewd, hard-headed Henry Drexel, whose secret pride it had always
been that no one had ever bested him in the game of wits, this frank,
handsome woman seemed flushed with excited devotion to her cause.
He had a momentary impulse to avoid the risk of working at cross
purposes by taking her as an ally into his and Sonya’s plan; but he was
restrained by the sense that to do so would be to reveal Sonya’s secret
to a third person, and none but she had that right. On the other hand
to tell the countess he was not interested would have been false to his
attitude--so he temporized.

“Do you know where Borodin is imprisoned?” he asked.

“No--not yet.”

“Should not your first effort be to find out?”

“It is going to be.”

Drexel did some quick thinking. Perhaps she had some information worth
knowing. “Where do you think his whereabouts can be learned?” he
inquired.

“There is undoubtedly a record of it in the Ministry of the Interior.”

“But the difficulty of getting it!”

“I know. But we have plans for searching the ministry’s records.”

He hesitated; then in his eagerness he went farther than he had
intended.

“But might there not be some easier, simpler plan?”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I have been doing some thinking--ah--apropos of what you said. Is
there not some man intimate with the secrets of the Government who may
have record of Borodin?”

“Like whom?”

“Well, say like our host. I merely use him for an illustration. He
seems to be informed on every detail of what the Government does.”

The countess’s quick mind decided that if this idea interested him,
it would be well to lure him on through that interest. “Yes,” she
returned, nodding her head. “I think you may be right. And as for the
prince, he may be the very man. It is entirely possible he may know
where Borodin is.”

She leaned nearer, and her manner was excitedly joyous. “Since you have
been doing this thinking, that means you are at heart already one of
us!”

“I am not saying yet, countess,” he smiled.

The voices of Prince Berloff and Mr. Howard sounded without.

“Come--you will be with us!” she said quickly, appealingly.

“Perhaps.” And then, half ashamed of his enforced reticence, he
whispered: “Who knows? I may do all you ask--some day.”

Her eyes glowed into his. “Ah--thank you!” she breathed as the others
entered.

Drexel excused himself, leaving the countess pouring tea for the two
men, and withdrew into the hall, where under pretense of examining some
etchings from Corot he kept watch upon the broad staircase. As he had
hoped, Sonya soon came down the stairway, alone. She responded to his
“Good-morning, princess,” with a formal smile.

“What kind of a day is it?” she asked perfunctorily, and crossed into
the embrasure of a window and gazed out into the park. He followed her,
half doubtful if there really was the secret tie of a common purpose
between this haughty being and himself. But once within the alcove she
smiled at him again--this time a comradely, half-whimsical smile.

“Well, sir, how do you feel now about being in the lion’s den?”

“Like getting out as soon as we get what we want.”

“Then you are ready to go on?”

“Do I look like a man who wishes to withdraw?”

She searched his face with its quiet, determined eyes.

“No,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and a warm glow went through him.

The countess’s recent words were strong upon him. He was curious
to learn Sonya’s impression, and there was not the same reason for
absolute secrecy in the countess’s case as there was in Sonya’s. “Tell
me, what do you know of Countess Baronova?” he asked.

“No more than you probably do.”

“Perhaps, then, not so much. We have--well--been friends, and have
had many talks. And at last, after working her way toward it, she has
confided to me that she is secretly a revolutionist.”

“Indeed! But I really cannot say that I am surprised. She is just
another example of how the revolt against the Government is penetrating
even the nobility. But why did she tell you?”

“To try to enlist my aid in some such plan as we now have in hand. She
thought because of my peculiar situation I could be of exceptional
assistance.” He did not want the countess as a third partner in the
scheme--he wanted to carry this thing through alone with Sonya; so he
quickly added: “But I suppose there is no reason for our taking her in.”

She shook her head. “It is always unwise to take in a single
unnecessary person--and especially a person who has not been tested.”

“When shall we make the trial?”

“To-day. We must watch till the prince and all the others are occupied
in some distant part of the house. Perhaps there will be an opportunity
before the rest come down--that might be our best chance.”

But this last was not to be. After breakfast the prince excused
himself, saying that he had some papers to which he was forced to
give immediate consideration, and withdraw to his study, the very room
Drexel and Sonya were to search. Moreover, Alice wanted her father to
see something of the estate which was to be her main country seat, and
since she had a headache and her mother felt disinclined to brave the
cold, it fell upon Drexel to accompany Mr. Howard. Until two o’clock
the pair of them, barricaded against the cold with layers of furs, and
drawn by three swift blacks, flew across broad fields, through long,
huddling villages, past forests of snow-shrouded pine and spruce and
hemlock.

Half an hour before the afternoon dinner Drexel and Sonya had another
moment together in the embrasure of the window. After this interview
Drexel went out to make a solitary inspection of the prince’s famous
stable, asking them to excuse him, as he had nibbled rather generously
after his drive and so was not hungry. Just before dinner was announced
Sonya, pleading a slight indisposition, retired to her room. Minus
these two, the company filed into the dining-room.

They were midway in the first course when Drexel returned to the house,
slipped quietly through the corridor that led to the library, and
taking a book at hazard from the French section, settled himself in one
of the leather chairs. A few minutes later Sonya entered.

“That is the study there,” she said quickly, leading the way through a
door opening off the library.

They had decided there was no necessity for one to keep guard; the
records were in French, as Sonya knew, and they could make double speed
by searching together. In case anyone interrupted them, Sonya was
to remark casually that Drexel was helping her look for a volume of
genealogy.

The study was distinctly a workroom. There were no vaults here, no
heavily locked cupboards, no air of secrecy, for all the prince’s
work was done upon the theory that the surest way to escape suspicion
of harbouring a secret is to make a quiet show of having nothing
to conceal. Shelves reaching to the ceiling were crowded with the
government reports of a dozen nations, and with rows of semi-official
files. It was frankly the room of such a man as Berloff appeared to
be--a statesman without a post, an unofficial adviser to the Czar.

“When here a week ago,” whispered Sonya, “I barely got into this room
when I had to fly. So we’ll have to begin at the very beginning--on
those files.”

Scarcely breathing, their ears quickened for the faintest step, they
set swiftly to work. The danger was great; discovery for Sonya, at
least, would mean complete disaster.

As each file was examined it was thrust back, so that in case they were
suddenly interrupted there might be no disorder to betray what they
had been about. There were digests of reports on the railroads, on the
peasants, on the wholesale corruption in the army commissariat, on
a hundred things of vital interest to the statesman at large Berloff
ostensibly was--but nothing relating to what they knew to be his real
business.

“After all, he must have some secret hiding-place for his records of
the political police,” whispered Drexel.

“Perhaps. But we must first make sure they are not here.”

The faint, musical jangling of bells without caused Drexel to glance
through the window. Already the brief daylight was beginning to wane.

“What is it?” asked Sonya.

“A sleigh driving up with one man in it. Another guest, I suppose.”

Sonya, who had been turning swiftly through crop reports from the
Ministry of Agriculture, gave a low cry and stared at a paper.

“We’re finding something! Think of it! Prince Berloff was behind
that attempt a month ago to kill the prime minister with a bomb! The
revolutionary leader who urged it on was in reality one of his spies!”

“Berloff try to kill the prime minister! Why?”

“Because that would be to kill two birds with one stone--make the
revolutionists unpopular because of their inhuman methods, and make
vacant the position he covets. But here are more! Examine the bottom of
the files.”

“Here it is!” cried Drexel.

“What does it say? Quick!”

“Arrested in the dress of a railway porter----”

“But the prison!”

“Put in Central Prison.”

She gave a sharp moan of disappointment. “He was put there at first.
But we know he was secretly removed to some other prison. Quick--we’ll
find it!”

They went feverishly at the files. But suddenly both straightened up.
Indistinct voices were heard in the corridor that opened into the
library. In an instant the files were back in their places and all
looked as before.

“I did not expect you to-day,” said a voice in the library.

“Berloff!” whispered Drexel.

“We’ll carry it off before him,” said Sonya, confidently, and she took
down a volume of genealogy.

“Count Orloff was very eager you should have the reports at once,” a
rumbling bass responded to Prince Berloff.

“That voice!” breathed Sonya.

“I, too, have heard it before! But where?”

The library filled with light. They crept to the half-open door. Sonya
put her eyes to the crack and peered in. The next instant she had
clutched Drexel with tense, quivering hands and was drawing him back.
Even the deepening twilight could not hide her sudden pallor.

“Who is it?” Drexel whispered.

“The captain of gendarmes!”

“The one who pursued us? Captain Nadson?”

“Yes.”

They stared at each other in deepest consternation.

“If he finds us here together----” breathed Drexel.

“The destruction of our plans--trouble for you--ruin for me, and who
knows what worse!”

“We must escape, then.”

“Yes--but how?”

“The windows, perhaps.”

“They are double, and are screwed down. The only way would be to break
the glass. And then they would seize us before we could get out.”

Drexel thought. “Our only chance then is that they may go away without
discovering us.”

“There is no other,” said she.

They crept back to the door, and this time Drexel put his eyes to
the crack. The big captain was in the act of handing Berloff a large
envelope.

“Here are the reports Count Orloff sent.”

“I suppose my advice is wanted soon?”

“Within two or three days, the count said.”

“Of course you can remain here until I have my advice ready. For a
couple of days.”

“Just as you order, Your Excellency.”

“Very well. And now what have you to report concerning the young woman
who made that attempt here a week ago?”

“I regret to say, nothing, Your Excellency.”

“Not even a clue?”

“She has completely disappeared. But her description is in the hands of
our men all over Russia. We’ll get her sooner or later.”

“And the man who helped her? An American, you said.”

“We have only his word for that. He probably lied. He could have been
English. As to him, also nothing.”

“You have had the police departments of the different cities send you
the records of American and English passports?”

“Yes; but these foreign passports only give the age and the colour of
one’s eyes and hair. That helps little to identify a man--especially
since most of the Americans and Englishmen in Russia are between
twenty-five and thirty, which was about the age of this woman’s
confederate.”

“Well, keep after them, captain. There is another little matter on
which I desire further information that I think you can give me, but I
must refer to the record in the case. It is in my study. Come with me.”

The prince and Captain Nadson rose and started for the study door.

“It’s all up!” whispered Drexel. “I’ll attack them, and under cover of
that you run.”

“No--no!” returned Sonya. “Don’t move--don’t breathe!”

And to Drexel’s consternation she calmly swept through the study door
into the arms of the two men.




CHAPTER XIII

BETWEEN THREE FIRES


At sight of her, Captain Nadson fell back and stared.

“Prince Berloff!” he ejaculated.

But Berloff, surprised at her appearance, did not heed him. “Why,
Olga,” he said, “I thought you were indisposed, and lying down.”

Sonya, cool, haughty, ignored the captain as a thing below her notice.
“So I was,” she replied; “but I felt a little better and a few minutes
ago I wandered in there to look at your genealogical library. Here’s a
volume that I find has some new things about the Valenkos in the time
of Ivan the Terrible.”

“Don’t you think it would be well for you to eat something?” inquired
the prince.

“Perhaps I shall,” she said languidly.

“Boris will get you anything you wish. You will excuse us. Come,
captain.”

He started toward the door. Sonya was putting out her hand, but it was
Nadson who stopped him.

“A moment, prince. I want to speak to the lady.”

The captain’s bearded face was a-quiver with excitement. Sonya turned
her eyes upon him now for the first time--a cool, inquiring look, half
amazed at his temerity in daring to address her. Behind the door, all
Drexel’s being stood at pause.

“What does the gentleman wish to say?” Sonya asked stiffly.

Triumph glittered in the officer’s eye. “I believe I have seen madame
before,” he said.

“Very likely. Many persons have.”

“And recently. Only a week ago.”

“Ah!--then monsieur has just come from abroad.”

“I saw you in St. Petersburg.”

“Indeed! This is very remarkable.”

“Why?”

“Because only three days ago I returned from abroad after an absence of
five months.”

This effrontery was too much for the police official. “It’s not true!”
he blurted out.

Her face darkened. “What!” she cried.

“Captain--you forget yourself!” cut in the sharp voice of Berloff.

“I do not understand the insolence of this underling of yours, prince,”
she said majestically. “I do not care what he thinks or believes. I
have nothing more to say to him. If you desire to set him right, you
may.”

“Captain,” said the prince severely, “I myself met her when she
arrived.”

“You!”

[Illustration: _Triumph glittered in the officer’s eye. “I believe I
have seen madame before,” he said_]

“And from August until three days ago the princess----”

“The princess!” ejaculated the captain.

“Yes. My cousin--the Princess Valenko.”

“The daughter of the military governor?”

“The same,” said the prince.

The stupid amazement on the face of the big officer was a sight to see.
This was quickly followed by the sense of the danger to him of his
heinous blunder.

“I believe the captain said he had something to say to me,” Sonya
remarked with an awful hauteur that completed the man’s discomfiture.
“What is it?”

“Nothing--a mistake--I beg pardon,” stammered the captain.

“You are sure you have nothing to say?”

“Nothing, princess--nothing--I assure you. I ask a thousand pardons.
Nothing.”

“In that case,” said Berloff, “we shall go on into the study. Come on,
captain.”

They started again toward the door. Drexel crouched with tense muscles,
determined to make the best struggle that was in him.

But Sonya quietly slipped her hand through Berloff’s arm. “Won’t you
take me in to the dining-room? It will be very stupid eating in that
great room alone.”

“With pleasure,” said the prince. “Captain, please wait for me here.”

“Certainly, certainly!” said the officer.

“Then come, Olga.”

The captain, with one hand on the back of the leather chair in which he
was going to be comfortable for the next half-hour, bowed low to them.

“I trust the captain will not take his mistake too much to heart,” said
Sonya, her manner relenting somewhat. “Perhaps he, too, would like
something to eat after his drive from the station?”

“No, no--don’t think of me, princess,” protested the humbled officer.
“I am not hungry--not in the least.”

Sonya unbent a little more. “Then a glass of tea?”

“No--really--thank you----”

Sonya unbent still more--was the least bit gracious. “Come--let me give
you a glass of tea just to show that I bear no ill will.”

The captain flushed, gratified. “Well, just a glass of tea.”

“Come, then”--and Sonya led the two men out.

Drexel waited a minute, then slipped into the library. Already he had
made one decision. If he remained in the house, Captain Nadson would
be sure to see him. The captain might think himself mistaken regarding
Sonya’s identity, if nothing new came to reawaken suspicion; but to
see the exact likeness of both his fugitives in the house--the finest
bluffing in the world would not avail to save them.

He must fly the house, and fly the house at once.

But to leave that instant meant to abandon what would likely be the
only chance to learn the whereabouts of Borodin--to abandon his
precious, newly made, uncemented friendship with Sonya. So he made a
second decision. Sonya would keep the prince and Captain Nadson beside
her for several minutes. It was a great risk, but he would go on with
the search.

He hurried back to the files, first closing the shutters and turning on
the light, and went with feverish rapidity through the documents, his
ears strained for the faintest approaching step. Paper after paper he
skimmed. His heart pounded as if it would burst open his breast.

Suddenly he gave a start. He heard a light footfall, a soft
swish-swish--Sonya slipping back, he guessed. But when he peeped into
the other room it was the countess he saw. She took down a book and
settled herself in a chair; evidently she had come in here for a few
minutes’ relief from the crowd.

Drexel hesitated a moment--then went back to his work, and again
the records of arrests, of exile, of nefarious plots, flew beneath
his nervous hands, his eyes looking only for the name of Borodin.
Noiselessly files came out, their pages were turned, then slipped back,
while his strained fear counted the seconds.

“Ah, Mr. Drexel!” said a low voice behind him.

He whirled about. “Countess Baronova!” he breathed.

She lightly crossed to him. “You are trying to find out about Borodin?”
she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Then you were in earnest in what you said this morning--about being
with us?”

“Yes.”

“I am proud--proud! To have won you to us--and so quickly!” she said
softly, glowing upon him. And this marvellously clever actress told in
her manner that the great infatuation for her which had led him to this
action was returned.

He did not disillusion her; to have done so would have taken time and
would have exposed Sonya. “I must hurry,” he said, turning to his work.
“I may be interrupted any second.”

“And I will help you!” The next moment she, too, was fluttering through
the records--and again she felt that peculiar tang of excitement, an
excitement not quite like any she had experienced before in all her
professional career.

She wondered if he had discovered what office the prince held. “Is
there anything,” she asked, “that makes you think Prince Berloff
especially may possess the evidence we seek?”

He remembered Sonya’s statement that their knowledge of Berloff’s
position was a close secret.

“He seems intimate with the Government, as I told you,” he replied.

Several minutes passed. The two worked swiftly, in silence. Finally
Drexel straightened up with a low cry of triumph.

“You have it?” asked the countess.

“Yes--at last!”

“Where is he?”

“In the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul! In St. Petersburg!”

He swiftly put back the files. Perhaps he had already remained too long.

“Countess,” he whispered, “I am going to leave the house immediately.”

“I was just going to suggest it,” she returned. “It would be dangerous
for you here. The prince has a violent temper; if he found out he might
stop at nothing. And I shall go with you.”

“Go with me?”

“I have led you into this. Do you think I shall desert you?”

“But countess----”

“Don’t protest. Besides, I can help you.” Her brain had worked as
rapidly as her hands, and she had a plan in readiness. “I had this same
idea for finding out about Borodin before I came here. So I prepared
for my escape. I have bribed one of the servants. He is to have a horse
and sleigh ready at a moment’s notice.”

“No, no, countess. I can’t let you run into this danger!”

“Not when I am the cause of the danger?”

“No, no, I cannot! But I must go.”

He started across the room. She followed him.

“But how will you escape?”

“I’ll say that I’ve been suddenly called away, and ask for a sleigh to
the station,” he said as they entered the library. “I’ll be far away
before they----”

He broke off. The countess gave a counterfeit cry of dismay. Before
them stood the figure of Prince Berloff. The pale mask of cultured
gentlemanliness was down, and all his relentless cruelty glared at
Drexel in a scowl of dark, malignant passion.

“What were you doing in my papers?” his voice grated out.

Perhaps the prince had seen nothing, was merely suspicious. “What
papers?” Drexel asked, with an effort at surprise.

“You cannot pretend innocence! I came in here a minute ago--heard
whispers--looked in and saw you in my private papers.”

Drexel, feeling there remained for him but the slenderest chance, did
not see wherein that chance would be bettered by a mild demeanour.
Besides, the mere sight of the man set his soul afire with wrath and
hatred.

“Well, suppose I was? What then?” he coolly demanded.

“What were you looking for? What did you find out?”

Drexel shrugged his shoulders.

“Speak out! What were you looking for?”

“I do not choose to tell,” returned Drexel calmly.

“You do not choose to tell--eh?” repeated the prince. “I think you do!”
And he drew a pistol and pointed it at Drexel’s breast.

The countess saw that the prince’s rage sprang from his fear--his
ever-present fear--that Drexel had discovered him to be the chief of
the hated secret police. Also, she saw the danger of the prince ruining
her new-made scheme. She threw herself between the two.

“Don’t, don’t, prince!” she cried. “It was all my doing!”

He turned upon her fiercely. “Your doing?”

She put all the double meaning into her words that she dared.

“I led him into it! The blame is all mine! He merely did what I----”

“Stop, countess!” Drexel interposed. He looked at the prince with the
flaming recklessness of a mastering hate. “The blame is not hers,
Prince Berloff. It is all mine. So whatever you do, you must do to me
alone. I might as well tell you, though, in order to save your time,
that I am not in the least afraid of that pistol.”

The prince was silent a moment, during which he held the pistol to
Drexel’s breast and glared into his defiant eyes. “Not afraid? Why?”

“Because you dare not shoot.”

“You think not?”

“I know not.”

Berloff again was silent for a moment. “Why do I not dare shoot?”

“Because you want to marry my cousin.”

“Well?”

“Well, if you were to shoot me down, no matter under what
circumstances, my cousin would never marry you.”

“Do you think the loss of your cousin will hold me back?”

“No, my dear prince. But the loss of my cousin’s millions will.”

The prince did not answer.

As he gazed at the prince, Drexel flamed with the desire to hurl
defiance, contempt, into that gleaming, passion-worked face: to tell
him that he knew him for a man-hunter with the blood of rare-souled
thousands upon his hands, and that he was going to disclose his
perfidious business to his cousin Alice, and proclaim it broadcast to
the world. He was almost overmastered by the impulse, let come what
might, to grapple that false throat and hold it till life was gone.

But there was the promise of silence that he had made to Sonya. His
first consideration had to be her safety, and her safety depended upon
his own. He thought of Captain Nadson; the captain might enter at any
moment, and bring about the undoing of them both. For Sonya’s sake he
must make some desperate effort to escape.

He sought to get out of the room by virtue of mere audacity. “And so,
prince, since you are afraid to use that weapon, you will have to think
of something else,” he said. “And that you may think the better, I
shall leave you to yourself.”

He pushed the pistol to one side and stepped toward the door.

The fear that his secret was out dominated the prince. “Stop, or I
shoot!” he cried.

At the same instant, drawing nearer in the corridor, sounded the deep
voice of Captain Nadson.




CHAPTER XIV

THE FLIGHT WITH THE COUNTESS


For an instant Drexel stood appalled. Then the captain’s step sounded
just without the threshold--two more steps and all was lost.

Drexel’s desperate eyes fell upon the electric-light key beside the
doorway. He sprang swiftly forward, and the room was filled with
blackness. He disliked leaving the countess to face the trouble alone,
but his first duty was to Sonya. He made for the door, and his shoulder
brushed the captain’s. “Excuse me,” he said, and was gone.

Berloff started to rush after him, but the countess, who had caught his
pistol, now caught his arm.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you.”

He turned on the light and gave her a quick, penetrating look. Then he
wheeled upon Captain Nadson, which well-disciplined officer was seeing
nothing he was not supposed to see.

“Captain, wait a moment in the study.”

The captain bowed and withdrew.

“Quick!” breathed the countess. “Order me a sleigh!”

“What for?”

“Order first. Then I’ll explain. A sleigh with one horse--and not too
fast--and no driver.”

The prince took up the telephone from his desk and gave the order.

“Now, tell me.”

“He has fallen right into my trap!” the countess whispered. “He has
found out where Borodin is--but no more.”

“Then he does not guess----”

“No. I quizzed him about you,” she went on rapidly. “He thinks you are
only what you pretend to be. Here’s my plan. He’s going to fly at once
with his information. I am going to take him with me in the sleigh.
We’re confederates, you know. You discover that some papers have been
stolen--by whom, you have no idea. You have the robbers pursued. We
shall go toward the railroad station. You must give orders that I am
not to be hurt. As for him----”

“Oh, I shall give the right orders for him!” said the prince grimly.
“And when we discover who the dead man is I shall be properly horrified
at the terrible mistake. But they will all see it was the fault of his
own rashness.”

He opened a drawer of his desk and drew out a couple of Government
documents. “Take these. It will help if they are found upon him.”

She took them. “You have men to pursue us?”

“A company of Cossacks is stationed in the village. I’ll telephone for
a squad.”

“You will hush up my part in this affair?”

“Certainly.”

“Then good-bye, prince. I’ll claim my fifty thousand to-night”--and
with an excited, triumphant smile she hurried out to find Drexel.

Drexel had rushed from the room with the desire to tell Sonya of
his success before he began his flight. In this he was aided by her
watchfulness. The party had all gone into the music room, but she,
wondering what had become of him, lingered near the door. When she saw
him emerge from the corridor and make for the entry, she crossed to
meet him. Her composure was perfect.

“I just saw the captain go in there,” she whispered. “Didn’t he----”

“He didn’t see me,” Drexel returned quickly. “I’ll explain some other
time. Borodin is in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.”

Her eyes glowed into his.

“I must go at once,” he said. “Good-bye.”

“Go to Ivan and Nicolai. Good-bye ... comrade!” And she gave him a look
that made him tingle all through.

As her proud figure turned coldly away, he slipped out into the entry
hall. But his uncle had seen him, and before the old door-man had
helped Drexel into his fur coat Mr. Howard had joined him.

“Can I have a talk with you after you come in, my boy?”

“No--I’m sorry,” Drexel answered rapidly, for to him every second
had the worth of two lives. “Just got a telephone message from St.
Petersburg--got to go back to Moscow on business--must hurry to catch
the train.” And disregarding his uncle’s attempt at a reply Drexel
rushed out.

Night was fully on, though the hour was scarcely five. The sky was
a-glitter with stars, all the wide spaces of the night were flooded
with the cold brilliance of the moon, and this celestial brightness was
reflected and doubled by the vast mirror of the snow. Why could not
this have been a black and hiding night? Drexel cursed this light as
his enemy.

He first struck out on foot; but it occurred to him that if he walked
the prince, were he minded to pursue, could easily overtake him. So he
turned and made haste along the road that swept among the hemlocks back
to the stable, determined to ask boldly for a sleigh.

As a curve in the avenue revealed the stable, a dark object glided out
and came toward him. It was the answer to his unspoken prayer.

“For whom is this sleigh?” he asked the driver.

“Countess Baronova,” was the answer.

For the first time in these last tense minutes he thought of the
countess, and recalled her declaration that she purposed escaping with
him. But before he could decide what should be his course concerning
her, he saw the countess herself hurrying across the snow.

“This is luck,” she gasped, “you are here already.” She dismissed the
driver. “Come, Mr. Drexel, we must be off at once.”

“But, countess,” he objected, “I cannot let you plunge into this
danger!”

“I led you into it,” she replied, “and I am going to share it.”

Again Drexel could not explain to her that another had been his leader.

“I want to get away,” the countess continued, “to help use the
information you have gained. Besides, I am in danger as well as you. I
must fly, whether I fly with you, or fly alone.”

“Well, if you are determined,” said Drexel. He helped her in and
stepped in beside her.

He struck the horse into a gallop and the countess tucked the thick
bear robes snugly about them. They sped silently over the snow, and a
minute later passed through the park gates.

“I feel safer now,” breathed the countess. She drew something from her
breast. “Here--take these.”

“What are they?”

“Some documents I secured while we were searching the prince’s
study--papers of great value to us, I think. They will be safer with
you.”

Drexel thrust the papers into the pocket of his shuba. “How did you get
away from the prince?”

“Oh, a man came in, and then other people. The prince could not make a
scene before them, so I calmly walked out. I suppose he had no idea
you and I would run away.”

“Countess, I know you must think me very much of a coward for my
desertion of you. I--well, I really can’t explain.”

“Please don’t apologize. You have shown you were no coward. Besides,
all has turned out for the best. In an hour we’ll be at the
station--two hours after that in St. Petersburg.”

“I wish we had a better horse,” said Drexel ruefully. “This is a stiff
old beast.”

“I dare say I didn’t bribe the stableman heavily enough. But we shall
make our train.”

They glided on--now over flat, bright spaces, where the road seemed
as broad as eye-reach--now through shadowy forest stretches, where on
either side they could almost touch the pendant boughs of the snowy
evergreens. The countess talked eagerly of their plans for the release
of Borodin; Drexel answered with reserve. She spoke warmly of what it
meant to her that she had won him to the cause; on this subject, too,
he was perforce reticent.

Presently, after they had been riding for over half an hour, Drexel
thought he detected, penetrating the countess’s unbroken talk, a faint,
soft thudding.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, looking back.

“What?”

“It sounds like horses’ feet.”

“I hear nothing; it must be imagination. See, the road is empty.” And
so it was, to where it emerged from a forest but a quarter of a mile
behind.

The countess talked rapidly on--talk that was as wax to fill his ears
against that warning sound. But soon the thudding had come so near that
it could no longer be concealed by the countess’s conversation. Drexel
looked back again. Forth from the forest into the broad moonlight shot
four dark bodies, and sped swiftly toward them over the snow.

“Look, countess!” he cried. “We are pursued!”

“Yes--horsemen!” she breathed. “The prince has sent for us.”

Drexel leaned forward and began to beat the horse’s flanks with the
ends of the lines; the whip the countess had dropped out unnoticed
when they had climbed into the sleigh. But belabouring the beast was
to little purpose. The countess’s orders had been well observed. The
horse was one of those dogged roadsters that can strike a fair gait at
daybreak and hold to it till nightfall, but that cannot be pressed much
beyond this speed, no matter how strong the arm that lays on the whip.
The animal quivered at the blows, but kept his even pace.

“They’re gaining on us fast!” Drexel exclaimed. “We can never outrun
them with this beast of wood!”

The countess had to play her part. “What shall we do?” she asked. Her
voice came out with a difficulty that surprised her.

“What can we do in this great empty prairie?” he returned grimly. “In
fifteen or twenty minutes they’ll be upon us.”

“And then?”

“We’ll see.”

They glided on--the excellent cob doing its mediocre best, the four
black figures gaining, gaining, gaining--showing more and ever more
clearly the lines of horses and armed men. It was a race that could
have but one end. Soon the pursuers were but three hundred yards
behind; and still they crept closer, closer. Drexel thought these
horsemen meant only arrest--which would be disaster enough; he never
guessed that death was riding after him, and that in his pocket were
papers that would justify his killing.

Two hundred yards ... one hundred seventy-five.

In five more minutes it would all be over; the countess’s fifty
thousand rubles would be earned. She stole a glance at the face of the
man she had led to his end in this white waste. In the moonlight it
showed clean-cut, strong.

“There is no escape?” she whispered--and her voice sounded strange in
her ears.

His head shook.

One hundred fifty yards ... one hundred twenty-five.

“Countess,” said Drexel, with intense self-reproach, “I cannot tell you
how I blame myself for letting you come!”

“Had I not come, I would have been in trouble just the same,” she said.

“Perhaps not. But even if so, far better be arrested in Prince
Berloff’s house, than by those Cossacks in this desert spot.”

The countess, her head turned backwards, saw Drexel’s death, her
fortune, gain upon them--and no chance of escape before him. He was as
thoroughly trapped in this vast, open country as though he were locked
in a narrow dungeon in the granite heart of a prison-fortress.

At the moment the Cossacks had come galloping out of the forest that
peculiar emotional excitement that had possessed the countess all day
had suddenly leaped to a thousandfold its former keenness. As the
Cossacks gained, the feeling had grown more intense. She did not try to
analyze that feeling; had she, she would have thought it born of the
thrill of the death-moment riding so hard behind.

As the Cossacks sounded closer, closer, as her well-plotted success
drew nearer, nearer, she grew weak, and her strange feeling swirled
dizzily within her. And still it had no meaning.

One hundred yards.

“Stop--or we fire!” boomed across the night in a deep and powerful
voice.

The moonlight, shining straight into the speaker’s bearded face,
corroborated the voice. Drexel saw the leader was Captain Nadson.

And he was all but in that man’s hands. For an instant he thought what
his capture would mean to Sonya!

“Take the lines, countess,” he said sharply. “Now crouch down in the
body of the sleigh, so there’ll be less danger of your being hit.”
He himself huddled on the floor, his face toward the Cossacks, his
Browning pistol drawn.

For a moment the countess--“the cleverest, keenest, most heartless
woman spy in Russia”--sat crouching in the bottom of the sleigh,
reeling, appalled. The captain’s cry, “Stop, or we fire!” was to
her the beginning of the death climax, and this nearness of the end
revealed to her, as though by a flash of lightning, the meaning of her
all-day’s strange excitement and of her present wild emotion--and the
revelation froze her soul with horror.

This man that she had led to this lonely death, she loved him!

She had, in the pursuit of her profession, lured many a man to acts
or confidences that had sent him to prison, to frozen exile on far
Siberian plains, even to death by bullet or hangman’s noose. For more
than one of these victims she had felt a liking--which, however, had
never stayed her purpose; and when the man was gone, and his price was
in her hand, she had never wished her act undone. Her original liking
for Drexel she had lightly classified as one with these others--and
only this climacteric moment revealed the truth.

She loved him--she had set this trap for him--and now she was powerless
to save him!

She sprang up and began wildly to belabour the horse. The poor beast,
under this terrific beating, did manage to make a little spurt and for
a moment they held their own.

“You are under arrest! Stop--or we fire!” bellowed the captain.

“Do you think you could shoot them?” gasped the countess over her
shoulder.

“I have only the seven cartridges in my pistol. And I’m a poor shot.”

“Try! Try!”

“If I fire, all four of them will fire. They have carbines. If they
begin to shoot it may mean that you’ll be killed. It’s better for you
to be arrested.”

“Don’t think of me!” she cried frantically. “I’d rather be killed.
Shoot! Shoot!”

“Wait till they are nearer. My pistol will have a better chance.”

The next moment there was a spurt of fire. He looked behind him to see
if the countess had been hit, and for the first time saw that she was
on her feet striking the horse with all her strength.

“Sit down!” he cried, and he seized the back of her coat and dragged
her into the bottom of the sleigh beside him.

“Then shoot!” she gasped.

“If I could only kill the captain I wouldn’t mind arrest so much.”

“You must kill them all! All!”

“Why?”

“Because they----”

She broke off suddenly. She dared not tell him why. To tell him that
they meant to kill him, would be to reveal to him that they were but
the tools working out her design.

“You must kill them all! All!” she repeated frantically.

Another flash--another whizzing bullet.

“Here goes, then. For the captain first.”

His Browning flamed out. The captain and the other three galloped on.
The Browning cracked again--and a third time. All four riders still
kept their seats.

“Oh, oh!” moaned the countess. “Only four bullets left! You _can’t_
miss again. You must get a man with every bullet!”

“Stop!” roared the captain. “We don’t want to shoot. We don’t want to
hurt the woman!”

“Shoot!” gasped the countess to Drexel. “And for God’s sake shoot
straight!”

Drexel in silence tried to take careful aim over the back of the
sleigh. But a galloping horseman at forty yards is not an easy
moonlight pistol target for a novice in a swaying sleigh. After the
crack of the pistol the captain rode on, but one of the men slowly fell
behind.

“That’s better!” breathed the countess. “You’ve wounded a horse. Once
more!”

At the next shot the captain’s bridle arm fell to his side. The sixth
went wide.

“Oh, oh!” groaned the countess.

“They’re not shooting any better,” commented Drexel between his teeth.

She could not explain that their shots were going wild because they
were under orders not to risk injuring her.

“Is the next the only cartridge? Feel in your pockets--perhaps you have
some more!” she implored.

“This is the last,” said he.

He took aim at the captain--fired--threw the empty Browning away with a
cry of despair. For the captain still sat his saddle.

“All is over,” he said grimly.

“No, no!” she cried. “They must not take you! They must not!”

“I’m willing they should not.”

“See--we’re in the forest,” she said desperately. “We’re running within
two or three paces of the trees. See how thick they are. The men could
never follow you on horseback in there. If you jump from the sleigh and
make a dash----”

“I shall not desert you, countess,” he interrupted.

“You must--you must! They’ll take me just the same whether you go or
remain. So why should not you at least escape?”

Yes, his thought told him in a flash, it would be just the same with
the countess. That being the case he should think of Sonya--think of
his safety, which was Sonya’s safety.

“I’ll pretend to help them,” she went on breathlessly. “I’ll try to
hold you; we’ll pretend to have a struggle--that’ll make them more
lenient with me.” This bit of play-acting was an inspired device for
clearing herself with Prince Berloff. “And if you get away, don’t go
near a railway station; the prince will have men waiting for you at
them all. Now!”

She seized him and turned backward toward the pursuers. “Hurry!--Hurry!”
she cried to them. “I have him!” And to Drexel she whispered: “Now
struggle to break away from me. Be rough--it will be better for me if I
have some marks to show.”

They struggled--squirmed and swayed about in the rocking little
vehicle--the countess encouraged by the pursuers; and in the struggle
she deftly removed from his pocket the documents that were to excuse
his death.

“Now jump!” she whispered.

He leaped forth. Then, all within the space of an instant, he went
rolling in the snow--there were four cracks--fine, dry snow-spray
leaped up about him--and at the instant’s end he was on his feet and
dashing into the forest.

Crack--crack--crack went the guns blindly behind him, and the wild
bullets whined among the branches. The horsemen plunged in after him,
but were thrust back by the arms of the close-growing wide-spreading
trees. They sprang from their horses and gave chase on foot. But
Drexel, going at the best speed he could make in the knee-deep snow,
weaving among the trees, stumbling often, scratching his face on the
undergrowth, heard their voices grow fainter and fainter--and when he
paused after half an hour, completely blown, he could hear no sound at
all.

For the time, at least, he was safe.




CHAPTER XV

THE MAN IN THE SHEEPSKIN COAT


Drexel sank down in the fine snow, his back against a patriarch pine
that rose without a branch far up towards the stars; and he sat there
amid that vast white silence, breathing heavily, and considering what
he should next do.

He had to get back to St. Petersburg, and soon, else lose the prized
chance of working on at Sonya’s side. But he dared not make straight
for the railroad. The countess’s advice on that point he knew was
sound; those bullets which had grazed him as he rolled in the snow
were grim and indisputable evidence that the pursuit of him was a most
serious matter. He thought of walking the fifty miles, of riding in
a relay of sleighs hired from peasants; but he quickly realised that
either method offered little if any chance of escaping the hundreds who
would be sent out to scour the country for him, and his mind returned
to the railroad. After all, he would go by train, and since he dared
not go as Henry Drexel, he would go in the one disguise the country
offered him. He would find a village, secretly buy peasant clothing,
and ride back to St. Petersburg under the very nose of spies and
police.

This settled, he found the North Star, calculated the course he wished
to follow through this unknown country, and set out. Now that the spur
of pursuit was gone, he made but slow progress. Walking is not easy
in a huge fur coat through unbroken snow a foot deep, and when your
path is a series of semi-circles round wide, earth-sweeping hemlocks,
and when every moment you have to set your course anew by a star. At
length, however, he came out into the open. He was tired, but he kept
on, heavily, doggedly. He was beginning to fear that he might walk
on all night and find no village, having steered an accurate course
between them all, when he saw in the distance a group of faint white
mounds.

Soon he was at the head of the village street, with its two lines of
night-capped cottages. The village lay in universal silence; not a
window winked with light. He determined to try the first cottage, and
toward this he instinctively went on tip-toe, lest some slight noise
should betray his presence to the village.

His precaution was in vain. Suddenly the yelp of a dog broke upon the
silence; then a relay of yelps ran from the village’s one end to the
other. One lean dog, then another and another and another, came leaping
out at him, looking fiercely ravenous in the ghostly moonlight. Drexel
seized a stake from the wicker-work fence of a barnyard, and kept the
white-fanged brutes at bay.

But these dogs he feared less than another danger. Momently he expected
the village to rush out, and thus ruin his plans of escape. But not a
cottager stirred. They had grown used to these canine serenades; the
barking no more disturbed their rustic sleep than a street-car’s rattle
does the city dweller’s.

Keeping the snarling pack without the circle of the swinging stake,
Drexel knocked at the door--and had to knock again and again before he
heard a stir. Finally there came a hesitant, “Who’s there?”

“A friend! Let me in!” he called in a low tone.

He heard voices consulting. One said that perhaps it was the police or
soldiers, and if the door was not opened they would burst it in or fire
the house. Whereupon the door swung open.

“Come in,” said the voice of the tactician.

Drexel followed through a dark room, which a sleepy rustling told him
was inhabitated by hens, into the peasants’ one living room--a room
with an earthen floor, walls of mud-plastered logs and a ceiling that
brushed the head. A well-built, shaggy old man, and a younger man and
woman, evidently his son and daughter-in-law, received Drexel. They
were dressed practically as by day, for the Russian peasant is too poor
to possess many bedclothes and he perforce sleeps in his day garments
for the sake of warmth.

“Will my lord sit down?” quaveringly asked the old man, pulling
forward a rough-hewn bench. All were agitated by the strangeness of a
richly-dressed city man calling at their house at dead of night; and
they wavered between the peasant’s natural courtesy and fear of some
disaster this visit might portend.

Drexel’s exhausted body collapsed upon the rude seat, and the three
formed a staring semi-circle. His eyes fixed upon the father as being
nearest his size.

“I want you,” said he, “to sell me a suit of your clothes.”

“Sell you this suit of clothes!” cried the old man.

“No, not that suit,” said Drexel wearily, eyeing with disfavour the
worn and greasy sheepskin coat. “I want your other suit.”

“But this is the only suit I have.”

Drexel shuddered. “Then I guess I’ll have to buy it. How much did it
cost?”

“Ten rubles, my lord--when it was new.”

Drexel drew out his purse and laid down a note. “There’s a hundred
rubles.”

The three stared in an even greater amazement.

The old man shook his head. “If I had so large a note,” he said at
length, “people would think I stole it.”

Drexel took out several smaller bills that totalled the same, and
restored the first note to his purse.

The three hesitated--looked at one another--then withdrew for a
conference into the chickens’ apartment. When they returned, the old
man said:

“Pardon, my lord--but if we do this, may we not get into trouble?”

“Isn’t it worth running a little risk to get twenty times a thing’s
value?” Drexel returned sharply.

They conferred again. “But if I sell this, what shall I wear?” asked
the old man.

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Drexel in exasperation. “Can’t you take ten rubles
of the hundred and buy a new suit?”

“No--I dare not buy new clothes. All the village knows we are very
poor, knows we have hardly a single ruble. If I get a new suit all the
village will ask questions and be suspicious. My lord knows how the
police look into everything; they would take it up and make trouble.”
He shook his head. “No, I dare not sell.”

The old man was right about the new suit, Drexel had to admit. His
situation seemed hopeless. But as they talked on a way opened, and
finally they settled upon a plan. Drexel was to have the clothes--the
old man was to remain in bed for a day on pretense of illness--the son
was to accompany Drexel to St. Petersburg to bring back the suit--and
on the day after the morrow the father could go about in his accustomed
garb. Tired as he was, Drexel had to laugh at all this complicated
caution to give him a few hours’ use of a suit hardly worth its weight
in rags.

The young woman delicately provided them privacy by lying down on the
broad low wooden shelf that is the peasant’s only bed and turning her
face to the wall. A moment later the old man was under a tattered
blanket on the same bed, and his clothes were on the earthen floor.
Drexel, not without some shrinking of the flesh, changed into the old
shirt of homespun linen, the tattered trousers, and the greasy coat
with the fleece turned inward. Instead of boots or shoes there were
slippers of woven grass, and these the son tied on with cords, having
first swathed Drexel’s feet and calves in rags. Drexel roughened his
moustache, touselled his hair and put on a fur cap which settled upon
his ears. He still did not look a typical village peasant, but he
counted on passing for a peasant workingman who fluctuated between
country and city.

He offered his discarded garments as a gift to the family for he dared
not take them with him. But the old man refused; such fine clothes
would surely get them into trouble. There was only one other course.
In one corner, filling a third of the room, stood a great, clay-built
oven. Drexel opened the door of this, and into the fire went the
dangerous raiment.

Two minutes later Drexel and the young man stepped out into the white,
starry night; and after following a beaten sleigh-track for an hour,
and when Drexel was feeling that his straw-shod feet had turned to ice,
they came at last to the station.

They entered the third-class waiting-room. A broad passage ran through
into the first- and second-class room, and through this, with a show
of stupid peasant curiosity, Drexel cautiously peeped. As he had half
expected, there stood Captain Nadson, his left arm in a sling. He threw
himself upon the floor, among the other waiting passengers a-sprawl in
sleep, and drew his cap over his face. The peasant dropped down beside
him.

Presently the captain entered, saw the new figures, crossed and kicked
Drexel’s side.

“Wake up--you!” he called.

Drexel moved slightly. “What you want?” he asked sleepily.

“Have you seen a man in a fine-looking coat walking through the
country?”

“Haven’t seen anybody,” said Drexel in a half snore.

The captain kicked the guide, and Drexel, peering from beneath his cap,
saw the poor fellow was trembling with terror--in a state of nerves to
make some catastrophic blunder.

To him the captain repeated his question.

“I--I--” began the peasant.

“We came here together,” put in Drexel. “Neither of us saw anyone.”

The captain thrust his toe into Drexel’s side by way of thanks, and
walked out.

Soon the train arrived. Drexel, with his guide, hurried out upon the
platform, when to his surprise and vast concern he saw come out of
the first-class waiting-room the imposing person of General Valenko,
and leaning upon him and half supported by his arm, a well-wrapped,
half-tottering figure. He needed not the company of the general to tell
him who she was.

He was torn with keenest apprehension over Sonya’s obvious illness.
What was the cause of this sudden seizure? Was it a distemper,
prostrating while it lasted, but harmless and swift to run its course?
Or did it promise to be dangerous and of a long duration?--and was she
hastening away in this its incipient stage that she might have the
superior care of home and St. Petersburg?

And since she was ill, should he see her again?

The train started up. Drexel slipped aboard, leaving the captain
standing on the platform looking for a fugitive dressed in clothes that
were now ashes in a peasant’s earthen stove.

A Russian train is a creature with a fine disdain for speed, and a
third-class coach makes each mile seem five--but at length, toward
morning, the train drew into St. Petersburg. All the suffocating
journey Drexel had thought of little else but Sonya’s weak figure
swaying across the platform upon her father’s arm; and when he got off
the train, it was to hasten to where stood the coach that he had seen
her enter. He saw her limp body carried out, placed in a wheeled chair
and pushed swiftly away. He followed, and saw her lifted into a closed
carriage, and saw the horses tear away at full gallop. Of a certainty,
it was a serious illness indeed.

Drexel sat in the third-class waiting-room till a sullen dawn began
to creep over the city. Having arranged that his companion was to
remain in the station, his cap wrongside out upon his left knee as
a sign whereby a messenger might know him, he started for the house
where lived Ivan and Nicolai in obedience to Sonya’s command. Weary as
he was, he dared not ride the long four miles; no peasant such as he
looked would spend forty kopeks for a sleigh.

The city was only beginning to rub sleep from its eyes when he slipped
unnoticed across the court to the house he so well remembered, and
rapped at the door. Presently it opened a few inches and he saw the
boarding-house keeper.

“Good-morning,” said Drexel. “I want to see Ivan and Nicolai.”

“They’ve got nothing for beggars. If you want bread, here’s five
kopeks. Now get away with you!” He tried to close the door in Drexel’s
face.

But Drexel’s shoulder went against the door. “Hold on, friend. I’m not
a beggar.”

“Either you or your clothes lie. Who are you then?”

“A man who wishes humbly to apologize for having done violence to your
stomach four days ago.” And he lifted his eclipsing cap.

The man stared. “Hey?--what’s that?” Then with a sudden flash in his
eyes he swung open the door, and, when Drexel had entered, he swiftly
slammed it behind him and shot the bolt. “You’ll not escape again!” he
said grimly.

“I don’t wish to,” Drexel lightly returned. But it went through him
with a chilling uneasiness that, with Sonya sick, and no other to set
him right with the household, he would be prisoner here for so long a
time as they desired to hold him.

“I’ll announce myself,” Drexel continued and went up the stairway. The
outer door was unlocked, and he crossed the empty room and knocked at
the second door. There was a sleepy cry of “Who’s there?” to which
Drexel responded by more knocking, whereupon the door opened and
revealed the square figure of Ivan.

“What do you want?” snapped the little fellow.

“I want to come in, comrade,” cried Drexel, doing so. “And I want
food--sleep--clothes!”

The undershot jaw of Ivan fell loose. “The American!” he ejaculated.

He turned to the bed. “Look at him, Nicolai--in those clothes! The
American!”

Nicolai was already sitting up in bed, and there was a revolver in his
hand and it was pointing at Drexel. “I see,” he said quietly.

“Well, if that isn’t a cordial way to say good-morning! Put down that
gun.”

“Not just yet,” returned Nicolai. “How do you happen to be in those
clothes? And how do you come to be here?”

“Cheer me up with the sight of food and I’ll talk. But first put away
that gun. Oh, I had forgotten the first formality guests are subjected
to in this establishment.” He held up his hands. “Here, Ivan--get busy.”

The little fellow quickly searched him and announced no weapons.

“Now breakfast,” said Drexel.

Still staring, Ivan brought the black bread and bologna from the
window-sill, and started the samovar going. While the tea was being
prepared, and the breakfast being devoured, Drexel told them as much
as he thought wise of what had happened in the three days since he had
fled this room.

“And now I want some clothes. I dare not go out in this dress and buy
civilized garments. One of you must do it for me.” He laid money on the
table and made a note of his sizes. “And now I’m going to sleep.”

With that he stretched himself upon the couch, the revolver of the wary
Nicolai upon him. Not again would they be caught off their guard and
tricked! For a time his mind was filled with painful fears for Sonya;
but his weariness was overpowering, and soon he slipped off into deep
slumber.

It seemed to him that scarce fifteen minutes had passed when hushed
voices from far, far above vaguely penetrated his sleep. He seemed to
float slowly up out of bottomless depths to consciousness. One voice
now sounded like a woman’s voice. That a woman should be here seemed
curious. He opened his eyes.

The next instant he was on his feet.

“Sonya!” he cried.




CHAPTER XVI

THE WHITE ONE


She rose and crossed to him; and Ivan and Nicolai slipped out. She was
dressed as he had seen her in this same room a week before--in the
coarse, quilted jacket and head-swathing shawl of a factory girl.

Their hands gripped. He had never known before what the grip of a hand
could be. Nor how glowing a pair of blue eyes.

“I thought you were sick!” he cried.

“Only a pretense,” she smiled.

He drew a breath of relief. “But even though you are well, how did you
manage to come here?”

“The time had come for me to stop being Princess Valenko--so I just
stopped.”

“Ah, I see. You have at length given up all that!”

“No--not yet.”

“Then how did you manage to leave home?--how did you dare?”

They sat down together on the couch, peasant and working-girl. Drexel
now noticed that a lamp was burning, and that without the window was
blackness; plainly he had slept the whole day.

“As soon as you told me last night where Borodin is,” she began, “I
complained to my father about feeling a fever coming on. I urged him to
take me home at once, so that I could have the proper attention in case
the fever developed seriously. I sent for my own doctor; I said I would
have no other. He is a friend--a revolutionist. He found I had a high
fever; he ordered day and night nurses--also revolutionists; he said
that my condition was so serious that no one should be allowed to see
me--not even my father.

“I waited till the way was made clear for me, then in these clothes I
slipped out through the servants’ entrance. Until further notice the
nurses will be keeping night and day watch upon Princess Valenko; they
will order special food for her; the doctor will visit her two or three
times a day, and issue bulletins regarding her condition. And in the
meantime--here I am.”

“Wonderful!” laughed Drexel.

“Now about yourself,” she said. “That is vastly more important.”

Drexel at first tried to give a mere bald outline, but she impatiently
demanded details of all that had happened since she had saved the
day by walking forth to face the captain and the prince. So he told
everything; how he had found Borodin’s whereabouts; how he had been
trapped by the prince, and almost by the captain; of his flight with
the countess and their pursuit; of his escape disguised as a peasant.
And if since yesterday he had passed through dangers, the look with
which she regarded him was payment a thousandfold.

“Forgive me for what I said in this room a week ago,” she besought him.

“Forgive you?” he cried. “Why, it was I----”

“No, no!” she interrupted. “There is a side to you I then no more than
glimpsed. I now see that it is really the larger side--perhaps it is
really the whole man. Since I then said unjust things, I now want to
say that you are generous, strong, resourceful, brave, resolute, true.”

Her look might mean no more than warm and grateful comradeship--and
yet, his heart leaped daringly. “I only hope that what you say is the
truth,” he stammered joyously.

“I do not know how much of a democrat you are--yet,” she continued;
“but you are the type of man we need to help set Russia free. And that
makes me regret that we must lose you.”

“Lose me!”

“Yes. For you must now leave us.”

“Why?”

“Prince Berloff has discovered that you are aiding us. He is after
you--and not only for that, but plainly for some private reason. The
only safe plan for you is to join your uncle’s family; he dare not
touch you then. Never leave them.”

“Never leave them? But I want to help you!”

“Do you not see that he will have you watched? That if you come to us
spies will follow you, and discover us?”

“Yes.” He thought a moment. “I see, then, there is only one way.”

“I thought you would see it.”

“But not the way you mean. Not to go back. But to stay among you. To
live the underground life. Won’t you let me?”

“But the danger!”

“Won’t you let me?” he repeated.

“You mean it?” The blue eyes shone with an even brighter glow into the
gray ones. “You do! Ah--perhaps you will help set Russia free!”

It was on Drexel’s tongue to say it was not Russia--but he remembered
the scene of a week ago in this room, and held back his words.

“Now that you have learned where my brother is, we must begin the next
step, to try to free him,” she went on. “Our Central Committee is ready
to strike at once. We discuss plans to-night. I go from here to The
White One.”

“The White One!” exclaimed Drexel. “You know The White One?”

“Well.”

“I have heard no name more often since I’ve been in Russia. Might I ask
what he is like?”

“Forgive me--I cannot tell even you. Only the Central Committee and a
very few others, persons who have been tested by fire and water, know
who The White One is.”

She paused, then said hesitant: “Possibly, after all, you may see for
yourself. I told about your saving me and your offer to help us, and
The White One was very much interested. By what you have done you have
earned and proved the right to be trusted, and when I tell all--who
knows? At any rate, I was going to ask you to walk there with me.”

“I am ready,” said Drexel springing up.

“In those clothes?”

Drexel for the first moment since waking thought of what he wore, and
of him who waited for the garments.

“What shall I do?” he cried. And he told her of leaving the peasant at
the station twelve hours before.

“Believe me,” she returned, “he is patiently sitting there, his left
leg over his right leg, his wrong-side-out cap on his left knee. Ivan
will take the clothes to him. The outfit Ivan bought for you is on the
table. I will wait for you in the next room.”

Half an hour later, Drexel, in a cheap, ready-made suit and overcoat,
and with a forged passport describing him as a mechanic, walked out of
the court with Sonya. He was now truly entering upon the underground
life; he was one of those who were being hunted down craftily,
ruthlessly by Prince Berloff’s vast secret army; his life might any
moment be snuffed out. Yet he felt an intense exhilaration; he felt
that he and Sonya would defeat the prince, despite all his cunning,
despite his myriads of spies.

A furious wind was raging in from the Gulf of Finland, armed with an
icy snow that stabbed the face like tiny daggers. As they bent away
against it, her arm through his, he asked her what had occurred when
the countess had been returned to Berloff’s house the night before, but
she had not seen the countess. They spoke of Captain Nadson, against
whom in particular they must ever be on the watch; and Sonya told him
of the captain’s own company of gendarmes, known as “Nadson’s Hundred,”
who had been recruited for the most merciless work from the lowest and
fiercest types of men.

As they came out upon the Palace Bridge they paused, despite the gale,
and gazed to where, a few hundred yards up the Neva, stood the mighty
fortress-prison of Saints Peter and Paul. They could not see it with
their eyes, but they sensed its fear-compelling form: a huge, low,
irregular oblong of massive granite walls, moat-surrounded, washed on
one side by the Neva’s flood, with cannon scowling blackly forth. This
grim pile was the prison that held Borodin, perhaps in some dungeon
beneath the water’s level. And it was this grim pile, separated from
the Czar’s palace by only the river’s width, in the centre of Russia’s
troop-filled capital--it was this that they two, a man and a woman,
with a few others proposed to rob of its chief prisoner.

“That is a symbol of all Russia,” she murmured with subdued passion.
“Russia is just one great jail; at best the position of the people is
merely that of prisoners on parole. The Czar is not a ruler. He is
merely head-jailer.”

They traversed the long bridge, went by the Winter Palace, and turned
south past the Cathedral of St. Isaac. After walking a quarter of an
hour Sonya paused.

“We part here for the present. Go into that little shop across the
street, and spend ten minutes in making some purchase. When you come
out, look at the windows on the third floor above the door I enter.
If the curtains are still down, you are to return. If one is up a few
inches, it will mean that The White One desires to see you.”

Drexel watched her enter a door half a block ahead, then he crossed to
the shop and bought a package of cheap tea. When he came out he looked
up at the windows. Light shone from beneath one of the curtains.

He crossed eagerly, his pulses in a tumult--for in a moment he was to
stand face to face with this famous mystery. His mind guessed wildly at
what figure he should find. Perhaps some great professor, whose ethics
or mathematics were only a mask for this his real activity. Perhaps
some noted general from the Czar’s army. Perhaps even some mighty
nobleman, hiding his identity beneath this vague and fearsome name.

He climbed the stairs and knocked. Sonya admitted him and led him
through a short hallway into a plainly furnished room. Here were three
men, and a figure in a wheeled chair. Drexel swept the three men with
swift, tense wonder. Two were the men he had seen with Sonya in the
house in Three Saints’ Court, the third he saw for the first time.
Which of the three was it?

“This is Mr. Drexel,” said Sonya. She took his arm and led him forward.
“And this is The White One.”

It was to the wheeled chair that she led him. Drexel looked at the
chair and stood amazed. For The White One, the leader feared and hated
by the Government, the master mind, the very heart of the revolution,
was a woman!

Aye, and an invalid at that! Her hands were twisted, her body bent,
and he had no guess of what infirmities lay hid beneath the rug that
warmed her lower body. But disease had stayed its withering hands at
her shoulders. Such a head it had never been his fortune to look upon
before: a pale, deep-wrinkled face, powerful, patient, austere, mighty
with purpose, yet in it a tremendous, lofty love; and crowning her
head, and falling unconfined upon her shoulders, a mass of soft short
hair as white as the virgin snow.

The White One--well named indeed!




CHAPTER XVII

THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE


Sonya had taken her stand beside the wheeled chair, her hand lightly
upon The White One’s shoulder. As Drexel gazed upon the two women, side
by side, and gathered the significance of the pair, a tremor of awe ran
through all his being. Sisters in purpose, these two generations: one
who had given all, one ready to give all. Sisters in purpose--yet what
a contrast! Sonya, fresh, young, lithely erect; the other pale, old,
shrivelled, twisted by a despot’s vengeful torture.

The White One bent upon him all-reading eyes, deep-set in purple
hollows; and Drexel had the feeling that to her his soul was large
print. After a moment she held out to him a withered hand. Though weak,
its grasp was firm.

“We owe you much, Mr. Drexel,” she said, in a firm, resonant voice. “We
are grateful; but as yet we can pay you in thanks alone.”

“That should be enough,” he managed to say. “Yet I should also like
something else.”

“And that?”

“If I have helped, then to be allowed to help you further.”

“So Sonya has told me.” Again those eyes peered from their purple
hollows into his soul. “Pardon me if I seem to speak discourteously,
but you do not care much for the principles for which we are
struggling.”

“I do not know what my principles are,” he said frankly. “I used
to have opinions, definite ones--a week ago. But now they are all
unsettled and I seem to be awhirl with new ones. But this I do know: I
am with you in this fight, and with you with all my heart!”

The White One slowly nodded, “Yes, I know we can trust you, and I know
you are too useful a person to be refused. You have shown both.”

She looked at the three men. “I say yes. What do you say?”

“Yes,” they responded.

She again gave Drexel her withered hand. “Then you shall help us,” said
she.

Whereupon Sonya and the three men clasped hands with him. He now
learned the two men he had before seen were Dr. Razoff, a distinguished
physician, and Pestel, a leader of the working-people. The third was
an official in the Ministry of the Interior, which he had entered
five years before for the purpose of gaining advance knowledge of the
Government’s proposed action against the revolutionists. His name was
Sabatoff, and as one of his functions was to secure and hold for use
Government blanks of all kinds, together with counterfeits of the
seals necessary to make them authoritative, he was known as “The Keeper
of the Seals.”

The Central Committee met here under the very eyes of the police, but
the police suspected nothing. They knew this old woman well enough
under her true name of Madame Nikitin, for her long history was written
down in their records; but she was to them a negligible person whose
harm was long since spent--little more than a corpse awaiting a delayed
sepulture. They knew that Dr. Razoff called frequently, but he was
her attending physician. They knew of Sabatoff’s visits, but he was
her man of affairs. Pestel they knew only as an irregular servant who
came in to do the rough work in her apartment. They never guessed that
this little coterie, seemingly summoned hither by routine business
relations, were the people that the police of all Russia was exerting
its every wile to discover and make prisoners.

They all drew about The White One and began to discuss what should be
their plan to free Borodin from the Fortress of Saints Peter and Paul.
“First we shall hear what Sonya has to propose,” said The White One.
“Since we have chosen her as leader in this affair, and since Borodin
is her brother, she has given more thought to a plan than any of us.”

They all looked at Sonya and waited. “I have a plan--yes,” she said.
“But it is one I dislike, one I would suggest only as a last resort.
Let us first discuss other possibilities.”

“How about your father?” suggested Sabatoff. “As military governor he
has absolute authority over political prisoners. He loves you, I know;
but how about his son? If he were told who Borodin is, would he do
anything?”

She slowly shook her head. “It would be useless to appeal to father in
his behalf.”

“Then strategy is our only course,” Sabatoff declared. “We must get
some of our comrades introduced into the Fortress as guards, and
through them manage his escape.”

“There is a bare chance that might succeed if we had time for it,”
returned Sonya. “But it would take months. In the meantime the police
may any day discover Borodin is Borski, and discovery will be followed
by immediate execution. Whatever we do we must do at once.”

“If we could only take the Fortress by force--blow it up--wipe it off
the earth!” growled Pestel.

All echoed that grim wish. But how achieve it? Force might do for
weaker prisons they all agreed, but what force less than an uprisen
nation could subdue Peter and Paul? A Paris mob overthrew the Bastille,
yes--but the Bastille was a house of cards compared to that granite
citadel beside the Neva.

“We will do that some day--never fear!” said The White One. “But at
present we must have some other plan. What is yours, Sonya?”

All again turned their eyes upon Sonya. “It is very simple. To buy the
coöperation of a prison official.”

“Who?”

“The very highest--the governor of Peter and Paul. I have heard that
Governor Delwig has fallen into disfavour and is soon to be displaced,
and is very bitter about it.” She looked at Sabatoff. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” was the answer.

“You know him?”

“I have met him officially.”

“Do you think he could be bought?”

“Where is the Russian official who cannot--if the price is right!”

They all agreed that Sonya’s suggestion was the best and safest
plan. Who should deal with the governor of the Fortress was the next
question. The three men all volunteered for the delicate and dangerous
task, but Sonya insisted that the mission be given her; of them all she
was the one most concerned, the one who would put most soul into it;
and at length she had her way.

But where should she arrange to see the governor? If she were to
appoint a rendezvous in any cafe, or private house, or street, or
even church, he might fear some plot and remain away; or if he came,
he would contrive that they should be under the surveillance of a
secret guard, and it would be in his power to seize her at any moment.
Moreover, even if he were agreeable to her proposal, they might be
observed by some of the city’s omnipresent spies and fatal suspicion be
aroused.

Any plan she could devise that would succeed in gaining her an audience
with him required that she should put herself in his power. Hence, what
seemed the boldest course was in reality the safest course, and also
was the simplest. On some pretense of business she would call upon the
governor in the Fortress. If he accepted her proposal, she had taken
the course least likely to rouse outside suspicion. If he rejected it,
then, to be sure, she was caught in that vast prison trap, but no more
securely caught than if seized in street or cafe by the governor’s
surveillant guard.

During all this talk The White One leaned back and spoke but little,
though she weighed every suggestion. As she had said, Sonya was the
leader in this affair, and it was no part of her generalship to
reassume an authority that had been vested in a deputy.

So much of the plan settled upon, nothing more could be done till
Delwig had been sounded. Sonya and Drexel rose to depart, leaving The
White One and the three men to discuss other matters.

Once more the old woman stretched out to him her wasted hand.
“Good-night, Mr. Drexel. Do not despair because we have given you
nothing to do. Before we are through you may have more than you desire!”

He followed Sonya down into the street, and still he saw that withered
and blanched old figure in the chair. All the time that he had sat
watching her, he had wondered who she was and what had been her
history; and now as he and Sonya, holding to each other, went careening
through the frenzied wind, he asked her. The White One, said Sonya, was
the daughter of a scientist famous during the third quarter of the last
century, and herself had been a learned and skilled physician. She had
become fired with the inspiration for freedom that crept into Russia
in the sixties, while she was in the first flush of young womanhood,
and ever since had given heart and mind to the cause of liberty.
Thirty-five years she had spent in prison or Siberian exile. Her last
sentence had been to fifteen years of hard labour in the Siberian
mines. Here toil, exposure, the bitter cold, the prison food, the vile
living conditions, a flogging she had been given, had at length broken
her once strong body. Two years before she had been sent back on a
stretcher as a “safe” and negligible person--sent back to die. But her
thirty-five years of harsh captivity that had shattered her body, had
only strengthened her spirit. She had returned to the struggle of right
against might with even greater devotion and intensity.

But she had to be careful, so very careful! Her life hung but by a
thread. Besides her paralysis, which bound her prisoner to chair and
bed, she had heart trouble, and Dr. Razoff had said that any unusual
exertion, any high excitement, would be her end.

By the time Sonya had concluded they were back again in Three Saints’
Court. As they entered the outer of the upstairs rooms a man rose from
the table where he had been reading by the light of a single candle. It
was Freeman, the terrorist.

“I was told some of you would be back, so I waited,” he said. “I have
an idea----”

He recognized Drexel and broke off in surprise. “Why it was to talk
about you that I came here! To plan for bringing you here in a day or
two, as I had promised. This is better than I had expected! How does it
happen you are here?”

Drexel remembered that Freeman was not one of the few in the secret of
Sonya’s identity--so he dared not reveal the part she had played.

“I learned a secret from Prince Berloff’s papers,” he answered easily.
“I had to flee; you had told me of this place; I came here.”

“It must have been a valuable discovery.” His eyes suddenly flashed.
“Not the whereabouts of Borodin?” he said.

Drexel glanced at Sonya. He had gained the information for her; it was
for her to decide with whom it should be shared.

“You are right,” said she.

Freeman seized Drexel’s hand. “Splendid! Splendid! This is doing even
more than I proposed to you!”

His lean face glowed with a sinister light, and he suggested, as
one detail of their plan, that Prince Berloff be “executed” and
the “execution” be left to him; but Sonya opposed that sanguinary
course. Whereupon he volunteered several suggestions bearing upon
their immediate plan of freeing Borodin; and although Drexel felt an
inward shrinking, he had to acknowledge that Freeman was an adviser of
wonderful shrewdness, of endless expedient, of intimate acquaintance
with the conditions with which their plan must deal. Drexel would have
preferred to work with an ally of less fearsome temperament, but that
he was an ally of supreme efficiency there was no denying.

“You seemed to have some hesitation about Mr. Freeman at that
conference in this room a week ago,” remarked Drexel, when the
terrorist had gone.

“It is a peculiarity of our hunted underground life that we hardly
know whom to trust,” was Sonya’s reply. “We are always suspecting one
another. And for the moment we were not certain about him. He is too
ruthless, he may be over-bold, but we can hardly doubt his sincerity.
You remember the scene between him and Prince Berloff in the Hotel
Europe.”

“I was present,” said Drexel.

“His course there was rash--but it proved that, whatever his faults, he
is sincere, and it brushed away whatever suspicions may have risen in
our minds.”

Presently Sonya withdrew to the lower floor, where she had a room in
the quarters of the housekeeper and his wife, and Drexel went to bed
in the adjoining room. The next day Sonya was for going straight to
the governor, but she took the precaution to call up the Fortress by
telephone to learn whether he was in. He was at the Ministry of the
Interior for the day, she was told, and had left word that he could
not be seen till the morrow. This postponement of action was a heavy
disappointment to her but there was nothing for it but to wait.

Toward the end of the afternoon Sonya went out with the housekeeper’s
wife, and Drexel was left to his thoughts. It was not long before the
countess came into his mind. Even though it had been for the best, he
felt a sharp, accusing shame over his desertion of her, and he wondered
what had befallen her after he had leaped from the sleigh two nights
before.

It occurred to him that perhaps he could gain some hint of her fate by
applying to one of her servants, and he went out to a public telephone
and called up her apartment house. To his surprise the voice that
answered was the countess’s. In reply to his questions she said that if
he would come to her she would tell him all.

She was awaiting him in her drawing-room, pale and rather worn, but
no less richly handsome than usual. She had, however, nothing of her
rallying good humour, her air of confident, luxurious grace. She
told him that she had fallen into the hands of Captain Nadson and
the Cossacks and had been taken by the captain privately before
Prince Berloff. The prince had been most harsh with her, but to save
his guests the unpleasantness of being involved in a scandal, he
had decided to keep the matter secret for the present. They had all
returned to St. Petersburg that day, except the prince; and she, though
apparently free, was under what amounted to domiciliary arrest.

What had happened was of course a little otherwise. When taken before
Prince Berloff, she had told the story of her failure, and how she had
struggled to prevent Drexel’s escape, and had been corroborated by
the captain and by the bruised arms which she exhibited. The prince,
bitterly disappointed as he was, had to attribute the failure to
Drexel’s quickness of brain and body.

Drexel told her in turn how he had got back to St. Petersburg.

“I know you have not returned to your hotel, for I called it up,” said
she. “Where have you gone?”

Her pallor deepened as he answered her.

“And so you are in the midst of a revolutionary plot!” she breathed.
“But how did you know of that house?”

Once more he was forced to give her an evasive reply. “Mr. Freeman told
me of it.”

She gazed at him for several moments, and appalling fear grew upon her.
He was going right forward with this plot she had lured him into--this
plot against his life!

Suddenly she stretched out a jewelled hand and caught his arm.
“Please--please do not go back to that house!” she cried.

He stared at her. “Why?”

“Please do not. I beg of you.”

“But why?” he asked. “Only two days ago you urged me into this plan.”

“I did not then realize the danger!”

“I did. And I realize it now.”

But not all the danger, she wanted to cry out. But to warn him of the
whole of his danger would be to reveal to him the truth about herself.

“And I am quite ready to face it,” he assured her. “I shall see this
affair through to the end.”

She turned ghastly white. If she spoke, he would spurn her, despise
her. If she did not----

But she dared not speak.




CHAPTER XVIII

FOR A BROTHER’S LIFE


At the coming on of dusk the next afternoon Sonya set out for the
Fortress. All was staked on that one bold cast of the die--her
brother’s freedom if she won, her capture if she lost. Drexel had
besought her to let him be the partner of her danger, but she had
replied that for him to come would be merely a useless risk, since he
could not possibly save her if trouble rose; moreover, the governor
certainly would not speak in the presence of a third person. So she
rode on her errand alone.

She had the courage of her ancient race, but when she drew up at the
gate of that great gray pile she could not keep down the pulsing fears.
Such a world of things hung upon the next few moments; and here, before
those high grim walls, how small the chance of success became, how
great and instant seemed the dangers! The governor, perhaps thinking to
regain lost favour with the Government, might hear her through and then
virtuously reject the offer. He would say a word, lift a hand, and she
would be caught in that giant trap.

To insure her admission she had sent ahead a note to Governor Delwig,
stating that she was calling to give him important information relative
to one of the prisoners. At the announcement of her name (she had
signed the note Madame Smirnova) she was admitted to the Fortress and
conducted to a room opening into the governor’s office. But she was
not to see him at once; the governor esteemed his life too dearly
to let a stranger come straight into his presence. A sentry made a
search of her, uncoiling even her thick black hair, peering even into
her mouth, to see that no compact explosive was hidden there. This
ceremony completed, word was sent in to the governor that all was well;
whereupon an order came out for her admission.

Governor Delwig looked curtly up from a big flat-topped desk as
the door closed behind her. But his manner changed at sight of his
visitor. Sonya knew what a powerful ally is good dress in dealing with
officials, and had attired herself accordingly.

He arose. “Madame Smirnova, I believe?” he said, and with a bow he
offered her a chair.

She sat down, and through her veil made a quick study of the man upon
whom her life now hung. He was half bald, but amends were made by a
proud, wide-flaring beard, and a thick, upturned moustache. His face
was puffed with good feeding and written over with the red script of a
thousand wine bottles--a face that could show hearty good fellowship
among friends, and that now regarded Sonya with bland and deferential
courtesy, but behind which she saw a cruel, selfish, unprincipled
nature.

“I believe you have some information to give regarding one of the
prisoners,” he said. Near his seemingly uncognizant right hand lay a
pistol--silent warning to visitors to make no suspicious move.

With an effort she got her dread and dislike of this man under control.
“Yes,” she said. “Regarding the prisoner Borodin.”

His face took on a blank expression. “Borodin? There is no such
prisoner here, madame.”

“I am aware, Governor Delwig, that you are under orders to pretend
ignorance of him. But I have definite knowledge that he is in the
Fortress.”

Her positive tone, no less than her positive words, had its effect upon
him. He hesitated. “And what did you wish to say?”

She knew that gradual approach to her purpose would count for nothing
here. “First, I desire to say, governor, that I realise that in coming
here I have put my life in your hands.”

“Eh?” said he, raising his heavy eyebrows.

“For I am a revolutionist.”

“What!” He sat up straight and reached for the pistol.

“I have been searched, you know,” she quietly reminded him.

He drew back his hand. “What is your business here?” he asked sharply.

“I wish to free Borodin.”

He fairly gasped. “And you tell me that! And here in Peter and Paul!
You certainly are a bold one!”

“We thought that you might help us.”

“Help you?”

“Yes. We knew you were incensed at the Government. We thought you might
consider casting in your future with us, and riding into power when the
revolution succeeds.”

“Bah!” he cried. “It will never succeed!”

“Had you seen fit to join us,” she continued quickly, “the first
business we thought to entrust to you was the freeing of Borodin. We
have a large sum of money to be devoted to that purpose. That sum we
had decided to put into your hands to be expended as you see fit.”

He did not speak. His fat lids narrowed and his small eyes stared at
her with piercing intentness. She waited with stilled breath.

His face suddenly grew dark. “I see!” he breathed between his closed
teeth. “Well, madame, your little scheme won’t work!”

Her heart went out of her.

His heavy face had grown malignantly inflamed. “You, and those who sent
you, are clever--very clever! And you thought you could bribe me, and
get me involved in a plan to free Borodin, eh?”

She could not deny it.

“But I see straight through your plot against me!”

She caught her breath. “Plot against _you_?” she exclaimed.

“Plot against me, madame. Oh, I see through it! You are an agent of my
enemies. You were to trick me into this Borodin business; when I was
thoroughly involved, my enemies thought to expose me, and use the case
to complete my ruin. Did you think to catch me by such an old trick?”

On his desk stood a bronze alarm bell. He stretched out a hand to
strike it.

She caught and stayed his arm. “Stop--what are you doing?”

“Ringing for a guard.” His little eyes gleamed with vindictive triumph.
“Perhaps I cannot reach my enemies, but at least I shall make their
agent suffer! I shall have you punished for what you pretend to be--a
revolutionist.”

“You are mistaken!” she cried. “I am a revolutionist!”

“Bah!” sneered he. “There have been too many schemes laid against me,
not to see through a simple one like this!”

“But I am a revolutionist, I tell you!”

He sneered again and he reached a second time to strike the belt.

Again she seized his arm. “Wait, wait!” she cried desperately. “I can
prove that I tell you the truth!”

“Prove it?”

“Yes, I can prove it! You have a description of the woman charged with
the attempted shooting of Prince Berloff?”

“I have.”

She raised her veil. “Compare the two faces.”

He scrutinized the flushed countenance thus revealed. “A--ah!” he
breathed.

“Did I not speak the truth?” she cried.

“You did,” said he deliberately. “And you spoke it also when you said
you had put your life in my hands.”

There was a new light in his little eyes--a gloating light. It sent a
shiver through her.

“There is a reward of ten thousand rubles for your arrest. Madame”--he
bowed to her--“I thank you for those ten thousand rubles!”

His words, the gleam of his eyes, left no doubt of his purpose. She
steadied herself and looked at him with calm eyes.

“But you are not going to arrest me,” she said. “To let me go, to help
free Borodin, will mean much more to you than ten thousand rubles.” She
tossed a packet of notes upon the desk.

His face grew black again, and he did not even glance at the notes.
“You try to bribe me!”

“I suggest that you look at the money.”

But he held his menacing scowl upon her.

“There is fifteen thousand rubles there,” said she. “And there will be
five more, twenty thousand rubles in all, when the work is completed.”

His gaze grew even blacker. “What--you dare insult me!”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“I tell you my honour is not for sale!” And he raised his hand above
the bell.

“Thirty thousand,” said Sonya, “would be our limit.”

The hand paused--then sank to his side. He glowered at her, stormed at
her--then at length he said:

“Why, even if I were willing, it could not be safely done!”

Twenty minutes later she left the Fortress, the agreement made, though
the plan was but vaguely formed. She drove swiftly home, bringing
vast relief to Drexel, and with him hurried off to The White One’s
where Dr. Razoff and Pestel were already waiting in anticipation of
the meeting. Sabatoff was not present; his position in the Ministry
of the Interior was too valuable to the Committee for him to endanger
it by running any avoidable risks. They discussed the plan for half
the night, and discussed it the next night, and the next; and Sonya
had further interviews with the governor to perfect the Fortress
arrangements. Sonya and Drexel went over the plan with Freeman several
times in the house in Three Saints’ Court. Freeman was full of keen,
able suggestions and was of tireless energy in arranging the details of
Borodin’s flight.

Four days of consultation and work, and the plan was complete. The
governor had demanded its first requisite to be that it should make him
seem guiltless of complicity in the escape. Among the prison guards
were two of his creatures of such dark records that, should they turn
against him, their word would count for nothing. For a thousand rubles
each these two gladly undertook the roles of scapegoats. At the hour
set for the escape they were to be the watch before Borodin’s cell; a
guard’s uniform was to be smuggled in to him; and, aided by a clever
disposition of the prison forces which would keep all eyes off the cell
for a few moments, he would be whisked out at the time of the changing
of the guard and would march away as one of the relieved watch, and so
out of the Fortress. A sleigh would be in readiness to carry him to
the house in Three Saints’ Court, where he would change his guard’s
clothing for a disguise, and from thence he would immediately set out
for the German frontier. As for the two guards, they would straightway
take to flight and would be far over the Finnish border before Governor
Delwig made his discovery of the escape.

The plan had dozens of details, and Sonya and Drexel were ever on the
move--always on their guard to avoid a sudden meeting with Captain
Nadson. But though Drexel’s every hour was filled his mind went more
than once to his relatives at the Hotel Europe, and he reached one
definite decision regarding Alice’s approaching marriage. The hour
this escape was consummated (two days before the day set for the
wedding) he would return to his hotel, share with uncle, aunt and
cousin the secret of Berloff’s position and character, and do whatever
else might be needed to save his cousin from that arch-villain. In
the meantime, to still any possible uneasiness, he wrote a letter to
his uncle stating that he would be back from Moscow in time for the
wedding, and this he sent to a friend in Moscow to be mailed.

These days made a deep impression on Drexel. He was in constant contact
and coöperation with men and women whom he had to admire, yet whose
ideals were the exact opposite of those that had ruled his life till
two weeks before. Self-interest did not enter into their thought; their
ideas, their energies, their very lives, were all directed to the
interest of the people. Living in the midst of this fire of devotion,
he felt for an instant now and then that a strange new fire was being
kindled in him; but in the tense activity he did not analyze the
impression made upon him, indeed he was not wholly conscious of it. He
was stirred, he was busy--that was all.

Of another matter he was more conscious. His love made him sensible to
every change in Sonya’s manner to him. She was engrossed with the plan
for her brother’s deliverance; yet little things, the way she looked
at him, the way she spoke to him, made him daringly hope that her
comradely feeling might be turning to something more.

At length the darkness of the fifth evening settled like a black
sediment into Three Saints’ Court, and found all in readiness. Sonya,
Drexel and the housekeeper were on duty in the house to receive Borodin
and aid his quick transformation; the others were assigned to assist
his flight hither from the prison. On the table in Ivan’s room stood a
bottle of hair-dye, and beside it were a pair of scissors and shaving
utensils; across a chair lay a new suit of clothes; at nine o’clock,
the hour set, a swift horse would wait in a side street. Thirty minutes
after the bearded, brown-haired prison guard entered, a black-haired,
smooth-chinned business man would ride off to the railway station.

As the appointed hour drew on, Sonya and Drexel hardly spoke. Sonya,
tense, nervous, paced to and fro; and Drexel, in almost equal suspense,
watched her pale strained face. How glad he would be when Borodin had
come and gone and her dangerous task was ended, for though he had
rejoiced in this close comradeship, he loved her far too dearly not to
wish her safely out of this great and constant peril.

The bells of Three Saints’ Church rang seven. Two more hours, and all
would be under way.




CHAPTER XIX

THE BATTLE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT


As the bells of the little church ceased tolling seven Sonya paused a
moment from her pacing. “Just about now they’ll be slipping his uniform
into his cell,” she said.

“Yes,” said Drexel.

“Ah--I do hope that nothing will go wrong!” she breathed.

She resumed her restless pacing, and again the silence of suspense
settled between them.

Presently they heard a knock below. Soon the housekeeper entered and
held out a letter to Drexel.

“A messenger just brought it,” he said.

The note was on heavy fashionable paper and gave off an odour of
violets. Drexel glanced it through, and let out a low cry.

“What is it?” asked Sonya.

“Listen. ‘Come to me instantly. Do not fail. It is a matter of
life-and-death importance.’ The note is from Countess Baronova.”

Sonya thought for a moment. “You must go,” she said.

“Not till this affair is over,” he returned. “I cannot leave you.”

“You must go. She would not have sent that unless the matter was of
truly great importance. You can be back in an hour; Borodin will not be
here till nine.”

He yielded to her judgment, and half an hour later he rang the bell
of the countess’s apartment. A maid ushered him into the drawing-room
and told him the countess would be in immediately. But one minute
passed--three--five--ten--and no countess. His patience would wait no
longer. He opened the entrance door and rang the apartment bell. The
maid reappeared.

“Tell the countess that I will return later,” he said.

But on the instant a voice called out, “Wait, Mr. Drexel,” and the
countess came toward him through the hall. She was strikingly dressed,
as always; but she was even more pale, more worn, than when he had last
seen her, and there was a new agitation in her manner.

“I’m so glad you came!” she said, in a voice that trembled with relief.

“I could not have come had I thought there would have been so much
delay,” he returned rather stiffly.

“I have purposely delayed. I confess it.”

“Why?--after you desired to get me here in haste?”

“To make certain of keeping you here as long as possible. I have just
discovered you are in great danger.”

“Danger from what?”

“I know only in a vague way. In moving among the officials I pick up
hints of things; that is my value as a revolutionist. From what I have
heard-- But promise to tell no one you learned this from me. It might
ruin me among the officials and thus ruin my worth to the cause.”

“I promise.”

“From what I have just heard, you and your group are in danger of
arrest.”

“Immediate arrest?” cried Drexel.

“This evening. Within the hour.”

“Good-night, countess!” And seizing his cap he sprang for the door.

But she caught his arm. “No! No! You must not go!”

“But I must warn the others!”

“It’s too late! Even now the police may be there. You can do nothing.”

His mind saw Sonya, alone, with gendarmes pouring in upon her. “Let
go!” he cried fiercely. “Let go!”

He tore her hand from his arm, but she threw her back against the door,
panting, her dark eyes flashing wildly.

“If you go, it’s to your certain death!” she gasped. “Prince Berloff
has arranged this. He will see that you do not escape. He wants to kill
you.”

“Why?”

“If you could be killed--by accident--with no blame attaching to
him--is there not some way in which it would benefit him?”

“Yes. But, countess--you must let me pass!”

“It will be to your death!”

“Perhaps. But I must warn the others!”

“No! No! I will not let you!” she cried.

“You leave me no other way!” and seizing her wrists he dragged her
struggling from the door. He shook off her hands that again sought to
detain him, and plunged down the stairway--leaving her collapsed upon
the floor, white, motionless, on her face a stare of ghastly horror.

He leaped into his waiting sleigh and thrust a five-ruble note into
the driver’s hands. “Back--at your best speed!” he cried--and though
the driver laid the end of his lines upon the flanks of his galloping
horse, Drexel constantly breathed, “Faster! Faster!”

He imagined every disaster as befalling Sonya. But when he had
reëntered the little court, and rushed up the stairway, and burst into
the room, it was to find Sonya still safely there--and not so poorly
defended as he had thought, for Freeman was with her.

“Come,” he said breathlessly, “we must fly! The police may be here any
moment!”

Sonya went suddenly white. “Then they have found out our plan?”

“I do not know. But we’re in instant danger of arrest. Come!”

“What! Desert our plan?” demanded Freeman. “Desert Borodin?”

“But how will our being arrested aid him?”

“I do not believe there is any danger,” returned Freeman. His thin lips
curled slightly with disdain. “Somebody’s fear has got the better of
his nerve!”

“But I’ve had definite warning!”

“From whom?”

“I promised not to tell.”

“Bah!” The terrorist’s lean face wrinkled contemptuously. “If there was
such a warning, its purpose was to frighten us and make our plan fail.
We are going to stay here!”

Drexel turned to Sonya. “Come, Sonya!” he begged.

She wavered, but before she could answer the housekeeper entered with a
letter for her. She tore it open.

“From Sabatoff,” she said. Then she gave a low moan of despair. “We’ve
failed!”

“What does it say?” asked Drexel.

“‘Plan discovered. White One and Razoff arrested; Delwig seized.
Escape!’”

“That means we have been sold to the Government!” cried Freeman.

“Yes--one of our group must have turned traitor!” cried Sonya.

The terrorist’s face grew dark. “And it’s plain who the traitor is!” He
whipped out his pistol and sprang toward Drexel. “Well--he’ll never
betray again!”

But Sonya threw herself before the black weapon. “He is not the
traitor!” she cried. “No more than yourself!”

“He sold us to the police--that’s how he knows in advance the police
are after us. And he’s trying to play innocence by warning us when it’s
too late.” Freeman’s eyes flashed vengeful fury. “Stand aside!”

Sonya held her place. “I tell you he is innocent!” she said with
ringing voice. “If you kill him, it will be plain murder!”

Her words had an effect, for he slowly lowered the pistol. “Well, I
apologise if I’m--”

But Drexel waited not for apology. “Come on!” he cried; and seizing
Sonya’s arm he made for the stairway, and dashed down and out into
the court, with Freeman and the housekeeper following. But here
they suddenly paused. Entering the gateway, the only exit from the
high-walled court, they saw a group of shadowy figures. They were too
late.

“Shall we surrender?” asked Sonya.

“Not I!” said Freeman grimly, and drew his pistol.

“Not I,” said Sonya.

She turned to Drexel. “I forgot. It would be better for you if we
surrendered. You’re an American--you’re not so deeply involved as
we--the Government cannot be so hard on you.”

“I’m in more danger from the gendarmes than any of you,” he returned.
“We’ll not surrender.”

“Then back to the house,” she said. “We can hold it for a time. Our
comrades may gather and come to our rescue. If not--anything is better
than falling into the gendarmes’ hands.”

They rushed into the house, locked the door, and waited on the lower
floor for the attack. In the minute of waiting Sonya’s mind went
apprehensively to Borodin.

“If the police have learned everything,” she breathed to Drexel, “then
they probably have learned that Borodin is Borski. If they have”--there
was a sob in her throat--“oh, my poor brother!”

Freeman started. “What! Is Borodin really Borski?--the leader of the
South Russian revolt?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “No wonder you have dared everything to release
him!”

Sonya sighed tremulously.

“Perhaps it may not go so bad with him,” said Drexel, desiring to
comfort her. “If they have discovered all about him, his being Prince
Valenko may make his fate lighter.”

Freeman cut off her reply. “Is Borski then Prince Valenko?” he
exclaimed, astounded. “The son of the military governor?”

He did not wait for her answer. “Then you are the famous Princess
Valenko!” he cried.

“I am Princess Valenko,” she returned quietly.

“Wonderful!” he ejaculated. “But all St. Petersburg thinks you are
dangerously----”

The expression of his amazement was cut short. The footsteps and low
voices of the gendarmes sounded without. The four, all with pistols
drawn, grimly waited the gendarmes’ action.

It came in a moment. A heavy fist pounded on the door and a deep bass
bellowed to them: “Open the door! Surrender!”

Sonya caught Drexel’s arm. “Captain Nadson’s voice!”

“Yes.”

“If I’m captured he’ll recognise me, and I’ll have to face that charge
of trying to kill Prince Berloff,” she said.

“You’re that woman?” cried Freeman--and added fiercely in the same
breath: “The person who tried to do that to Prince Berloff will not be
taken while I’m alive!”

“The gendarmes with him must be Nadson’s Hundred!” breathed Drexel.

He said it with something like a shiver. For these men, as Sonya had
told him, were thugs, ex-convicts, and many indeed had been taken
directly from prison and forgiven their robbery or murder on condition
that they undertake this service; and all were big, bold, merciless
men.

The fist again pounded. “Open that door!” roared the captain.

The four said not a word.

The next instant the door creaked and bent under the impact of heavy
shoulders. And in the same instant Freeman’s pistol spat twice into the
thin panels. There was a sharp cry.

“Come--try it again!” taunted the terrorist.

There was again silence without. “They’re planning some new attack,”
said Sonya.

They were--and it came the next moment. In the room on their right a
window crashed. Freeman flung open the door and saw a burly figure
scrambling through the broken sash. Again his pistol flashed. The
gendarme went sprawling on the floor and did not move.

“Come on--more of you!” shouted Freeman in savage joy.

None of the gendarmes accepted the challenge to enter, but a bullet
did and tore off half an ear. The terrorist did not flinch; but as the
pistol flashed without, he fired at the flash. There was a cry of pain.

He stepped to one side, out of range, but kept his pistol levelled at
the window. “One more!” he called. With his lean, sardonic face, his
lips curling away from his white teeth, he looked half devil.

Again there was silence without--this time a longer silence. Then
suddenly there was a crash at the door. A panel splintered out, and
the end of a heavy pole burst through. At the same moment figures began
to leap into the window on the right, and there was a splintering of
glass on the floor above and a heavy thud against the window-sill.

“It’s on in earnest now!” said Freeman grimly, and turned his pistol
again at the window on the right.

“Come on--we’ll hold the upper floor!” Sonya cried to Drexel and sprang
up the stairway.

They rushed into Ivan’s room, whence the crash had come. The end of a
ladder stuck through the demolished window and scrambling up it was a
gendarme. Drexel fired; the man fell, and none was so bold as to spring
to his deadly place upon the ladder.

The crashing at the downstairs door sounded louder. They rushed back to
the stairway. The door was almost down.

“We can hold this floor but a moment longer!” shouted Freeman.

“Come up here, then!” called Drexel. “The stairway’s easier to defend!”

He sprang into a bedroom and dragged out a chest of drawers, which
he placed at the head of the stairs as a barricade, and this Sonya
reinforced with a mattress which she dragged after him.

Crash! Crash! went the battering-ram.

“Come up!” shouted Drexel.

The landlord plunged up the stairway and over the barricade. But
Freeman crouched before the door, like a panther ready for the spring.

Crash! The splintered door flew from its hinges.

“There’s nothing left but a dash for life!” Freeman cried up to them,
and the dare-devil sprang over the door and straight out among the
gendarmes.

“Don’t kill him--we want his secrets!” roared the captain.

There was the sound of a whirlwind scuffle without, which testified to
the terrorist’s desperate strength. But it quickly ceased. “Handcuff
him!” the captain ordered. “Now in after the others!”

The three crouched down and their pistols looked blackly over the
barricade. There was a wild rush of gendarmes through the door and up
the stairway. The three pistols spoke as one. Two men fell. But the
gendarmes rushed on up, firing as they came; their bullets thudded into
the barricade and the walls behind the defenders. Bang--bang--bang went
the three pistols. The gendarmes faltered before the deadly fire, then
fell back.

“Up after them!” roared the captain, himself safely without, and poured
on his men dynamic curses and more dynamic threats.

Their evil faces gleaming, the gendarmes charged again. The three met
them with a rapid fire, the pistols’ flame and smoke almost in the
gendarmes’ faces. But they surged on up. Two fell dead against the
breastworks. A huge, ferocious fellow following stepped upon their
bodies and vaulted the barricade. He died in mid air. But he had
given death for death, and fell upon the landlord’s body.

[Illustration: _A huge, ferocious fellow vaulted the barricade. He died
in mid air_]

But Sonya and Drexel had not time to glance at the dead.
Bang--bang--bang went their pistols; and before this fierce, protected
fire the gendarmes again turned and fled pell-mell from the house.

The captain first cursed his men, then his voice raged in through
the open door: “We’ll have you out of there in five minutes!” And to
his men he said: “When they come out, seize the woman and kill the
foreigner.”

He moved away. Several minutes passed. Sonya and Drexel wondered what
their assailants were doing. Then a low crackling sound came to their
ears.

“They’ve fired the house!” cried Drexel.

“Yes,” said she.

“They have us now. It’s stay here and be roasted, or march down into
their arms.”

The former alternative seemed not many minutes off. The air began to
grow furnace-hot; smoke oozed through the floor.

“Shall we go down and surrender?” asked Sonya.

“If we do, I’ll be dead the minute we step outside the door. Did you
hear Captain Nadson give special orders to kill the foreigner?”

“Yes, but why especially kill you?”

“He is so ordered by his master, Prince Berloff.” And Drexel repeated
what the countess had told him.

“And to think,” cried Sonya, “that it is I that put you in the prince’s
power--I that brought you to this fate. Oh, if at least I could only
save you!”

Her eyes sank in frantic thought, and she saw the two dead bodies. She
sprang up, rushed into Ivan’s room, and then rushed back again.

“You shall not die here!” she cried excitedly. “We have still a chance!
Quick! On with that gendarme’s coat and cap!”

“But what--”

“The gendarmes are away from that side of the house. I’ll slip down
the ladder--you come after, and lead me away as your captive. In the
darkness it may succeed. At least it’s a chance!”

Drexel threw away his pistol, tore the long coat from off the limp
gendarme, slipped it on instead of his own and put on the dead man’s
cap.

“I’m ready--come!” he cried, and made for Ivan’s room.

She stopped him with a hand upon his arm. “I deceived you. That chance
is no chance at all. The house is surrounded.”

“Surrounded!” He rushed into the next room and to the window, she
following him. “Yes! But if you knew it, why suggest----”

“To get you into that uniform.”

“Why?”

“Your wits will tell you later. Promise me one thing. If you promise,
you will make me meet much easier whatever is to happen.”

“Yes, yes, I promise.”

“You are not to leave this room for two minutes. And now I’m going
down.”

She held out both her hands to him, and the fiery light that glowed in
through the window showed him a face calm, beautiful--in it a new look
that made him catch his breath. They gazed a moment into each other’s
eyes. Then she loosed her hands, and before he knew what she intended
she had drawn down his head and had kissed him on his forehead.

“Sonya!” he cried, “Sonya!” and he caught her wildly to him, and for
one heaven-scaling moment all that lay on the yonder side of that
moment was forgotten.

She gently freed herself, for the flames had leaped through the floor
and were now springing toward the ceiling. “I must go,” she said softly.

“And is this to be the end of it all?” he cried in agony. “Only this
one moment?”

“So it seems.” There were tears in her eyes, and in the flame-light
they gleamed like stars.

They moved into the next room and closed the door, and crossed to the
door that opened on the stairway.

“And now a last good-bye,” she said.

“No!” he cried. “We shall go down together!”

“You have promised,” she returned.... “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he whispered brokenly.

She bent again to his lips, then stepped out upon the stair-landing.
“I surrender!” her clear voice called loudly, steadily. And Drexel,
breaking his promise so far as to watch her to the last through the
crack of the door, saw the captain appear, and saw her slender, noble
figure move calmly toward him down the dead-strewn stairs.




CHAPTER XX

THE SPY


As Sonya came to the foot of the stairs Drexel saw Captain Nadson
start. “God!” he ejaculated joyously. “The woman that tried to kill
Berloff!”

He seized her shoulder roughly with his uninjured hand. “I did not
think we were going to get that prize, too! Well, my lady, you’ll not
escape this time!”

Drexel flared with the desire to rush down and throttle the burly
beast. One minute more, and he would be free of his promise to Sonya.

“Where is that foreigner?” continued the captain. “Isn’t he coming out?”

“He is wounded,” said Sonya.

“Here--men!” he roared. “Up with you and get him!”

As half a dozen of the gendarmes lunged in, Drexel saw Sonya deftly
knock over the hallway’s single lamp. It went out as it fell, and the
hall was darkness, save for the faint light that the snow caught from
the lurid blaze and threw in at the door. Drexel now had an inkling of
what was in Sonya’s mind: there was no chance for her, but for him
there was a fighting chance, and that chance she was striving to give
him.

As the men rushed up the stairway, swearing as they stumbled over dead
comrades, Drexel flattened himself against the wall. Though the fire
roared in the farther room, this room was black, and on this blackness
hung his chance. The men surged through the door. With high-beating
heart Drexel stepped forth and mixed among them.

They did not note that they had been joined by another man. They cursed
the blackness and sought their wounded prey by kicking about the floor.
None kicked more ruthlessly than Drexel.

“He’s not in here,” growled one of the men.

“Let him roast--that’s as good as killing,” said another. “I’m not
going to stay in here. It’s too hot and smoky for me.”

“And for me,” growled Drexel, coughing. “I’m going.”

He walked out and started down the stairs, the other complainant at his
heels. “One of you bring up a lantern,” was shouted after them.

Drexel thought of the story that lantern would reveal: the coatless
gendarme and his own discarded coat. “You do it,” he said to his
fellow, again coughing. “I’m choking.”

He hurried out into the open air. Ahead of him he saw the captain, and
he put his hand to his face as though to shield it from the scorching
heat.

“What’s the matter?” Nadson demanded.

Drexel coughed violently. “I can’t stand it,” he gasped in a muffled
voice.

“Well, my lady, why didn’t you bring your smelling salts?” the
captain demanded sarcastically, and proceeded to swear at him for a
weak-stomached coward. Then he gave Drexel a violent shove. “Get out of
here, and join the guard about the prisoners!”

Drexel hurried across the court and out the gateway. By the curb stood
two sleighs, in the front one Freeman, handcuffed, in the rear one
Sonya, and about them stood a solid circle of gendarmes, and beyond
these was a silent, unarmed crowd glowering helplessly on. Drexel
trembled with a fierce impulse to hurl himself upon the guard, but
reason told him that course would help Sonya none at all, and would
be the end of him, and the end of any aid he might give her should he
escape.

A roar from the blazing house informed him that his trick had been
discovered. He coughed. “I’m going to get a drink,” he remarked to
the guards, and walked quickly to the nearest corner. Fortunately the
street was empty; such people as were abroad were before the entrance
of the court. He held up the skirts of his long coat and sprang away at
his best speed. At the next corner he turned again, and at the next he
turned once more. Luckily here stood a sleigh waiting a fare.

Into this he leaped. “Quick--I’m after an escaped prisoner!” he cried
to the driver.

The man lashed his horse into a gallop, and at Drexel’s direction they
sped for the Neva, crossed it, and entered the broad Nevsky Prospect,
where they were quickly lost among the hundreds of darting sleighs.
Here Drexel dismissed his sleigh, took another and drove southward to
near the Marianskia Theatre. Here he again dismissed the sleigh, and
once more he took another and this time ordered himself driven into the
northeastern part of the city.

He felt that for the time at least he was safe against capture.

Now that the excitement of his escape was over, his whole being
was torn with the agony of Sonya’s loss. He saw her march, calmly
erect, down the stairway to her arrest, saw her sitting handcuffed
in the sleigh; saw her, in his imagination, meeting a dozen dreadful
fates, and, whatsoever they were, meeting them with the calm heroism
of Joan of Arc upon the pyre at Rouen. And into his agony shot the
breath-taking thought that she loved him, and he lived again that one
supreme moment when he had held her in her arms.

And then he recalled the cry of Freeman that they had been betrayed.
But for this traitor, she would now be free! But for him, their love
might have come to bliss!

He sprang suddenly aflame with wild rage against this unknown Judas.
Who could the traitor be? The desire to know, the desire for vengeance,
mastered him. He knew of but one person at liberty with whom he might
consult--Sabatoff; and he hurried away to his house.

Drexel knew that Sabatoff, the better to maintain his character of
an orthodox official, the better to keep suspicious eyes turned from
him, had surrounded himself with stupid servants who had an inherited
loyalty to the Czar. But he considered that, fugitive though he was,
his gendarme’s uniform would pass him by these hirelings, and so the
event proved.

He found the Keeper of the Seals making a pretense of examining some
documents of his department; whatever might happen, he had to play his
part. Sabatoff also believed that their plans had been betrayed by some
one of their number; only through a traitor could the Government have
learned such exact details. The man could not be Delwig, for he would
hardly betray himself; nor Freeman, nor Razoff, for they were under
arrest--and one by one Sabatoff counted off the others who had been
concerned in the plan. Unquestionably it had been none of them. Yet a
spy, a traitor, there certainly had been.

Drexel had told Sabatoff in detail all the happenings of the evening,
and Sabatoff now thought upon them for a long space. At length he
looked up.

“The lady who warned you,” he said slowly, “she loves you, does she
not?”

Drexel could not deny what he had plainly seen. “But what has that to
do with the matter?”

“Does it not explain why she warned you--and you alone?”

Drexel sprang up as Sabatoff’s meaning broke upon him. “You think she
is a spy?”

“I do.”

“But how did she learn our plans?” he cried. “And how do you explain
this?” And he told him of his escape with the countess from Berloff’s.

“I cannot explain that. And I do not know how she learned our plans.
Yet I do know she is a spy. She knew our plans, and also the plans of
the police; who but a spy could know both? It is plain she wished the
police to succeed in every detail except the capture of you. If she
were the revolutionist she claims to be, instead of trying to save you
alone, why did she not give warning to you all in that note she sent?”

“You are right! I never thought of that!”

He seized his cap and was gone. Not knowing what he purposed doing,
impelled by a blind, overmastering desire to make the person suffer who
had brought on the night’s disaster, he sped away to the countess. He
hastened up to her apartment and rang. She herself opened the door. Her
face was blanched and strained.

She started at the sight of him. “You! Thank God, you are safe!” she
cried--and there was a world of relief in her voice.

He walked in without a word.

“Tell me, how did you escape? No, no, not now!” Breathlessly she pushed
him toward the door. “Go, go! It’s dangerous for you here. Some one is
coming--”

She now noticed his face, black with awful accusation. She stepped back
with widened eyes.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Oh, you damnable spy!”

The life went out of her almost as though his words had been a bullet
into her heart. She stared at him, silent, shrinking, stricken with
consternation.

“I see you cannot deny it!”

“It’s--false,” came from her dry lips.

“You lie!”

“It’s false! It’s false!”

“Of course you deny it. A woman would not hesitate at another lie,
whose trade it is to make friends and sell them to their death. God,
what shall I do to you? You woman Judas!”

It was less the fear of the fate she thought she saw in his rageful
face than the frantic desire to escape this awful accusation from the
man she loved, that prompted her to cry out desperately: “It’s false!
You’ve been deceived! I’m innocent!”

“You lie, I say. Your guilt is all over your face!” He thought of
Sonya, Sonya inspired by the holy desire to help her people out of
their bitter suffering--betrayed! His eyes blazed with a yet fiercer
wrath. “I should kill you as ruthlessly as you kill others.”

“I’m innocent! I’m innocent!” she gasped.

“And you have the effrontery to say that after what you did to-night!”

“What I--what I--” A dazed look came into her face. “What I did
to-night?”

“Yes, what you did to-night! Betrayed our plan, sold it to the
Government!”

“Is that your only accusation?”

“God--is it not enough!”

She gave a cry of relief. “I swear to you I’m innocent,” she cried
eagerly. “I swear to you I had nothing to do with to-night’s affair,
except to warn you. I swear it!”

“Swear it--but I won’t believe you!”

“I’m not the spy who betrayed you!” she cried frantically. “I’m not, I
tell you! I’m not!”

His fierce, hard face was unchanged. “And I tell you--you lie!”

There was a ring at the door. The reply to him died upon her lips. Her
face went ashen.

“Quick--quick!” she whispered. “It’s not safe for you here!” She
clutched his arm and pointed to a door hung with portières of crimson
silk. “Go through the hall, and out the rear entrance. No! Not that!”
Her face lighted with sudden desperate purpose. “Step behind the
portières there, and I will prove my innocence!”

“Prove? How?”

“I will show you the real spy! I will make him tell you all!”

He looked at her darkly. “Is this just a trick to escape, or--”

“S-s-sh! Not so loud!”

“Or is the real spy at the door?”

“The real spy is at the door.”

His face lit with a vengeful joy. “Then I stay here!”

The door-bell rang again.

“No, no, no!” she implored, frantically. “You do not understand your
danger! It may be your death!”

“It may be his!” said Drexel.

“Oh! Oh!” She twisted her hands in agony. “Are you armed?”

“I am not. But my hands are enough.”

“You must go!” she cried. “Don’t you see--to stay may be your death!
Please--please!” And she tried to push him toward the curtains.

“I shall stay. Open the door,” he ordered grimly.

“Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?” Again she wrung her hands.
“Listen! It would be foolish to meet him now. Wait, you can see him
again--when you are armed. Besides, will you not give me a chance to
prove my innocence? Don’t you wish to know the truth? I will make him
tell everything--everything!”

He wavered. She saw it, and again tried to press him out.
“Go--please--please!”

He looked at her darkly, suspiciously. “I still half think this is only
a trick to escape.”

“I will not try to escape, I swear! And how can I escape, with you but
a yard away?”

The door-bell rang once more.

“Go! Go! Go!” she breathed frantically, and she pushed him half
resisting into the hall and pulled the curtains before him.

Drexel, watching through the parting of the portières, saw her stand a
moment, hand pressed against her heart, striving to calm her heaving
bosom and subdue the working passion of her face. Then she opened the
door.

“Here I am, Zenia--safe,” said the visitor.

Drexel started at the familiar voice. Then into the room came--Drexel
almost let out a cry--the terrorist, James Freeman.




CHAPTER XXI

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAINS


Freeman laid off his overcoat, and stood before her with triumph and
exultation in his dark eyes.

“Well--it’s all over,” he whispered. “A success--a tremendous success!”

“Tell me all about it.”

He glanced toward the portières behind which Drexel stood. “You are
alone? There are no servants about?”

“I had sent them to bed before you telephoned you were coming.”

“What’s that noise overhead?”

“The people who live up there are having a party.”

He now noticed her pallor. “How white you are, Zenia!”

“Am I? I suppose it’s the suspense of waiting to hear how things came
out.”

“I had to see Berloff first, you know, before I could come to you.”

“You have seen him then?”

“No. I went to him to report, but he was not in. I’m going back in an
hour.”

They sat down, the countess turning her chair so that she faced the
curtains, he with his back to them.

“How did you manage to escape?” she asked.

“Captain Nadson saw to that.”

“But your being there at the time of the arrest was an unnecessary
risk, a very great risk.”

“It is by taking big risks that you win big prizes! I thought that in
the excitement of the moment they might let something drop that would
be of great importance.”

“But the danger from the revolutionists. If they had suspected--”

“I played my part so well they couldn’t suspect! I killed three or four
gendarmes myself. They’re cheap. Berloff tells me to shoot a few to
keep up my reputation.”

He leaned toward her and his eyes glistened. “I tell you, Zenia, the
risk was worth while!”

“Then you learned something?”

“Did I? Listen. I learned that Borodin is Borski, and that the young
woman arrested with me is the one who shot at Berloff. But that is not
the best!”

“No?”

“I won’t tell you what it is now; Prince Berloff may wish it kept an
absolute secret for a while. But it is something he’ll be glad to know.
And he will pay well for it, too! It will be our fortune, Zenia, or I
miss my guess!”

Only the countess’s self-control enabled her to restrain a cry. For the
curtains had parted, and Drexel, very white, had stepped noiselessly
out.

As it was she went suddenly pale. “What’s the matter?” queried Freeman.

There was an outburst of merriment in the apartment overhead. Drexel
paused, considered, then slipped noiselessly back.

She regained her composure. “Nothing--just a thought,” she returned.
“And how about Mr. Drexel?”

“I failed there--temporarily,” Freeman continued. “In the beginning,
to make sure of him, I accused him of being a traitor, and was on the
point of shooting him myself. But I happened to think that if it got
out that I had killed him, it might queer me among the revolutionists
and might later make living in America uncomfortable. Besides, I was
sure Nadson would get him.”

“And Nadson did not?”

“He let him escape. I suppose Berloff will be mad. Berloff had it
all arranged that Drexel’s death was not to leak out till after the
marriage; the Howards were to suppose he was merely detained in the
South.”

“And The White One, and the others?”

“All safe in Peter and Paul, as I telephoned you. And as for Drexel,
I’ll get him later--sure. He doesn’t suspect me--we’re certain to meet
sometime soon--and then!”

The countess led him on with questions, asked for the sake of the man
behind the portières. For ten years, Drexel learned by fitting together
fragments of Freeman’s answers, Freeman had been a Russian spy. Most of
the time he had been in New York, his duty there having been to pose as
an active sympathizer with political refugees, gain their confidence,
and forward to the Russian Government information on which their
comrades in Russia could be discovered and arrested. His cleverness had
caused him to be brought to Russia where he had been able to deliver
into the Government’s hands scores of leading men and women. Even those
of the revolutionists who opposed his violent methods had no doubt
of his sincerity, so wonderfully daring was he, and so wonderfully
successful had been his terroristic plots. They did not guess that
the Government for its private reasons desired to get rid of these
officials whom Freeman slew, and by secretly aiding Freeman’s terrorism
had not only achieved this immediate purpose but had reinforced the
position among the revolutionists of its best spy.

That scene between Freeman and Prince Berloff in the Hotel Europe had
been merely a bit of pre-arranged play-acting. The pair knew that the
Central Committee was aware of Berloff’s office, and they feared that
the Committee was beginning to suspect Freeman of secret relations with
the prince; and this public display of hostility had been to throw
dust into the eyes of incipient suspicion.

Freeman spoke exultantly of the rewards that were as good as in his
hands. “Fifty thousand from the Government for the arrest of The White
One and the others; another fifty at least from Berloff’s own pocket
for what I have to tell him; fifty for Drexel, whom I’ll not let slip
again. Zenia, never before has a spy made such a haul as this!”

“Never before was there such a clever spy.”

“We’re a pair, you and I! This business won’t last forever; but there
are plenty of other things in which wits and beauty count. When we’re
married, we’ll be a match for the world--my Zenia!”

“Let’s not speak of that now,” she said nervously. She gave an
apprehensive look at the curtains.

He caught the look. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, “nothing.”

He glanced about at the curtains, then turned back.

“Yes, we’ll be a match for the world,” he went on. “Ah, but you are
a clever one, my dear! Only once have you ever failed. And I don’t
understand yet how the other night out at Berloff’s you let Drexel get
away from you. But with us both upon the case--”

She went suddenly white. “Let’s speak of other things,” she broke in.

He caught a second nervous glance at the portières. “Is there something
wrong with those curtains?” he said, and he quickly rose and made for
them, his hand instinctively reaching for his pistol.

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried, and she sprang forward to catch his arm.

But already he had parted the curtains. He saw no one and passed on
into the hall, and the curtains closed behind him. Pallid, breathless,
the countess awaited the sudden uproar of the struggle.

But after a minute Freeman reappeared.

“There was no one?” she asked.

“No one. But what made you try to stop me from going in?”

“Just nerves,” she said.

They sat down and Freeman had begun to run on about the fortune that
was almost theirs, when there was a ring. The countess opened the door.
Into the room walked Drexel.

A baleful exultation leaped into Freeman’s dark face. But his impulse
to shoot Drexel was instantly checked by the realization that the shot
would bring the merry-makers overhead trooping down as witnesses to his
deed.

“Why, hello!” he cried holding out his hand. “How did you escape? I’m
mighty glad to see you!”

“And I to see you,” said Drexel quietly.

He avoided the outstretched hand by turning to the countess. “I came to
tell you of our disaster. But Mr. Freeman must have told you.”

“Yes,” she said. She was very white, and looked with sickening dread
from man to man.

“Then I will not stay. The police are after me, and I must get into
hiding.”

“Wait, I’ll go with you,” Freeman eagerly put in. “I was just leaving,
and I want to talk over some plans for retrieving our loss.”

Drexel had counted on just this offer when he had decided it would be
safest not to try to take his vengeance here. But he did not show his
satisfaction.

“Very well. Come on.”

Freeman slipped on his overcoat, and as he did so he swiftly
transferred his pistol to the overcoat’s outer pocket. “I’m ready.
Good-night, countess.”

She knew that Freeman was armed, that Drexel had but his bare hands.
“Don’t go yet, Mr. Drexel,” she said, trying to speak calmly.

“Thank you. But I must,” he returned.

She laid a hand upon his arm. It seemed a casual touch, but the fingers
gripped him tensely, warningly, with wild appeal.

“But I want to hear your story of the affair. Please stay.”

“Do not think me rude, countess. But as Mr. Freeman says, we have some
things to talk over. So good-night.”

She saw the changeless determination beneath his apparent calm. There
was nothing more that she could say. He knew what he was walking into,
and any further warning to him would be but a warning to Freeman.

“Good-night,” she breathed. And clinging to a chair-back, her face
ghastly, she watched the two go out.

“I have a sleigh waiting below,” said Freeman as they went down. “I
wanted to be unobserved, so I left the driver behind. We can ride about
and talk. Let’s go through the State Garden; there’ll be no danger of
our being overheard there.”

Drexel knew well why Freeman suggested that lonely park, sure to be
deserted at this midnight hour. But he acquiesced, for it suited his
own purpose no less than Freeman’s.

They got into the little backless sleigh, Freeman took the reins in
his left hand and slipped his ungloved right into his overcoat pocket.
The horse was of that big, black, powerful breed the rich of Russia
have developed for carriage service. At Freeman’s word he sprang away
at a swift trot, and they sped along the broad Fontanka Canal, Drexel
listening to a clever fabrication of Freeman’s escape. He kept the tail
of his eye on Freeman’s pocketed right hand, for he knew what that hand
clutched, and held himself in tense readiness for that hand’s first
swift, hostile move.

They entered the park--broad, white, with the hush of midnight brooding
upon it. Drexel’s eye never left that right hand, which he knew would
now dart out at any moment.

He preferred to choose the moment himself. He slipped an arm behind
Freeman’s back as if to support himself.

“Freeman,” he said in the same quiet tone in which he had thus far
spoken, “there is one thing that I know which I have not yet told you.”

“What is that?”

His voice rang out with sudden fierceness. “That you are the traitor
who sold us out!” Instantly he pinned Freeman’s arms to his sides in
a tight embrace, rendering helpless, as he thought, that pistol hand.
“And now you are going to pay for it!”

Freeman must have been startled, but he was not the man to lose a
second. He dropped the reins, twisted his body like a snake in the
powerful grip that held him, bringing his right side toward Drexel.

“Am I?” he cried with a sardonic laugh. And without trying to draw out
his hand, he fired through the pocket.

The bullet missed, but at the shot the big black snorted and sprang
away at a frenzied gallop. Drexel gave Freeman no chance for a second
shot. He loosed his embrace and seized Freeman’s right wrist. The
pistol came out and instantly the four hands were struggling over
it--Freeman’s to aim it for but a moment, Drexel’s to wrench it free.

Drexel had known that the man was stronger than he seemed, but he had
not guessed that that lean body possessed such steely strength as it
now revealed. Each time he tried a twist or a trick, Freeman matched
it, and laughed tauntingly at his failure. So, swaying about in the
tiny sleigh, each struggling for an instant’s possession of that which
meant the other’s death, they dashed past snow-shrouded shrubbery, past
statues done up in straw to ward off the marble-chipping cold--out of
the park--down an incline and out upon the frozen river. And still they
struggled, and still the big black galloped madly over the ice.

Drexel saw that his gaining the pistol was doubtful, and he determined
that at least Freeman should have no advantage from it. As they
struggled he cautiously shifted his grip on the pistol till his
forefinger slipped into the trigger guard. As swiftly as his finger
could work, he six times pulled the trigger, and six times harmless
fire spurted toward the stars. The seventh time he pulled there was
only a sharp click that announced the pistol to be empty.

Instantly he dropped the weapon and drove his right fist into Freeman’s
face. The blow unbalanced Freeman; he went reeling backward from the
sleigh, dragging Drexel with him, and the horse dashed away through the
night.

Locked together, the two fell heavily upon the ice and rolled over and
over. In the same moment that Drexel had struck Freeman with his right,
his left had darted out and clutched the spy’s black-bearded throat;
and now as they tumbled and twisted about, his hand held on with
savage, deathlustful grip, and his fist drove again and again into the
spy’s face. Freeman beat the wrist of the hand at his throat between
hammer-like fists, but the hand only bit the deeper.

“You’ll never play Judas again!” Drexel gloatingly gasped into the
other’s face, which gleamed defiantly back into his. Somehow he
realized that they lay fighting in the shadow of Saints Peter and Paul,
where this man had sent Sonya. He drove in his fists more fiercely.
Freeman’s struggles grew weaker, yet he spoke not a word for mercy;
whatever he was, he knew how to die game. Then the struggling ceased,
and the body lay limp. Still Drexel’s vengeance-mad fists drove home.

He had not noticed that, upon the shots, several figures had started
running from the banks across the ice. So he was now startled when a
rough voice called out, “Stop! What are you doing?” and when a hand
fell upon his shoulder.

He rose from the motionless body, and saw that he was surrounded by
policemen. He was giving himself up for lost, when the policeman, who
had spoken, said:

“Oh, I see you are a gendarme.”

Drexel caught at the chance. “Yes,” he panted. “I had arrested him, and
he tried to shoot me. He’s a political.”

“An important one?”

A bold idea came to Drexel. “You heard of Captain Nadson’s great arrest
to-night?”

They had; in fact they had all been ordered to be on the watch for a
man who had escaped from Nadson--a foreigner.

“That’s the very man,” said Drexel.

“Was he indeed!” they exclaimed. One stooped and put his ear to
Freeman’s chest.

“Is he dead?” asked Drexel.

“No.”

A mighty pang of regret went through him.

“He’ll likely come to in a few minutes,” added the policeman.

Drexel thought quickly. If Freeman revived, this would be no company
for him. “Will you take charge of him, and take him to headquarters?”
he asked. “I want to catch my horse.”

They were proud to lead to their chief this prize prisoner. Tired as he
was, Drexel set off at a swift run in the direction taken by the big
black. He sped over the ice till he knew the night blotted him out of
the policemen’s vision, then he made for the bank and doubled about in
obscure streets.

Now that his fury was spent, the great agony of his love swept into
him; and obeying its direction, he made his way among government
buildings and palaces, and came out again beside the river and stood
leaning upon its granite wall. Behind him was the hushed mansion of the
Valenkos. He gazed up at the dim-lighted window where watch was being
kept over the sick princess--her for whom all noble St. Petersburg was
anxiously concerned. If St. Petersburg only knew! Then he cast his
eye across the river to where, in the moonlight, like some fearsome,
man-consuming monster of tradition, lay the long, low, black shape that
was the Fortress of Peter and Paul; wherein, for close upon two hundred
years, men and women distasteful to the Czars had been tortured,
murdered, driven mad--wherein this night, in some dark and soundless
dungeon, lay the woman of his love, awaiting on the morrow who knew
what?




CHAPTER XXII

A VICE-CZAR DOES HIS DUTY


This same evening Prince Berloff dined with the Howards at their hotel.
There were a score of noble guests, the highest of the new friends
Berloff would bring to Alice, and the dinner was as elaborate as
Russia’s capital could provide. In a way this was a farewell function
given by her parents in honour of Alice; on the day after the morrow,
in the gilded splendour of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, she was to become the
Princess Berloff. The prince, in his dress uniform of a colonel of the
Czar’s guards, with his breast a-glitter with jewelled orders, looked
a bridegroom worth any millionaire’s money; and Alice, flushed with
excitement, given a new dignity by the nearness of her ennoblement,
looked a bride well worth the payment of any princely name.

Berloff knew what was due to happen, while they sat at table, in the
house over in Three Saints’ Court. But the expectation that, even while
he ate and chatted, he was being put in direct command of the Howard
fortune by Drexel’s death, did not make a ripple upon the surface
of his composure. He asked Mr. Howard if any further word had been
received from Drexel, and affected satisfaction when told of a second
letter giving reassurance that Drexel would be back in time for the
marriage.

Beneath that calm front blazed a desire to know if all had gone as
planned, but midnight had long passed before he could with propriety
quit the company and hurry to his apartment. He found Captain Nadson
waiting in his study. The captain told of the arrest of the famed White
One, and of the evening’s other successes.

“Yes--very good,” said the prince. “But the foreigner?”

The captain hesitated. “He escaped.”

“Escaped!” The prince stood up, his face suddenly dark. “How?”

As Nadson told him, his thin lips drew back from his white teeth.
“Fool--blockhead!” he cried.

“But, Your Excellency, I succeeded in all else--and I have got the girl
that shot at you,” protested the abashed officer.

“You failed in the one thing I laid stress upon!” was the cold and
fierce retort.

It might have gone hard with Nadson then and there, had not a servant
knocked and entered with a card. Berloff glanced at it.

“Wait without--I’ll settle with you later!” he said ominously to the
captain. He turned to the servant. “Show him in.”

The big gendarme, thoroughly cowed, went out. The next moment Freeman
weakly entered.

The prince stared. And well he might, for there was not a patch of
white in Freeman’s face. It was all purple and green, and so swollen
that his eyes were but two narrow slits.

“What’s the matter? Who did it?”

“Drexel,” Freeman coolly returned.

“Drexel! When? How? I thought he escaped.”

Freeman calmly sat down and related what has already been told, adding
that he had been taken as a political prisoner to police headquarters,
where he had been recognized and released. The prince’s lips parted in
wrath again. He rose and stood menacingly above the spy.

“This is twice you people have had him in one night, and twice you have
let him escape! Such infernal blunderers!”

Freeman stood up and his pulpy, discoloured face looked straight into
the pale, high-bred one.

“Prince,” said he slowly, and the narrow slits blazed, “do you think
you can talk to me as you do to your Russian officers?”

They gazed at each other for a silent moment. “Pardon me--I lost my
temper,” said the prince.

Freeman nodded and sat down.

“That Drexel must have the nerve of the devil!” Berloff continued.

“He has,” was the calm response.

“And I suppose we shall not get another chance at him.”

“Won’t we! I have twice the reason I had before--and I’ll get him,
sure! So don’t worry about his escape. Besides, if I have lost you
Drexel I have brought you something even more important.”

“More important? What is it?”

“We’ll talk a little business first. I believe that after his children,
you are the next heir to Prince Valenko?”

“What are you driving at?”

“I’ll tell you in good time. You are, are you not?”

“You know I am.”

“And I believe you would be quite willing to have these intervening
heirs disappear--permanently--provided no blame attached to you?”

The prince’s eyes narrowed, and he tried to read Freeman’s meaning in
his face, but that was too blurred a page.

“Suppose I say yes.”

“Suppose, then, I can arrange to put it in your power to remove them
safely--hum--how much?”

There was a stealthy silence. “How much do you want?”

“Fifty thousand.”

Again a silence. “Very well.”

“Agreed!” said Freeman, and his slits of eyes glittered. “Then I have
the pleasure to tell you that the job is done.”

“Done?”

“Yes, done! Prince, I have made some great discoveries to-night! First,
do you know who Borodin is?”

The prince started. “Not the young Prince Valenko?” he cried.

“Yes. And do you know who else he is? No? He is Borski.”

“Borski! The leader of the South Russian revolt?”

“The same!”

“Oh!” slowly breathed the prince, and his eyes glittered back at
Freeman’s. “But you forget. There still remains his sister, the
Princess Olga.”

“You have been told that a young woman was arrested to-night?”

“Yes.”

“That young woman is the sister.”

This was too much for even Berloff’s self-command. His thin lips fell
apart and he stared at Freeman.

“She Princess Olga? You are mistaken. Princess Olga lies dangerously
ill at home.”

“Pardon me,” Freeman calmly returned, “Princess Olga lies in a cell in
Peter and Paul.”

“You are certain?”

“She told me who she was herself--and told me before Drexel.”

“Drexel knows the princess. You may be right.” He walked the floor in
repressed excitement. “Yes--you are right! And her pretended illness is
only a trick to hide her absence!”

He came to a pause. “But what charge can be made against her? The
jail-breaking plot? Shooting gendarmes?”

“An attempt to assassinate Prince Berloff.”

“What!”

“She is that woman. She confessed it to me.”

“Captain Nadson was not mistaken then! But do many know all this?”

“Only you and I, and two or three revolutionists besides those under
arrest.”

“Then between us two it must remain a secret.”

“Of course. But you must act quickly, or the revolutionists may decide
to reveal it.”

The prince paced up and down the room in deep concentration, then he
took up his telephone. After long waiting he got the number he desired.

“Is this one of the servants?” he asked. “Yes? Will you awaken General
Valenko and tell him that Prince Berloff is coming over to see him
immediately on a matter of the very gravest importance?”

He hung up the receiver. “Mr. Freeman, I want you and Captain Nadson to
come with me to Prince Valenko’s. I shall want your evidence. I think
you will know what to say and what not to say.”

Freeman’s slits of eyes gleamed, for he fathomed the prince’s plan.
“Clever--devilishly clever!” he commented beneath his breath.

Twenty minutes later Berloff and his two subordinates were admitted
to the Valenko palace by a sleepy servant. Berloff was ushered into
a room richly furnished as an administrative office. The military
governor raised his tall and portly body from his chair. He wore a
dressing-gown of deep crimson, and what with his gray hair, his thick
gray beard, his stern dominant face, and his military carriage, he was
a rarely imposing figure of a man.

He greeted Berloff with grumbling cordiality. “What fool business is
this, that pulls a man out of his bed at this time of the night?”

“So important that I did not feel justified in waiting till morning to
refer it to you.”

“Well, sit down, and out with it.”

Both took chairs. “But first,” said Berloff sympathetically, “how is
the princess?”

The general’s face softened with concern, and he sighed. Those who
said that the harsh old despot loved his daughter put the truth
conservatively.

“The doctor tells me she is still in serious danger.”

“Have you seen her yet?”

“No,” returned the general. “He says she must be spared any such
excitement.”

“Well, you know all St. Petersburg is praying for the best.”

“I know--I know.” He sighed again. “But what’s the business?”

“Of course you have heard about the arrests made this evening.”

“Of course. It was a tremendous coup--especially the capture of The
White One.”

“Some first-rate information has come to me in connection with the
arrests.” The prince watched the old man’s face closely and subdued
his voice to a tone of mere official interest. “First, the young woman
who was arrested is the woman who tried to shoot me two weeks ago.”

“The devil you say! How did you learn it?”

“She confessed to Freeman. You know he was intimate with the group.
Besides, Captain Nadson recognized her. They are both here to offer
their evidence in person. Of course I am merely reporting what they
told me.”

“What is she like?” asked the general.

“You know when she attacked me I saw her only in the dusk. She was then
dressed as a lady. But that probably was only a disguise. Freeman can
tell you about her.”

“But I don’t see why her case could not have waited till morning.”

“Her case is not all. I have learned the identity of Borodin.”

“Well?”

“He is Borski.”

The general’s red figure sprang up. “What! The leader of the South
Russian revolt!”

“Yes. The revolutionists confessed it to Freeman.”

The general rang sharply. “Show in the two men who are waiting,” he
said to the servant.

A minute later Freeman and the captain entered. The latter, having the
least to say, was first examined. He testified to the identity of the
arrested girl and was dismissed. The general then turned to Freeman,
and Berloff slipped back in his chair, withdrawing as it were from the
affair.

“Now, Mr. Freeman,” the general began, “you declare that this Borodin
is in reality Borski?”

“So the revolutionists confided to me.”

“They trusted you?”

“They considered me as one of themselves, Your Excellency.”

“Then of course their statement is beyond question. Did they tell you
anything else about him? Who he is--what he has done?”

For an instant Prince Berloff held his breath. But he had no reason,
for Freeman did not falter.

“Nothing else, Your Excellency.”

“They told you enough!” the general said grimly. “And now as to the
woman. She told you she tried to assassinate Prince Berloff?”

“She said she was the woman wanted for the attack,” was the adroit
response.

“And she took part in the plot to free Borski?”

“She was its leader.”

“Its leader! You did not tell me that, Berloff!”

“I was only summarizing what I had been told,” was the quiet reply.
“I of course know nothing at first hand and can make no charges. The
evidence is all Nadson’s and Freeman’s.”

Berloff was playing his game with his utmost skill. When it came out in
time who these two prisoners were, as it must, no blame could attach to
him; he had merely laid the case before the military governor, as in
duty bound, and had himself given no evidence and taken no action.

“Who is this woman? What is she like?” the general continued of Freeman.

“She calls herself Sonya Varanova,” was the ready answer. “She is in
the early twenties and is rather good-looking. She belongs, by her
appearance, to the common classes--is, in fact, a working woman.”

“Yes, that is what all these trouble-makers are--the riff-raff of
Russia!” the general wrathfully exclaimed. “Do you know anything else
about her?”

“Nothing material to the case, Your Excellency.”

A moment later Freeman was dismissed.

“My business is of course only to discover political criminals,”
Berloff began quickly but without the appearance of haste. “It rests
wholly with you, as the possessor of absolute power in such cases, to
decide what action shall be taken upon the information I lodge with
you. But I did feel, when I discovered these things, that here were
cases that you would consider should be immediately and rigorously
dealt with. The revolutionists are getting bolder every day; this
attempted jail-delivery is but a single instance. We have struck
consternation into them by the way we foiled that plot. If right on top
of that we could deliver them another sudden and severe blow, nothing
else would do so much to frighten them into quiet.”

“You are right!” agreed the general. “It has long been my guiding
principle that severe action is the only check for revolution.”

“And instant action,” subtly suggested the prince.

“And instant!” repeated the general.

There was little need, however, for the suggestion to this old
Vice-Czar, long accustomed to the relentless exercise of autocratic
power. He had sent scores to instant death, without giving them trial,
without seeing them, upon far slighter charges than those now laid
before him. While in command against the South Russian revolt it had
been his standing order that any person found with a pistol upon him
should be straightway stood against a wall and shot. So now he did not
hesitate.

He rang. “Tell my secretary to dress and come here,” he ordered the
servant. Then he sat down at his desk, drew out two awesome documents
and began to fill in the first. While the general’s head was down the
prince did not try to hide his excitement; his eyes glittered, and his
breath came tensely between his thin lips.

The general brushed the first aside, completed, and began the second.
He paused and looked up.

“What was the woman’s name? Sonya something, was it not?”

“Sonya Varanova, Freeman said,” returned the prince’s even voice.

“Sonya Varanova,” the general repeated as he wrote in the name. A
minute later he affixed his signature and his official seal and laid
this warrant with the other.

“On the other cases I shall postpone action,” he said. “As for The
White One, it might occasion some criticism even among our own friends
to execute so old and crippled a woman.”

“What time have you set?” queried the prince.

“Twenty-six hours from now. Four o’clock Thursday morning.”

Berloff adroitly let it be seen that an idea had occurred to him.

“You have a suggestion?” asked the general.

“I was thinking this would have a more dumbfounding effect if it came
without warning--if the revolutionists’ first news was the news that
all was over.”

“Yes--yes. And it will show them how crushingly determined is the
Government!”

“Then I suggest that you take precaution against your sentence leaking
out. That you send along with the warrants an order to the governor of
the Fortress that the prisoners are to be allowed to speak to no one,
and no one is to speak to them--that is, without your permission.”

“An excellent precaution.” The general took up his pen. As the order
was finished his secretary entered, and to him the general gave the
orders and the warrants. “Take these immediately over to the governor
of Peter and Paul.”

When the secretary had withdrawn, the prince arose. His pale face
showed none of the exultant triumph that filled his heart.

“Since all is done, I will be going,” he said.

The general’s red figure stood up. “An excellent evening’s work,
prince,” he said with satisfaction.

“Excellent,” quietly acquiesced Berloff.

The general pushed the button on his desk and followed Berloff into
the darkened hall. “Andrei here will show you out. Good-night.” In
the darkness the sleepy servant stumbled and upset a chair. “Be
careful there, you Andrei!” he called out sharply. “You’ll disturb the
princess!”

And yawning, and moving very lightly, the old general went back to his
bed.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAST CARD


Drexel turned from the Valenko mansion a few minutes before Berloff
and his party entered it. Though harrowed by the evening’s misfortune,
there was a minor matter of which he had to think as he slipped
cautiously away--whither should he take himself?

He could return to the Hotel Europe, and there be safe, if he but
kept near his uncle’s family and had no communication with the
revolutionists; but this would be equivalent to deserting Sonya, and
deserting her in the hour of her direst need. Sabatoff was still at
liberty; if they two could consult there was a chance, slender to be
sure, but still a chance, that they could evolve some plan whereby
Sonya and the other prisoners might be saved. Whatever the danger to
himself, he would try for that slender chance.

But where should he go for the night? His home of the past week was
ashes, his friends scattered or under arrest; to go to an hotel, no
matter how obscure, would be a dangerous risk, with all the city’s
police and spies on the watch for him; and as for walking the street
this arctic night, it meant, if not capture, then at least a possible
death from freezing. He knew the address of but one free revolutionist,
Sabatoff, and to go to him at such a suspicious hour involved the
likelihood of bringing disaster upon that important person. But
somewhere he had to go, and Sabatoff’s was the only where; and toward
his house he set out. Sabatoff, he judged, would hardly be asleep after
the evening’s catastrophe, and would himself answer his ring. If one of
the Czar-loving servants came to the door, he would leave some message
in keeping with his gendarme’s uniform and go away.

After half an hour’s walk Drexel came to Sabatoff’s house. He searched
the street with his eyes; it was empty, and confident that he was
unobserved, he stepped quickly into the doorway and rang. There was a
long wait; then steps sounded and the door opened. He had been right in
his conjecture. The person at the door was Sabatoff.

“It is I--Drexel,” he whispered.

Sabatoff drew him in. “Quick, then--and silent.”

With no other word the official led the way up a flight of stairs and
into a room which Drexel saw was the library. In a minute footsteps
shuffled by. Sabatoff opened the door an inch.

“You need not bother, Pavel,” he called. “I answered the ring. It was
only a telegram.”

There was a sleepy mumble, then the footsteps faded away toward the top
of the house.

Sabatoff locked the door. Drexel now made known his need of shelter,
and Sabatoff assured him that he could have refuge in this same room
till the morrow; that sofa there could be his bed. Drexel then spoke
of the possibility of freeing the prisoners. Sabatoff saw little hope,
but favoured trying their utmost. However, it would be a waste of time
to discuss a scheme until they knew just how matters stood. He would
acquaint himself with the situation to-morrow, and they would then
consider plans.

After Drexel had related his night’s experiences, Sabatoff
withdrew--not that he expected to sleep, but it was wisdom to avoid the
possibility of his servants missing him from his bed. Though the hour
was already four, the night that followed was the longest of Drexel’s
life. He could not have a light, he could not move about--either might
reveal to the servants that a stranger was in the house. He could only
lie motionless upon the couch and wait--wait--wait for the morrow, and
think of Sonya in her damp and gloomy dungeon.

Morning came at length. Sabatoff smuggled in some fruit and bread. “I
have told my servants that I have locked this room to make sure that
some papers I have been arranging shall not be disturbed,” he said. “I
may not be back till afternoon. Anyhow, it will not be safe for you to
leave the house till it’s dark again.”

The hours that followed were like the hours that had gone before; hours
of tense, inactive waiting, filled with thoughts of Sonya. Once, to
be sure, he did recall that to-morrow his cousin was to be married to
Berloff, and that he had as yet done nothing to save her from what
could only be gilded misery with that relentless villain. But Alice’s
approaching misfortune was quickly obliterated by the far greater
disaster of her who was a thousand times more dear to him--her whom he
had kissed once, then lost.

Three o’clock came, and with it darkness. Soon Sabatoff entered the
room, locked the door, and lit the gas. There was an ominous whiteness
in his face.

“What is it?” Drexel whispered, new terror in his heart.

“This afternoon while in my office a record passed through my hands
that told me something it was plain we revolutionists were not intended
to know.”

“Yes, yes?”

“The worst has happened. Sonya and Borodin are condemned to die.”

Drexel’s legs gave way beneath him and he sank slowly to the couch.
“Condemned to die?”

Sabatoff nodded. “Condemned by their father.”

There was silence.

Drexel’s lips formed: “When do they----” and stilled.

“At four to-morrow morning.”

“In twelve hours!” he breathed.

Even in this reeling moment Drexel recognized that Freeman was in this
crowning calamity. Why had not his hand been stronger out there upon
the frozen river! And he recognized in it the diabolic cunning of
Berloff--and he recognized that the prince’s motive was the Valenko
fortune.

He sprang up frantically. “We must do something--at once!”

“Yes--but what?” said Sabatoff.

What indeed? What could their scattered forces do against those mighty
walls, in the bare dozen hours that remained? The two men gazed at each
other in silence.

After a moment Drexel gave a start. “There is only one chance!” he
breathed quickly.

“And that?”

“I am certain General Valenko does not know whom he condemned. If he is
told, he may do something.”

“And then again he may not. You know what a stern old Roman he is.”

“But he loves his daughter!”

“And even if he wants to save them he may be able to do little,”
continued Sabatoff. “In the eyes of the Government Sonya and Borodin
are flagrantly guilty. The Government may be inclined to treat them
with especial harshness as examples to warn the rest of the nobility
from the same course.”

“But he may be able to postpone the execution,” Drexel cried
desperately. “Or have it changed to exile to Siberia for life. This is
better, at least, than death in a few hours. It is worth trying!”

“Worth trying--yes. I was not against the plan. I was merely pointing
out that we should be conservative in our hopes--that there is only a
bare chance.”

“A bare chance, yes--but an only chance! I shall go at once!”

Sabatoff caught his arm. “Wait! It’s walking into the lion’s den. He
may put his duty above his love. If he does, he will surely arrest the
messenger as being another revolutionist. I shall go myself.”

There was a debate upon this point, but Sabatoff had to yield. “Very
well. But you must not go to him in that uniform; that may suggest to
him that you are the stranger who escaped last night as a gendarme.
I shall send my servants away on errands for half an hour, and in
the meantime you can get into some of my clothes and leave the house
unobserved.”

Twenty minutes later Drexel slipped cautiously from the house, and
after walking swiftly for a block caught a sleigh. As he sped along he
built a plan upon his hope that Sonya’s sentence might be commuted to
exile to Siberia. He would organize a secret expedition, manage her
escape from the mines of Eastern Siberia or from some stockaded prison
above the Arctic circle, fly with her to the Pacific coast and carry
her to safety in America.

As he drew up before the Valenko palace he cast a glance up at the
softly glowing windows of the princess’s sick-room, then hurriedly
rang. Luckily the general was in and Drexel was ushered back into his
home office.

The general rose from his papers and greeted Drexel with that finished
courtesy which even the harshest of Russia’s high officials bestow upon
foreigners. “You left us very suddenly out at Prince Berloff’s, Mr.
Drexel,” he said. “You have just got back from Moscow, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Drexel.

“In good time for Miss Howard’s marriage. And how is my niece?”

“I have not yet seen her.”

“Ah, out I suppose. She is in great demand. She will make a very
popular Russian, your cousin.” He held out a golden cigarette case.

“I don’t care to smoke--thank you, prince.”

“Pardon me if I do,” and he lit a cigarette and settled back in comfort.

“I--the fact is,” Drexel began with an effort, “this is not a social
call. I should have said so. I came on business.”

“Business?” The prince raised his heavy eyebrows. “I am at your
service.”

For a moment Drexel hesitated; and for that moment he wondered how that
stern old warrior, puffing there at his ease, would take the revelation
about his son and daughter. Would he inflexibly allow their execution
to go on? And he had an instantaneous fear for himself. Would he order
his arrest when he guessed his connection with the revolutionists?

“I am at your service,” the prince repeated.

“I came about two prisoners whom you ordered to be executed to-morrow
morning--Borodin and Sonya Varanova.”

The prince straightened up. “How did you learn of this, Mr. Drexel?” he
asked sharply.

“It does not matter, since it is true. Do you know who Borodin is?”

“Pardon me, Mr. Drexel, if I refuse to be catechized upon matters
pertaining to my official business,” he returned, coldly.

“And pardon me, prince, if I insist.”

The tense seriousness of Drexel caught his attention. “Eh--what’s the
matter?”

“Do you know who he is?”

“Oh, I suppose there is no reason why I should not tell you; it will be
all over the city to-morrow. He is Borski.”

Drexel leaned forward. “Yes--but do you know who else he is?”

“I think that knowing he is Borski is quite enough,” was the grim
response.

“Not enough for you, prince.”

“For me? What do you mean?”

“That for you he is some one far more important than Borski.”

“Who?”

“Prince Vladimir Valenko.”

The commanding figure rose, and the ruddy colour fled his cheeks.

“My son?”

“Your son.”

“You are--you are certain of this?”

“Certain.”

He stared at Drexel in dumbfoundment.

Drexel stood up. “And do you know who Sonya Varanova is?”

“Who is she?”

“Princess Olga Valenko.”

“Olga!” he gasped.

His face overspread with ashy horror. But the next instant it cleared,
and he gave a cry of relief.

“It’s all a mistake, Mr. Drexel! But for a moment, how you did frighten
me!”

“It is not a mistake!”

“It is, and the proof of it is that my daughter is in this house,
dangerously ill.”

“But should she not be in this house, what would that prove?”

“Not in this house?” He fell back a pace.

“Look in her room,” said Drexel.

The prince gazed a moment at Drexel’s pale face, then turned and fairly
plunged away. “Keep the deception from the servants,” Drexel warned in
a whisper as he went through the door.

Two minutes later he reëntered the room. His face was blanched and was
filled with fear and horror. “She’s not there--you may be right--I am
going to the Fortress,” he said in a husky whisper.

He started out. Drexel caught his arm.

“What are you going to do?”

“I do not know.”

“But I must know what you do!”

“Wait here, then,” he said.

A chaos of fear, doubt, pride, shame and wrath, the prince sent his
horse galloping past the palaces that border the Neva, over the Palace
Bridge, and through the dark, arched gateway of the Fortress. Here he
sprang from his sleigh and started to hurry into the governor’s office;
then remembering himself, he slowed down and strode in with all the
dignity of a military governor.

The place of the imprisoned Governor Delwig had been that day filled
by Colonel Kavelin of Odessa, who had previously been determined on as
Delwig’s successor and who had arrived in St. Petersburg the evening
before. The new chief of the prison, burly, heavy-faced, greeted Prince
Valenko with obsequious, flurried pleasure, which the prince returned
with the hauteur that a high official gives one far beneath him.

“I came over, Colonel Kavelin,” he said, “on a matter of business
concerning the prisoners Borodin and Sonya Varanova.”

“Yes, yes,” said the gratified governor. “All is ready for the
execution. Everything will be carried out just as Your Excellency
commanded.”

“I desire to examine them upon certain points. Let me see them at
once.”

“Certainly. Will Your Excellency examine them here? I can be a witness
to their testimony, and my clerk here can take it down.”

“No. I wish to see them in their cells, alone. Put them both into one
cell.”

“It shall be done immediately,” said the governor, and withdrew.

He presently returned, and led the prince through chill, dark
corridors. The utter prison stillness was broken only by the chimes of
the Fortress Cathedral, sounding out the hymn, “How Glorious is Our
God in Zion.” Before the dungeon doors stood silent guards. Here was
the dungeon said to be the one in which Peter the Great with his own
hand slew his son Alexis; here the dungeons in which Catherine the
Great entombed those who dared lift their voices against her murder of
her husband. Dungeons of a black and awful past, of a black and awful
present.

Colonel Kavelin stopped and thrust a key into a door. Prince Valenko
asked the governor to call for him in fifteen minutes; then he stepped
into the dungeon and the bolts grated behind him.

There was a table, a chair and a bed, all chained to the granite wall.
On the table burned a single candle, on the bed sat a man and a woman,
their arms about each other.

The prince stood stock still, all his fears come true. The pair arose.
For a space father and children gazed at each other in a silence that
was a part of the vast chill silence of this vast cold tomb. First
the prince’s gaze had centred on Sonya; then on the son whom he had
not seen these five years--a man of thirty, as tall as his father, but
more slender, with soft, dark hair brushed straight back from a broad
forehead. There were dignity and nobility and power in his bearing, and
high purpose glowed in his deep-set eyes.

It was Sonya that ended the silence. She took a hesitant step forward.

“Father!” she whispered.

He did not move. Now that doubt and suspense were over, it was the
turn of wrath. His cheeks slowly crimsoned, the thick gray brows drew
together, and from beneath them flashed an awful fire.

“So!” he burst out; “these two political criminals are my own children!”

They did not speak.

His figure seemed to swell with wrathful majesty. “My own children!” he
ejaculated. “The Czar had faith in me. He made me military governor of
St. Petersburg because he thought that I, above all others, was the one
to subdue the revolt in this the heart of Russia. And now, at the head
of that revolt I find my own son, my own daughter! My own children the
arch-traitors!”

“Not traitors, father,” said Sonya, “but patriots of a truer sort!”

“Traitors, I say! As for Vladimir there, I may not be surprised. But
you, Sonya, you whom I loved and cherished and trusted, of whom I was
so proud--to think that you could secretly join these vile enemies of
our country!”

“Our country’s enemies!” Borodin repeated quietly, but with a quick
flashing of his eyes. “Who are they? Those who are crushing it into
darkness, or those who are striving to lift it into liberty and light?”

“Silence! Nothing from you!” cried the general. “It is you that led
Sonya into this. You are the sole cause of our disgrace and shame!”

“Perhaps another generation will not call it shame.”

The quiet answer only roused the proud old autocrat the more.

“But, father,” put in Sonya quickly, “at such a time as this cannot we
forget these differences----”

“Forget! How forget, when to-morrow all St. Petersburg, all Russia,
will know that the children of General Valenko are traitors? Can I
forget this disgrace upon the name that for a thousand years has been
one of Russia’s proudest?”

“That disgrace,” returned Borodin steadily, “may later prove the
Valenkos’ greatest honour.”

His father did not heed him. “To-morrow our name will be in the mire,”
he went on with mounting wrath. “To-morrow I shall be sneered at all
over the land. The revolution-queller, who found the revolution sprang
from his own family! How Russia will laugh!”

His voice grew even more wroth, and his face darkened with accusation.
“You have turned against your father--you have turned against your
class--you have turned against your Czar! But one disgrace I shall not
suffer. They shall never say of me that I shrank from duty because the
criminals were my own children. You are guilty! You must suffer the
penalty of your guilt!”

He stood before them the very figure on an heroic scale of a wrathful,
implacable, almighty judge. There was a moment of deep silence. Through
the heavy masonry came the tones of the Cathedral clock, tolling the
hour of six.

“We knew the risk, and we accepted it,” said Borodin. “So we do not
complain at your decision.”

“Yes, you are doing your duty as you see it,” said Sonya. “But even if
we cannot agree, father, can we not admit that we all have tried to do
what we have thought best for our own country, and part without blame
or bitterness?”

She took Borodin’s arm and drew him forward, front to front with his
infuriate sire and judge. “Since we are parting forever, won’t you and
Vladimir part as friends, father?”

The general gazed at his son--at his daughter. They were pale, but
their eyes were clear, their mien tranquilly intrepid. Their calm
acceptance of their fate sobered his wrath, but stern judgment still
sat upon his brow.

At length he spoke. “And you are willing to die?” he asked his son.

“Since it must be so--yes.”

“And you, Sonya?”

“I do not want to die, but I am quite ready.”

“And do you not regret what you have done?”

“I only regret,” said she, “that it all turned out so ill.”

There was a knock at the dungeon’s door, and the governor called that
the fifteen minutes were at an end.

The general paled. A spasmodic twitching rippled across his stern,
strong face.

“I must go now,” he said.

Sonya stretched out to him both her hands and her eyes filled with
tears. “Good-bye, father. And in the--the future--try to see that the
cause we died for----”

There was a breaking, a surging up, within him, and suddenly his arms
opened and he clutched her to him.

“No! No! You shall not die!” he cried convulsively. “You shall not
die--neither of you! I’ll move heaven and earth! I’ll arrange it
somehow. How, I do not know--but I’ll arrange it!”

He kissed her again and again, tears flushing his old eyes; and he
embraced and kissed his disowned son. Then he tore himself from their
arms, saying that the time was short, that he must make haste, and that
they should have no fear.

At the door he paused a moment to regain his calm. “I am ready, Colonel
Kavelin,” he called. The bolts grated back and he strode out into the
governor’s company, with the cold, haughty, indifferent bearing that
becomes an autocrat.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE PRINCE PLAYS TRUMPS


As the general strode through the cell-lined corridors he swiftly
planned his course. He had power to condemn, but in a case of such
flagrant guilt he had not power to pardon. He would return to his
home, send the governor an official order staying the execution, and
then hasten straight to the Czar and beg for clemency. He would keep
the identity of the prisoners secret, save only from his royal master,
and thus, barring misfortune, he and his name would emerge from the
situation without public disgrace.

He came out into the court, where he had left his sleigh, to find
standing there a score of cavalry. The officer in charge, a captain
whom he knew, rode up to him, dismounted, and saluting respectfully,
handed him an envelope.

“I was sent to give this to Your Excellency,” he said.

“Thank you.” The general started to put it in his coat.

“Pardon me, Your Excellency, but I was to request you to examine it at
once.”

The general opened the envelope and read.

  “It is with extreme regret that we find it advisable to remove you
  temporarily from office and place you under domiciliary arrest until
  six o’clock to-morrow morning. During this period you are not to
  communicate with anyone whatever, by speech or writing, except your
  guards who will be with you constantly.

  “There is no desire to dishonour you. If you will submit yourself
  quietly to this order, and will promise to make no effort to break
  its provisions, only the bearer of the order and his two lieutenants
  need accompany you. No attention will be attracted and the fact of
  your temporary restraint will never reach the public.

                                                             “NICHOLAS.”

The general stood there in the snow and stared at the paper. All his
blood seemed to flow out of him.

His way to the Czar was blocked--blocked by the Czar’s own hand. He
could not even send the intended reprieve. He was as helpless as though
bound and gagged.

And his children would die under his own death warrants!

He knew the power he served too well not to know that his only course
was submission. If he did not go quietly, he would go under a heavy
guard, and the only difference would be the public disgrace.

He pulled himself together with a great effort and pocketed the order.
“I will go with you,” he said to the captain.

The captain saluted.

The prince touched his pocket. “You know the contents of this?”

“I know only my orders.” He again saluted. “Shall I ride with you?”

“If you please.”

The captain gave his horse to one of his men to be led, and the two got
into the sleigh. The prince then remembered that his children would be
expecting every minute up to the last the reprieve that now was not to
come. They ought to be spared that long suspense with its climax of
disappointment, but he knew it was useless to ask to speak with them.

He was aware that the governor was behind them, though he pretended
ignorance of the fact. “I was examining two condemned prisoners,” he
remarked to the captain, but for the governor’s ear. “They asked a
slight favour of me which I promised to consider. Will you have one of
your men tell the governor to inform them that I can do nothing for
them.”

“I will see they are told,” eagerly put in the governor.

The captain looked as if he half considered this to be a breach of
orders; but the prince gave him no chance to object.

“Let us start,” he said quickly.

The sleigh moved off through the arched gateway, two officers riding
beside it, and the rest of the troop following at a distance. To
Governor Kavelin, and to all whom they passed, the cavalcade seemed
merely an escort of honour. But beneath the prince’s calm surface he
was revolving frantic measures. He thought of telling the captain at
his side that the condemned ones were his children, and begging his
aid; but he knew the captain had his orders and would dare not disobey.
He thought of rising in his sleigh and crying out to the people, but he
knew this would not avail to save his children. This would do nothing
but spectacularly publish his own disgrace. So he rode on with closed
lips, a cold, proud figure.

The three officers accompanied him into his office, where Drexel sat
waiting. As they entered, Drexel sprang up.

“Yes, yes?” he cried.

The prince, surrounded by his guards, could only gaze at Drexel in his
commanded silence.

“For God’s sake, what does this mean?” Drexel demanded in dismay.

Thus abjured, the prince opened his mouth. “I am----”

“Stop, prince!” the captain broke in. “Remember, you cannot speak.”

“He cannot speak?” cried Drexel.

“Such is the order.”

“But I must know! I must know!”

“He can say nothing,” said the captain in a tone of finality.

Drexel stared at the prince in helpless despair. The prince turned to
the captain.

“I may not speak to him, I know. But I may to you. This gentleman has
sought my interest in a certain matter. It will be no breach of your
orders for you to inform him that I am under arrest.”

“Under arrest!” exclaimed Drexel.

“And that I can do nothing whatever in the affair,” the prince
concluded.

“Nothing!” breathed Drexel.

“I think the gentleman understands,” said the captain. “I am sure he
will excuse me when I say that it is necessary for him to withdraw.”

Drexel stumbled out of the palace. He leaned upon the river’s parapet
and gazed wildly across the night at the dim outlines of the Fortress.

The last card played--and trumped!

       *       *       *       *       *

Drexel thought he knew the worst. Doubtless he did, but he did not know
all.

At the time that Drexel stood gazing across at Sonya’s prison, word
was brought to Prince Berloff that his plan for the arrest of General
Valenko had had successful issue. The fear of the last hour, since he
had been told that the general had gone to the Fortress, gave place to
exultant satisfaction. Yes, it was fortunate that he had foreseen the
danger that the general might learn the identity of the two prisoners,
and had had the general’s every movement shadowed, prepared instantly
to checkmate him. And it was fortunate, too, that he had had by him
blank orders with the Czar’s signature attached, entrusted to him by
Nicholas for use in extreme emergency.

Upon his self-congratulation there entered Freeman. Freeman reported
that he had been searching for Drexel ever since he had left Berloff
the night before, but that thus far he had not a clue.

“No clue yet!” exclaimed the prince. “And only ten hours remain! After
the execution he will be sure to return to the Howards, and then we
cannot touch him.”

“Correct,” was the easy response. “And in the meantime he is hiding
with the revolutionists, and there is little chance of our finding him
by ordinary police methods in these ten hours.”

“Then he will escape unless we use some clever, quick-working plan!”

“Exactly, prince.” Freeman’s eyes gleamed between their puffy,
blackened lids. “And so we are going to use a clever, quick-working
plan.”

“Then you have one?”

“A great one! Princess Valenko knows every revolutionist that Drexel
knows. Also she believes me under arrest, and does not suspect me. You
are to have me put in the cell with her and her brother, as condemned
to die--and trust me, in the emotional before-the-scaffold hour, as a
fellow prisoner doomed to die at the same time, to worm out of her the
name of every possible person with whom Drexel can be in hiding.”

“I see! I see!”

“Then when I’m released,” Freeman went on excitedly, “we’ll swoop down
on every person whose name I’ve learned. We’ll get him, sure! And we’ll
get every leader of importance still free in St. Petersburg!”

“Excellent!” ejaculated the prince.

The triumphant light that leaped up in his eyes as suddenly died out.

“But, Mr. Freeman, there is one weak spot in the plan.”

“What is that?”

“Yesterday’s attempt to free Borodin shows that the revolutionists
have very likely won over, or bought over, a number of the prison
staff. Some of these guards might get warning to the prisoners that you
are not condemned to die. Then they would be suspicious and tell you
nothing.”

“I’ve foreseen that danger, and have devised my plan to avoid it. I am
to be really condemned to death.”

“You mean----”

“I mean that you are to have a real death warrant made out for me.
Then no one in the prison, not even the governor, will know what we’re
about.”

“Yes, that avoids the danger!”

“And then an hour before the execution you send an officer with an
order for my release. No--wait. Now that I think of it, I don’t care to
have that order trusted to any stupid officer. Suppose he failed to get
there on time--eh? Prince, you must bring it yourself.”

This fitted Berloff’s desire; for being in the Fortress at the time
of the execution, he would not have to wait till morning to learn
definitely that he had won the great stake for which he had so craftily
played.

“Very well; I will bring it myself.”

“Say at three o’clock?”

“At three o’clock.”

Freeman rose to go. “One moment,” said the prince. He paused, then went
on quietly. “You will recall that two or three weeks ago we considered
the desirability of a terroristic plot against General Valenko.”

Freeman smiled cynically. “Whose misfortune it was to stand between you
and his fortune. Yes, I remember.”

“We dropped it then because the revolutionists refused to be involved.
They will now be burning to avenge the general’s execution of their
comrades. Might not this be a good time to take it up again?”

Freeman’s sinister intelligence read what was in the prince’s mind.
“With the two children out of the way, why wait years for the
general’s natural death to give you possession of his fortune--eh,
prince? Besides, if you waited, he might come to suspect your part in
to-night’s business and will his fortune elsewhere. You are right--this
is the very time.”

“Then you will undertake the matter at once?”

“I will begin on it to-morrow--as soon as Drexel is done for. Prince,
allow me to congratulate you. Victory over the revolutionists--two vast
fortunes the same as won to-night--a beautiful bride to-morrow--and the
Prime Ministership certain to be yours! How the devil must love his
favourite child!”

The prince frowned, but his heart leaped at the summary of his success.

They settled the further details of their plans, and an hour later
Freeman, in coarse prison clothes, was thrust into the dungeon with
Sonya and Borodin.




CHAPTER XXV

A DESPERATE PLAN


The death silence that broods over the sombre dungeons of Peter and
Paul brooded also over the library of Sabatoff. Drexel and the Keeper
of the Seals sat looking each at the other’s drawn face, or paced the
room with frantic strides, now and then glancing at the cold impassive
clock whose ticking seemed the relentless footsteps of the approaching
hour when Sonya and Borodin must mount the scaffold. They had nothing
to say to each other. They could do nothing. They could only dumbly
wait till the clock knelled four.

And never a dream had either of them of the deadly intelligence Freeman
was even now subtly drawing from the condemned pair--that at almost the
same hour the end came in the Fortress, so Freeman planned, the end
would also come here.

Eight!... Nine!... Ten!

As if revealed by lightning flashes, Drexel had swift visions of Sonya.
He saw her in her dungeon, now and then lifting her head to listen to
the slow pacing of the death watch at her door, or to the tower of the
Fortress Cathedral, far up in the night, chiming “The Glory of God in
Zion”; saw a look of despair darken her face as she thought how near
her end was, how little she had done, how desperate was her people’s
need; saw her led forth from her cell and through the silent corridors
of this great catacomb whose tenants were the living dead, and out to
where waited the gallows-tree; saw her mount the steps, her face white
but calm, and lighted with a glory as though granted a Mosaic vision of
the land she might not enter. And then he saw----

He gave a low cry. Sabatoff glanced at him but did not speak.

“Can we not do something?” Drexel moaned.

“What?”

“Oh, anything! Anything!”

Sabatoff answered with the quiet of one long accustomed to tragedies
such as this, who himself expected some day to be a victim. “The hope
that General Valenko might save them was our last and only chance.”

“But we cannot just sit here and watch that clock creep round to four!”
Drexel sprang up desperately. “Can’t we at least go out and publicly
proclaim the identity of Sonya and Borodin? In hotels, restaurants,
theatres!”

“What will that do?”

“Why, the roused public will never let the prince and princess of so
great a family die on the scaffold!”

“Even if we succeeded in rousing the people, they could not move the
Government.”

“But let’s try, man!”

“If so high an official as General Valenko tried to save them and was
arrested, what can the people do? No, that plan would only be a vain
waste of these last few hours.”

“But, God, there must be something we can do!”

“I wish there was!” groaned Sabatoff.

Drexel dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands, and tried
with pure muscle to press an idea from his aching forehead. But he
could not long sit thus. He paced the floor--thinking--thinking--wildly
thinking. He looked at the clock. “Half past ten!” he breathed, and
continued his frantic walk. Sabatoff’s eyes followed him in keen
sympathy; deeply as he felt the impending tragedy on his own account,
he felt an especial pang on Drexel’s, for it was easy guessing what lay
behind Drexel’s agonized concern.

Suddenly Drexel paused. A tense excitement dawned upon his face.

His strange look drew Sabatoff to his feet. “What is it?”

Drexel tried to speak calmly. “Was not Borodin, when first arrested,
held in some other prison?”

“Yes, in the Central Prison.”

“And the reason you did not know where he was, was because he had been
secretly removed?”

“Yes.”

“These removals are common, are they not? Especially into a stronger
prison?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a stronger prison in Russia than Peter and Paul?”

“None.”

“But are not prisoners sometimes transferred from Peter and Paul?”

“Many of the most feared life-prisoners are sent to Schlusselburg.”

“Yes--I remember now. And where is Schlusselburg?”

“Forty versts away, on an island in Lake Ladoga. But, Mr. Drexel--what
are you driving at?”

Drexel clutched the other’s shoulder and the excitement he had
repressed now blazed forth.

“We are going to remove Sonya and Borodin to Schlusselburg!”

Sabatoff stared. “Remove them to Schlusselburg?” he repeated blankly.

“Yes--to Schlusselburg!”

“Are you out of your head?”

“Or at least Schlusselburg is where we will pretend to start for. But
once out of Peter and Paul we march solemnly along for a way, then----”

“Then disappear. I see that. Once out of Peter and Paul, the rest is
easy. But how will you get them out?”

“By an order.”

“By an order?”

“Yes, by an order! You have all kinds of official blanks, you have
copies of the signatures of all important officials. By an order made
out by you.”

Sabatoff’s eyes opened wide. “You are thinking of a regular official
removal?” he ejaculated.

“Of a removal that will appear so regular and official that it will
deceive every one for a few hours.”

“You mean that you propose to walk calmly into the Fortress, calmly
request the prisoners, and then calmly walk out with them?”

“As calmly as I can.”

“But there is not one chance in a hundred that the plan will succeed!”

“Perhaps not. But that hundredth chance is the only chance!”

“It’s either the idea of a madman--or a genius!” Sabatoff’s face caught
the excited blaze of Drexel’s. “Yes, it’s the only chance!” he cried,
and he held out his hand. “And who knows--we may succeed!”

For a moment they silently gripped hands upon the dangerous adventure;
then their tongues fell busy about details. Would the governor of the
prison accept the forged order without suspicion, and act upon it?
Perhaps not; indeed, most likely not, for Colonel Kavelin was reputed
an ideal jailer, shrewd, watchful, versed in the thousand tricks of
caged people who long and scheme for liberty. But that he should not
was one of the risks.

An escort would be necessary to act as guard to the prisoners, but
the escort would be an easy matter. Sabatoff would provide the men,
and there were secret stores of uniforms prepared for use in just
such exigencies as this. It was decided that Drexel should lead the
adventure alone; not that Sabatoff lacked courage, but he lacked what
was equally requisite in a daring venture like this, coolness and
readiness of wit in a crisis.

At the last they had a moment of vivid dismay. Drexel, with his broken
speech, could never pass as a Russian officer. But a second thought
disposed of this difficulty. There were plenty of French officers in
the Russian service, and they mutilated the native tongue quite as
atrociously as he. He would be a Frenchman.

It was now eleven. Sabatoff hastened away to arrange for the escort,
leaving Drexel with nothing to do but watch the clock hands. Twelve
o’clock came--one. How time strode irresistibly on! Only three more
hours! Suppose something had happened to Sabatoff--arrest, perhaps--and
he should not return?

But presently Drexel heard a key in the outer door, then light
footsteps, and then Sabatoff entered the library.

“There was difficulty about collecting the men at so late an hour,” he
whispered. “But all is well.” He handed Drexel a bundle. “By the time
you get into that uniform I’ll have everything in readiness.”

While Drexel was changing from civilian to gendarme officer, Sabatoff
first wrote out the forged order, then took up the telephone on his
desk and called a number.

“Is this Peter and Paul?” he asked after a moment.

“Yes.”

“I want to speak to the governor.”

There was another silence. “Is this Governor Kavelin?”

“Yes.”

Sabatoff’s voice had taken on a tone of cold, supercilious politeness.
“This is the second secretary of General Pavloff, administrator of
prisons. General Pavloff presents his compliments to Colonel Kavelin
and begs to inform him that the Czar in his clemency has commuted
the sentence of the prisoners Borodin and Sonya Varanova to life
imprisonment.”

“Why, I’m all ready to execute them!” exclaimed the governor.

“The administrator also wishes me to inform you,” Sabatoff went on,
“that it has been decided to remove these two prisoners, together with
Razoff and the White One, to Schlusselburg.”

“Remove them to Schlusselburg!” cried the governor. “What does this
mean?”

“I dare say that if General Pavloff had wished you to know the reason
he would have instructed me to inform you,” was the cool response.

“Pardon me,” Colonel Kavelin returned angrily, “but it seems to me that
General Pavloff, knowing my record, could have considered the prisoners
perfectly safe in my charge!”

“I am not authorized to answer for General Pavloff. Do you know
Captain Laroque of the gendarmerie?--who was recently transferred here
from Moscow?”

“No.”

“Captain Laroque will be over within an hour with a guard and with
an order for the prisoners. A special train will carry them to
Schlusselburg. Have the prison van ready to take them to the station.
The administrator asks that you make all haste when the captain comes.”

Sabatoff hung up the receiver.

“Weren’t you pretty high-handed with him?” suggested Drexel.

“I had to be; that’s the manner of the administrator’s office. And you
have got to be high-handed, too, for this Captain Laroque is one of the
most brutal men in all the gendarmerie.”

“Do I look the part?”

Sabatoff glanced over the well-set figure in the long gray coat and top
boots, with sword and pistol at the belt.

“You’ll do very well if you remember to mix in plenty of scowls and
curses.”

A minute later they softly opened the front door and peered out. The
little street was as empty as the night overhead, save for a driverless
sleigh beside the curb. This they got into, and choosing the obscurest
streets they drove swiftly to the south. Here in a mean, unlighted
street, Sabatoff drew up before the vaguely seen gateway of a court.

“Here we are,” he whispered.

He softly coughed twice. In a few seconds through the gateway filed a
dozen shadowy figures. Despite the darkness Drexel could see they wore
the uniform of gendarmes.

“Captain Laroque,” Sabatoff whispered to them.

They touched their caps.

“They know what to do,” Sabatoff whispered to Drexel. “When all is
over, abandon the sleigh; there’s no clue connecting it with me. And
all luck with you!”

They clasped hands, and Sabatoff stepped from the sleigh and
disappeared into a cross street. Drexel started the horse into a walk
and the men fell into double file behind him. As they passed a street
lamp Drexel looked back to take the measure of his escort. Of the front
pair one nodded at him, and the other gave him a wink and a grin.

“Nicolai--Ivan!” he breathed.

Nicolai responded with a formal salute. Ivan’s pock-marked face grinned
again and his little eyes glinted with excitement. “Great business!” he
whispered, nodding his head.

As they moved on Drexel’s suspense tightened. One chance in a hundred,
Sabatoff had said, and on so desperate a hazard hung the life of Sonya.
Yes, and Borodin’s life, and his own, and if not the lives at least the
freedom of Razoff, The White One, and the dozen of his escort. And the
slightest mistake, the slightest misfortune, would instantly be the
ruin of all!

His foremost fear was that he might be intercepted before he reached
the prison. The city was filled with soldiers, the gendarmerie were
skulking everywhere; what more natural than that some squad should fall
in with them, penetrate their deception and place them under arrest?
Drexel expected some late-prowling company to rush out upon them as
they passed every dark cross street--as they passed the huge pile of
St. Isaac’s Cathedral, whose cavernous shadows seemed the lurking place
of surprises--as they passed the Winter Palace of the Czar--as they
traversed the long bridge that arched the Neva’s ice. But save for a
few sleighs and a sleepy policeman or two, the streets were void and
silent--as silent as though frozen by the bitter cold; and without
having been once addressed they drew nigh the mighty Fortress.

Before the dark gateway--how many lofty souls had entered there never
to come out!--he paused, almost choking with the nearness of the
climax. Even the night seemed to hold its breath. Fifteen more minutes
would decide it all. Fifteen more minutes and Sonya would be free--or
he, too, would be a prisoner in the bowels of the Fortress.

Other fears suddenly assailed him. Suppose the governor should detect
something wrong in the order for the prisoners? Or, worse still--and
what more likely?--suppose the governor, desiring instruction upon
some detail of the transfer, had called up the real administrator of
prisons and had thus laid bare the plot?--and even now was cunningly
waiting for him to appear to snap the prison doors behind him like the
doors of a trap?

A hundred chances against them? Standing beneath those frowning walls,
the odds seemed worse a hundred times than that!




CHAPTER XXVI

THE JAWS OF DEATH


But the odds had to be taken.

“Ring the bell, Ivan,” Drexel ordered. Ivan did so, and the gates
slowly creaked open upon their frozen hinges. A sentry appeared,
looking more a bear than a man in his huge sheepskin coat.

“Who’s there?” he demanded.

“Captain Laroque,” Drexel gruffly returned.

“Come in, captain.”

Drexel drove into the prison yard, more than half expecting the gates
to close behind him with a clang. They did not, but that proved
nothing. The governor would wait till he had him in the prison itself
before he sprang the trap.

In the court the prison van stood ready. But that also proved nothing.

Drexel stepped from his sleigh, his nerves as taut as violin strings,
and crossed to the prison entrance. Suddenly from the blackness
overhead there rushed down a wild tumult of bells. He stood frozen in
his tracks. This was the signal, the alarm! He looked to see every door
burst open and belch out scores of guards.

The next moment his heart beat again. That horrific alarm was only the
chimes of the Fortress Cathedral hymning “Glory to God in Zion,” and
announcing that it was three of the night.

He put his guards in charge of the van, then crossed the court and
entered the governor’s office. Colonel Kavelin, who sat at his desk
smoking a cigarette and making an erasure in a record with a big knife,
stood stiffly up. Drexel glanced keenly into the broad bearded face.
There was a glint to the sharp beady eyes that boded unpleasantness.
Had he telephoned?

“Captain Laroque?” queried the governor.

Drexel put on a formidable look to match his name, one part brutality
to one part swagger.

“At your service, Colonel Kavelin,” he returned, holding himself ready
to make a dash out of the door. “I suppose you know my business. You
had a message from the administrator of prisons?”

“I had two,” growled the governor.

“Two!” Drexel backed nearer the door.

“Yes, two.”

“The second--when did you get it?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“You--you called him up?”

“No. He called me up.”

Drexel caught at hope. “What did he say?”

“He said to tell you, when you had finished, to come back to him.”

Sabatoff!

“The transfer of these prisoners may seem all right to him,” the
governor went on, suddenly flaring into anger. “But to remove them on
the very first day I am in charge, it is an insult--it is casting doubt
on my watchfulness and trustworthiness.”

So that was the meaning of the governor’s black manner! He had been
pricked in his professional pride, and since he dared not vent his
spleen on those above he was venting it on their agent.

“Come, colonel,” said Drexel soothingly. “I understand. I am more sorry
than you that it is necessary for me to be here on this errand. Can I
say more?”

The scowl slowly lifted from the governor’s face. “Pardon me, captain.
I should have remembered that we are both mere order-obeying machines.”
He held out his hand. “We might as well be friends. I’ve heard much of
you, Captain Laroque, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Drexel took the hand. “Thank you, colonel.”

“Though at least they might have notified me sooner,” grumbled the
governor. “The executions are all arranged for--the orders all
given--the men appointed to the work merely waiting for the hour. But
that’s no fault of yours, captain!” He proffered his cigarette case.
“Will you join me?”

“If you please. Thank you. And now I suppose the prisoners are ready?”

“They have merely to be brought from their cells. Will you let me have
the order?”

Drexel handed it forth, and life stood suspended in him while it
underwent the scrutiny of the governor’s sharp eyes. If Sabatoff had
made an error in the form!

But the governor thrust it into a drawer of his desk. “So you only want
four of them?”

“Four, yes. The prisoners known as Borodin, Sonya Varanova, Razoff and
The White One.”

“They trust me with one out of the five; I dare say I should be
satisfied,” said the governor ironically. “The order against the fifth,
of course, still stands. I suppose you will wait here while I bring
them.”

It flashed upon Drexel that if Sonya first saw him in this bright room,
her natural astonishment might be observed and prove the means of their
betrayal. Better that the first meeting should be in her shadowy cell.

“No, I will go with you,” he said.

The governor summoned guards and ordered irons for four and a wheeled
chair for The White One; then armed with a lantern he led the way from
the office. A deeper chill, a more fearsome suspense, settled upon
Drexel as he entered the cold and gloomy corridors whence no voice
could penetrate the outer world--behind whose every door lay some
political dreamer who perhaps would never again look upon the sun.
Through one dark corridor--then another--then another, the governor and
Drexel marched, followed by a guard with manacles and leg-chains, and
another trundling The White One’s chair.

At length the governor paused and thrust a key into a door. “In here is
the old woman,” he said.

They entered. The lantern’s yellow light revealed The White One upon
the straw mattress of an iron cot. She turned her white head and
regarded the invaders with calm questioning.

The governor stepped forward, the guard with the irons beside him.
“Hold out your hands!” he ordered.

“What for?” she asked in her even voice.

“For those,” and he pointed to the heavy manacles in the hands of the
guard.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“None of your questions! Out with your hands!”

She returned his look with the calm defiance of her unbroken spirit. “I
shall give you no aid in leading me to a fate I am ignorant of.”

“You won’t!” roared the governor.

He snatched the manacles from the guard, tore off her coarse blanket
and was reaching for her wrists, when Drexel quickly shouldered in
front of him.

“Wait, colonel. I’ll make her obey!”

He seized the lantern and held it before him, so standing that his body
blocked the governor’s sight of the blanched head on the pillow.

“You hear me--hold out your hands!” he commanded in a voice that would
have been a credit to Captain Laroque himself.

She gazed up at him with her calm defiance; then the lips slowly
parted, and a dazed, marvelling look came into the gray old eyes. Then
her face was as calm as before.

Slowly she stretched out her thin white wrists.

Her legs were not put in chains. They were already sufficiently
shackled by disease. With a show of roughness, but with infinite care,
Drexel lifted the frail figure from the bed and placed it in the chair.
Then he wheeled her into the corridor.

The dungeon of Razoff was next entered. To him, too, Drexel covertly
revealed himself; and a few minutes later, irons on hands and feet, he
was waiting in the corridor beside The White One.

Thus far all had gone with the smoothness of a wish. The governor now
unlocked a third door. “Here are the condemned ones--all together,”
said he.

They entered, followed by the guards. In the days before the Fortress
had become a political prison, this gloomy dungeon had been a casemate,
and the one window through the five feet of solid masonry had been the
embrasure through which had looked forth the muzzle of a great cannon.
Beneath the window, on the bed, her brother’s arm about her, sat Sonya.
Drexel’s heart gave a leap. His feverish gaze saw naught but her.

“Get ready there!” ordered the governor.

From out a shadowy corner sprang a third figure. “You’ve come at last!
I’m ready!”

Drexel’s breath suddenly stopped. His blood seemed all to leave him,
and he seemed to turn to ice.

“I’m ready! Come on!” cried Freeman eagerly.

“Now don’t you be afraid I’ll overlook you,” the governor grimly
reassured him. “But I don’t want you yet.”

“What!” cried Freeman. “Hasn’t the order for my release from prison
come yet?”

“The order that is going to release you from prison and everything
else--yes.”

“But my pardon? My reprieve?” Freeman took a quick step forward and
pointed a finger at Drexel. “Are you sure he hasn’t got it?”

“No. Be quiet, will you!” and the governor gave him a push.

Sonya had been looking at Freeman in questioning surprise. “The order
for your release?” she now asked.

“Oh, we all entertain hope to the last,” he said, and retreated into
his corner.

Drexel took breath and hope into himself. If he kept silent, if he kept
in the shadow, he might go unrecognized by Freeman and there might yet
be a chance. He guessed Freeman’s reason for being here, but he saw the
governor was not a confidant of the plan.

Colonel Kavelin turned to the gray-garbed brother and sister. “You two
are the ones I want.”

“Our execution was set for four,” said Borodin. “Is not our life short
enough, without your stealing an hour from it?”

“I suppose,” said Sonya, “that the gallows grows impatient.”

Many a jailer, less hardened than Colonel Kavelin, finds a perverted
gratification in delaying to give relieving news to a prisoner--there
is a rarely exquisite pleasure in watching the poor thing writhe a
little longer. Colonel Kavelin did not deign to set the brother and
sister right, and Drexel did not dare to, for the statement that they
were to be removed, not executed, would be certain to rouse Freeman’s
deadly suspicion.

“Let’s have those irons,” said the governor to the guard. Then he
looked back at Drexel who had shrunk into the shadow near the door.
“These prisoners are inclined to make trouble, Captain Laroque. To save
time and a row, we’ll just put the irons on them ourselves. I’ll attend
to the man. Women seem your specialty, so I turn her over to you.”

Drexel could but obey. He pushed his cap far down, and praying that the
dusk of the dungeon might be a mask to him against the eyes of Freeman,
he took a set of the irons and moved forward to Sonya. She met him with
a gaze of magnificent wrath and contempt.

“Is it not enough that you should hang us,” she demanded, “without
hanging us in chains?”

“We’ll hang you as we please, my lady,” Drexel roughly responded.

“Spoken like the infamous Captain Laroque!” she flamed back at him.

“That kind of talk will make it all the worse for you,” he growled. He
knelt down, the leg-irons in his hands. “Put out your foot!”

“I will not!”

“Put out your foot, I say!”

“I will never submit to chains!” she cried.

“Don’t waste words on her--use force,” advised the governor, who with
the aid of a guard was practising this expedient on Borodin. “Or wait a
minute, and I will help you.”

“I can manage her,” Drexel quickly returned.

But how he had no idea. Oh, this delay!--with destruction watching from
Freeman’s corner. If she only knew!

Suddenly he thought of something she had taught him one day in
the house in Three Saints’ Court--the telegraph code of political
prisoners, by means of which they speak among themselves by
dot-and-dash raps upon their dungeon walls. Sonya’s back was to
Freeman; the governor was bent over Borodin. He seized one of her
ankles. She did not struggle, but she grew rigid.

“Oh, you brute!” she breathed hotly.

With quick sharp indentations of his thumb Drexel spelled his name
upon her ankle. He felt a start go through her. Again he spelled his
name; then, ordering the guard away and turning his back to Freeman,
he raised his face so that the governor’s light shone full into it. A
quivering tensity told him that she saw and recognized.

“Put out your foot!” he growled once more.

With the wrathful indignation of one who yields to brute force, she
acceded; and a minute later, with the same air of outraged pride, she
yielded her wrists to the manacles. He had a momentary glimpse of her
face. It showed nothing of the hope of life that thrilled her; it
showed nothing of her awed astonishment at his presence. Its control
was perfect.

“Are you ready, captain?” asked the governor.

“All ready, colonel,” said Drexel.

Freeman came out of his corner, and Drexel matched the movement by
slipping toward the door. “Good-bye, comrades,” said the spy, in the
tone of the last and long farewell.

Brother and sister clasped the false hand, then moved toward the door.
Drexel began to breathe again. Another minute and the cell door would
be between him and Freeman.

The spy twitched the governor’s sleeve. “Colonel,” he said in a low,
eager voice, “my pardon will certainly be in your office--”

The governor shook him off with an oath and turned his back upon him.
Then, obeying his instinctive care, he examined first the irons on
Sonya’s ankles then those upon her wrists.

“Well, Captain Laroque,” he remarked with satisfaction, “I guess
they’ll give you no trouble on the journey.”

“Journey?” said Borodin.

“Yes,” said the governor coolly. “Didn’t I tell you you were being
removed to Schlusselburg?”

“Schlusselburg!” exclaimed Borodin.

“Schlusselburg!” exclaimed Freeman, springing forward.

The life went out of Drexel.

“You’re removing them to Schlusselburg?” Freeman demanded fiercely. “By
whose order?”

The governor answered with a curse and with a drive of his fist into
Freeman’s chest. Freeman came back from the blow in a fury.

“You’ll pay for that, Colonel Kavelin!” He turned to Drexel. “You’re
taking them? Who are you?”

He jerked the lantern from the governor and swung it into Drexel’s
white face. He stared. Then his swollen, discoloured countenance
gleamed with triumph.

“This is no Captain Laroque!” his voice rang out. “He is a
revolutionist! And this is no removal of prisoners to Schlusselburg!
It’s a plot to set them free!”

The governor, Borodin and Sonya gazed at Freeman, each amazed in a
different way. Drexel seemed to be whirling downward into abysmal
depths.

“I denounce this as a plot!” Freeman cried on. “And this Captain
Laroque is himself wanted by the police!” His face gleamed into
Drexel’s. “Captain,” he exulted, “I think this puts us even!”

Drexel had not a word.

The governor looked at Drexel with suspicion. “What does this mean,
captain?”

Drexel desperately took his nerves in both his hands and summoned all
his boldness. “I was going to ask you the same question, colonel,” said
he.

“Most noteworthy acting, captain,” put in Freeman sardonically. “But
even such rare acting won’t save you now!”

“I find,” Drexel continued to the governor, in a tone of cool comment,
“that condemned revolutionists frequently lose their nerve at the last
moment and go out of their head.”

“I’m no revolutionist, Colonel Kavelin,” Freeman retorted. “I’m a
secret agent of the political police. I’m the man that laid bare this
whole plot. And with this Captain Laroque, you’ve got them all!”

The governor wavered. Drexel saw it. He gave Freeman a black look--a
Captain Laroque look. “You dog! Be careful, or you’ll go too far!” he
warned.

He turned to the governor. “Colonel,” he said, to recall to the
governor his credentials, “to stop the ravings of this crazed
prisoner you might tell him that you have had two messages from the
administrator of prisons about this matter, in addition to the official
order for the removal.”

“Tricks! Forgery!” said Freeman contemptuously.

“I have found, and doubtless so have you, colonel,” Drexel went on
coolly, “that an unnerved prisoner like this, with the fear of the
gallows upon him, will make any frantic pretense, that he’s a spy,
or what-not, in the hope of thereby gaining a little delay in his
execution. At first, you remember, his pretense was that a reprieve was
coming.”

Drexel’s eyes had never left the governor’s face, that barometer of his
fate; and during his last words he saw it began to glower at Freeman.

“Enough of this fooling, colonel,” said he in his harshest Captain
Laroque voice, giving Freeman his darkest look. “It is not my custom to
waste time on these dogs of prisoners!”

“Nor mine!” said the governor. “I’m too old a bird to be fooled by such
tricks.”

“What! You don’t believe me?” cried Freeman.

“No, I don’t believe you! And be quiet, if you want an unbroken head!”
The governor started out the door. “Come on, Captain Laroque.”

“But, colonel, stop, stop!” Freeman cried with frantic energy. “I tell
you this is a trick--a plot! He’s going to set those prisoners free!
Remember, I give you warning!”

“And I’ve given you warning!” returned the governor wrathfully, and
drove his heavy fist into Freeman’s face. The spy reeled back, then
rushed forward with a wild look of evil in his eyes. “Seize him!” the
governor sharply ordered the guards. They pinioned Freeman in their
arms. “Hold him till we get out of here. I’ll come back and let you out
later.”

They passed out of the dungeon, Drexel last. He glanced back. The
guards were too occupied by their writhing prisoner to notice, but he
caught Freeman’s eyes. He flashed him an instant-long look of triumph.

“Since you claim acquaintance with me,” he said, “I wish you good-bye.”

“Curse you!” grated out Freeman. “And curse that idiot governor! But in
five minutes I’ll be out of here--”

But the closing of the door cut off his sentence in the middle.

The governor led the way, Drexel brought up the rear, pushing The
White One’s chair, and between them Borodin, Razoff and Sonya shuffled
with short, clanking steps. Once The White One turned her head and
gave him an upward look--a look that might have been a warrior angel’s
benediction. And once Sonya stole him back a look--and ah, such a look
as it was!... Fresh spirit flamed into him.

They moved in clanking processional back through dungeon-bordered
corridors--every step a step nearer freedom; and came at last to the
governor’s door.

“I hope there will be no further delay,” said Drexel.

“None at all,” said the governor. “I have the receipt for the prisoners
all ready for your signature. That formality done with and you are
free.”

They entered the office. A man who sat at the governor’s desk turned
them a casual look. Then he slowly rose to his feet and stared.

It was Prince Berloff.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE GODDESS OF VENGEANCE


The prince stared about at the transfixed party. In all his life he
had never been more astounded. But after the first moment he had his
astonishment under perfect control. He realized that he was master of
the situation, and that the situation, near as it had been to spoiling
all, fitted his desire as though framed by his private deity.

The governor had addressed him with obsequious pleasure and surprise,
but him the prince had at first not heeded. But now he turned to him.

“Colonel Kavelin, would you mind explaining the meaning of this,” he
said in his even voice.

“Certainly, Your Excellency. Captain Laroque here is removing these
prisoners to Schlusselburg. Here is the order,” and he took it from his
desk.

“Thank you. I do not care to see it.”

He turned to Drexel. “And so, Captain Laroque,” he said, with a
glint of a white, sardonic smile, “you are removing these people to
Schlusselburg.”

Drexel had run the whole gamut of emotions that night. There was no
new dismay, no deeper fear, for him to feel. He had done his best, but
fate had been against him from the first and the game was up; and
there was nothing for it now but to meet the end as boldly as he could.
He did not answer the prince, but he met his look calmly.

“I suppose you are not aware, Colonel Kavelin,” the prince continued in
his even, conversational tone, “that your Captain Laroque is no captain
at all, but a revolutionist.”

“What!” cried the governor.

“I recognize him as a leader who is wanted by the police, and I charge
you to seize him.”

The governor turned on Drexel in a fury. “So you have been trying to
fool me!” he roared.

“I have done my best,” said Drexel.

“And this Schlusselburg business is just a plot to free these
prisoners?”

“You are quite correct.”

“Then that prisoner was right!” ejaculated the governor. “Perhaps after
all he is a spy, and there is to be an order for his release!”

“There is an order,” said the prince, “for I am here to bring it.”

“My God--and I all but set them free!” The governor blanched at his
narrow escape. Then his fury blazed forth again. “Back you all four go
to your cells!--and you two straight from your cell to your scaffold!
And as for you, Captain Laroque”--he almost frothed in his revengeful
rage--“you’ll never leave here to trick another man!”

He tore Drexel’s revolver from its holster, and with a quick stride
toward his desk raised a hand above a bronze bell to sound the
guard-summoning alarm. But though Drexel had thought all hope was gone,
there was an instinct in him, deeper than consciousness, not to give
up. He sprang desperately forward and caught the descending arm. At
the same moment, as though this had been a signal, Razoff and Borodin
seized Berloff in their manacled hands.

Like a flash Drexel’s other hand went for the governor’s throat to shut
off the alarm from that, and he swung him out of reach of the bell.
But the governor seized from the desk the big knife with which he had
been making erasures and drove it into Drexel’s shoulder. He jerked
it out and raised it for a second plunge. Drexel released the throat
to check this nearer death. He seized the governor’s wrist, and in
the same instant sent his fist into the governor’s great stomach; the
wind rushed groaning out of his mouth and his arms fell to his sides.
Drexel drove his fist fiercely into the bushy beard. The governor went
reeling, and even as he fell Drexel drove his fist with terrific force
a second time against his chin. The governor lay motionless.

Drexel whirled about for Berloff. For the minute of his struggle with
the governor Borodin and Razoff had managed to hold the prince, but the
handicap of manacles and anklets was too great, and the instant the
governor fell the prince broke from their grasp. So when Drexel turned
it was to find himself looking at the cold barrel of a pistol, and
behind that the cold face of Berloff.

“I owe you great thanks, Captain Laroque, for removing the governor as
a spectator,” he said, his eyes agleam with triumph. “That sets me free
to admit the fact of our acquaintance and to enjoy this little reunion
openly. For there is no danger”--he smiled about on them in malign
pleasantry--“when all the present witnesses will soon be as insensible
as our friend the governor there, only permanently so.”

White as she was, Sonya went a shade paler. She came forward with
short, clanking steps.

“Do you mean, Prince Berloff, that you intend executing not only us
Russians, but Mr. Drexel as well?”

“Duty is duty, my dear cousin”--he bowed to her--“however unpleasant.”

She would have spoken in Drexel’s behalf, but he stopped her. “I would
not plead with him for your life, for I know it would be useless. It is
just as vain to plead for mine.”

He turned to Berloff. “We want none of your devil’s raillery! You have
won. Go on with your purpose!”

“As you command. But remember that the haste in the matter is yours,
not mine.” He crossed to the desk and stood beside the bell. “But
before I call in those outsiders, the guards, let us have our farewell
among ourselves.”

He turned to The White One, who sat three or four paces behind him, her
manacled hands upon her knees. “So you are the famous White One. I am
glad to meet you, madame, and I beg to assure you that the meeting with
The White One will be all the more memorable to me since it took place
on what afterward proved the last day of her memorable life.”

That high, pale face returned his mocking courtesy with a gaze of
blazing hatred.

“Justice will not always withhold its hands from you,” she said. “This
is the hour of your triumph--but that hour may not be for long!”

“Pardon my saying it, madame,” returned he, “but one so near the end
should cherish kindlier thoughts.”

For all his air of free and easy mastery he was keeping his eye on the
others to check any dangerous move. But this helpless invalid needed
no watching, and he turned his back upon her, and gazed at Sonya and
Borodin.

“As for you, my dear cousins, it would be hypocrisy for your heir to
make pretense of grief. So what more can I say than ‘I thank you.’”

“Ring the bell!” returned Sonya.

“In one moment I must, for see, the governor is returning to life to
intrude upon our pleasant function.” He turned to Drexel. “So I make
haste, my dear cousin-never-to-be, to wish that your taking-off may
be as gentle as falling asleep, and that your waking may be among the
angels!”

Drexel kept contemptuous silence.

The prince flashed upon them all a look of mocking, malignant
triumph--a figure electric with power, coldly, cruelly handsome--a
model of puissant, high-bred deviltry, fit for the emulation of the
first gentleman of hell.

“And now before the guards come in I will say good-bye to you all”--he
bowed around--“and may your journey be pleasant!”

He raised his hand for the stroke upon the bell, and held it aloft
in fiendish pleasure of prolonging their suspense; and for a moment
he stood there poised in his triumph. They stared at him, waiting
breathless for the fatal hand to fall.

Then their eyes widened, their lips parted, and in thrilled awe they
stared beyond to the wheeled chair at his back, where sat the unfeared
invalid. For something strange was happening with The White One. That
snow-haired figure was slowly uprearing itself, whom none here had ever
seen upon her feet before.

She was of commanding height. In her thin face there blazed a stern
fire; and this portentous look, her loose white hair, her priestess
stature, the flowing robe in which they had garbed her, made her a
figure of preternatural majesty. She moved three silent paces to the
prince’s back, above whom she towered, and there she paused.

The prince was bowing in mockery and saying with his sardonic smile:
“And now once more, good-bye!”

He never knew the reflex meaning of his words. The tall figure at his
back raised her thin arms on high, pressing together the heavy manacles
that bound her wrists. And then, her physician’s eye fixed on a vital
spot, all her strength summoned up in this one effort, she swung that
improvised sledge downward upon his head.

He fell without a word, his sneering good-bye still warm upon his lips.

She gazed down at his lifeless body, in her blazing, majestic wrath
looking the very high priestess of vengeance. She said never a word.
For a moment she stood so, eyes flashing, breast heaving, erect in her
magnificent frailty. Then she raised her eyes to the others and parted
her lips as if to speak. But the fire faded from her face--a tremor
went through her old body--she wavered--and her figure bowed over and
toppled to the floor.

Her fall broke the awed spell which had bound the little group. Sonya
sprang to her side and turned her upon her back. A glance at that calm
face was enough. But Sonya pressed her ear against where had beat The
White One’s heart.

“Dead!” she whispered.

And so it was. The supreme excitation of her mighty wrath had for the
moment conquered disease and lent strength to her withered limbs. She
had made the effort her doctor had long foretold as fatal, had spent
her little store of strength in one prodigal blow; and, her spasm of
energy over, her heart had instantly exacted the penalty--and there she
lay!

But there was no time to exclaim upon the swift happenings of this
one minute. A shuffling noise from behind them caused Drexel to turn
quickly. The governor had risen upon one knee and was stretching out a
hand toward the bell. At once Drexel was upon him, and a minute later
he was securely bound and a gag was in his throat.

The way was now clear for their escape; but to leave these bodies here
for the next minute’s possible discovery might mean alarm and pursuit
before they were out of the Fortress gates. Opening into the office
was a store-room in which were kept blank documents and other office
supplies. In this Drexel laid with reverence the wasted body of The
White One; it seemed hardly less than sacrilege to desert those warrior
ashes to the enemy, but there remained no other way. And in here he
dragged her chair, and the bulky person of the governor, glowering
impotently; and last of all the prince, troubled no more with dreams of
empire.

Three minutes later the prison van, with prisoners and guards inside it
and Drexel driving at its tail, moved with official staidness through
the arched gateway of the Fortress, out into the vast black silence of
the night.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DAY AFTER


An hour would likely pass--with God’s grace more--ere the tenants of
that dark room would be discovered and St. Petersburg’s ten thousand
police and spies be unloosed upon the chase. By the hour’s end they
must all be safe in hiding, or stand in danger of wearing the Czar’s
neckties.

Drexel had still urgent need of his wits. But as the grim shape of the
Fortress withdrew into the rearward gloom, the breaking strain of the
last half-hour began to relax, and he began to feel the reaction of
the two nights he had not slept, and of the two nights and a day that
he had been stretched upon the rack of an almost superhuman suspense.
Moreover, the gash from the governor’s knife, mere flesh-wound though
it was, had bled profusely in the office, and now in the sleigh he
could feel the warm blood creeping down his back and chest. He was
dizzy, and he felt himself grow weaker, yet he dared not call anyone
from the van to bear him company, for the minutes were too precious to
use a single one of them in a transfer to the sleigh.

He clenched his teeth and tried to hold fast to his slipping
strength. But he grew more dizzy, more weak. His horse, noting the
lack of incitement from behind, dropped into a lazy jog, and Drexel
saw the van pull rapidly away. He had not the strength to mend the
horse’s pace, nor the strength to call out, even had he dared. The gap
widened; the van was lost in the darkness ahead; he felt his strength
ebbing--ebbing. He made a supreme effort to hold on to consciousness;
but suddenly blankness closed in upon him, and he lurched sidewise from
the low sleigh out upon the snow.

His next sensation was of some one shaking his shoulder. He opened his
eyes. It was still night; he was sitting on the snow; and at his back
was a support which he realized was a man’s knee.

“Awake yet?” asked a voice.

“Yes,” he said weakly. “What time is it?”

“Five.”

He had lain there for an hour or more. Where were Sonya and the others?

He started to rise, and the man put his hand beneath his shoulders and
assisted him to his feet. Drexel now made out that his Good Samaritan
wore the uniform of a policeman, and he had a moment of poignant fear.

“A drop too much, eh?” said the officer with heavy facetiousness.

Drexel was more than content to have that remain the explanation of
his state. He was still weak and there was an icy numbness through
all his bones. He begged the use of the policeman’s arm for a little
way, which was granted him; and after a few blocks of that support he
felt sufficiently recovered to thank his obliging crutch and venture on
alone.

At last he gained the house of Sabatoff. The Keeper of the Seals
listened in amazement to his sketch of what had happened in the three
hours since they had parted; and on learning of the governor’s knife he
quickly bared Drexel’s shoulder and dressed the wound with no little
skill.

Whether the prisoners had escaped or been recaptured, it was clear that
Drexel could do no more and that it was time for him to consider his
own safety. Sabatoff aided him to change into the clothes of a citizen,
and once more he set forth from the little house, Sabatoff promising to
send news of the fugitives if any came to him. An hour later, having
changed from sleigh to sleigh to hide his trail, he drove up to the
Hotel Europe. A sense of personal relief descended upon him as he
entered the hotel. He was once more Henry Drexel, American citizen.

It was too early yet to see his uncle’s family, so he went to his room
and stretched himself upon his bed. But weary as he was, there was no
sleep for him. Was Sonya now in safety--or had she been recaptured in
the hour of escape and was she now lying again in her dungeon in Peter
and Paul?

This uncertainty throbbed through him with every pulse-beat. And
there was no active measure he could take to learn the truth. He could
do nothing but wait; wait for good or evil news from Sabatoff, or
wait till rumour or the papers brought him news that could be only of
disaster.

His mind went back to that strange introduction to Sonya upon the
Moscow train. Half his life seemed to have been lived since then--and
yet this epoch included but a fortnight! She passed before him in the
various aspects which the two weeks had shown him; as the shawled
factory girl; as the princess, proud with the pride of a thousand
years; as the ardent saviour of her brother’s life; he saw her go
calmly down the stairs of the house in Three Saints’ Court to give him
chance of escape; saw her in her dungeon, with calm and lofty mien
prepared to mount the sacrificial scaffold. And this rare figure, while
the smoke had swirled and the flames had flared wildly round them,
this rare figure had kissed his brow, and said she loved him! The
remembrance of that moment swept him in dizzy awe to heaven....

But where was she now?

He could stand this inactive ignorance no longer. He got into a suit of
his own clothes and went down to the dining-room. Perhaps news might
already be circulating there, for the Hotel Europe was a favourite
resort of officialdom. With swift sight he picked out three officers
whose breakfast of tea and sweet rolls was forgotten in excited
converse. Masking any possible show of emotion behind the Paris
Herald, he took the table adjoining them, his ears wide open. Sure
enough, they were rehearsing last night’s events in Peter and Paul. It
appeared that Governor Kavelin had been discovered and released at five
o’clock and all St. Petersburg was now beginning to reverberate with
the affair. They had the whole story, even the awesome picture of the
fall of Prince Berloff beneath the manacles of The White One, followed
by her own swift death--for Colonel Kavelin had been far enough revived
to be a witness to the double tragedy.

It was all strange, they said--wonderfully, wonderfully strange.
And not the least strange of all was a later episode. There had
been a third condemned prisoner, the American correspondent, James
Freeman. When the guards had come at four o’clock to lead him to his
execution, he had protested that he was no revolutionist, but a spy,
and his being there was but a spy’s stratagem, and that an order for
his release was on the way and should have been there an hour gone.
They had regarded the talk as the hysterical ravings of one undone by
fear, and had dragged him from his cell. When he had seen there was no
hope, he had taken on a cynical courage. He had ordered the hangman
to keep his greasy paws off him, and had himself, with steady hands,
settled the soaped cord about his neck, and with a nod and a sneering,
“Good-morning, gentlemen,” had swung out of the world.

And an hour later the order for his release had been found in the
breast of the dead Berloff!

While Drexel listened, his eyes fixed on his paper, there was a rustle
beside him. He looked up. Into the empty chair across the table had
slipped the Countess Baronova.

Her manner was smilingly composed. But he saw that she was pale,
high-wrought, and that there were dark rings about her eyes.

She leaned forward. “I have come here--especially to try to see you,”
she whispered with an effort.

“Yes?”

“You know--what I have been. From your point of view--and I do not
blame you--it is your duty to expose me to the revolutionists. I have
come to tell you that this is not necessary.”

He did not reply.

“After what has happened--the last few days--last night--I cannot be
what I used to be any more. I wanted you to know that.”

“I am glad,” he whispered.

“I am leaving Russia. After what has happened--I can’t stand it
here--and it will be safest. I think that is all. Except”--and she
looked him straight in the eyes, and her voice dropped to a barest
breath--“I believe I know who this Captain Laroque is.”

“Yes?”

“What he did was--was wonderful!” Her dark eyes looked a quick,
subdued admiration. “That is all. Good-bye.”

She rose and was leaving him, but he followed her to the tapestried
doorway. Here, very pale, she inclined her head to him and was sweeping
away--when suddenly he held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said. “And I hope--I hope--”

“Thank you. Good-bye.”

For an instant her hand pressed his with quivering tensity. Then she
bowed again, and moved away.

Drexel returned to his table and again set his ears open, but heard
nothing more of consequence. He thought of his relatives above; of
Alice, even now, perhaps, beginning excitedly to prepare for the
wedding. He was rising to go upstairs and discharge his painful duty,
when he saw that Prince Valenko had entered the room and was bearing
in his direction. They exchanged a few words of commonplace, then they
drew apart to a window and made a show of gazing out.

The prince’s manner was cool, even casual, for the sake of those eyes
that might be looking on, and in it was no slightest sign of the secret
that lay between them. But when he spoke, his low words vibrated with
eagerness.

“Have you heard anything of the escaped prisoners?” he asked.

“Nothing. And you?”

“Nothing. Until certain gentlemen who honoured me with their company
last night left me this morning, I had supposed the execution had
taken place.”

Drexel replied in the same masked language. “You must have been
surprised.”

The prince nodded. “I have no idea who this Captain Laroque is,” he
went on, with a calm look into Drexel’s face; “and I have no wish to
know, for it would be my official duty to hang him. But if by any
strange twist of circumstances you should ever meet him, please inform
him that he is the boldest man I ever heard of.”

“Should there be such a strange twist, I will,” said Drexel.

“Doubtless he is already on his way out of Russia,” the prince went
on. “For he undoubtedly knows that of all concerned in last night’s
affair he is the one most wanted by the Government--that a vast reward
is being offered for his arrest, and that thousands of men are already
searching for him.”

“Indeed!” ejaculated Drexel.

“But I dare say he will make good his escape. Should he by chance have
any relatives of importance--bereaved relatives--in whose company he
could go, he would be certain to escape suspicion.” He bowed. “I wish
you good-morning, Mr. Drexel.”

He started away. But with a quick motion Drexel caught his arm, for
through the doorway had just entered Captain Nadson and Colonel Kavelin.

“Prince,” he whispered, “see those two men who have just entered. I
prefer not to meet them.”

The prince looked. “Excuse me,” he said. “Those are the men who can
identify Captain Laroque. I have some orders to give them.”

Out of the tail of his eye Drexel saw the military governor accost
the two officers with curt aloofness and lead them out. He waited a
moment, then crossed to the door. The trio were in conversation down a
corridor, the backs of the two officers toward him. Drexel crossed to
the stairway and swiftly mounted.

Of a surety, St. Petersburg was no safe place for him!

He went to his uncle’s apartment. Tables and chairs were heaped with
wedding gifts, and wherever a spot was empty of presents it held a
vase of flowers. The Howards had been up most of the night before, and
his aunt and Alice were only rising, but his uncle joined him at once.
The old man greeted him heartily, and spoke for several minutes of the
wedding now but a few hours off.

“And was your trip to Moscow a success?”

“I hope events will prove that I have succeeded in every detail,” said
Drexel.

“Good. You’ll tell me about it later. And I’ve been having success
too.” He half closed his eyes and nodded his head. “I’ve had a dozen
cipher cables from America while you’ve been gone. Great news about
that street-railway scheme!”

“Yes?” said Drexel mechanically. He was glad of a momentary respite
from his unpleasant task.

“Things have developed just as we planned. The scheme is ripe. All
we’ve got to do is to hustle home, do a little more work, and then
pluck the profits.”

The scheme had been out of Drexel’s head for near a fortnight. Coming
back fresh as it did, it had certain aspects it had not borne before.

“I believe the fifteen millions profit is to be squeezed out of the
city--out of the people,” he said slowly.

“I wouldn’t use such an unpleasant word as ‘squeeze’ about money that I
was to control,” returned his uncle dryly. “Remember, this is where I
step out and you step in. ‘The king is dead; long live the king!’”

Drexel gazed steadily at the carpet.

“You seem to take your coronation very coolly,” grumbled his uncle.
“But in two weeks you’ll be back in Chicago, in the midst of the deal.
You’ll be excited enough then!”

Drexel still looked down. His thoughts had gone to Sonya--to Sonya and
the others, giving their all to the people’s cause. He raised his eyes.

“And what about the people?” he slowly asked.

“The people?” queried his uncle. “What people?”

“The city--the stock-holders--the tax-payers--the passengers--all the
people we’re going to get the fifteen millions out of.”

“Now what the devil’s the matter with the boy!” exploded the old man.

“I haven’t been doing any thinking, and I’m not going to do any
moralizing now--but somehow that deal looks different to me from what
it used to.” He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,
uncle, but you’ll have to count me out.”

“Count you out!” He stared. “Are you crazy?”

“I am just beginning to come to my senses,” said Drexel.

“Then you are in earnest?”

“With all the earnestness I have.”

The old man regarded the other in grim silence. His jaw began to
tighten and his eyes to shoot fire from beneath their bushy iron-gray
brows.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Some quality that had lain dormant in Drexel till it had been roused
by his fortnight’s contact with new ideals, new motives, now suddenly
stirred within him. His face quickened with decision.

“Yes I think I do know,” he said.

“Well--what is it?”

“After all, I’m not going to drop out of that street-car deal. I’m
going back to fight it.”

“Fight it?” The old man looked bewildered. “For whom?”

“For the people.”

“For the people!”

Amazement, contempt, rising wrath, struggled in his face. “You realize,
young man, that means you are going to fight me?”

“Forgive me, uncle, for I think we have truly loved one another--”

“No snuffling!”

“Yes, I am going to fight you.”

The old man stared as if he could not quite believe his ears; but the
square-chinned, determined young face left him no doubt. His lips
tightened into a hard straight line, his head sank crouching between
his shoulders, his short hair seemed to rise like the ruff of an angry
dog. He leaned forward--the fighting John Howard that many a man in
Chicago had met and gone down before.

“A declaration of war, eh?” he said in a slow guttural voice. “All
right. I thought I was done for, but that puts ten more good years in
me. And I think John Howard can give you all you want. Oh, it’ll be a
fight, young man, a fight--and you’ll never imagine it’s anything else!
And now, good-morning to you.”

“I suppose it is only natural for you to take it so, uncle. I’m sorry
the break----”

“I think I said good-morning!”

Drexel gazed a moment at the glaring, rigid old man. “Good-morning,” he
said, and started for the door.

But he turned about. “Pardon me. I have something of importance to tell
you.”

“You’ve told me enough!” He pointed to the door.

“This does not concern me. It concerns you and aunt, and Alice most of
all. I must speak to the three of you.”

It was the look in Drexel’s face rather than his words that made his
uncle summon Alice and her mother. Their exclamations of pleasure at
sight of Drexel were stopped by an abrupt command.

“We are no longer friends,” the old man explained to the wondering
women. “Go on, Henry.”

“What I’m going to tell you is God’s truth--I can prove it all if need
be,” he began. And he went on to unfold the prince’s secret office
and his crafty villainies. Before he was half to the end of the dark
record, his uncle and his aunt were staring with white faces and
Alice was bowed upon the table among the wedding gifts, sobbing and
shuddering.

When he finished, Alice threw herself upon her father’s breast. “Oh, I
can’t marry him--never! Never!”

The old man strained her to him convulsively. “There--there, my child!
You shall not!”

He looked in accusing wrath at Drexel. “My God, why did you wait till
the very wedding-day to tell this?” he fiercely demanded.

“This was my first chance.”

“Well--if they were at the very altar we’d break it off!”

“There is no need to break it off,” said Drexel quietly.

“No need to break it off! Why?”

“Because he’s dead.”

“Dead!” they cried in one voice.

They stared at him, blanched, astounded--and relieved. Drexel went on
to tell how the prince had come by his death, telling it as something
he had overheard in the dining-room, and referring only in vaguest
terms to Captain Laroque. Some day he might make known his part in this
daring escape, with its triple tragedy, but that day was in the far,
far future.

Alice again threw herself upon her father’s breast. “Take me home,
father--please, please!” she begged him.

He caressed her hair with tender hand. “You shall go. We will leave
at once--to-day. But there’s much to be seen to--packing, tickets,
passports, returning these presents.”

He looked at Drexel, and his face became grim, but not so grim as it
had been a half-hour back. “Henry, it’s still going to be war all
right,” said he. “But under the circumstances, till we get out of this
country, what do you say to a truce?”

“With all my heart!” said Drexel.

The hours that followed were feverishly busy ones. Drexel furtively
studied Alice. She could but be appalled by the revelations concerning
the prince and by his death, but in her manner was none of that
excruciating grief and horror that a loving heart would feel over such
a double loss of a loved one. It was plain, what he had all along
suspected, that she had never loved Berloff, but that her pretty young
head had merely been turned by his title. Drexel knew who had most of
her heart, and it needed no superhuman prescience to see her a year
hence, her wounds healed, her head a little wiser, yielding a blushing
“yes” to her old Chicago lover, Jack Hammond.

But all this while Drexel’s first thoughts were all of Sonya. Twelve
o’clock came--one--two--three--and not a word of news. Did this
silence mean that she had escaped, but could not without great risk
send him word of her security? Or did the silence mean that she had
been secretly rearrested and was being secretly held in some voiceless
dungeon?

Every minute repeated these hopes and fears. He acquiesced in the
plan for the general hegira of that night, let his passport be
countersigned, his baggage be packed, his ticket be bought, for he well
knew the masked advice of General Valenko was good advice. Yet even as
he suffered these preparations, he knew he would not, could not, leave
St. Petersburg till he had word with Sonya, or knew her fate.

At a little after three Sabatoff called. But he had not heard a word;
and he soon left, to be ready for a message should one come, with the
promise to return at six.

The early darkness closed down upon the city. Another hour dragged on.
Drexel could stand the suspense no longer, so, despite the risk, he
slipped down into the tea-room and again set his ears wide open. They
were still discussing the daring of the unknown Captain Laroque, the
escape, the three tragic deaths. But no word about the prisoners. He
returned above and wore away another awful hour, and yet another. Then
Sabatoff came again--still with nothing.

Sabatoff had barely gone when a note was handed Drexel. It read:

  “I am requested to inform you that the condition of Princess Valenko
  has shown rapid and great improvement. Her doctor has given her
  permission to receive a few friends, and in case you are at liberty
  she will be glad to see you.
                                                 “VERA SAVANOVA, NURSE.”




CHAPTER XXIX

TO-MORROW?


The next fifteen minutes, when Drexel looks back upon them, present
nothing but a blur of ecstatic relief. Distinct remembrance begins with
his being ushered to a certain door--a door within which, excited as he
was, he recalled that the princess ten days before had thrown off her
mask to him.

He entered.

There she was!--in a convalescent’s robe, half reclining in a great
chair soft with many cushions. He could but stare. But a few hours
since and he had seen her in the coarse gray garments of death. But a
few hours--and there she was!

“Close the door, Andrei,” she said.

The door closed.

She rose up in all her superb young beauty and came to him, her arms
outstretched, her face a glory of love.

“Oh, Henry! Henry!”

“Sonya! My Sonya!”

And he caught her to him.

Ah, that minute against her heart!... It was payment and more for all
his fortnight’s pain and danger--aye, and payment for the pain and
longing of all the long years to come!

And then she disengaged herself, and took his pale cheeks in her two
hands, and gazed into his face, her eyes ashine with tears and love and
wonder.

“It was brave!--brave!--splendid!” she said in a trembling whisper.
“But I forgot--you are wounded!”

She led him to a divan before the glowing fire, and was going on with
her praise, but he caught a hand and pressed it to his heart. “Feel it!
Another word will kill me with happiness. Please don’t, Sonya!”

He begged her to tell him what had happened during the day and how
she had come home. An hour after leaving the Fortress, she said, they
had deserted the van and scattered, she going into hiding in the home
of a trusted friend. Here she had lain all day, not daring to move
till she learned how matters stood. By the coming of dusk her course
was resolved upon. Only three persons, besides her friends, knew the
identity of Sonya Varanova, her father, Freeman and Prince Berloff.
The two last, in the interest of their crafty scheme, she was certain
had told no one--and now they were dead; her father she knew she
could trust. Dressed as a working-girl, she had hurried through the
disguising darkness across the city, had watched her chance and entered
the servants’ door unnoticed, had slipped unseen up to the sick-room
where watch was still being kept--and had become once more Princess
Valenko.

As for the others: the faces of the escort had not been seen, they
could not be identified if caught, and furthermore they were all as
clever at hiding as the fox. Borodin and Razoff were already on their
way out of Russia, in the guise of immigrants bound for America--of
course, to return in a few weeks to resume their revolutionary work.
They were all quite safe.

They might be safe, but his concern was not for them. He looked at that
fair dark face, with its crown of glorious black. Yes, she was again
the princess, but----

“But you are still in danger!” cried he.

“And who in Russia, with a soul, is not?”

“But not such danger as you! You may still be found out. And then----”

He sickened as he saw her again in last night’s danger, with this
time no rescue for her. “I cannot bear to think of that!” he cried
desperately. “Sonya, come with me to America!”

“That’s what my heart wants most of all to do,” said she.

He caught her hands in joy. “Then you will come?”

Her face grew gray with pain, and she sighed.

“If I only could!”

“You can!”

She slowly shook her head.

“I cannot, dear. If my country were happy, I would. Ah, but I would!
But at the time of my country’s agony, I cannot think first of my own
happiness. I cannot desert her in the time of her distress.”

“Then I will stay with you!” he cried. “I’ll stay with you, and help
you!”

“I cannot let you. Father has told me how the description of Captain
Laroque is everywhere. You are safe for perhaps only a few hours. You
must leave at once.”

He thought a moment. “You are right,” he said. “And leave for a greater
reason than my own safety. You have an alibi; no one will suspect
the sick Princess Valenko. But should I stay, and should we be seen
together, I the double of Captain Laroque, you the double of the
escaped prisoner--that would rouse a fatal suspicion. Yes--I must leave
at once.”

“I was thinking of your safety alone,” said she.

“But to go away to placid safety, leaving you to undertake new perils!”
he groaned. If at least she were only safe! He thought of her father,
and his fearing love seized at that hope. “Now that your father knows,
will he not prevent your activities?”

“Father and I have just had a long talk. He cannot countenance what
I do, and I cannot give up doing it. He cannot denounce me; nor will
his honour let him continue in power and keep silent. So he is going
to resign; he had been considering that, anyhow, for he is close upon
seventy. We are going to part--to part in love. He is going to retire
to one of his estates.”

“And you,” he cried despairingly, “are going to plunge into new
dangers!”

“Whatever danger my country’s freedom requires--I must.”

“Sonya! Oh, Sonya!” and her name came out as a sob.

“But, dear--would you have me suffer these wrongs in silence?” she
asked softly.

“I would have my love be safe!” he cried in anguish.

“Would you have me apathetically content?” she asked.

“Ah, you know, dearest,” he moaned, “that I would have you be yourself!”

“Yes, I knew,” she said softly.

He gazed at her in an agony of longing. There was a sudden flare of
hope.

“You said--a moment ago--that if your country did not need you, you
would come to me.”

“And so I would!” she breathed.

“Then if there comes a day when your country is set free?”

“That day I’ll come to you!” she said.

But hope as suddenly died to ashes. “But moving among such dangers, you
may never see that day!”

“Who knows? Six months--a year--more perhaps--and then----”

“Don’t!” he whispered, and he tried to close his eyes against the
vision she had conjured up.

“If when you are back in America, you should hear ... anything, don’t
take it with too much sorrow,” she went on. “Remember that, foreknowing
the end, I have gone to it willingly, gladly--for my country’s sake.”

She said it quietly, with clear eyes, even faintly smiling. For many
moments he gazed upon her, for whom life held every good there was, yet
counting self as least of all. And as he gazed, something of her spirit
crossed to him. Personal sorrow, personal happiness, seemed to grow a
minor thing. Half his pain was swept away, and into him there thrilled
a strange new exaltation.

“It is to do such things, I suppose, that we are given life,” he
whispered.

Her gazed softened, her voice sank to an exquisite tenderness. “And
though I stay, and you go, and half the world shall lie between us, we
are not giving one another up, dearest. I shall ever be with you.”

“And I with you, my darling!” he breathed.

They talked on, of love, of danger, of what the future might hold, and
then of love again. And thus their one short hour together sped away,
and the time came when he must go. Their hands clasped and he looked
long, long, into that glorious face which it might never be his to gaze
upon again. Then he strained her to him.... And then they parted.

       *       *       *       *       *

Parted, and yet not parted. For in the days when steam hurled land and
sea behind him, and in those farther days when the fight with his uncle
was on (and a fight it was indeed! as his uncle had promised), her
spirit was as a presence at his side, giving him new strength and new
courage, making it easier to live humbly and bravely, and play his part
as a man. It was as she in their last moment had said to him: “We shall
be as husband and wife whom a duty higher than happiness keeps each in
his own land.”

Every day or two, at the pleasure of ocean mails, there comes a letter,
bearing him fresh assurance of her love. But writ in fear of the
censor’s eye, it gives no hint of what she does, no whisper of what may
be her danger. Of that he can only guess. And after each such letter he
strains to peer beyond time’s curtain. After each such letter a hope
that will not die breathes daringly in the ear of his heart that to him
may yet be granted the fulness of bliss--that Freedom may yet be won
for Sonya’s people--that she may come to him!

       *       *       *       *       *

But, ah--the fear of that to-morrow when the letters may cease to
come!...


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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