The Price of Power Part 13

"Miss West will be here in a few minutes," she said. "Tell me, Uncle Colin, what have you been doing while you've been away--eh?"

"I had some business in London, and afterwards went on a flying visit to see my mother down in Cornwall," I said.

"Ah! How is she? I hope you told her to come and see me. I would be so very delighted if she will come and stay a week or so."

"I gave her Your Highness's kind message, and she is writing to thank you. She'll be most delighted to visit you," I said.

"Nothing has been discovered regarding Madame de Rosen's letters, I suppose?" she asked with a sigh, her face suddenly grown grave.

"Hartwig arrives to-night, or to-morrow," I replied. "We shall then know what has transpired. From his Majesty he received explicit instructions to spare no effort to solve the mystery of the theft."

"I know. He told me so when he was here three weeks ago. He has made every effort. Of all the police administration I consider Hartwig the most honest and straightforward."

"Yes," I agreed. "He is alert always, marvellously astute, and, above all, though he has had such an extraordinary career, he is an Englishman."

"So I have lately heard," replied my pretty companion. "I know he will do his best on my behalf, because I feel that I have lost the one piece of evidence which might have restored poor Marya de Rosen and her daughter to liberty."

"You have lost the letters, it is true," I said, looking into her splendid eyes. "You have lost them because it was plainly in the interests of General Markoff, the Tzar's favourite, that they should be lost. Madame de Rosen herself feared lest they should be stolen, and yet a few days later she and Luba were spirited away to the Unknown.

Search was, no doubt, made at her house for that incriminating correspondence. It could not be found; but, alas! you let out the secret when sitting out with me at the Court ball. Somebody must have overheard. Your father's palace was searched very thoroughly, and the packet at last found."

"The Emperor appeared to be most concerned about it before I left Russia. When I last saw him at Tzarskoie-Selo he seemed very pale, agitated and upset."

"Yes," I said. Then, very slowly, for I confess I was much perturbed, knowing how we were at that moment hemmed in by our enemies, I added: "This theft conveyed more to His Majesty than at present appears to your Highness. It is a startling coup of those opposed to the monarchy--the confirmation of a suspicion which the Emperor believed to be his--and his alone."

"A suspicion!" she exclaimed. "What suspicion? Tell me."

Next moment Miss West, thin-faced and rather angular, entered the room, and we dropped our confidences. Then, at my invitation, my dainty little hostess went to the piano, and running her white fingers over the keys, commenced to sing in her clear, well-trained contralto "L'Heure Exquise" of Paul Verlaine:

La lune blanche Luit dans les bois; De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramee...

O bien-aimee.

CHAPTER TEN.

REVEALS TWO FACTS.

When I entered my bedroom at the Hotel Metropole it wanted half an hour to midnight. But scarce had I closed the door when a waiter tapped at it and handed me a card.

"Show the gentleman up," I said in eager antic.i.p.ation, and a few minutes later there entered a tall, thin, clean-shaven, rather aristocratic-looking man in a dark brown suit--the same person whom old Igor had evidently recognised walking along King's Road.

"Well, Tack? So you are here with your report--eh?" I asked.

"Yes, sir," was his reply, as I seated myself on the edge of the bed, and he took a chair near the dressing-table and settled himself to talk.

Edward Tack was a man of many adventures. After a good many years at Scotland Yard, where he rose to be the chief of the Extradition Department on account of his knowledge of languages, he had been engaged by the Foreign Office as a member of our Secret Service abroad, mostly in Germany and Russia. During the past two years he had, as a blind to the police, carried on a small insurance agency business in Petersburg; but the information he gathered from time to time and sent to the Emba.s.sy was of the greatest a.s.sistance to us in our diplomatic dealings with Russia and the Powers.

He never came to the Emba.s.sy himself, nor did he ever hold any direct communication with any of the staff. He acted as our eyes and ears, exercising the utmost caution in transmitting to us the knowledge of men and matters which he so cleverly gained. He worked with the greatest secrecy, for though he had lived in Petersburg two whole years, he had never once been suspected by that unscrupulous spy-department controlled by General Markoff.

"I've been in Brighton several days," my visitor said. "The hotel porter told me here that you were away, so I went to the `Old s.h.i.+p!' and waited for you."

"Well--what have you discovered?" I inquired, handing him my cigarette-case. "Anything of interest?"

"Nothing very much, I regret to say," was his reply. "I've worked for a whole month, often night and day, but Markoff's men are wary--very wary birds, sir, as you know."

"Have you discovered the real perpetrator of that bomb outrage?"

"I believe so. He escaped."

"No doubt he did."

"There have been in all over forty persons arrested," my visitor said.

"About two dozen have been immured in Schusselburg, in those cells under the waters of Lake Ladoga. The rest have been sent by administrative process to the mines."

"And all of them innocent?"

"Every one of them."

"It's outrageous!" I cried. "To think that such things can happen every day in a country whose priests teach Christianity."

"Remove a certain dozen or so of Russia's statesmen and corrupt officials, put a stop to the exile system, and give every criminal or suspect a fair trial, and the country would become peaceful to-morrow,"

declared the secret agent. "I have already reported to the Emba.s.sy the actual truth concerning the present unrest."

"I know. And we have sent it on to Downing Street, together with the names of those who form the camarilla. The Emperor is, alas! merely their catspaw. They are the real rulers of Russia--they rule it by a Reign of Terror."

"Exactly, sir," replied the man Tack. "I've always contended that. In the present case the outrage is not a mystery to the Secret Police."

"You think they know all about it--eh?" I asked quickly.

"Well, sir. I will put to you certain facts which I have discovered.

About two years ago a certain Danilo Danilovitch, an intelligent shoemaker in Kazan, and a member of the revolutionary group in that city, turned police-spy, and gave evidence of a _coup_ which had been prepared to poison the Emperor at a banquet given there after the military manoeuvres last year. As a result, there were over a hundred arrests, and as reprisal the chief of police of Kazan was a week later shot while riding through one of the princ.i.p.al streets. Next I know of Danilovitch is that he was transferred to Petersburg, where, though in the pay of the police, he was known to the Party of the People's Will as an ardent and daring reformer, and foremost in his fiery condemnation of the monarchy. He made many inflammatory speeches at the secret revolutionary meetings in various parts of the city, and was hailed as a strong and intrepid leader. Yet frequently the police made raids upon these meeting-places and arrested all found there. After each attempted outrage they seemed to be provided with lists of everyone who had had the slightest connection with the affair, and hence they experienced no difficulty in securing them and packing them off to Siberia. The police were all-ubiquitous, the Emperor was greatly pleased, and General Markoff was given the highest decorations, promotion and an appointment with rich emoluments.

"But one day, about four months ago," Tack went on, "a remarkable but unreported tragedy occurred. Danilovitch, whose wife had long ago been arrested and died on her way to Siberia, fell in love with a pretty young tailoress named Marie Garine, who was a very active member of the revolutionary party, her father and mother having been sent to the mines of Nerchinsk, though entirely innocent. Hence she naturally hated the Secret Police and all their detestable works. More than once she had remarked to her lover the extraordinary fact that the police were being secretly forewarned of every attempt which he suggested, for Danilovitch had by this time become one of the chief leaders of the subterranean revolution, and instigator of all sorts of desperate plots against the Emperor and members of the Imperial Family. One evening, however, she went to his rooms and found him out. Some old shoes were upon a shelf ready for mending, for he still, as a subterfuge, practised his old trade. Among the shoes was a pair of her own. She took them down, but she mistook another pair for hers, and from one of them there fell to her feet a yellow card--the card of ident.i.ty issued to members of the Secret Police! She took it up. There was no mistake, for her lover's photograph was pasted upon it. Her lover was a police-spy!"

"Well, what happened?" I asked, much interested in the facts.

"The girl, in a frenzy of madness and anger, was about to rush out to betray the man to her fellow-conspirators, when Danilovitch suddenly entered. She had, at that moment, his yellow card in her hand. In an instant he knew the truth and realised his own peril. She intended to betray him. It meant her life or his! Not a dozen words pa.s.sed between the pair, for the man, taking up his shoemaker's knife, plunged it deliberately into the girl's heart, s.n.a.t.c.hed the card from her dying grasp, and strode out, locking the door behind him. Then he went straight to the private bureau of General Markoff and told him what he had done. Needless to relate, the police inquiry was a very perfunctory one. It was a love tragedy, they said, and as Danilo Danilovitch was missing, they soon dropped the inquiry. They did not, of course, wish to arrest the a.s.sa.s.sin, for he was far too useful a person to them."

"Then you know the fellow?"

"I have met him often. At first I had no idea of his connection with the revolutionists. It is only quite recently through a woman who is in the pay of the Secret Police, and whose son has been treated badly, that I learned the truth. And she also told me one very curious fact. She was present in the crowd when the bomb was thrown at the Grand Duke Nicholas's carriage, and she declares that Danilo Danilovitch--who has not been seen in Petersburg since the tragic death of Marie Garine--was there also."

"Then he may have thrown the bomb?" I said, amazed.

"Who knows?"

"But I saw a man with his arm uplifted," I exclaimed. "He looked respectable, of middle-age, with a grey beard and wore dark clothes."

"That does not tally with Danilovitch's description," he replied. "But, of course, the a.s.sa.s.sin must have been disguised if he had dared to return to Petersburg."

"But I suppose his fellow-conspirators still entertain no suspicion that he is a police-spy?"