By Right of Sword Part 27

"I'll not consent," she cried again, vehemently, and broke out into a fresh storm of protests and reproaches. But I held to my decision, confident that she would see she must give way.

We parted without coming to any definite decision; and I was glad, because it spared me the infliction of those outward signs of affection in which she delighted to indulge and which now would have been more than ever repulsive.

But the knowledge of the increased peril and embarra.s.sment overwhelmed me with a feeling of anxious doubt and most painful and galling impotence.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEXT NIHILIST PLOT.

It seemed to me when I thought over my interview with Paula Tueski, that the complications which surrounded me could not possibly be increased. It was of course hopeless to think of leaving Russia except by some stratagem, or in disguise; and this would be all the more difficult because Olga must leave first, and her flight would undoubtedly turn attention on me.

A positively baffling set of conditions faced me therefore, whichever way I turned. If I stayed on, Paula Tueski would insist on the marriage, and the crisis would come that way. If I attempted to go, she herself would join with the police in following me, and the mere endeavour to fly would give just that colour to her story which would make all the world ready to believe it.

Again, if I tried the remaining alternative of proclaiming my ident.i.ty, I had so egregiously compromised myself that I could not hope to escape heavy punishment of some kind; while it would certainly implicate Olga and at the same time have no effect against the direct lies Paula Tueski was ready to swear.

Above all, a great change had come over me. I wished to live and keep my freedom. The old indifference and apathy were gone. My object now was to get both Olga and myself out of the country in safety; and thus I took diametrically opposite views of difficulties which a few days previously--before I had made the discovery of my love for Olga--would have caused me little more than a laugh of amused perplexity.

Baffling as the puzzle was, however, it became infinitely more involved and perilous a few days later. Two fresh complications came to kill even every forlorn hope.

My Nihilist friends were responsible for the first.

The belief that I had struck down the Chief of the Secret Police and had done it in a manner so secret, mysterious, and impenetrable that it staggered the most ingenious police spies and defied the efforts of the astutest detectives, surrounded me with a glamour of wholly undeserved and undesired reputation.

The first intimation of this had reached me through Olga, and was followed by several others; and I received clear proof that I was now regarded as a sort of leader of the forlorn hopes of these wild and desperate men. A man who could alone and unaided achieve what I was believed to have accomplished was held capable of the greatest deeds.

So they appeared to argue; and I was accordingly picked out next for a task of infinite danger and hazard in a plot of even more tremendous consequences than that of the recent murder.

It was nothing less than the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Czar.

It was resolved, by whom and in what centre of the Empire I never knew, to follow up the murder of Christian Tueski by the greater blow, and to strike this with the utmost possible despatch: as a proof of the desperate courage and daring of the Nihilists.

I was chosen to play one of the chief parts. I had no option to refuse. There was no choice given me. The task was committed to me; just as a command might have been given me by my military superior officer. When I attempted to decline, I was given to understand that refusal meant death.

I was thus placed in a position of cruel difficulty and I pondered with close self-searching what I ought to do. Looking back I think I made a blunder in not disclosing all I knew to the authorities, leaving them to take what steps they pleased; but in forming my decision at the time I was swayed by a number of considerations most difficult to weigh.

One of my chief reasons for holding my tongue was that as the plot followed so soon after the Tueski murder--for the plans were all made within a week--the fact that I knew so much of Nihilist plots at such a time, would bring both Olga and myself under suspicion of having been privy to the former one. In such a case everything I wished to win would be jeopardised. A single breath of suspicion would have been enough to sweep us both into a gaol; and once there, no one could say when, if ever, we should come out; for the whole country was red-hot against the Nihilists, and men of the highest rank and wealth were rotting in gaol side by side with the most abject and dest.i.tute paupers.

I was also much concerned as to my supposed past. I knew that the old Alexis was gravely compromised; but what he had actually done, I did not know. If any old offences were raked up I should be certain to be called to account for them now, while Olga would inevitably suffer with me.

For those reasons I decided to hold my tongue and to seek my own means for causing the infernal scheme to miss its aim. I reckoned that, as I was to have a princ.i.p.al part a.s.signed to me, I could by my own effort, either through apparent stupidity or by wilful design, wreck the whole project; and with this object I thought carefully over every detail of it which was entrusted to me.

The scheme was ingenious and, save in one respect, simple enough. A fortnight later the Emperor was to pay a visit to Moscow, and already preparations had commenced for his reception. At one time it was thought he would refuse to come because of the Tueski murder; but with that unerring accuracy that always made me marvel, till I ascertained the cause, the Nihilist leaders learnt the Imperial intentions before they were known in some of even the closest official circles.

What the Czar decided to do was to have all the preparations continued as though the original arrangements for the visit were to be carried out; but at the last moment to make a change which would baffle any plots. He meant to alter the arrangement of the train by which he would travel: and this at the very last moment.

The object of this was, of course, to thwart any plot that might be laid to attack the train in which he travelled, so that thus the plotters might be discovered.

But the double cunning of the Nihilists was quite equal to this change: and the plot was indeed exactly what the officials had antic.i.p.ated--to wreck the train in which the Czar travelled--and I think it was chosen for the very reason of its apparent obviousness. Given precise information of the Imperial movements and a little double cunning in the plans, it was likely enough that the authorities would be especially vulnerable in just that spot in which they believed they had most effectively guarded themselves.

The official reasoning was that if the train in which the Czar was publicly but erroneously believed to be travelling could pa.s.s safely, then that in which His Majesty would actually be, would be sure to get by without mishap. The Nihilist plans were laid in full knowledge of the official theory.

A part of the line about ten miles from the city where the rails ran in a dead straight course over a comparatively flat country for some five or six miles was chosen for the attack; and it was chosen because it was that which the authorities would the least suspect, since it was most easy to watch and guard. A man standing at either end of the long, flat, straight stretch could with a gla.s.s watch, not only the line itself, but also the land adjoining the line. Of all the spots the train would pa.s.s this was by far the unlikeliest to be selected for any Nihilist attack.

The most prominent and conspicuous spot of all was that, moreover, which was picked out for the actual attempt. At that particular point a shallow dip in the fields caused the line to be embanked to a height of some ten or twelve feet; and the key of the plan was to fix levers to two of the rails so that they could be moved at the very last moment, just when the train was within a few yards of them. In this way the train would be turned off the metals and sent over the embankment into the field.

The levers, worked by electric motive power, were of course out of sight under the wooden sleepers: and the wires were trailed in tubes down inside the embankment and away through field-drains to a house more than half a mile distant from the line, where the operators were to remain until after the "accident."

Personally, I did not dislike the scheme: because I thought I could see several ways in which I could prevent any fatal outcome; should I have to remain in the country long enough to compel me to take part in it.

It would be easy enough for me to appear to lose my head at the last moment, for instance, and so bungle matters that the men who were to kill the Emperor would be in fact prevented from approaching him.

But there was also in this a desperate personal risk to myself. I knew that these men would be picked from among the most reckless and daring spirits in the Empire; men suffering under the grossest personal wrongs as well as motived by wild political fanaticism. To them the blood of either friend or foe was as nothing if it stood in the way of what their unbalanced minds deemed justice and right.

It was thus a perilous and slippery eminence to which I had been thrust, and it increased infinitely the hazard of my course.

My thoughts returned to the idea of flight with redoubled incentive, therefore; and a circ.u.mstance occurred which seemed to promise me some help in this direction.

A letter came to me from "Hamylton Tregethner." Olga's brother had escaped, as we knew, and had made his way to Paris. He was going on, he said, to America as soon as he had enjoyed himself: and when he found himself in New York, he purposed to change his name and nationality once more and be a Pole.

"I have not had many adventures," he wrote; "nor do I seem to have met many men who know me. But I had one encounter that was rather amusing.

I was at breakfast and saw a man staring hard at me from the other side of the room. I thought he might be a friend, and so I did not look at him. But he would not let his eyes move from me, and when I left the table he followed and spoke to me. 'Hamylton, old man, I did not know you at first. You're looking frightfully ill and altered. You're not going to cut me.' This gave me a cue, though I did not understand all he said, when he added something about 'on account of somebody's conduct.' I did cut him, however; looked him hard in the face and curling my lip as if in profound contempt, I turned on my heel. I had the curiosity to ask afterwards who he was, and they gave me his name as the Hon. Rupert Balestier. I suppose I know him, but I thought the best way was not to speak. I did not shake him off, however: for that night he saw me again just when I was speaking English to some other men. I saw him listening as if he could not believe his ears; and as soon as I was alone he came up and asked me who I was and what right I had to masquerade as his old friend, Hamylton Tregethner. For answer I gave him another stare and got away. Then I changed my hotel and am going away from Paris for a few days. I do not intend to be bothered by the man."

My first impression of this incident was that it boded further danger.

I knew Balestier. He was a man of great resolution and if he imagined that anyone was masquerading in my name in Paris, he would think nothing of rousing both the English and Russian Emba.s.sies; or of coming on to Moscow himself to probe the thing to the bottom. He loved mysteries; was most active, energetic, and enterprising; and nothing would suit him better than to have imported into his rather purposeless life some such task as a search for me half over Europe. He was quite capable, too, of jumping to the conclusion that the man he had met had murdered and was personating me; and in a belief of the kind he was just the man to raise the hue and cry in every police office on the Continent.

What the real Alexis called "speaking English" was of course bad enough to brand him anywhere as an impostor, should he try to pa.s.s himself off as an Englishman. Balestier had no doubt listened in amazement to the strange jargon coming from lips that looked like mine; and the extraordinary likeness and "my" peculiar conduct would quite complete his perplexity.

Probably I should hear more of the matter; and this set me considering whether I could not manage in some way to communicate with Balestier and get him to help in smuggling Olga across the frontier. He would revel in the work if I could only find him.

I turned to "Tregethner's" letter therefore to find the name of the hotel, and to my infinite annoyance the fool had not mentioned it; while his intention to run away from Paris and Balestier would cause more delay. The fellow was not only a coward but an idiot as well; and I could have kicked him liberally, if my foot would only have reached from Moscow to Paris.

As it was, Balestier, with the best will in the world, would probably be blundering about and plunging me still deeper into the mud, when he not only could, but would, have given me valuable help if I could have got at him to tell him what to do.

I felt like Tantalus, when I thought of it.

CHAPTER XVII.

AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE.

The second complication was a much bigger matter; and it was of so strange a description and fraught with consequences of such critical importance to Olga and myself that of all my experiences of that time it deserves to be cla.s.sed as the most remarkable. Like all else at that time, it came quite unsought by me, and as the direct and unavoidable consequence of the first step in my new life--the duel with Devinsky and my subsequent repute as a swordsman.

A day or two after Tueski's funeral, and while the city was still quivering and staggering under the effects of the supposed Nihilist blow, a great ball took place at the Valniski Palace.

Count Valniski was among the richest men in Moscow, bidding hard for power and courting popularity right and left among all cla.s.ses. To this ball all the officers of my regiment were invited, together with many of their friends. Amongst the latter Olga had a card; and although we were certainly in a poor mood for a function of the kind, we felt it expedient to do what all the world was doing, go to it; lest by remaining away we should attract attention to ourselves.