The shears of destiny
Date: 2024-06-10T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adventure stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Americans -- Russia -- Fiction

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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 ***

Her eyes swept the room with cold hauteur

The Shears of Destiny

By
Leroy Scott

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

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, | } | of the revolutionists’ Central Committee
Sabatoff,
Pestel,
Ivan, | } | revolutionists.
Nicolai,
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.”

“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!”

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.

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:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- The Shears of Destiny
- CHARACTERS
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I THE WOMAN IN BROWN
- CHAPTER II CAUGHT IN THE CURRENT

- CHAPTER III A LONG JOURNEY THAT WAS SOON ENDED

- CHAPTER IV THE PRISONER OF THE WHITE ONE
- CHAPTER V THE HOUSE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT
- CHAPTER VI THE KING AND THE BEGGAR MAID

- CHAPTER VII CONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF A PRINCE

- CHAPTER VIII THE PRINCESS OF HEARTS
- CHAPTER IX ONE WOMAN—OR TWO?
- CHAPTER X “YOU AND I—AGAINST THE WORLD”
- CHAPTER XI A BARGAIN IS RENEWED
- CHAPTER XII IN THE PRINCE’S STUDY
- CHAPTER XIII BETWEEN THREE FIRES
- CHAPTER XIV THE FLIGHT WITH THE COUNTESS
- CHAPTER XV THE MAN IN THE SHEEPSKIN COAT
- CHAPTER XVI THE WHITE ONE
- CHAPTER XVII THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
- CHAPTER XVIII FOR A BROTHER’S LIFE

- CHAPTER XIX THE BATTLE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT

- CHAPTER XX THE SPY
- CHAPTER XXI THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAINS
- CHAPTER XXII A VICE-CZAR DOES HIS DUTY
- CHAPTER XXIII THE LAST CARD
- CHAPTER XXIV THE PRINCE PLAYS TRUMPS
- CHAPTER XXV A DESPERATE PLAN
- CHAPTER XXVI THE JAWS OF DEATH
- CHAPTER XXVII THE GODDESS OF VENGEANCE
- CHAPTER XXVIII THE DAY AFTER
- CHAPTER XXIX TO-MORROW?
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE