Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.Concerns Madame de Rosen.At Her Highness’s side I had strolled through the smaller salon and along the several great corridors to the splendid winter garden, on the opposite side of the palace. It was one of the smaller courtyards which had been covered in with glass and filled with high palms and tropical flowers ablaze with bloom. There, in that northern latitude, Asiatic and African plants flourished and flowered, with little electric lights cunningly concealed amid the leaves.Several other couples were seated there, away from the whirl and glitter of the Court; but taking no notice, we halted at two wicker chairs set invitingly in a corner. Into one of these she flung herself with a little sigh, and, bowing, I took the other.I sat and watched her. Her beauty was, indeed, exquisite. She had the long, tender, fluent lines of body and limb, the round waist, the deep chest and small bust, the sturdy throat of those ancient virgins that the greatest sculptors of the world worshipped and wrought into imperishable stone. She was not very tall, though she appeared so. It was something in pose and movement that did it. A beautiful soul looked from Her Highness’s beautiful eyes whenever she smiled upon me.I found myself examining every line and turn and contour of the prettily-poised head. She was dark, with that lovely complexion like pure alabaster tinted with rose sometimes seen in Russian women. Her eyes, under the sweeping lashes, seemed capable of untold depths of tenderness. Hers was the perfect oval of a young face across whose innocent girlishness experience had written no line, passion cast no shadow.“One thing I’ve heard to-day has greatly pained me,” I said presently to my dainty little companion. “You’ll forgive me for speaking quite frankly—won’t you?”“Certainly, Uncle Colin,” she replied, opening her big eyes in surprise. “But I thought you had brought me here to flirt with me—not to talk seriously.”“I must talk seriously for a moment,” I said apologetically. “It is in Your Highness’s interests. Listen. I heard something to-day at which I know that you yourself will be greatly annoyed. I heard it whispered that Geoffrey Hamborough had killed himself because of you.”“Geoffrey dead!” she gasped, starting up and staring at me, her face blanched in an instant.“No. He is not dead,” I replied calmly, “for as soon as I heard the report I sent him a wire to Yorkshire and to the Travellers’, in London. He replied from the club half an hour before I came here.”“But who could have spread such a report?” the girl asked. “It could only be done to cast opprobrium upon me—to show that because—because we parted—he had taken his life. It’s really too cruel,” she declared, and I saw hot tears welling in her beautiful eyes.“I agree. But you must deny the report.”“Who told you?”“I regret that I must not say. It was, however, a friend of yours.”“A man?”I nodded in the affirmative.“Ah!” she cried impatiently. “You diplomats are always so full of secrets. Really you must tell me. Uncle Colin.”“I can’t,” was my brief reply. “I only ask you to refute the untruth.”“I will—at once. Poor Geoffrey.”“Have you heard from him lately?” I asked.“You’re very inquisitive. I have not.”“I’m very glad of that,” I answered her. “You know how greatly the affair annoyed the Emperor. You were awfully injudicious. It’s a good job that I chanced to meet you both at the station in Moscow.”“Well,” she laughed, “I was going to England with him, and we had arranged to be married at a registrar’s office in London. Only you stopped us—you nasty old thing!”“And you ought to be very glad that I recognised you just in the nick of time. Ten minutes later and you would have left Moscow. Think of the scandal—the elopement of a young Imperial Grand Duchess of Russia with an English commoner.”“Well, and isn’t an English commoner as good, and perhaps better, than one of these uniformed and decorated Russian aristocrats? I am Russian,” she added frankly, “but I have no love for the Muscovite man.”“It was a foolish escapade,” I declared; “but it’s all over now. The one consolation is that nobody knows the actual truth.”“Except His Majesty. I told him everything; how I had met Geoffrey in Hampshire when I went to stay with Lady Hexworthy; how we used to meet in secret, and all that,” she said.“Well now,” I exclaimed, looking straight into her face, “I want to ask you a plain open question. I have a motive in doing so—one which I will explain to you after you have answered me honestly and truthfully. I—”“At it again!” cried the pretty madcap. “You’re really not yourself to-night, Uncle Colin. What is the matter with you?”“Simply I want to know the truth—whether there is still any love between Geoffrey and yourself?”“Ah! no,” she sighed, pulling a grimace. “It’s all over between us. It broke his heart, poor fellow, but some kind friend, at your Embassy, I think, wrote and told him about Paul Urusoff and—well, he wrote me a hasty letter. Then I replied, a couple of telegrams, and we agreed to be strangers for ever. And so ends the story. Like a novel, isn’t it?” she laughed merrily.My eyes were fixed upon her. I was wondering if she were really telling me the truth. As the Emperor had most justly said, she was an artful little minx where her love-affairs were concerned.Colonel Polivanoff, the Grand Chamberlain of the Court, crossed the great palm-garden at that moment, and bowed to my pretty companion.“But,” she added, turning back to me, “people ought not to say that he’s been foolish enough to do away with himself on my account. It only shows that I must have made some enemies of whom I’m quite unaware.”“Everyone has enemies,” I answered her. “You are no exception. But, is it really true that Geoffrey is no longer in your thoughts?” I asked her very seriously.“Truth and honour,” she declared, with equal gravity.“Then who is the fortunate young man at present—eh?”“That’s my own secret. Uncle Colin,” she declared, drawing herself up. “I’ll ask you the same question. Who is the lady you are in love with at the present moment?”“Shall I tell you?”“Yes. It would be interesting.”“I’m in love with you.”“Ah?” she cried, nodding her head and laughing. “I thought as much. You’ve brought me out here to flirt with me. I wonder if you’ll kiss me—eh?” she asked mischievously.“I will, if you tempt me too much,” I said threateningly. “And then the report you’ve spread about will be the truth.”She laughed merrily and tapped my hand with her fan.“I never can get the better of you, dear old uncle,” she declared. “You always have the last word, and you’re such a delightfully old-fashioned person. Now let’s try and be serious.” And she settled herself and, turning to me, added: “Why do you wish to know about Geoffrey Hamborough?”“For several reasons,” I said. “First, I think Your Highness knows me quite well enough to be aware that I am your very sincere friend.”“My best friend,” she declared quickly; her manner changed in an instant from merry irresponsibility to deep earnestness. “That night on the railway platform at Moscow you saved me making a silly fool of myself. It was most generous of the Emperor to forgive me. I know how you pleaded for me. He told me so.”“I am your friend,” I replied. “Now, as to the future. You tell me that you find all the Court etiquette irksome, and that you are antagonistic to this host of young men about you. You are, in brief, sorry that you are back in Russia. Is that so?”“It is so exactly.”“And how about Prince Urusoff—eh?”“I haven’t seen him for fully three months, and I don’t even know where he is. I believe he’s with his regiment, the 21st Dragoons of White Russia, somewhere away in the Urals. I heard that the Emperor sent him there. But he certainly need not have done so. I found him only a foolish young boy.”Her Imperial Highness was a young lady of very keen intelligence. After several governesses at home, she had been sent to Paris, and afterwards to a college at Eastbourne—where she was known as Miss Natalia Gottorp, the latter being one of the family names of the Imperial Romanoffs—and there she had completed her education. From her childhood she had always had an English governess, Miss West, consequently, with a Russian’s adaptability, she spoke English almost without a trace of accent. Though so full of fun and frolic, and so ready to carry on a violent flirtation, yet she was, on the other hand, very thoughtful and level-headed, with a keen sense of humour, and a nature extremely sympathetic with any person in distress, no matter whom they might be. Hers was a bright, pleasant nature, a smiling face, and ever-twinkling eye full of mischief and merriment.“Well,” I said, looking into her face, “I’ve been thinking about you a good deal since you’ve been away—and wondering.”“Wondering what?”“Whether, as you have no love for Russia, you might not like to go back to England?” I said slowly.“To England!” she cried in delight. “Ah! If I only could! I love England, and especially Eastbourne, with the sea and the promenade, the golf, and the concerts at the Devonshire Park, and all that. Ah! I only wish I could go.”“But if you went you’d fall in love with some young fellow, and then we should have another scandal at Court,” I said.“I wouldn’t. Believe me, I wouldn’t, really, Uncle Colin,” she pleaded, looking up into my face with almost childish simplicity.I shook my head dubiously.“All I’ve told you is the real truth,” she assured me. “I’ve only amused myself. Every girl likes men to make love to her. Why should I be so bitterly condemned?”“Because you are not a commoner.”“That’s just it. But if I went to England and lived again as Miss Natalia Gottorp, nobody would know who I am, and I could have a really splendid time. Here,” she cried, “all the glitter and etiquette of Court life stifle me. I’ve been bored to death on the tour round the Empire, but couldn’t you try and induce the Emperor to let me go back to England? Do, Uncle Colin, there’s a dear. A word from the Emperor, and father would let me go in a moment. I wish poor mother were alive. She would soon let me go, I know.”“And what would you do in England if you went back?”“Why, I’d have my old governess, Miss West—the one I had at Strelna—to live with me, and I’d be ever so happy. I’d take a house on the sea-front at Eastbourne, so as to be near the old college, and see the girls. Try what you can do with Uncle Alexander, won’t you? there’s a dear old uncle,” she added, in her most persuasive tones.“Well,” I said, with some show of reluctance, “if I succeed, you will be responsible to me, remember. No flirtations.”“I promise,” she said. “Here’s my hand,” and she put her tiny white-gloved hand into mine.“And if I heard of any affectionate meetings I should put down my foot at once.”“Yes, that’s agreed,” she exclaimed, with enthusiasm. “At once.”“And I should, perhaps, want you to help me in England,” I added slowly, looking into her pretty face the while.“Help you, in what way?” she asked.“At present, I hardly know. But if I wanted assistance might I count on you?”“Count on me, Uncle Colin!” she echoed. “Why, of course, you can! Look at my indebtedness to you, and it will be increased if you can secure me permission to go back to England.”“Well,” I said, “I’ll do what I can. But you have told me no untruths to-night, not one—?” I asked very seriously. “If so, admit it.”“Not one. I swear I haven’t.”“Very well,” I said. “Then I’ll do my best.”“Ah! you are a real dear!” cried the girl enthusiastically. “I almost feel as though I could hug and kiss you!”“Better not,” I laughed. “There are some people sitting over there, and they would talk—”“Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose really one ought to be a bit careful, after all. When will you see the Emperor?”“Perhaps to-morrow—if he gives me audience.” Then I related to her the story of the attempt in the Nevski on the previous morning, and the intention of assassinating the Emperor as he drove from the Nicholas station to the Palace.“Ah, yes!” she cried. “It is all too dreadful. For seven weeks we have lived in constant terror of explosions. I could not go through it again for all the world. Those days in that stuffy armoured train were simply awful. His Majesty only undertook the journey in order to defy those who declared that some terrible catastrophe would happen. The Empress knew nothing of the danger until we had started.”“And yet the only danger lay within half a mile of the Palace on your return,” I said. “There have, I hear, been thirty-three arrested to-day, including my friends Madame de Rosen and Luba. You knew them.”“Marya de Rosen!” gasped the Grand Duchess, staring at me. “She is not under arrest?”“Alas! she is already on her way, with her daughter, to Eastern Siberia.”“But that is impossible. She was no revolutionist. I knew them both very intimately.”“General Markoff was her enemy,” I said in a whisper. “Ah, yes! I hate that man!” cried Her Highness. “He is a clever liar who has wormed himself completely into the Emperor’s confidence, and now, in order to sustain a reputation as a discoverer of plots, he is compelled to first manufacture them. Hundreds of innocent men and women have been exiled by administrative order during the past twelve months for complicity in conspiracies which have never had any existence save in the wicked imagination of that brutal official. I know it—I can prove it!”“Hush!” I said. “You may be overheard. You surely do not wish the man to become your enemy. Remember, he is all-powerful here—in Russia.”“I will speak the truth when the time comes,” she said vehemently. “I will show the Emperor certain papers which have come into my own hands which will prove how His Majesty has been misled, tricked and terrorised by this Markoff, and certain of his bosom friends in the Cabinet.”“It is really most unwise to speak so loudly,” I declared. “Somebody may overhear.”“Let them overhear!” cried the girl angrily. “I do not fear Markoff in the least. I will, before long, open the Emperor’s eyes, never fear—and justice shall be done. These poor wretches shall not be sent to the dungeons beneath the lake at Schusselburg, or to the frozen wastes of Yakutsk, in order that Markoff shall remain in power. Ah! he little dreams how much I know!” she laughed harshly.“It would hardly be wise of you to take any such action. You might fail—and—then—”“I cannot fail to establish at least the innocence of Madame de Rosen and of Luba. The reason why they have been sent to Siberia is simple. Into Madame de Rosen’s possession there recently came certain compromising letters concerning General Markoff. He discovered this, and hence her swift exile without trial. But, Uncle Colin,” she added, “those letters are in my possession! Madame de Rosen gave them to me the night before I went south with the Emperor, because she feared they might be stolen by some police-spy. And I have kept them in a place of safety until such convenient time when I can place them before His Majesty. The latter will surely see that justice is done, and then the disgraceful career of this arch-enemy of Russian peace and liberty will be at an end.”“Hush!” I cried anxiously, for at that moment a tall man, in the bright green uniform of the Lithuanian Hussars, whose face I could not see, passed close by us, with a handsome middle-aged woman upon his arm. “Hush! Do, for heaven’s sake, be careful, I beg of you!” I exclaimed. “Such intention should not even be whispered. These Palace walls have ears, for spies are everywhere!”

At Her Highness’s side I had strolled through the smaller salon and along the several great corridors to the splendid winter garden, on the opposite side of the palace. It was one of the smaller courtyards which had been covered in with glass and filled with high palms and tropical flowers ablaze with bloom. There, in that northern latitude, Asiatic and African plants flourished and flowered, with little electric lights cunningly concealed amid the leaves.

Several other couples were seated there, away from the whirl and glitter of the Court; but taking no notice, we halted at two wicker chairs set invitingly in a corner. Into one of these she flung herself with a little sigh, and, bowing, I took the other.

I sat and watched her. Her beauty was, indeed, exquisite. She had the long, tender, fluent lines of body and limb, the round waist, the deep chest and small bust, the sturdy throat of those ancient virgins that the greatest sculptors of the world worshipped and wrought into imperishable stone. She was not very tall, though she appeared so. It was something in pose and movement that did it. A beautiful soul looked from Her Highness’s beautiful eyes whenever she smiled upon me.

I found myself examining every line and turn and contour of the prettily-poised head. She was dark, with that lovely complexion like pure alabaster tinted with rose sometimes seen in Russian women. Her eyes, under the sweeping lashes, seemed capable of untold depths of tenderness. Hers was the perfect oval of a young face across whose innocent girlishness experience had written no line, passion cast no shadow.

“One thing I’ve heard to-day has greatly pained me,” I said presently to my dainty little companion. “You’ll forgive me for speaking quite frankly—won’t you?”

“Certainly, Uncle Colin,” she replied, opening her big eyes in surprise. “But I thought you had brought me here to flirt with me—not to talk seriously.”

“I must talk seriously for a moment,” I said apologetically. “It is in Your Highness’s interests. Listen. I heard something to-day at which I know that you yourself will be greatly annoyed. I heard it whispered that Geoffrey Hamborough had killed himself because of you.”

“Geoffrey dead!” she gasped, starting up and staring at me, her face blanched in an instant.

“No. He is not dead,” I replied calmly, “for as soon as I heard the report I sent him a wire to Yorkshire and to the Travellers’, in London. He replied from the club half an hour before I came here.”

“But who could have spread such a report?” the girl asked. “It could only be done to cast opprobrium upon me—to show that because—because we parted—he had taken his life. It’s really too cruel,” she declared, and I saw hot tears welling in her beautiful eyes.

“I agree. But you must deny the report.”

“Who told you?”

“I regret that I must not say. It was, however, a friend of yours.”

“A man?”

I nodded in the affirmative.

“Ah!” she cried impatiently. “You diplomats are always so full of secrets. Really you must tell me. Uncle Colin.”

“I can’t,” was my brief reply. “I only ask you to refute the untruth.”

“I will—at once. Poor Geoffrey.”

“Have you heard from him lately?” I asked.

“You’re very inquisitive. I have not.”

“I’m very glad of that,” I answered her. “You know how greatly the affair annoyed the Emperor. You were awfully injudicious. It’s a good job that I chanced to meet you both at the station in Moscow.”

“Well,” she laughed, “I was going to England with him, and we had arranged to be married at a registrar’s office in London. Only you stopped us—you nasty old thing!”

“And you ought to be very glad that I recognised you just in the nick of time. Ten minutes later and you would have left Moscow. Think of the scandal—the elopement of a young Imperial Grand Duchess of Russia with an English commoner.”

“Well, and isn’t an English commoner as good, and perhaps better, than one of these uniformed and decorated Russian aristocrats? I am Russian,” she added frankly, “but I have no love for the Muscovite man.”

“It was a foolish escapade,” I declared; “but it’s all over now. The one consolation is that nobody knows the actual truth.”

“Except His Majesty. I told him everything; how I had met Geoffrey in Hampshire when I went to stay with Lady Hexworthy; how we used to meet in secret, and all that,” she said.

“Well now,” I exclaimed, looking straight into her face, “I want to ask you a plain open question. I have a motive in doing so—one which I will explain to you after you have answered me honestly and truthfully. I—”

“At it again!” cried the pretty madcap. “You’re really not yourself to-night, Uncle Colin. What is the matter with you?”

“Simply I want to know the truth—whether there is still any love between Geoffrey and yourself?”

“Ah! no,” she sighed, pulling a grimace. “It’s all over between us. It broke his heart, poor fellow, but some kind friend, at your Embassy, I think, wrote and told him about Paul Urusoff and—well, he wrote me a hasty letter. Then I replied, a couple of telegrams, and we agreed to be strangers for ever. And so ends the story. Like a novel, isn’t it?” she laughed merrily.

My eyes were fixed upon her. I was wondering if she were really telling me the truth. As the Emperor had most justly said, she was an artful little minx where her love-affairs were concerned.

Colonel Polivanoff, the Grand Chamberlain of the Court, crossed the great palm-garden at that moment, and bowed to my pretty companion.

“But,” she added, turning back to me, “people ought not to say that he’s been foolish enough to do away with himself on my account. It only shows that I must have made some enemies of whom I’m quite unaware.”

“Everyone has enemies,” I answered her. “You are no exception. But, is it really true that Geoffrey is no longer in your thoughts?” I asked her very seriously.

“Truth and honour,” she declared, with equal gravity.

“Then who is the fortunate young man at present—eh?”

“That’s my own secret. Uncle Colin,” she declared, drawing herself up. “I’ll ask you the same question. Who is the lady you are in love with at the present moment?”

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes. It would be interesting.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“Ah?” she cried, nodding her head and laughing. “I thought as much. You’ve brought me out here to flirt with me. I wonder if you’ll kiss me—eh?” she asked mischievously.

“I will, if you tempt me too much,” I said threateningly. “And then the report you’ve spread about will be the truth.”

She laughed merrily and tapped my hand with her fan.

“I never can get the better of you, dear old uncle,” she declared. “You always have the last word, and you’re such a delightfully old-fashioned person. Now let’s try and be serious.” And she settled herself and, turning to me, added: “Why do you wish to know about Geoffrey Hamborough?”

“For several reasons,” I said. “First, I think Your Highness knows me quite well enough to be aware that I am your very sincere friend.”

“My best friend,” she declared quickly; her manner changed in an instant from merry irresponsibility to deep earnestness. “That night on the railway platform at Moscow you saved me making a silly fool of myself. It was most generous of the Emperor to forgive me. I know how you pleaded for me. He told me so.”

“I am your friend,” I replied. “Now, as to the future. You tell me that you find all the Court etiquette irksome, and that you are antagonistic to this host of young men about you. You are, in brief, sorry that you are back in Russia. Is that so?”

“It is so exactly.”

“And how about Prince Urusoff—eh?”

“I haven’t seen him for fully three months, and I don’t even know where he is. I believe he’s with his regiment, the 21st Dragoons of White Russia, somewhere away in the Urals. I heard that the Emperor sent him there. But he certainly need not have done so. I found him only a foolish young boy.”

Her Imperial Highness was a young lady of very keen intelligence. After several governesses at home, she had been sent to Paris, and afterwards to a college at Eastbourne—where she was known as Miss Natalia Gottorp, the latter being one of the family names of the Imperial Romanoffs—and there she had completed her education. From her childhood she had always had an English governess, Miss West, consequently, with a Russian’s adaptability, she spoke English almost without a trace of accent. Though so full of fun and frolic, and so ready to carry on a violent flirtation, yet she was, on the other hand, very thoughtful and level-headed, with a keen sense of humour, and a nature extremely sympathetic with any person in distress, no matter whom they might be. Hers was a bright, pleasant nature, a smiling face, and ever-twinkling eye full of mischief and merriment.

“Well,” I said, looking into her face, “I’ve been thinking about you a good deal since you’ve been away—and wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“Whether, as you have no love for Russia, you might not like to go back to England?” I said slowly.

“To England!” she cried in delight. “Ah! If I only could! I love England, and especially Eastbourne, with the sea and the promenade, the golf, and the concerts at the Devonshire Park, and all that. Ah! I only wish I could go.”

“But if you went you’d fall in love with some young fellow, and then we should have another scandal at Court,” I said.

“I wouldn’t. Believe me, I wouldn’t, really, Uncle Colin,” she pleaded, looking up into my face with almost childish simplicity.

I shook my head dubiously.

“All I’ve told you is the real truth,” she assured me. “I’ve only amused myself. Every girl likes men to make love to her. Why should I be so bitterly condemned?”

“Because you are not a commoner.”

“That’s just it. But if I went to England and lived again as Miss Natalia Gottorp, nobody would know who I am, and I could have a really splendid time. Here,” she cried, “all the glitter and etiquette of Court life stifle me. I’ve been bored to death on the tour round the Empire, but couldn’t you try and induce the Emperor to let me go back to England? Do, Uncle Colin, there’s a dear. A word from the Emperor, and father would let me go in a moment. I wish poor mother were alive. She would soon let me go, I know.”

“And what would you do in England if you went back?”

“Why, I’d have my old governess, Miss West—the one I had at Strelna—to live with me, and I’d be ever so happy. I’d take a house on the sea-front at Eastbourne, so as to be near the old college, and see the girls. Try what you can do with Uncle Alexander, won’t you? there’s a dear old uncle,” she added, in her most persuasive tones.

“Well,” I said, with some show of reluctance, “if I succeed, you will be responsible to me, remember. No flirtations.”

“I promise,” she said. “Here’s my hand,” and she put her tiny white-gloved hand into mine.

“And if I heard of any affectionate meetings I should put down my foot at once.”

“Yes, that’s agreed,” she exclaimed, with enthusiasm. “At once.”

“And I should, perhaps, want you to help me in England,” I added slowly, looking into her pretty face the while.

“Help you, in what way?” she asked.

“At present, I hardly know. But if I wanted assistance might I count on you?”

“Count on me, Uncle Colin!” she echoed. “Why, of course, you can! Look at my indebtedness to you, and it will be increased if you can secure me permission to go back to England.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll do what I can. But you have told me no untruths to-night, not one—?” I asked very seriously. “If so, admit it.”

“Not one. I swear I haven’t.”

“Very well,” I said. “Then I’ll do my best.”

“Ah! you are a real dear!” cried the girl enthusiastically. “I almost feel as though I could hug and kiss you!”

“Better not,” I laughed. “There are some people sitting over there, and they would talk—”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose really one ought to be a bit careful, after all. When will you see the Emperor?”

“Perhaps to-morrow—if he gives me audience.” Then I related to her the story of the attempt in the Nevski on the previous morning, and the intention of assassinating the Emperor as he drove from the Nicholas station to the Palace.

“Ah, yes!” she cried. “It is all too dreadful. For seven weeks we have lived in constant terror of explosions. I could not go through it again for all the world. Those days in that stuffy armoured train were simply awful. His Majesty only undertook the journey in order to defy those who declared that some terrible catastrophe would happen. The Empress knew nothing of the danger until we had started.”

“And yet the only danger lay within half a mile of the Palace on your return,” I said. “There have, I hear, been thirty-three arrested to-day, including my friends Madame de Rosen and Luba. You knew them.”

“Marya de Rosen!” gasped the Grand Duchess, staring at me. “She is not under arrest?”

“Alas! she is already on her way, with her daughter, to Eastern Siberia.”

“But that is impossible. She was no revolutionist. I knew them both very intimately.”

“General Markoff was her enemy,” I said in a whisper. “Ah, yes! I hate that man!” cried Her Highness. “He is a clever liar who has wormed himself completely into the Emperor’s confidence, and now, in order to sustain a reputation as a discoverer of plots, he is compelled to first manufacture them. Hundreds of innocent men and women have been exiled by administrative order during the past twelve months for complicity in conspiracies which have never had any existence save in the wicked imagination of that brutal official. I know it—I can prove it!”

“Hush!” I said. “You may be overheard. You surely do not wish the man to become your enemy. Remember, he is all-powerful here—in Russia.”

“I will speak the truth when the time comes,” she said vehemently. “I will show the Emperor certain papers which have come into my own hands which will prove how His Majesty has been misled, tricked and terrorised by this Markoff, and certain of his bosom friends in the Cabinet.”

“It is really most unwise to speak so loudly,” I declared. “Somebody may overhear.”

“Let them overhear!” cried the girl angrily. “I do not fear Markoff in the least. I will, before long, open the Emperor’s eyes, never fear—and justice shall be done. These poor wretches shall not be sent to the dungeons beneath the lake at Schusselburg, or to the frozen wastes of Yakutsk, in order that Markoff shall remain in power. Ah! he little dreams how much I know!” she laughed harshly.

“It would hardly be wise of you to take any such action. You might fail—and—then—”

“I cannot fail to establish at least the innocence of Madame de Rosen and of Luba. The reason why they have been sent to Siberia is simple. Into Madame de Rosen’s possession there recently came certain compromising letters concerning General Markoff. He discovered this, and hence her swift exile without trial. But, Uncle Colin,” she added, “those letters are in my possession! Madame de Rosen gave them to me the night before I went south with the Emperor, because she feared they might be stolen by some police-spy. And I have kept them in a place of safety until such convenient time when I can place them before His Majesty. The latter will surely see that justice is done, and then the disgraceful career of this arch-enemy of Russian peace and liberty will be at an end.”

“Hush!” I cried anxiously, for at that moment a tall man, in the bright green uniform of the Lithuanian Hussars, whose face I could not see, passed close by us, with a handsome middle-aged woman upon his arm. “Hush! Do, for heaven’s sake, be careful, I beg of you!” I exclaimed. “Such intention should not even be whispered. These Palace walls have ears, for spies are everywhere!”

Chapter Five.The Man in Pince-Nez.Next day was Wednesday.At half-past five in the afternoon I was seated in my room at the Embassy, busy copying out the last of my despatches which were to be sent that week by Foreign Office messenger to London.The messenger himself, in the person of my friend Captain Hubert Taylor, a thin, long-limbed, dark-haired cosmopolitan, was stretched lazily in my chair smoking a cigarette, impatient for me to finish, so that the white canvas bag could be sealed and he could get away.The homeward Nord express to Ostend was due to leave at six o’clock; therefore he had not much time to spare.“Do hurry up, old man,” he urged, glancing at his watch. “If it isn’t important, keep it over until Wednesday week. Despatches are like wine, they improve with keeping.”“Shut up!” I exclaimed, for I saw I had a good deal yet to copy—the result of an important inquiry regarding affairs south of the Caspian, which was urgently required at Downing Street. Our Consul in Baku had been travelling for three months in order to supply the information.“Well, if I miss the train I really don’t mind, my dear Colin. I can do quite well with a few days’ rest. I was down in Rome ten days ago; and, besides, I only got here the night before last.”“I do wish you’d be quiet, Taylor,” I cried. “I can’t write while you chatter.”So he lit a fresh cigarette and repossessed himself in patience until at last I had finished my work, stuck down the long envelope with the printed address, and placed it with thirty or forty other letters into the canvas bag; this I carefully sealed with wax with the Embassy seal.“There you are!” I exclaimed at last. “You’ve plenty of time for the train—and to spare.”“I shouldn’t have had if I hadn’t hurried you up, my dear boy. Everyone seems asleep here. It shows your chief’s away on leave. You should put in a day in Paris. They’re active there. It would be an eye-opener for you.”“Paris isn’t Petersburg,” I laughed.“And an attaché isn’t a foreign service messenger,” he declared. “Government pays you fellows to look ornamental, while we messengers have to travel in hot haste and live in those rocking sleeping-cars of the wagon-lits.”“Horribly hard work to spend one’s days travelling from capital to capital,” I said, well knowing that this remark to a foreign service messenger is as a red rag to a bull.“Work, my dear fellow. You try it for a month and see,” Taylor snapped.“Well,” I asked with a laugh, “any particular news in London?” for the messengers are bearers of all the diplomatic gossip from embassy to embassy.“Oh, well—old Petheridge, in the Treaty Department, is retiring this month, and Jack Scrutton is going to be transferred from Rome to Lima. Some old fool in the Commons has, I hear, got wind of that bit of scandal in Madrid—you know the story, Councillor of Embassy and Spanish Countess—and threatens to put down a question concerning it. I hear there’s a dickens of a row over it. The Chief is furious. Oh!—and I saw your Chief in the St. James’s Club the day I left London. He’d just come from Windsor—been kissing hands, or something. Well,” he added, “I suppose I may as well have some cigarettes before I go, even though you don’t ask me. But they are alwayspro bono, I know. The Embassy at Petersburg is always noted for its hospitality and its cigarettes!” And he emptied the contents of my cigarette-box into the capacious case he took from his pocket.“Here you are,” I said, taking from my table another sealed despatch bearing a large blue cross upon it, showing that it was a confidential document in cipher upon affairs of State.“Oh, hang!” he cried. “I didn’t know you had one of those.”And then, unbuttoning his waistcoat, he fumbled about his waist, and at last placed it carefully in the narrow pocket of the belt he wore beneath his clothes, buttoning the flap over the pocket.“Well,” he said at last, putting on his overcoat, “so long, old man. I’ll just have time. I wonder what old Ivanoff, in the restaurant-car, will have for dinner to-night? Borstch, of course, and caviare.”“You fellows have nothing else to think about but your food,” I laughed.“Food—yes, it’s railway-food with a vengeance in this God-forgotten country. Lots to drink, but nothing decent to eat.”And taking the little canvas bag he shook my hand heartily and strode out.I stood for some time gazing through the open window out upon the sunlit Neva across to the grim fortress on the opposite bank—the prison of many terrible tales.My thoughts were running, just as they had run all day, upon that strange suspicion which the Emperor had confided to me. It seemed too remarkable, too strange, too amazing to be true.And again before my vision there arose the faces of those two refined and innocent ladies, Madame de Rosen and her daughter, who had been so suddenly hurried away to a living tomb in that far-off Arctic region. I remembered what the little Grand Duchess had told me, and wondered whether her allegations were really true.I was wondering if she would permit me to see those incriminating letters which Madame had given to her for safe-keeping, for at all costs I felt that, for the safety of the Emperor and the peace and prosperity of Russia, the country should be rid of General Serge Markoff.And yet the difficulties were, I knew, insurmountable. His Majesty, hearing of these constant plots being discovered and ever listening to highly-coloured stories of the desperate attempts of revolutionists, naturally believed his personal safety to be due to this man whom he had appointed as head of the police of the Empire. To any word said against Serge Markoff he turned a deaf ear, and put it down to jealousy, or to some ingenious plot to withdraw from his person the constant vigilance which his beloved Markoff had established. More than once I had been bold enough to venture to hint that all those plots might not be genuine ones; but I had quickly understood that such suggestion was regarded by the Emperor as a slur cast upon his favourite official and personal friend.The more I reflected, the more unwise seemed that sudden outburst of my pretty little companion in the winter garden on the night before. If anyone had overheard her threat, then no doubt it would reach the ears of that man who daily swept so many innocent persons into the prisons andétapesbeyond the Urals. I knew, too well, of those lists of names which he placed before the Emperor, and to which he asked the Imperial signature, without even giving His Majesty an opportunity to glance at them.Truly, those were dark days. Life in Russia at that moment was a most uncertain existence, for anyone incurring the displeasure of General Markoff, or any of his friends, was as quickly and effectively removed as though death’s sword had struck them.Much perturbed, and not knowing how to act in face of what the Emperor had revealed to me, I was turning from the window back to my writing-table, when one of the English footmen entered with a card.“Oh, show him up, Green. And bring some cigarettes,” I said.My visitor was Ivan Hartwig, the famous chief of the Russian Criminal Detective Service—an entirely distinct department from the Secret Police.A few moments later he was ushered in by Green, and, bowing, took the hand I offered him.A lean, bony-faced man, of average height, alert, clean-shaven, and aged about forty-five. His hair was slightly streaked with grey, and his eyes, small and shrewd, beamed behind a pair of round gold-rimmed pince-nez. I had never seen him in glasses before, but I only supposed that he had suddenly developed myopia for some specific purpose. As he smiled in greeting me, his narrow jaws widened, displaying an even row of white teeth, while the English he spoke was as perfect as my own. At that moment, in his glasses, his black morning-coat and grey trousers, he looked more like a grave family physician than a police officer whose career was world-famous.And yet he was a man of striking appearance. His broad white forehead, his deep-set eyes so full of fire and expression, his high, protruding cheek-bones, and his narrowing chin were all characteristics of a man of remarkable power and intelligence. His, indeed, was a face that would arrest attention anywhere; hence the hundred and one disguises which he so constantly adopted.“I have had private audience of His Majesty this afternoon, Mr Trewinnard,” he said, as he took the chair I offered him. “He has sent me to you. You wish to see me.”“Yes,” I said. “I need your assistance.”“So His Majesty has told me, but he explained nothing of the affair. He commanded me to place myself entirely at your disposal,” replied the man, who, in himself, was a man of mystery.His nationality was obscure to most people, yet we at the Embassy knew that he was in reality a British subject, and that Ivan Hartwig was merely the Russian equivalent of Evan Hardwicke.I handed him the box of cigarettes which Green had replenished, and took one myself.As he slowly lit his, I recollected what a strange career he had had. Graduating from Scotland Yard, where on account of his knowledge of German and Russian he had been mainly employed in the arrest of alien criminals in England, he had for several years served under Monsieur Goron, Préfet of Police of Paris, and after being attached to the Tzar on one of his visits to the French capital, had been personally invited by the Emperor to become head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Russia.He was a quiet-spoken, alert, elusive, but very conscientious man, who had made a study of crime from a psychological standpoint, his many successes being no doubt due to his marvellously minute examination of motives and his methodical reasoning upon the most abstruse clues. There was nothing of the ordinary blunt official detective about him. He was a man of extreme refinement, an omnivorous reader and a diligent student of men. He was a passionate collector of coins, a bachelor, and an amateur player of the violin. I believe that he had never experienced what fear was, and certainly within my own knowledge, he had had a dozen narrow escapes from the vengeance of the Terrorists. Once a bomb was purposely exploded in a room into which he and his men went to arrest two students in Moscow, and not one present escaped death except Hartwig himself.And as he now sat there before me, so quiet and attentive, blinking at me through those gold-rimmed pince-nez, none would certainly take him for the man whose hairbreadth escapes, constant disguises, exciting adventures and marvellous successes in the tracking of criminals all over Europe had so often amazed the readers of newspapers the world over.“Well, Mr Hartwig,” I said in a low voice, after I had risen and satisfied myself that Green had closed the door, “the matter is one of strictest confidence—a suspicion which I may at once tell you is the Emperor’s own personal affair. To myself alone he has confided it, and I requested that you might be allowed to assist me in finding a solution of the problem.”“I’m much gratified,” he said. “As an Englishman, you know, I believe, that I am ever ready to serve an Englishman, especially if I am serving the Emperor at the same time.”“The inquiry will take us far afield, I expect—first to England.”“To England!” he exclaimed. “For how long do you anticipate?”“Who knows?” I asked. “I can only say that it will be a very difficult and perhaps a long inquiry.”“And how will the department proceed here?”“Your next in command will be appointed in your place until your return. The Emperor arranged for this with me yesterday. Therefore, from to-morrow you will be free to place yourself at my service.”“I quite understand,” he said. “And now, perhaps, you will in confidence explain exactly the situation, and the problem which is presented,” and he settled himself in his chair in an attitude of attention.“Ah! that, I regret, is unfortunately impossible. The Emperor has entrusted the affair to me, and to me alone. I must direct the inquiry, and you will, I fear, remain in ignorance—at least, for the present.”“In other words, you will direct and I must act blindly—eh?” he said in a rather dubious voice. “That’s hardly satisfactory to me, Mr Trewinnard, is it?—hardly fair, I mean.”“I openly admit that such an attitude as I am compelled to adopt is not fair to you, Hartwig. But I feel sure you will respect the Emperor’s confidence, and view the matter in its true light. The matter is a personal one of His Majesty’s, and may not be divulged. He has asked me to tell you this frankly and plainly, and also that he relies upon you to assist him.”My words convinced the great detective, and he nodded at last in the affirmative.“The problem I alone know,” I went on. “His Majesty has compelled me to swear secrecy. Therefore I am forbidden to tell you. You understand?”“But I am not forbidden to discover it for myself?” replied the keen, wary official.“If you do, I cannot help it,” was my reply.“If I do,” he said, “I promise you faithfully, Mr Trewinnard, that His Majesty’s secret, whatever it is, shall never pass my lips.”

Next day was Wednesday.

At half-past five in the afternoon I was seated in my room at the Embassy, busy copying out the last of my despatches which were to be sent that week by Foreign Office messenger to London.

The messenger himself, in the person of my friend Captain Hubert Taylor, a thin, long-limbed, dark-haired cosmopolitan, was stretched lazily in my chair smoking a cigarette, impatient for me to finish, so that the white canvas bag could be sealed and he could get away.

The homeward Nord express to Ostend was due to leave at six o’clock; therefore he had not much time to spare.

“Do hurry up, old man,” he urged, glancing at his watch. “If it isn’t important, keep it over until Wednesday week. Despatches are like wine, they improve with keeping.”

“Shut up!” I exclaimed, for I saw I had a good deal yet to copy—the result of an important inquiry regarding affairs south of the Caspian, which was urgently required at Downing Street. Our Consul in Baku had been travelling for three months in order to supply the information.

“Well, if I miss the train I really don’t mind, my dear Colin. I can do quite well with a few days’ rest. I was down in Rome ten days ago; and, besides, I only got here the night before last.”

“I do wish you’d be quiet, Taylor,” I cried. “I can’t write while you chatter.”

So he lit a fresh cigarette and repossessed himself in patience until at last I had finished my work, stuck down the long envelope with the printed address, and placed it with thirty or forty other letters into the canvas bag; this I carefully sealed with wax with the Embassy seal.

“There you are!” I exclaimed at last. “You’ve plenty of time for the train—and to spare.”

“I shouldn’t have had if I hadn’t hurried you up, my dear boy. Everyone seems asleep here. It shows your chief’s away on leave. You should put in a day in Paris. They’re active there. It would be an eye-opener for you.”

“Paris isn’t Petersburg,” I laughed.

“And an attaché isn’t a foreign service messenger,” he declared. “Government pays you fellows to look ornamental, while we messengers have to travel in hot haste and live in those rocking sleeping-cars of the wagon-lits.”

“Horribly hard work to spend one’s days travelling from capital to capital,” I said, well knowing that this remark to a foreign service messenger is as a red rag to a bull.

“Work, my dear fellow. You try it for a month and see,” Taylor snapped.

“Well,” I asked with a laugh, “any particular news in London?” for the messengers are bearers of all the diplomatic gossip from embassy to embassy.

“Oh, well—old Petheridge, in the Treaty Department, is retiring this month, and Jack Scrutton is going to be transferred from Rome to Lima. Some old fool in the Commons has, I hear, got wind of that bit of scandal in Madrid—you know the story, Councillor of Embassy and Spanish Countess—and threatens to put down a question concerning it. I hear there’s a dickens of a row over it. The Chief is furious. Oh!—and I saw your Chief in the St. James’s Club the day I left London. He’d just come from Windsor—been kissing hands, or something. Well,” he added, “I suppose I may as well have some cigarettes before I go, even though you don’t ask me. But they are alwayspro bono, I know. The Embassy at Petersburg is always noted for its hospitality and its cigarettes!” And he emptied the contents of my cigarette-box into the capacious case he took from his pocket.

“Here you are,” I said, taking from my table another sealed despatch bearing a large blue cross upon it, showing that it was a confidential document in cipher upon affairs of State.

“Oh, hang!” he cried. “I didn’t know you had one of those.”

And then, unbuttoning his waistcoat, he fumbled about his waist, and at last placed it carefully in the narrow pocket of the belt he wore beneath his clothes, buttoning the flap over the pocket.

“Well,” he said at last, putting on his overcoat, “so long, old man. I’ll just have time. I wonder what old Ivanoff, in the restaurant-car, will have for dinner to-night? Borstch, of course, and caviare.”

“You fellows have nothing else to think about but your food,” I laughed.

“Food—yes, it’s railway-food with a vengeance in this God-forgotten country. Lots to drink, but nothing decent to eat.”

And taking the little canvas bag he shook my hand heartily and strode out.

I stood for some time gazing through the open window out upon the sunlit Neva across to the grim fortress on the opposite bank—the prison of many terrible tales.

My thoughts were running, just as they had run all day, upon that strange suspicion which the Emperor had confided to me. It seemed too remarkable, too strange, too amazing to be true.

And again before my vision there arose the faces of those two refined and innocent ladies, Madame de Rosen and her daughter, who had been so suddenly hurried away to a living tomb in that far-off Arctic region. I remembered what the little Grand Duchess had told me, and wondered whether her allegations were really true.

I was wondering if she would permit me to see those incriminating letters which Madame had given to her for safe-keeping, for at all costs I felt that, for the safety of the Emperor and the peace and prosperity of Russia, the country should be rid of General Serge Markoff.

And yet the difficulties were, I knew, insurmountable. His Majesty, hearing of these constant plots being discovered and ever listening to highly-coloured stories of the desperate attempts of revolutionists, naturally believed his personal safety to be due to this man whom he had appointed as head of the police of the Empire. To any word said against Serge Markoff he turned a deaf ear, and put it down to jealousy, or to some ingenious plot to withdraw from his person the constant vigilance which his beloved Markoff had established. More than once I had been bold enough to venture to hint that all those plots might not be genuine ones; but I had quickly understood that such suggestion was regarded by the Emperor as a slur cast upon his favourite official and personal friend.

The more I reflected, the more unwise seemed that sudden outburst of my pretty little companion in the winter garden on the night before. If anyone had overheard her threat, then no doubt it would reach the ears of that man who daily swept so many innocent persons into the prisons andétapesbeyond the Urals. I knew, too well, of those lists of names which he placed before the Emperor, and to which he asked the Imperial signature, without even giving His Majesty an opportunity to glance at them.

Truly, those were dark days. Life in Russia at that moment was a most uncertain existence, for anyone incurring the displeasure of General Markoff, or any of his friends, was as quickly and effectively removed as though death’s sword had struck them.

Much perturbed, and not knowing how to act in face of what the Emperor had revealed to me, I was turning from the window back to my writing-table, when one of the English footmen entered with a card.

“Oh, show him up, Green. And bring some cigarettes,” I said.

My visitor was Ivan Hartwig, the famous chief of the Russian Criminal Detective Service—an entirely distinct department from the Secret Police.

A few moments later he was ushered in by Green, and, bowing, took the hand I offered him.

A lean, bony-faced man, of average height, alert, clean-shaven, and aged about forty-five. His hair was slightly streaked with grey, and his eyes, small and shrewd, beamed behind a pair of round gold-rimmed pince-nez. I had never seen him in glasses before, but I only supposed that he had suddenly developed myopia for some specific purpose. As he smiled in greeting me, his narrow jaws widened, displaying an even row of white teeth, while the English he spoke was as perfect as my own. At that moment, in his glasses, his black morning-coat and grey trousers, he looked more like a grave family physician than a police officer whose career was world-famous.

And yet he was a man of striking appearance. His broad white forehead, his deep-set eyes so full of fire and expression, his high, protruding cheek-bones, and his narrowing chin were all characteristics of a man of remarkable power and intelligence. His, indeed, was a face that would arrest attention anywhere; hence the hundred and one disguises which he so constantly adopted.

“I have had private audience of His Majesty this afternoon, Mr Trewinnard,” he said, as he took the chair I offered him. “He has sent me to you. You wish to see me.”

“Yes,” I said. “I need your assistance.”

“So His Majesty has told me, but he explained nothing of the affair. He commanded me to place myself entirely at your disposal,” replied the man, who, in himself, was a man of mystery.

His nationality was obscure to most people, yet we at the Embassy knew that he was in reality a British subject, and that Ivan Hartwig was merely the Russian equivalent of Evan Hardwicke.

I handed him the box of cigarettes which Green had replenished, and took one myself.

As he slowly lit his, I recollected what a strange career he had had. Graduating from Scotland Yard, where on account of his knowledge of German and Russian he had been mainly employed in the arrest of alien criminals in England, he had for several years served under Monsieur Goron, Préfet of Police of Paris, and after being attached to the Tzar on one of his visits to the French capital, had been personally invited by the Emperor to become head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Russia.

He was a quiet-spoken, alert, elusive, but very conscientious man, who had made a study of crime from a psychological standpoint, his many successes being no doubt due to his marvellously minute examination of motives and his methodical reasoning upon the most abstruse clues. There was nothing of the ordinary blunt official detective about him. He was a man of extreme refinement, an omnivorous reader and a diligent student of men. He was a passionate collector of coins, a bachelor, and an amateur player of the violin. I believe that he had never experienced what fear was, and certainly within my own knowledge, he had had a dozen narrow escapes from the vengeance of the Terrorists. Once a bomb was purposely exploded in a room into which he and his men went to arrest two students in Moscow, and not one present escaped death except Hartwig himself.

And as he now sat there before me, so quiet and attentive, blinking at me through those gold-rimmed pince-nez, none would certainly take him for the man whose hairbreadth escapes, constant disguises, exciting adventures and marvellous successes in the tracking of criminals all over Europe had so often amazed the readers of newspapers the world over.

“Well, Mr Hartwig,” I said in a low voice, after I had risen and satisfied myself that Green had closed the door, “the matter is one of strictest confidence—a suspicion which I may at once tell you is the Emperor’s own personal affair. To myself alone he has confided it, and I requested that you might be allowed to assist me in finding a solution of the problem.”

“I’m much gratified,” he said. “As an Englishman, you know, I believe, that I am ever ready to serve an Englishman, especially if I am serving the Emperor at the same time.”

“The inquiry will take us far afield, I expect—first to England.”

“To England!” he exclaimed. “For how long do you anticipate?”

“Who knows?” I asked. “I can only say that it will be a very difficult and perhaps a long inquiry.”

“And how will the department proceed here?”

“Your next in command will be appointed in your place until your return. The Emperor arranged for this with me yesterday. Therefore, from to-morrow you will be free to place yourself at my service.”

“I quite understand,” he said. “And now, perhaps, you will in confidence explain exactly the situation, and the problem which is presented,” and he settled himself in his chair in an attitude of attention.

“Ah! that, I regret, is unfortunately impossible. The Emperor has entrusted the affair to me, and to me alone. I must direct the inquiry, and you will, I fear, remain in ignorance—at least, for the present.”

“In other words, you will direct and I must act blindly—eh?” he said in a rather dubious voice. “That’s hardly satisfactory to me, Mr Trewinnard, is it?—hardly fair, I mean.”

“I openly admit that such an attitude as I am compelled to adopt is not fair to you, Hartwig. But I feel sure you will respect the Emperor’s confidence, and view the matter in its true light. The matter is a personal one of His Majesty’s, and may not be divulged. He has asked me to tell you this frankly and plainly, and also that he relies upon you to assist him.”

My words convinced the great detective, and he nodded at last in the affirmative.

“The problem I alone know,” I went on. “His Majesty has compelled me to swear secrecy. Therefore I am forbidden to tell you. You understand?”

“But I am not forbidden to discover it for myself?” replied the keen, wary official.

“If you do, I cannot help it,” was my reply.

“If I do,” he said, “I promise you faithfully, Mr Trewinnard, that His Majesty’s secret, whatever it is, shall never pass my lips.”

Chapter Six.Relates a Sensation.Ten days had gone by. I had applied to Downing Street for leave of absence, and was awaiting permission.One afternoon I had again been commanded to private audience at the Palace, and in uniform, had spent nearly two hours with the Emperor, listening to certain confidential instructions which he had given me—instructions for the fulfilment of a somewhat difficult task.Twice during our chat I had referred to the case of my friends Madame and Mademoiselle de Rosen, hoping that he would extend to them the Imperial clemency, and by a stroke of that well-worn quill upon the big writing-table recall them from that long and weary journey upon which they had been sent.But His Majesty, who was wearing the undress uniform of a general with a single cross at his throat, uttered an expression of regret that I had been friendly with them.“In Russia, in these days, a foreigner should exercise the greatest caution in choosing his friends,” he said. “Only the day before yesterday Markoff reported it was to those two women that the attempt in the Nevski was entirely due. The others, thirty or so, were merely tools of those clever women.”“Forgive me, Your Majesty, when I say that General Markoff lies,” I replied boldly.“Enough! Our opinions differ, Trewinnard,” he snapped, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.It was on the tip of my tongue to make a direct charge against his favourite official, but what was the use when I held no actual proof. Twice recently I had seen Natalia, but she refused to allow me sight of the letters, telling me that she intended herself to show up the General in her own way—and at her own time.So the subject had dropped, for I saw that mention of it only aroused the Emperor’s displeasure. And surely the other matter which we were discussing with closed doors was weighty enough.At last His Majesty tossed his cigarette-end away, and, his jewelled cross glittering at his throat, rose with outstretched hand, as sign that my audience was at an end.That eternal military band was playing in the grey courtyard below, and the Emperor had slammed-to the window impatiently to keep out the sound. He was in no mood for musical comedy that afternoon. Indeed, I knew that the military music often irritated him, but Court etiquette—those iron-bound, unwritten laws which even an Emperor cannot break—demanded it. Those same laws decreed that no Emperor of Russia may travelincognito, as do all other European sovereigns; that at dinner at the Winter Palace there must always be eight guests; and that the service of gold plate of Catherine the Great must always be used. At the Russian Court there are a thousand such laws, the breach of a single one being an unpardonable offence, even in the case of the autocratic ruler himself.“Then you understand my wishes—eh, Trewinnard?” His Majesty said at last in English, gripping my hand warmly.“Perfectly, Sire.”“I need not impress upon you the need for absolute and entire discretion. I trust you implicitly.”“I hope Your Majesty’s trust will never be betrayed,” I answered fervently, bowing over the strong outstretched hand.And then, backing out of the door, I bowed and withdrew.Through the long corridor with its soft red carpet I went, passing Calitzine, a short, dark man in funereal black, the Emperor’s private secretary, to whom I passed the time of day.Then, reaching the grand staircase with its wonderful marble and gold balustrades and great chandeliers of crystal, I descended to the huge hall, where the echoes were constantly aroused by hurrying footsteps of ministers, officials, chamberlains, courtiers and servants—all of them sycophants.The two gigantic sentries at the foot of the stairs held their rifles at the salute as I passed between them, when of a sudden I caught sight of the Grand Duchess Natalia in a pretty summer gown of pale-blue, standing with a tall, full-bearded elderly man in the brilliant uniform of the 15th Regiment of Grenadiers of Tiflis, of which he was chief, and wearing many decorations. It was her father, the Grand Duke Nicholas.“Why, here’s old Uncle Colin!” cried my incorrigible little friend in pleased surprise. “Have you been up with the Emperor?”I replied in the affirmative, and, bowing, greeted His Imperial Highness, her father, with whom I had long been on friendly terms.“Where are you going?” asked the vivacious young lady quickly as she rebuttoned her long white glove, for they had, it seemed, been on a visit to the Empress.“I have to go to the opening of the new wing of the Naval Hospital,” I said. “And I haven’t much time to spare.”“We are going there, too. I have to perform the opening ceremony in place of the Emperor,” replied the Grand Duke. “So drive with us.”“That’s it, Uncle Colin!” exclaimed his daughter. “Come out for an airing. It’s a beautiful afternoon.”So we went forth into the great courtyard, where one of the Imperial state carriages, an open one, was in waiting, drawn by four fine, long-tailed Caucasian horses.Behind it was a troop of mounted Cossacks to act as escort.We entered, and the instant the bare-headed flunkeys had closed the door the horses started off, and we swung out of the handsome gateway into the wide Place, in the centre of which stood the grey column of Peter the Great.Turning to the left we went past the Alexander Gardens, now parched and dusty with summer heat, and skirted the long façade of the War Office.“I wonder what tales you’ve been telling the Emperor about me, Uncle Colin?” asked the impudent little lady, laughing as we drove along, I being seated opposite the Grand Duke and his daughter.“About you?” I echoed with a smile. “Oh, nothing, I assure you—or, at least, nothing that was not nice.”“You’re a dear, I know,” declared the girl, her father laughing amusedly the while. “But you are so dreadfully proper. You’re worse about etiquette than father is—and he’s simply horrid. He won’t ever let me go out shopping alone, and I’m surely old enough to do that!”“You’re quite old enough to get into mischief, Tattie,” replied her father, speaking in French.“I love mischief. That’s the worst of it,” and she pouted prettily.“Yes, quite true—the worst of it, for me,” declared His Imperial Highness. “I thought that when you went to school in England they would teach you manners.”“Ordinary manners are not Court manners,” the girl argued, trying to rebutton one of her gloves which had come unfastened.“Let me do it,” I suggested, and quickly fastened it.“Thank you,” she laughed with mock dignity. “How charming it is to have such a polished diplomat as Mr Colin Trewinnard to do nice things for one. Now, isn’t that a pretty speech? I suppose I ought to study smart things to say, and practise them on the dog—as father does sometimes.”“Really, Tattie, you forget yourself, my dear,” exclaimed her father, with distinct disapproval.“Well, that’s nothing,” declared my charming little companion. “Don’t parsons practise preaching their sermons, and lawyers and statesmen practise their clever untruths? You can’t expect a woman’s mouth to be full of sugar-plums of speech, can you?”My eyes met those of the Grand Duke, and we both burst out laughing at the girl’s quaint philosophy.“Why, even the Emperor has his speeches composed and written for him by silly old Calitzine,” she went on. “And at Astrakhan the other day I composed a most telling and patriotic speech for His Majesty, which he delivered when addressing the officers of the Army of the Volga. I sat on my horse and listened. The old generals and colonels, and all the rest of them, applauded vociferously, and the men threw their caps in the air. I wonder if they would have done this had they known that I had written those well-turned patriotic sentences, I—a mere chit of a girl, as father sometimes tells me!”“And the terror of the Imperial family,” I ventured to add.“Thank you for your compliment. Uncle Colin,” she laughed. “I know father endorses your sentiments. I see it in his face.”“Oh, do try and be serious, Tattie,” he urged. “See all those people! Salute them, and don’t laugh so vulgarly.” And he raised his white-gloved hand to his shining helmet in recognition of the shouts of welcome rising from those assembled along our route.Whereat she bowed gracefully again with that slight and rather frigid smile which she had been taught to assume on public occasions.“If I put up my sunshade they won’t see me, and it will avoid such a lot of trouble,” she exclaimed suddenly, and she put up her pretty parasol, which matched her gown and softened the light upon her pretty face.“Oh, no, Uncle Colin!” she exclaimed suddenly, as we turned the corner into the Yosnesenskaya, a long, straight street where the throng, becoming greater, was kept back by lines of police in their grey coats, peaked caps and revolvers. “I know what you are thinking. But it isn’t so. I’m not in the least afraid of spoiling my complexion.”“Then perhaps it is a pity you are not,” I replied. “Complexions, like all shining things, tarnish quickly.”“Just like reputations, I suppose,” she remarked, whereupon her father could not restrain another laugh.Then again, at word in an undertone from the Grand Duke, both he and his daughter saluted the crowd, our horses galloping, as they always do in Russia, and our Cossack-escort clattering behind.There were a good many people just at this point, for it was believed that the Emperor would pass on his way to perform the opening ceremony, and his loyal subjects were waiting to cheer him.On every hand, the people, recognising the popular Grand Duke and his daughter, set up hurrahs, and while His Imperial Highness saluted, his pretty daughter, the most admired girl in Russia, bowed, and I, in accordance with etiquette, made no sign of acknowledgment.As we came to the narrow bridge which spans the canal, the road was flanked on the left by the Alexander Market, and here was another huge crowd.Loud shouts of welcome in Russian broke forth from those assembled, for the Grand Duke and his daughter were everywhere greeted most warmly.But as we passed the market, the police keeping back the crowd, I saw a thin, middle-aged man in dark clothes lift his hand high above his head. Something came in our direction, yet before I had time to realise his action a blood-red flash blinded me, my ears were deafened by a terrific report, a hot, scorching breath swept across my face, and I felt myself hurled far into space amid the mass of falling débris.It all occurred in a single instant, and I knew no more. I had a distinct feeling that some terrific explosion had knocked the breath clean out of my body. I recollect seeing the carriage rent into a thousand fragments just at the same instant that black unconsciousness fell upon me.

Ten days had gone by. I had applied to Downing Street for leave of absence, and was awaiting permission.

One afternoon I had again been commanded to private audience at the Palace, and in uniform, had spent nearly two hours with the Emperor, listening to certain confidential instructions which he had given me—instructions for the fulfilment of a somewhat difficult task.

Twice during our chat I had referred to the case of my friends Madame and Mademoiselle de Rosen, hoping that he would extend to them the Imperial clemency, and by a stroke of that well-worn quill upon the big writing-table recall them from that long and weary journey upon which they had been sent.

But His Majesty, who was wearing the undress uniform of a general with a single cross at his throat, uttered an expression of regret that I had been friendly with them.

“In Russia, in these days, a foreigner should exercise the greatest caution in choosing his friends,” he said. “Only the day before yesterday Markoff reported it was to those two women that the attempt in the Nevski was entirely due. The others, thirty or so, were merely tools of those clever women.”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, when I say that General Markoff lies,” I replied boldly.

“Enough! Our opinions differ, Trewinnard,” he snapped, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

It was on the tip of my tongue to make a direct charge against his favourite official, but what was the use when I held no actual proof. Twice recently I had seen Natalia, but she refused to allow me sight of the letters, telling me that she intended herself to show up the General in her own way—and at her own time.

So the subject had dropped, for I saw that mention of it only aroused the Emperor’s displeasure. And surely the other matter which we were discussing with closed doors was weighty enough.

At last His Majesty tossed his cigarette-end away, and, his jewelled cross glittering at his throat, rose with outstretched hand, as sign that my audience was at an end.

That eternal military band was playing in the grey courtyard below, and the Emperor had slammed-to the window impatiently to keep out the sound. He was in no mood for musical comedy that afternoon. Indeed, I knew that the military music often irritated him, but Court etiquette—those iron-bound, unwritten laws which even an Emperor cannot break—demanded it. Those same laws decreed that no Emperor of Russia may travelincognito, as do all other European sovereigns; that at dinner at the Winter Palace there must always be eight guests; and that the service of gold plate of Catherine the Great must always be used. At the Russian Court there are a thousand such laws, the breach of a single one being an unpardonable offence, even in the case of the autocratic ruler himself.

“Then you understand my wishes—eh, Trewinnard?” His Majesty said at last in English, gripping my hand warmly.

“Perfectly, Sire.”

“I need not impress upon you the need for absolute and entire discretion. I trust you implicitly.”

“I hope Your Majesty’s trust will never be betrayed,” I answered fervently, bowing over the strong outstretched hand.

And then, backing out of the door, I bowed and withdrew.

Through the long corridor with its soft red carpet I went, passing Calitzine, a short, dark man in funereal black, the Emperor’s private secretary, to whom I passed the time of day.

Then, reaching the grand staircase with its wonderful marble and gold balustrades and great chandeliers of crystal, I descended to the huge hall, where the echoes were constantly aroused by hurrying footsteps of ministers, officials, chamberlains, courtiers and servants—all of them sycophants.

The two gigantic sentries at the foot of the stairs held their rifles at the salute as I passed between them, when of a sudden I caught sight of the Grand Duchess Natalia in a pretty summer gown of pale-blue, standing with a tall, full-bearded elderly man in the brilliant uniform of the 15th Regiment of Grenadiers of Tiflis, of which he was chief, and wearing many decorations. It was her father, the Grand Duke Nicholas.

“Why, here’s old Uncle Colin!” cried my incorrigible little friend in pleased surprise. “Have you been up with the Emperor?”

I replied in the affirmative, and, bowing, greeted His Imperial Highness, her father, with whom I had long been on friendly terms.

“Where are you going?” asked the vivacious young lady quickly as she rebuttoned her long white glove, for they had, it seemed, been on a visit to the Empress.

“I have to go to the opening of the new wing of the Naval Hospital,” I said. “And I haven’t much time to spare.”

“We are going there, too. I have to perform the opening ceremony in place of the Emperor,” replied the Grand Duke. “So drive with us.”

“That’s it, Uncle Colin!” exclaimed his daughter. “Come out for an airing. It’s a beautiful afternoon.”

So we went forth into the great courtyard, where one of the Imperial state carriages, an open one, was in waiting, drawn by four fine, long-tailed Caucasian horses.

Behind it was a troop of mounted Cossacks to act as escort.

We entered, and the instant the bare-headed flunkeys had closed the door the horses started off, and we swung out of the handsome gateway into the wide Place, in the centre of which stood the grey column of Peter the Great.

Turning to the left we went past the Alexander Gardens, now parched and dusty with summer heat, and skirted the long façade of the War Office.

“I wonder what tales you’ve been telling the Emperor about me, Uncle Colin?” asked the impudent little lady, laughing as we drove along, I being seated opposite the Grand Duke and his daughter.

“About you?” I echoed with a smile. “Oh, nothing, I assure you—or, at least, nothing that was not nice.”

“You’re a dear, I know,” declared the girl, her father laughing amusedly the while. “But you are so dreadfully proper. You’re worse about etiquette than father is—and he’s simply horrid. He won’t ever let me go out shopping alone, and I’m surely old enough to do that!”

“You’re quite old enough to get into mischief, Tattie,” replied her father, speaking in French.

“I love mischief. That’s the worst of it,” and she pouted prettily.

“Yes, quite true—the worst of it, for me,” declared His Imperial Highness. “I thought that when you went to school in England they would teach you manners.”

“Ordinary manners are not Court manners,” the girl argued, trying to rebutton one of her gloves which had come unfastened.

“Let me do it,” I suggested, and quickly fastened it.

“Thank you,” she laughed with mock dignity. “How charming it is to have such a polished diplomat as Mr Colin Trewinnard to do nice things for one. Now, isn’t that a pretty speech? I suppose I ought to study smart things to say, and practise them on the dog—as father does sometimes.”

“Really, Tattie, you forget yourself, my dear,” exclaimed her father, with distinct disapproval.

“Well, that’s nothing,” declared my charming little companion. “Don’t parsons practise preaching their sermons, and lawyers and statesmen practise their clever untruths? You can’t expect a woman’s mouth to be full of sugar-plums of speech, can you?”

My eyes met those of the Grand Duke, and we both burst out laughing at the girl’s quaint philosophy.

“Why, even the Emperor has his speeches composed and written for him by silly old Calitzine,” she went on. “And at Astrakhan the other day I composed a most telling and patriotic speech for His Majesty, which he delivered when addressing the officers of the Army of the Volga. I sat on my horse and listened. The old generals and colonels, and all the rest of them, applauded vociferously, and the men threw their caps in the air. I wonder if they would have done this had they known that I had written those well-turned patriotic sentences, I—a mere chit of a girl, as father sometimes tells me!”

“And the terror of the Imperial family,” I ventured to add.

“Thank you for your compliment. Uncle Colin,” she laughed. “I know father endorses your sentiments. I see it in his face.”

“Oh, do try and be serious, Tattie,” he urged. “See all those people! Salute them, and don’t laugh so vulgarly.” And he raised his white-gloved hand to his shining helmet in recognition of the shouts of welcome rising from those assembled along our route.

Whereat she bowed gracefully again with that slight and rather frigid smile which she had been taught to assume on public occasions.

“If I put up my sunshade they won’t see me, and it will avoid such a lot of trouble,” she exclaimed suddenly, and she put up her pretty parasol, which matched her gown and softened the light upon her pretty face.

“Oh, no, Uncle Colin!” she exclaimed suddenly, as we turned the corner into the Yosnesenskaya, a long, straight street where the throng, becoming greater, was kept back by lines of police in their grey coats, peaked caps and revolvers. “I know what you are thinking. But it isn’t so. I’m not in the least afraid of spoiling my complexion.”

“Then perhaps it is a pity you are not,” I replied. “Complexions, like all shining things, tarnish quickly.”

“Just like reputations, I suppose,” she remarked, whereupon her father could not restrain another laugh.

Then again, at word in an undertone from the Grand Duke, both he and his daughter saluted the crowd, our horses galloping, as they always do in Russia, and our Cossack-escort clattering behind.

There were a good many people just at this point, for it was believed that the Emperor would pass on his way to perform the opening ceremony, and his loyal subjects were waiting to cheer him.

On every hand, the people, recognising the popular Grand Duke and his daughter, set up hurrahs, and while His Imperial Highness saluted, his pretty daughter, the most admired girl in Russia, bowed, and I, in accordance with etiquette, made no sign of acknowledgment.

As we came to the narrow bridge which spans the canal, the road was flanked on the left by the Alexander Market, and here was another huge crowd.

Loud shouts of welcome in Russian broke forth from those assembled, for the Grand Duke and his daughter were everywhere greeted most warmly.

But as we passed the market, the police keeping back the crowd, I saw a thin, middle-aged man in dark clothes lift his hand high above his head. Something came in our direction, yet before I had time to realise his action a blood-red flash blinded me, my ears were deafened by a terrific report, a hot, scorching breath swept across my face, and I felt myself hurled far into space amid the mass of falling débris.

It all occurred in a single instant, and I knew no more. I had a distinct feeling that some terrific explosion had knocked the breath clean out of my body. I recollect seeing the carriage rent into a thousand fragments just at the same instant that black unconsciousness fell upon me.

Chapter Seven.Tells Tragic Truths.When, with extreme difficulty, I slowly struggled back to a knowledge of things about me, I found myself, to my great surprise, in a narrow hospital-bed, with a holyikonupon the whitewashed wall before me, and a Red Cross sister bending tenderly over me.Beside her stood two Russian doctors regarding me very gravely, and at their side was Saunderson, our Councillor of Embassy.“Well, how are you feeling now, Colin, old man?” the latter whispered cheerfully.“I—I don’t know. Where am I?” I asked. “What’s happened?”“My dear fellow, you can thank your lucky stirs that you’ve escaped from the bomb,” he said.“The bomb!” I gasped, and then in a flash all the horrors of that sudden explosion crowded upon me. “What happened?” I inquired, trying to raise myself, and finding my head entirely enveloped in surgical bandages. “What happened to the others?”“The Grand Duke was, alas! killed, but his daughter fortunately escaped only with a scratch on her arm,” was his reply. “The carriage was blown to atoms, the two horses and their driver and footman were killed, while three Cossacks of the escort were also killed and two injured.”“Then—then she—she is alive!” I managed to gasp, dazed at the tragic truth he had related to me.“Yes—it was a desperate attempt. Fifteen arrests have been made up to the present.”And while he was speaking, Captain Stoyanovitch advanced to my bedside, and leaning over, asked in a low voice:“How are you, Trewinnard? The Emperor has sent me to inquire.”“Tell His Majesty that I—I thank him. I’m getting round—I—I hope I’ll soon be well. I—I—”“That’s right. Take great care of yourself,mon cher,” he urged.And then the doctors ordered my visitors away, and I sank among my pillows into a state of semi-consciousness.How long I lay thus I do not know. I remember seeing soldiers come and go, and at length discovered that I was in the hospital attached to the artillery barracks on the road to Warsaw Station. Beside me always sat a grave-eyed nursing sister, silent and watchful, while ever and anon one or other of the doctors would approach, bend over me, and inquire of her my condition.Saunderson came again some hours later. It was then night. And from him, now that I was completely conscious, I learnt how, after the explosion, the police had in the confusion shot down two men, afterwards proved to be innocent spectators, and made wholesale indiscriminate arrests. It was believed, however, that the man I had seen, the perpetrator of the dastardly act, had escaped scot-free.Dozens of windows in the market-hall opposite where the outrage was committed had been smashed, and many people besides the killed and injured had been thrown down by the terrific force of the explosion.“The poor Grand Duke Nicholas has, alas! been shattered out of recognition,” he told me. “His body was taken at once to his palace, where it now lies, while you were brought here together with the Grand Duchess Natalia. But her wound being quite a slight one, was dressed, and she was driven at once to the Winter Palace, at the order of the Emperor. Poor child! I hear that she is utterly prostrated by the fearful sight which her father presented to her eyes.”I drew a long breath.“I suppose I was struck on the head by some of the débris and knocked insensible—eh?” I asked.“Yes, probably,” he replied. “But the doctors say the wound is only a superficial one, and in a week’s time you’ll be quite right again. So cheer up, old chap. You’ll get the long leave which you put in for the other day, and a bit more added to it, no doubt.”“But this state of things is terrible,” I declared, shifting myself upon my side so that I could better look into his face. “Surely the revolutionists could have had no antagonism towards the Grand Duke Nicholas! He was most popular everywhere.”“My dear fellow, who can gauge the state of the Russian mind at this moment? Plots seem to be of daily occurrence.”“If you believe the reports of the Secret Police. But I, for one, don’t,” I declared frankly.“No, no,” he said reprovingly. “Don’t excite yourself. Be thankful that you’ve escaped. You might have shared the same fate as those poor Cossacks.”“I know,” I said. “I thank God that I was spared. But it will be in the London papers, no doubt. Reuter’s man will send it; therefore, will you wire to my mother at once. You know her address—Hayford Manor, near Newquay, Cornwall. Wire in my name, and tell her that the affair is greatly exaggerated, and that I’m all right, will you?”He promised.I knew with what eagerness my aged mother always followed all my movements, for I made it a practice to write to her twice every week with a full report of my doings. I was as devoted to her as she was to me. And perhaps that accounted for the fact that I had never married. My father, the Honourable Colin Trewinnard, had been one of the largest landowners in Cornwall, and my family was probably one of the oldest in the county. But evil times had fallen upon the estate in the last years of my father’s life; depreciation in the value of agricultural land, failing crops and foreign competition had ruined farming, and now the income was not one-half that it had been fifty years before. Yet it was sufficient to keep my mother and myself in comfort; and this, in addition to my pay from the Foreign Office, rendered me better off than a great many other men in our Service.Through Stoyanovitch, on the following morning, I received a message from Natalia. He said:“Her Highness, whom I saw in the Palace an hour ago, told me to say that she sent you her best wishes for a speedy recovery. She is greatly grieved over the death of her father, and, of course, the Court has gone into mourning for sixty days. She told me to tell you that as soon as you are able to return to the Embassy she wishes to see you on a very important matter.”“Tell her that I am equally anxious to see her, and that she has all my sympathy in her sad bereavement,” I replied.“Terrible, wasn’t it?” the Imperial equerry exclaimed. “The poor girl looks white, haggard and entirely changed.”“No wonder—after such an awful experience.”“There were, I hear, twenty more arrests to-day. Markoff had audience with His Majesty at ten o’clock this morning, and eight of the prisoners of yesterday have been sent to Schusselburg.”“From which they will never emerge,” I said, with a shudder at the thought of that living tomb as full of horrors as was the Bastille itself.“Well, I don’t see why they should, my dear friend,” the Captain replied. “If I had had such an experience as yours, I shouldn’t feel very lenient towards them—as you apparently do.”“I am not thinking of the culprit,” I said. “He certainly deserves a death-sentence. It is the innocents who, here in Russia, suffer for the guilty, with whom I deeply sympathise. Every day unoffending men and women are arrested wholesale in this drastic, unrelenting sweeping away of prisoners to Siberia. I tell you that half of them are loyal, law-abiding subjects of the Tzar.”The elegant equerry-in-waiting only grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He was too good a Russian to adopt such an argument. As personal attendant upon His Majesty, he, of course, supported the Imperial autocracy.“This accursed system of police-spies andagents-provocateursmanufactures criminals. Can a man wrongly arrested and sent to the mines remain a loyal subject?”“The many have to suffer for the few. It is the same in all lands,” was his reply. “But really the matter doesn’t concern me, my dear Trewinnard.”“It will concern you one day when you are blown up as I have been,” I exclaimed savagely.Shortly afterwards he left, and for hours I lay thinking, my eyes upon that square gilt holy picture before me, theikonplaced before the eyes of every patient in the hospital. Nurses in grey and soldiers in white cotton tunics passed and repassed through the small ward of which I was the only occupant.The pains in my head were excruciating. I felt as though my skull had been filled with boiling water. Sometimes my thoughts were perfectly normal, yet at others my mind seemed full of strange, almost ridiculous phantasies. My whole career, from the days when I had been a clerk in that sombre old-fashioned room at Downing Street, through my service at Madrid, Brussels, Berlin and Rome to Petersburg—all went before me, like a cinema-picture. I looked upon myself as others saw me—as a man never sees himself in normal circumstances—a mere struggling entity upon the tide of that sea of life called To-day.We are so very apt to think ourselves indispensable to the world. Yet we have only to think again, and remember that the unknown to-morrow may bring, us death, and with it everlasting oblivion, as far as this world is concerned. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were the two greatest figures of our time; yet a month after their deaths people had to recall who they were, and what they had actually done to earn distinction.These modern days of rush and hurry are forgetful, irresponsible days, when public opinion is manufactured by those who rule the halfpenny press, and when the worst and most baneful commodities may be foisted upon the public by means of efficient advertisement.The cleverest swindler may by payment become a baronet of England, even a peer of the realm, providing he subscribes sufficient to Somebody’s Newspaper Publicity Agency; and any blackguard with money or influence may become a Justice of the Peace and sentence his fellows to fourteen days’ imprisonment.But the reader will forgive me. Perhaps remarks such as these ill become a diplomat—one who is supposed to hold no personal opinions. Yet I assert that to-day there is no diplomat serving Great Britain in a foreign country who is not tired and disgusted with his country’s antiquated methods and her transparent weaknesses.The papers speak vigorously of Britain’s power, but men in my service—those who know real international truths—smile at the defiant and well-balanced sentences of the modern journalist, whose blissful ignorance of the truth is ofttimes so pathetic. Yes, it is only the diplomat serving at a foreign Court who can view Great Britain from afar, and accurately gauge her position among modern nations.For ten days I remained in that whitewashed ward, many of my friends visiting me, and Stoyanovitch coming daily with a pleasant message from His Majesty. Then one bright morning the doctors declared me to be fit enough to drive back to the Embassy.An hour later, with my head still bandaged, I was seated in my own room, in my own big leather armchair, with the July sun streaming in from across the Neva.Saunderson was sitting with me, describing the great pomp of the funeral of the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the service at the Isaac Church, at which the Tzar, the Court, and all thecorps diplomatiquehad attended.“By the way,” he added, “a note came for you this morning,” and he handed me a black-edged letter, bearing on the envelope the Imperial arms embossed in black.I tore it open and found it to be a neatly-written little letter from the Grand Duchess Natalia, asking me to allow her to call and see me as soon as ever I returned to the Embassy.“I must see you, Uncle Colin,” she wrote. “It is most pressing. So do please let me come. Send me word, and I will come instantly. I cannot write anything here.I must see you at once!”

When, with extreme difficulty, I slowly struggled back to a knowledge of things about me, I found myself, to my great surprise, in a narrow hospital-bed, with a holyikonupon the whitewashed wall before me, and a Red Cross sister bending tenderly over me.

Beside her stood two Russian doctors regarding me very gravely, and at their side was Saunderson, our Councillor of Embassy.

“Well, how are you feeling now, Colin, old man?” the latter whispered cheerfully.

“I—I don’t know. Where am I?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

“My dear fellow, you can thank your lucky stirs that you’ve escaped from the bomb,” he said.

“The bomb!” I gasped, and then in a flash all the horrors of that sudden explosion crowded upon me. “What happened?” I inquired, trying to raise myself, and finding my head entirely enveloped in surgical bandages. “What happened to the others?”

“The Grand Duke was, alas! killed, but his daughter fortunately escaped only with a scratch on her arm,” was his reply. “The carriage was blown to atoms, the two horses and their driver and footman were killed, while three Cossacks of the escort were also killed and two injured.”

“Then—then she—she is alive!” I managed to gasp, dazed at the tragic truth he had related to me.

“Yes—it was a desperate attempt. Fifteen arrests have been made up to the present.”

And while he was speaking, Captain Stoyanovitch advanced to my bedside, and leaning over, asked in a low voice:

“How are you, Trewinnard? The Emperor has sent me to inquire.”

“Tell His Majesty that I—I thank him. I’m getting round—I—I hope I’ll soon be well. I—I—”

“That’s right. Take great care of yourself,mon cher,” he urged.

And then the doctors ordered my visitors away, and I sank among my pillows into a state of semi-consciousness.

How long I lay thus I do not know. I remember seeing soldiers come and go, and at length discovered that I was in the hospital attached to the artillery barracks on the road to Warsaw Station. Beside me always sat a grave-eyed nursing sister, silent and watchful, while ever and anon one or other of the doctors would approach, bend over me, and inquire of her my condition.

Saunderson came again some hours later. It was then night. And from him, now that I was completely conscious, I learnt how, after the explosion, the police had in the confusion shot down two men, afterwards proved to be innocent spectators, and made wholesale indiscriminate arrests. It was believed, however, that the man I had seen, the perpetrator of the dastardly act, had escaped scot-free.

Dozens of windows in the market-hall opposite where the outrage was committed had been smashed, and many people besides the killed and injured had been thrown down by the terrific force of the explosion.

“The poor Grand Duke Nicholas has, alas! been shattered out of recognition,” he told me. “His body was taken at once to his palace, where it now lies, while you were brought here together with the Grand Duchess Natalia. But her wound being quite a slight one, was dressed, and she was driven at once to the Winter Palace, at the order of the Emperor. Poor child! I hear that she is utterly prostrated by the fearful sight which her father presented to her eyes.”

I drew a long breath.

“I suppose I was struck on the head by some of the débris and knocked insensible—eh?” I asked.

“Yes, probably,” he replied. “But the doctors say the wound is only a superficial one, and in a week’s time you’ll be quite right again. So cheer up, old chap. You’ll get the long leave which you put in for the other day, and a bit more added to it, no doubt.”

“But this state of things is terrible,” I declared, shifting myself upon my side so that I could better look into his face. “Surely the revolutionists could have had no antagonism towards the Grand Duke Nicholas! He was most popular everywhere.”

“My dear fellow, who can gauge the state of the Russian mind at this moment? Plots seem to be of daily occurrence.”

“If you believe the reports of the Secret Police. But I, for one, don’t,” I declared frankly.

“No, no,” he said reprovingly. “Don’t excite yourself. Be thankful that you’ve escaped. You might have shared the same fate as those poor Cossacks.”

“I know,” I said. “I thank God that I was spared. But it will be in the London papers, no doubt. Reuter’s man will send it; therefore, will you wire to my mother at once. You know her address—Hayford Manor, near Newquay, Cornwall. Wire in my name, and tell her that the affair is greatly exaggerated, and that I’m all right, will you?”

He promised.

I knew with what eagerness my aged mother always followed all my movements, for I made it a practice to write to her twice every week with a full report of my doings. I was as devoted to her as she was to me. And perhaps that accounted for the fact that I had never married. My father, the Honourable Colin Trewinnard, had been one of the largest landowners in Cornwall, and my family was probably one of the oldest in the county. But evil times had fallen upon the estate in the last years of my father’s life; depreciation in the value of agricultural land, failing crops and foreign competition had ruined farming, and now the income was not one-half that it had been fifty years before. Yet it was sufficient to keep my mother and myself in comfort; and this, in addition to my pay from the Foreign Office, rendered me better off than a great many other men in our Service.

Through Stoyanovitch, on the following morning, I received a message from Natalia. He said:

“Her Highness, whom I saw in the Palace an hour ago, told me to say that she sent you her best wishes for a speedy recovery. She is greatly grieved over the death of her father, and, of course, the Court has gone into mourning for sixty days. She told me to tell you that as soon as you are able to return to the Embassy she wishes to see you on a very important matter.”

“Tell her that I am equally anxious to see her, and that she has all my sympathy in her sad bereavement,” I replied.

“Terrible, wasn’t it?” the Imperial equerry exclaimed. “The poor girl looks white, haggard and entirely changed.”

“No wonder—after such an awful experience.”

“There were, I hear, twenty more arrests to-day. Markoff had audience with His Majesty at ten o’clock this morning, and eight of the prisoners of yesterday have been sent to Schusselburg.”

“From which they will never emerge,” I said, with a shudder at the thought of that living tomb as full of horrors as was the Bastille itself.

“Well, I don’t see why they should, my dear friend,” the Captain replied. “If I had had such an experience as yours, I shouldn’t feel very lenient towards them—as you apparently do.”

“I am not thinking of the culprit,” I said. “He certainly deserves a death-sentence. It is the innocents who, here in Russia, suffer for the guilty, with whom I deeply sympathise. Every day unoffending men and women are arrested wholesale in this drastic, unrelenting sweeping away of prisoners to Siberia. I tell you that half of them are loyal, law-abiding subjects of the Tzar.”

The elegant equerry-in-waiting only grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He was too good a Russian to adopt such an argument. As personal attendant upon His Majesty, he, of course, supported the Imperial autocracy.

“This accursed system of police-spies andagents-provocateursmanufactures criminals. Can a man wrongly arrested and sent to the mines remain a loyal subject?”

“The many have to suffer for the few. It is the same in all lands,” was his reply. “But really the matter doesn’t concern me, my dear Trewinnard.”

“It will concern you one day when you are blown up as I have been,” I exclaimed savagely.

Shortly afterwards he left, and for hours I lay thinking, my eyes upon that square gilt holy picture before me, theikonplaced before the eyes of every patient in the hospital. Nurses in grey and soldiers in white cotton tunics passed and repassed through the small ward of which I was the only occupant.

The pains in my head were excruciating. I felt as though my skull had been filled with boiling water. Sometimes my thoughts were perfectly normal, yet at others my mind seemed full of strange, almost ridiculous phantasies. My whole career, from the days when I had been a clerk in that sombre old-fashioned room at Downing Street, through my service at Madrid, Brussels, Berlin and Rome to Petersburg—all went before me, like a cinema-picture. I looked upon myself as others saw me—as a man never sees himself in normal circumstances—a mere struggling entity upon the tide of that sea of life called To-day.

We are so very apt to think ourselves indispensable to the world. Yet we have only to think again, and remember that the unknown to-morrow may bring, us death, and with it everlasting oblivion, as far as this world is concerned. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were the two greatest figures of our time; yet a month after their deaths people had to recall who they were, and what they had actually done to earn distinction.

These modern days of rush and hurry are forgetful, irresponsible days, when public opinion is manufactured by those who rule the halfpenny press, and when the worst and most baneful commodities may be foisted upon the public by means of efficient advertisement.

The cleverest swindler may by payment become a baronet of England, even a peer of the realm, providing he subscribes sufficient to Somebody’s Newspaper Publicity Agency; and any blackguard with money or influence may become a Justice of the Peace and sentence his fellows to fourteen days’ imprisonment.

But the reader will forgive me. Perhaps remarks such as these ill become a diplomat—one who is supposed to hold no personal opinions. Yet I assert that to-day there is no diplomat serving Great Britain in a foreign country who is not tired and disgusted with his country’s antiquated methods and her transparent weaknesses.

The papers speak vigorously of Britain’s power, but men in my service—those who know real international truths—smile at the defiant and well-balanced sentences of the modern journalist, whose blissful ignorance of the truth is ofttimes so pathetic. Yes, it is only the diplomat serving at a foreign Court who can view Great Britain from afar, and accurately gauge her position among modern nations.

For ten days I remained in that whitewashed ward, many of my friends visiting me, and Stoyanovitch coming daily with a pleasant message from His Majesty. Then one bright morning the doctors declared me to be fit enough to drive back to the Embassy.

An hour later, with my head still bandaged, I was seated in my own room, in my own big leather armchair, with the July sun streaming in from across the Neva.

Saunderson was sitting with me, describing the great pomp of the funeral of the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the service at the Isaac Church, at which the Tzar, the Court, and all thecorps diplomatiquehad attended.

“By the way,” he added, “a note came for you this morning,” and he handed me a black-edged letter, bearing on the envelope the Imperial arms embossed in black.

I tore it open and found it to be a neatly-written little letter from the Grand Duchess Natalia, asking me to allow her to call and see me as soon as ever I returned to the Embassy.

“I must see you, Uncle Colin,” she wrote. “It is most pressing. So do please let me come. Send me word, and I will come instantly. I cannot write anything here.I must see you at once!”

Back to IndexNext