CHAPTER XIVTHE FLIGHT WITH THE COUNTESS
FOR an instant Drexel stood appalled. Then the captain’s step sounded just without the threshold—two more steps and all was lost.
Drexel’s desperate eyes fell upon the electric-light key beside the doorway. He sprang swiftly forward, and the room was filled with blackness. He disliked leaving the countess to face the trouble alone, but his first duty was to Sonya. He made for the door, and his shoulder brushed the captain’s. “Excuse me,” he said, and was gone.
Berloff started to rush after him, but the countess, who had caught his pistol, now caught his arm.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you.”
He turned on the light and gave her a quick, penetrating look. Then he wheeled upon Captain Nadson, which well-disciplined officer was seeing nothing he was not supposed to see.
“Captain, wait a moment in the study.”
The captain bowed and withdrew.
“Quick!” breathed the countess. “Order me a sleigh!”
“What for?”
“Order first. Then I’ll explain. A sleigh with one horse—and not too fast—and no driver.”
The prince took up the telephone from his desk and gave the order.
“Now, tell me.”
“He has fallen right into my trap!” the countess whispered. “He has found out where Borodin is—but no more.”
“Then he does not guess——”
“No. I quizzed him about you,” she went on rapidly. “He thinks you are only what you pretend to be. Here’s my plan. He’s going to fly at once with his information. I am going to take him with me in the sleigh. We’re confederates, you know. You discover that some papers have been stolen—by whom, you have no idea. You have the robbers pursued. We shall go toward the railroad station. You must give orders that I am not to be hurt. As for him——”
“Oh, I shall give the right orders for him!” said the prince grimly. “And when we discover who the dead man is I shall be properly horrified at the terrible mistake. But they will all see it was the fault of his own rashness.”
He opened a drawer of his desk and drew out a couple of Government documents. “Take these. It will help if they are found upon him.”
She took them. “You have men to pursue us?”
“A company of Cossacks is stationed in the village. I’ll telephone for a squad.”
“You will hush up my part in this affair?”
“Certainly.”
“Then good-bye, prince. I’ll claim my fifty thousand to-night”—and with an excited, triumphant smile she hurried out to find Drexel.
Drexel had rushed from the room with the desire to tell Sonya of his success before he began his flight. In this he was aided by her watchfulness. The party had all gone into the music room, but she, wondering what had become of him, lingered near the door. When she saw him emerge from the corridor and make for the entry, she crossed to meet him. Her composure was perfect.
“I just saw the captain go in there,” she whispered. “Didn’t he——”
“He didn’t see me,” Drexel returned quickly. “I’ll explain some other time. Borodin is in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.”
Her eyes glowed into his.
“I must go at once,” he said. “Good-bye.”
“Go to Ivan and Nicolai. Good-bye ... comrade!” And she gave him a look that made him tingle all through.
As her proud figure turned coldly away, he slipped out into the entry hall. But his uncle had seen him, and before the old door-man had helped Drexel into his fur coat Mr. Howard had joined him.
“Can I have a talk with you after you come in, my boy?”
“No—I’m sorry,” Drexel answered rapidly, forto him every second had the worth of two lives. “Just got a telephone message from St. Petersburg—got to go back to Moscow on business—must hurry to catch the train.” And disregarding his uncle’s attempt at a reply Drexel rushed out.
Night was fully on, though the hour was scarcely five. The sky was a-glitter with stars, all the wide spaces of the night were flooded with the cold brilliance of the moon, and this celestial brightness was reflected and doubled by the vast mirror of the snow. Why could not this have been a black and hiding night? Drexel cursed this light as his enemy.
He first struck out on foot; but it occurred to him that if he walked the prince, were he minded to pursue, could easily overtake him. So he turned and made haste along the road that swept among the hemlocks back to the stable, determined to ask boldly for a sleigh.
As a curve in the avenue revealed the stable, a dark object glided out and came toward him. It was the answer to his unspoken prayer.
“For whom is this sleigh?” he asked the driver.
“Countess Baronova,” was the answer.
For the first time in these last tense minutes he thought of the countess, and recalled her declaration that she purposed escaping with him. But before he could decide what should be his course concerning her, he saw the countess herself hurrying across the snow.
“This is luck,” she gasped, “you are here already.” She dismissed the driver. “Come, Mr. Drexel, we must be off at once.”
“But, countess,” he objected, “I cannot let you plunge into this danger!”
“I led you into it,” she replied, “and I am going to share it.”
Again Drexel could not explain to her that another had been his leader.
“I want to get away,” the countess continued, “to help use the information you have gained. Besides, I am in danger as well as you. I must fly, whether I fly with you, or fly alone.”
“Well, if you are determined,” said Drexel. He helped her in and stepped in beside her.
He struck the horse into a gallop and the countess tucked the thick bear robes snugly about them. They sped silently over the snow, and a minute later passed through the park gates.
“I feel safer now,” breathed the countess. She drew something from her breast. “Here—take these.”
“What are they?”
“Some documents I secured while we were searching the prince’s study—papers of great value to us, I think. They will be safer with you.”
Drexel thrust the papers into the pocket of his shuba. “How did you get away from the prince?”
“Oh, a man came in, and then other people. The prince could not make a scene before them, so Icalmly walked out. I suppose he had no idea you and I would run away.”
“Countess, I know you must think me very much of a coward for my desertion of you. I—well, I really can’t explain.”
“Please don’t apologize. You have shown you were no coward. Besides, all has turned out for the best. In an hour we’ll be at the station—two hours after that in St. Petersburg.”
“I wish we had a better horse,” said Drexel ruefully. “This is a stiff old beast.”
“I dare say I didn’t bribe the stableman heavily enough. But we shall make our train.”
They glided on—now over flat, bright spaces, where the road seemed as broad as eye-reach—now through shadowy forest stretches, where on either side they could almost touch the pendant boughs of the snowy evergreens. The countess talked eagerly of their plans for the release of Borodin; Drexel answered with reserve. She spoke warmly of what it meant to her that she had won him to the cause; on this subject, too, he was perforce reticent.
Presently, after they had been riding for over half an hour, Drexel thought he detected, penetrating the countess’s unbroken talk, a faint, soft thudding.
“Do you hear that?” he asked, looking back.
“What?”
“It sounds like horses’ feet.”
“I hear nothing; it must be imagination. See, the road is empty.” And so it was, to where it emerged from a forest but a quarter of a mile behind.
The countess talked rapidly on—talk that was as wax to fill his ears against that warning sound. But soon the thudding had come so near that it could no longer be concealed by the countess’s conversation. Drexel looked back again. Forth from the forest into the broad moonlight shot four dark bodies, and sped swiftly toward them over the snow.
“Look, countess!” he cried. “We are pursued!”
“Yes—horsemen!” she breathed. “The prince has sent for us.”
Drexel leaned forward and began to beat the horse’s flanks with the ends of the lines; the whip the countess had dropped out unnoticed when they had climbed into the sleigh. But belabouring the beast was to little purpose. The countess’s orders had been well observed. The horse was one of those dogged roadsters that can strike a fair gait at daybreak and hold to it till nightfall, but that cannot be pressed much beyond this speed, no matter how strong the arm that lays on the whip. The animal quivered at the blows, but kept his even pace.
“They’re gaining on us fast!” Drexel exclaimed. “We can never outrun them with this beast of wood!”
The countess had to play her part. “What shall we do?” she asked. Her voice came out with a difficulty that surprised her.
“What can we do in this great empty prairie?” he returned grimly. “In fifteen or twenty minutes they’ll be upon us.”
“And then?”
“We’ll see.”
They glided on—the excellent cob doing its mediocre best, the four black figures gaining, gaining, gaining—showing more and ever more clearly the lines of horses and armed men. It was a race that could have but one end. Soon the pursuers were but three hundred yards behind; and still they crept closer, closer. Drexel thought these horsemen meant only arrest—which would be disaster enough; he never guessed that death was riding after him, and that in his pocket were papers that would justify his killing.
Two hundred yards ... one hundred seventy-five.
In five more minutes it would all be over; the countess’s fifty thousand rubles would be earned. She stole a glance at the face of the man she had led to his end in this white waste. In the moonlight it showed clean-cut, strong.
“There is no escape?” she whispered—and her voice sounded strange in her ears.
His head shook.
One hundred fifty yards ... one hundred twenty-five.
“Countess,” said Drexel, with intense self-reproach, “I cannot tell you how I blame myself for letting you come!”
“Had I not come, I would have been in trouble just the same,” she said.
“Perhaps not. But even if so, far better be arrested in Prince Berloff’s house, than by those Cossacks in this desert spot.”
The countess, her head turned backwards, saw Drexel’s death, her fortune, gain upon them—and no chance of escape before him. He was as thoroughly trapped in this vast, open country as though he were locked in a narrow dungeon in the granite heart of a prison-fortress.
At the moment the Cossacks had come galloping out of the forest that peculiar emotional excitement that had possessed the countess all day had suddenly leaped to a thousandfold its former keenness. As the Cossacks gained, the feeling had grown more intense. She did not try to analyze that feeling; had she, she would have thought it born of the thrill of the death-moment riding so hard behind.
As the Cossacks sounded closer, closer, as her well-plotted success drew nearer, nearer, she grew weak, and her strange feeling swirled dizzily within her. And still it had no meaning.
One hundred yards.
“Stop—or we fire!” boomed across the night in a deep and powerful voice.
The moonlight, shining straight into the speaker’s bearded face, corroborated the voice. Drexel saw the leader was Captain Nadson.
And he was all but in that man’s hands. For aninstant he thought what his capture would mean to Sonya!
“Take the lines, countess,” he said sharply. “Now crouch down in the body of the sleigh, so there’ll be less danger of your being hit.” He himself huddled on the floor, his face toward the Cossacks, his Browning pistol drawn.
For a moment the countess—“the cleverest, keenest, most heartless woman spy in Russia”—sat crouching in the bottom of the sleigh, reeling, appalled. The captain’s cry, “Stop, or we fire!” was to her the beginning of the death climax, and this nearness of the end revealed to her, as though by a flash of lightning, the meaning of her all-day’s strange excitement and of her present wild emotion—and the revelation froze her soul with horror.
This man that she had led to this lonely death, she loved him!
She had, in the pursuit of her profession, lured many a man to acts or confidences that had sent him to prison, to frozen exile on far Siberian plains, even to death by bullet or hangman’s noose. For more than one of these victims she had felt a liking—which, however, had never stayed her purpose; and when the man was gone, and his price was in her hand, she had never wished her act undone. Her original liking for Drexel she had lightly classified as one with these others—and only this climacteric moment revealed the truth.
She loved him—she had set this trap for him—and now she was powerless to save him!
She sprang up and began wildly to belabour the horse. The poor beast, under this terrific beating, did manage to make a little spurt and for a moment they held their own.
“You are under arrest! Stop—or we fire!” bellowed the captain.
“Do you think you could shoot them?” gasped the countess over her shoulder.
“I have only the seven cartridges in my pistol. And I’m a poor shot.”
“Try! Try!”
“If I fire, all four of them will fire. They have carbines. If they begin to shoot it may mean that you’ll be killed. It’s better for you to be arrested.”
“Don’t think of me!” she cried frantically. “I’d rather be killed. Shoot! Shoot!”
“Wait till they are nearer. My pistol will have a better chance.”
The next moment there was a spurt of fire. He looked behind him to see if the countess had been hit, and for the first time saw that she was on her feet striking the horse with all her strength.
“Sit down!” he cried, and he seized the back of her coat and dragged her into the bottom of the sleigh beside him.
“Then shoot!” she gasped.
“If I could only kill the captain I wouldn’t mind arrest so much.”
“You must kill them all! All!”
“Why?”
“Because they——”
She broke off suddenly. She dared not tell him why. To tell him that they meant to kill him, would be to reveal to him that they were but the tools working out her design.
“You must kill them all! All!” she repeated frantically.
Another flash—another whizzing bullet.
“Here goes, then. For the captain first.”
His Browning flamed out. The captain and the other three galloped on. The Browning cracked again—and a third time. All four riders still kept their seats.
“Oh, oh!” moaned the countess. “Only four bullets left! Youcan’tmiss again. You must get a man with every bullet!”
“Stop!” roared the captain. “We don’t want to shoot. We don’t want to hurt the woman!”
“Shoot!” gasped the countess to Drexel. “And for God’s sake shoot straight!”
Drexel in silence tried to take careful aim over the back of the sleigh. But a galloping horseman at forty yards is not an easy moonlight pistol target for a novice in a swaying sleigh. After the crack of the pistol the captain rode on, but one of the men slowly fell behind.
“That’s better!” breathed the countess. “You’ve wounded a horse. Once more!”
At the next shot the captain’s bridle arm fell to his side. The sixth went wide.
“Oh, oh!” groaned the countess.
“They’re not shooting any better,” commented Drexel between his teeth.
She could not explain that their shots were going wild because they were under orders not to risk injuring her.
“Is the next the only cartridge? Feel in your pockets—perhaps you have some more!” she implored.
“This is the last,” said he.
He took aim at the captain—fired—threw the empty Browning away with a cry of despair. For the captain still sat his saddle.
“All is over,” he said grimly.
“No, no!” she cried. “They must not take you! They must not!”
“I’m willing they should not.”
“See—we’re in the forest,” she said desperately. “We’re running within two or three paces of the trees. See how thick they are. The men could never follow you on horseback in there. If you jump from the sleigh and make a dash——”
“I shall not desert you, countess,” he interrupted.
“You must—you must! They’ll take me just the same whether you go or remain. So why should not you at least escape?”
Yes, his thought told him in a flash, it would be just the same with the countess. That being the casehe should think of Sonya—think of his safety, which was Sonya’s safety.
“I’ll pretend to help them,” she went on breathlessly. “I’ll try to hold you; we’ll pretend to have a struggle—that’ll make them more lenient with me.” This bit of play-acting was an inspired device for clearing herself with Prince Berloff. “And if you get away, don’t go near a railway station; the prince will have men waiting for you at them all. Now!”
She seized him and turned backward toward the pursuers. “Hurry!—Hurry!” she cried to them. “I have him!” And to Drexel she whispered: “Now struggle to break away from me. Be rough—it will be better for me if I have some marks to show.”
They struggled—squirmed and swayed about in the rocking little vehicle—the countess encouraged by the pursuers; and in the struggle she deftly removed from his pocket the documents that were to excuse his death.
“Now jump!” she whispered.
He leaped forth. Then, all within the space of an instant, he went rolling in the snow—there were four cracks—fine, dry snow-spray leaped up about him—and at the instant’s end he was on his feet and dashing into the forest.
Crack—crack—crack went the guns blindly behind him, and the wild bullets whined among the branches. The horsemen plunged in after him, but were thrust back by the arms of the close-growingwide-spreading trees. They sprang from their horses and gave chase on foot. But Drexel, going at the best speed he could make in the knee-deep snow, weaving among the trees, stumbling often, scratching his face on the undergrowth, heard their voices grow fainter and fainter—and when he paused after half an hour, completely blown, he could hear no sound at all.
For the time, at least, he was safe.