CHAPTER XXVIIITHE DAY AFTER
AN HOUR would likely pass—with God’s grace more—ere the tenants of that dark room would be discovered and St. Petersburg’s ten thousand police and spies be unloosed upon the chase. By the hour’s end they must all be safe in hiding, or stand in danger of wearing the Czar’s neckties.
Drexel had still urgent need of his wits. But as the grim shape of the Fortress withdrew into the rearward gloom, the breaking strain of the last half-hour began to relax, and he began to feel the reaction of the two nights he had not slept, and of the two nights and a day that he had been stretched upon the rack of an almost superhuman suspense. Moreover, the gash from the governor’s knife, mere flesh-wound though it was, had bled profusely in the office, and now in the sleigh he could feel the warm blood creeping down his back and chest. He was dizzy, and he felt himself grow weaker, yet he dared not call anyone from the van to bear him company, for the minutes were too precious to use a single one of them in a transfer to the sleigh.
He clenched his teeth and tried to hold fast tohis slipping strength. But he grew more dizzy, more weak. His horse, noting the lack of incitement from behind, dropped into a lazy jog, and Drexel saw the van pull rapidly away. He had not the strength to mend the horse’s pace, nor the strength to call out, even had he dared. The gap widened; the van was lost in the darkness ahead; he felt his strength ebbing—ebbing. He made a supreme effort to hold on to consciousness; but suddenly blankness closed in upon him, and he lurched sidewise from the low sleigh out upon the snow.
His next sensation was of some one shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes. It was still night; he was sitting on the snow; and at his back was a support which he realized was a man’s knee.
“Awake yet?” asked a voice.
“Yes,” he said weakly. “What time is it?”
“Five.”
He had lain there for an hour or more. Where were Sonya and the others?
He started to rise, and the man put his hand beneath his shoulders and assisted him to his feet. Drexel now made out that his Good Samaritan wore the uniform of a policeman, and he had a moment of poignant fear.
“A drop too much, eh?” said the officer with heavy facetiousness.
Drexel was more than content to have that remain the explanation of his state. He was still weakand there was an icy numbness through all his bones. He begged the use of the policeman’s arm for a little way, which was granted him; and after a few blocks of that support he felt sufficiently recovered to thank his obliging crutch and venture on alone.
At last he gained the house of Sabatoff. The Keeper of the Seals listened in amazement to his sketch of what had happened in the three hours since they had parted; and on learning of the governor’s knife he quickly bared Drexel’s shoulder and dressed the wound with no little skill.
Whether the prisoners had escaped or been recaptured, it was clear that Drexel could do no more and that it was time for him to consider his own safety. Sabatoff aided him to change into the clothes of a citizen, and once more he set forth from the little house, Sabatoff promising to send news of the fugitives if any came to him. An hour later, having changed from sleigh to sleigh to hide his trail, he drove up to the Hotel Europe. A sense of personal relief descended upon him as he entered the hotel. He was once more Henry Drexel, American citizen.
It was too early yet to see his uncle’s family, so he went to his room and stretched himself upon his bed. But weary as he was, there was no sleep for him. Was Sonya now in safety—or had she been recaptured in the hour of escape and was she now lying again in her dungeon in Peter and Paul?
This uncertainty throbbed through him with everypulse-beat. And there was no active measure he could take to learn the truth. He could do nothing but wait; wait for good or evil news from Sabatoff, or wait till rumour or the papers brought him news that could be only of disaster.
His mind went back to that strange introduction to Sonya upon the Moscow train. Half his life seemed to have been lived since then—and yet this epoch included but a fortnight! She passed before him in the various aspects which the two weeks had shown him; as the shawled factory girl; as the princess, proud with the pride of a thousand years; as the ardent saviour of her brother’s life; he saw her go calmly down the stairs of the house in Three Saints’ Court to give him chance of escape; saw her in her dungeon, with calm and lofty mien prepared to mount the sacrificial scaffold. And this rare figure, while the smoke had swirled and the flames had flared wildly round them, this rare figure had kissed his brow, and said she loved him! The remembrance of that moment swept him in dizzy awe to heaven....
But where was she now?
He could stand this inactive ignorance no longer. He got into a suit of his own clothes and went down to the dining-room. Perhaps news might already be circulating there, for the Hotel Europe was a favourite resort of officialdom. With swift sight he picked out three officers whose breakfast of tea and sweet rolls was forgotten in excited converse.Masking any possible show of emotion behind the Paris Herald, he took the table adjoining them, his ears wide open. Sure enough, they were rehearsing last night’s events in Peter and Paul. It appeared that Governor Kavelin had been discovered and released at five o’clock and all St. Petersburg was now beginning to reverberate with the affair. They had the whole story, even the awesome picture of the fall of Prince Berloff beneath the manacles of The White One, followed by her own swift death—for Colonel Kavelin had been far enough revived to be a witness to the double tragedy.
It was all strange, they said—wonderfully, wonderfully strange. And not the least strange of all was a later episode. There had been a third condemned prisoner, the American correspondent, James Freeman. When the guards had come at four o’clock to lead him to his execution, he had protested that he was no revolutionist, but a spy, and his being there was but a spy’s stratagem, and that an order for his release was on the way and should have been there an hour gone. They had regarded the talk as the hysterical ravings of one undone by fear, and had dragged him from his cell. When he had seen there was no hope, he had taken on a cynical courage. He had ordered the hangman to keep his greasy paws off him, and had himself, with steady hands, settled the soaped cord about his neck, and with a nod and a sneering, “Good-morning, gentlemen,” had swung out of the world.
And an hour later the order for his release had been found in the breast of the dead Berloff!
While Drexel listened, his eyes fixed on his paper, there was a rustle beside him. He looked up. Into the empty chair across the table had slipped the Countess Baronova.
Her manner was smilingly composed. But he saw that she was pale, high-wrought, and that there were dark rings about her eyes.
She leaned forward. “I have come here—especially to try to see you,” she whispered with an effort.
“Yes?”
“You know—what I have been. From your point of view—and I do not blame you—it is your duty to expose me to the revolutionists. I have come to tell you that this is not necessary.”
He did not reply.
“After what has happened—the last few days—last night—I cannot be what I used to be any more. I wanted you to know that.”
“I am glad,” he whispered.
“I am leaving Russia. After what has happened—I can’t stand it here—and it will be safest. I think that is all. Except”—and she looked him straight in the eyes, and her voice dropped to a barest breath—“I believe I know who this Captain Laroque is.”
“Yes?”
“What he did was—was wonderful!” Her darkeyes looked a quick, subdued admiration. “That is all. Good-bye.”
She rose and was leaving him, but he followed her to the tapestried doorway. Here, very pale, she inclined her head to him and was sweeping away—when suddenly he held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said. “And I hope—I hope—”
“Thank you. Good-bye.”
For an instant her hand pressed his with quivering tensity. Then she bowed again, and moved away.
Drexel returned to his table and again set his ears open, but heard nothing more of consequence. He thought of his relatives above; of Alice, even now, perhaps, beginning excitedly to prepare for the wedding. He was rising to go upstairs and discharge his painful duty, when he saw that Prince Valenko had entered the room and was bearing in his direction. They exchanged a few words of commonplace, then they drew apart to a window and made a show of gazing out.
The prince’s manner was cool, even casual, for the sake of those eyes that might be looking on, and in it was no slightest sign of the secret that lay between them. But when he spoke, his low words vibrated with eagerness.
“Have you heard anything of the escaped prisoners?” he asked.
“Nothing. And you?”
“Nothing. Until certain gentlemen who honoured me with their company last night left me thismorning, I had supposed the execution had taken place.”
Drexel replied in the same masked language. “You must have been surprised.”
The prince nodded. “I have no idea who this Captain Laroque is,” he went on, with a calm look into Drexel’s face; “and I have no wish to know, for it would be my official duty to hang him. But if by any strange twist of circumstances you should ever meet him, please inform him that he is the boldest man I ever heard of.”
“Should there be such a strange twist, I will,” said Drexel.
“Doubtless he is already on his way out of Russia,” the prince went on. “For he undoubtedly knows that of all concerned in last night’s affair he is the one most wanted by the Government—that a vast reward is being offered for his arrest, and that thousands of men are already searching for him.”
“Indeed!” ejaculated Drexel.
“But I dare say he will make good his escape. Should he by chance have any relatives of importance—bereaved relatives—in whose company he could go, he would be certain to escape suspicion.” He bowed. “I wish you good-morning, Mr. Drexel.”
He started away. But with a quick motion Drexel caught his arm, for through the doorway had just entered Captain Nadson and Colonel Kavelin.
“Prince,” he whispered, “see those two men who have just entered. I prefer not to meet them.”
The prince looked. “Excuse me,” he said. “Those are the men who can identify Captain Laroque. I have some orders to give them.”
Out of the tail of his eye Drexel saw the military governor accost the two officers with curt aloofness and lead them out. He waited a moment, then crossed to the door. The trio were in conversation down a corridor, the backs of the two officers toward him. Drexel crossed to the stairway and swiftly mounted.
Of a surety, St. Petersburg was no safe place for him!
He went to his uncle’s apartment. Tables and chairs were heaped with wedding gifts, and wherever a spot was empty of presents it held a vase of flowers. The Howards had been up most of the night before, and his aunt and Alice were only rising, but his uncle joined him at once. The old man greeted him heartily, and spoke for several minutes of the wedding now but a few hours off.
“And was your trip to Moscow a success?”
“I hope events will prove that I have succeeded in every detail,” said Drexel.
“Good. You’ll tell me about it later. And I’ve been having success too.” He half closed his eyes and nodded his head. “I’ve had a dozen cipher cables from America while you’ve been gone. Great news about that street-railway scheme!”
“Yes?” said Drexel mechanically. He was glad of a momentary respite from his unpleasant task.
“Things have developed just as we planned. The scheme is ripe. All we’ve got to do is to hustle home, do a little more work, and then pluck the profits.”
The scheme had been out of Drexel’s head for near a fortnight. Coming back fresh as it did, it had certain aspects it had not borne before.
“I believe the fifteen millions profit is to be squeezed out of the city—out of the people,” he said slowly.
“I wouldn’t use such an unpleasant word as ‘squeeze’ about money that I was to control,” returned his uncle dryly. “Remember, this is where I step out and you step in. ‘The king is dead; long live the king!’”
Drexel gazed steadily at the carpet.
“You seem to take your coronation very coolly,” grumbled his uncle. “But in two weeks you’ll be back in Chicago, in the midst of the deal. You’ll be excited enough then!”
Drexel still looked down. His thoughts had gone to Sonya—to Sonya and the others, giving their all to the people’s cause. He raised his eyes.
“And what about the people?” he slowly asked.
“The people?” queried his uncle. “What people?”
“The city—the stock-holders—the tax-payers—the passengers—all the people we’re going to get the fifteen millions out of.”
“Now what the devil’s the matter with the boy!” exploded the old man.
“I haven’t been doing any thinking, and I’m not going to do any moralizing now—but somehow that deal looks different to me from what it used to.” He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, uncle, but you’ll have to count me out.”
“Count you out!” He stared. “Are you crazy?”
“I am just beginning to come to my senses,” said Drexel.
“Then you are in earnest?”
“With all the earnestness I have.”
The old man regarded the other in grim silence. His jaw began to tighten and his eyes to shoot fire from beneath their bushy iron-gray brows.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Some quality that had lain dormant in Drexel till it had been roused by his fortnight’s contact with new ideals, new motives, now suddenly stirred within him. His face quickened with decision.
“Yes I think I do know,” he said.
“Well—what is it?”
“After all, I’m not going to drop out of that street-car deal. I’m going back to fight it.”
“Fight it?” The old man looked bewildered. “For whom?”
“For the people.”
“For the people!”
Amazement, contempt, rising wrath, struggled in his face. “You realize, young man, that means you are going to fight me?”
“Forgive me, uncle, for I think we have truly loved one another—”
“No snuffling!”
“Yes, I am going to fight you.”
The old man stared as if he could not quite believe his ears; but the square-chinned, determined young face left him no doubt. His lips tightened into a hard straight line, his head sank crouching between his shoulders, his short hair seemed to rise like the ruff of an angry dog. He leaned forward—the fighting John Howard that many a man in Chicago had met and gone down before.
“A declaration of war, eh?” he said in a slow guttural voice. “All right. I thought I was done for, but that puts ten more good years in me. And I think John Howard can give you all you want. Oh, it’ll be a fight, young man, a fight—and you’ll never imagine it’s anything else! And now, good-morning to you.”
“I suppose it is only natural for you to take it so, uncle. I’m sorry the break——”
“I think I said good-morning!”
Drexel gazed a moment at the glaring, rigid old man. “Good-morning,” he said, and started for the door.
But he turned about. “Pardon me. I have something of importance to tell you.”
“You’ve told me enough!” He pointed to the door.
“This does not concern me. It concerns you and aunt, and Alice most of all. I must speak to the three of you.”
It was the look in Drexel’s face rather than his words that made his uncle summon Alice and her mother. Their exclamations of pleasure at sight of Drexel were stopped by an abrupt command.
“We are no longer friends,” the old man explained to the wondering women. “Go on, Henry.”
“What I’m going to tell you is God’s truth—I can prove it all if need be,” he began. And he went on to unfold the prince’s secret office and his crafty villainies. Before he was half to the end of the dark record, his uncle and his aunt were staring with white faces and Alice was bowed upon the table among the wedding gifts, sobbing and shuddering.
When he finished, Alice threw herself upon her father’s breast. “Oh, I can’t marry him—never! Never!”
The old man strained her to him convulsively. “There—there, my child! You shall not!”
He looked in accusing wrath at Drexel. “My God, why did you wait till the very wedding-day to tell this?” he fiercely demanded.
“This was my first chance.”
“Well—if they were at the very altar we’d break it off!”
“There is no need to break it off,” said Drexel quietly.
“No need to break it off! Why?”
“Because he’s dead.”
“Dead!” they cried in one voice.
They stared at him, blanched, astounded—and relieved. Drexel went on to tell how the prince had come by his death, telling it as something he had overheard in the dining-room, and referring only in vaguest terms to Captain Laroque. Some day he might make known his part in this daring escape, with its triple tragedy, but that day was in the far, far future.
Alice again threw herself upon her father’s breast. “Take me home, father—please, please!” she begged him.
He caressed her hair with tender hand. “You shall go. We will leave at once—to-day. But there’s much to be seen to—packing, tickets, passports, returning these presents.”
He looked at Drexel, and his face became grim, but not so grim as it had been a half-hour back. “Henry, it’s still going to be war all right,” said he. “But under the circumstances, till we get out of this country, what do you say to a truce?”
“With all my heart!” said Drexel.
The hours that followed were feverishly busy ones. Drexel furtively studied Alice. She could but be appalled by the revelations concerning the prince and by his death, but in her manner was noneof that excruciating grief and horror that a loving heart would feel over such a double loss of a loved one. It was plain, what he had all along suspected, that she had never loved Berloff, but that her pretty young head had merely been turned by his title. Drexel knew who had most of her heart, and it needed no superhuman prescience to see her a year hence, her wounds healed, her head a little wiser, yielding a blushing “yes” to her old Chicago lover, Jack Hammond.
But all this while Drexel’s first thoughts were all of Sonya. Twelve o’clock came—one—two—three—and not a word of news. Did this silence mean that she had escaped, but could not without great risk send him word of her security? Or did the silence mean that she had been secretly rearrested and was being secretly held in some voiceless dungeon?
Every minute repeated these hopes and fears. He acquiesced in the plan for the general hegira of that night, let his passport be countersigned, his baggage be packed, his ticket be bought, for he well knew the masked advice of General Valenko was good advice. Yet even as he suffered these preparations, he knew he would not, could not, leave St. Petersburg till he had word with Sonya, or knew her fate.
At a little after three Sabatoff called. But he had not heard a word; and he soon left, to be ready for a message should one come, with the promise to return at six.
The early darkness closed down upon the city. Another hour dragged on. Drexel could stand the suspense no longer, so, despite the risk, he slipped down into the tea-room and again set his ears wide open. They were still discussing the daring of the unknown Captain Laroque, the escape, the three tragic deaths. But no word about the prisoners. He returned above and wore away another awful hour, and yet another. Then Sabatoff came again—still with nothing.
Sabatoff had barely gone when a note was handed Drexel. It read:
“I am requested to inform you that the condition of Princess Valenko has shown rapid and great improvement. Her doctor has given her permission to receive a few friends, and in case you are at liberty she will be glad to see you.“Vera Savanova, Nurse.”
“I am requested to inform you that the condition of Princess Valenko has shown rapid and great improvement. Her doctor has given her permission to receive a few friends, and in case you are at liberty she will be glad to see you.
“Vera Savanova, Nurse.”