This was evidently a new view to his Imperial Highness, and I could see by the expression of his face that it was telling powerfully.
‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘it seems to me that you have my word. When do you propose to pay me this money?’
‘Now, this moment, if your Highness pleases.’
‘Count it out, then,’ was the brief injunction.
“It was a singular scene, as I stood there laying down pile after pile of greasy ten-thousand-rouble notes on a richly inlaid table.”
I obeyed. It was a singular scene as I stood there laying down pile after pile of greasy ten thousand rouble notes on a richly inlaid table, while one of the highest personages in the proudest Court of Europe or Asia stood beside me, his tall figure glistening with gold ornaments and jewelled decorations, and his dark Slavonian features flushed with excitement and greed. As the last note left my fingers, he bent down and breathed in my ear—
‘Take the Siberian railway, and use your eyes.’
I am ready to admit that my first feeling, after hearing those few words which had cost me a hundred thousand roubles each, was one of sickening disappointment. But a very little consideration served to show me that the Grand Duke had told me enough to place success within my reach, and that the information which he thus put it in my power to acquire by my own observation was calculated to be of greater value than any mere statement made at second-hand.
Somewhere along the vast, just completed track which connects the Baltic with the Pacific lay the key to the true purpose of that famous rescript which had imposed on all the statesmen of the world, and only vigilance and circumspection were required to find it.