I alighted in Berlin armed only with two weapons, the passport made out in the name of Petrovitch, and a fairly accurate knowledge of the schemes, or at all events the hopes, of the German Government.
From the first beginning of my long investigation, all the clues I had picked up had led steadily in one direction.
The great disorganized Empire of the Czar’s, with its feeble-willed autocrat, its insubordinate grand dukes, its rival ministers pulling different ways, and its greedy officials whose country was their pocket, had been silently and steadily enfolded in the invisible web of German statecraft.
The brilliant personality of Wilhelm II had magnetized the vacillating, timorous Nicholas. Count Bülow had courted the Russian Foreign Office with the assiduous arts of a lover, and his wooing had been crowned by complete success. Through Petrovitch the grand dukes had been indirectly bribed, and the smaller fry like M. Auguste had been bought outright. Even the Army and Navy had been cajoled, or bought, or terrorized by pretended revelations of Japanese designs.
Russia had become a supple implement in the hands of the German Kaiser, the sovereign who for nearly twenty years had been striving toward one goal by a hundred different crooked paths.
It was evident that the unexplained disappearance of Petrovitch must have struck consternation into his employers. I suspected that the Princess Y—— had been summoned to Berlin to throw light on the event, and possibly to be furnished with instructions which would enable her to take over the dead man’s work.
My position was now peculiarly difficult. I wished to get in touch with the principals for whom Petrovitch had acted, but to avoid, if possible, meeting any one who had known him personally.
Above all, I was determined not to risk an encounter with Sophia. She knew that I was still alive, and I feared that her feminine intuition, quickened by love, would penetrate through whatever disguise I might adopt.
Under these circumstances I decided to begin by approaching Herr Finkelstein, the head of the imperial Secret Service in Berlin.