Having more than an hour to spare, I now laid in a large stock of Turkish tobacco and cigarette papers, so as to have some means of beguiling the time on the long, wearisome run across Asia. I also bought a second-hand valise, and stocked it modestly with clothes. Finally I made a hearty breakfast in the station restaurant, and boarded the train a few minutes before it rolled out of Moscow.
Needless to say, I had introduced myself to the superintendent of the train, an official of great dignity and importance. As a police agent, of course I traveled free on the Government lines. The superintendent was good enough to offer me a spare bed in his private cabin at the end of the train, and during the run we became the best of friends.
But I must be excused from dwelling on the details of the journey, not the first I had taken on the great transasiatic line. My whole energies were absorbed in two tasks. In the first place, I had to gain the confidence of the maid, Marie, and in the second to prevent her mistress gaining the confidence of the messenger of the Czar.
“I hope that message I brought to the Princess did not contain any bad news?” I said to Marie as soon as I got a chance of addressing her.
This was when we were fairly on the way.
After first attending to her mistress, and seeing that she was comfortably settled, the maid was at liberty to look after herself, and I had seized the opportunity to render her a few trifling services with her luggage.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” was the answer to my question. “The Princess tells me nothing of her secrets.”
“Perhaps the Princess Y——”
“Oh, let’s call her Sophy,” the maid interrupted crossly.
Needless to say I welcomed these symptoms that Marie was no great friend of her employer.