“Spernow found them for me,” was my answer.
“Would you change them?”
“Every man and woman to-morrow, if you can fill their places.”
“I can do that,” he assented quickly. “Wait—better—can you let me see them all? I may spot the traitor, or at all events separate the sheep from the goats.”
I rang the bell and sent for my steward. When he came I told him to get the servants all together, and send them in to me one at a time, as I wished to question them separately about a certain paper which I said had been mislaid.
They came in one by one, and we so arranged the position that each stood in a strong light for Zoiloff to be able to watch them as I put a short string of questions. He put a black mark against three whom he regarded as suspicious. The rest, he declared, were above question.
“My opinion is that one of those three men is false and a spy, presumably in the service of this woman. I expect they have been eavesdropping when you and I and Spernow have been together, and perhaps have caught some unguarded words. The thing is very ugly. What shall we do?”
“Fool them with their own tactics,” said I readily, thinking of my original idea. “Let us have a hurried meeting of men whom we can trust, have it to-night, explain the position hurriedly, and pretend that we are disclosing to them the real object of the plot—to work nominally for the Princess, but really for the Russian party—and have these suspects so placed that they can hear what is going on. Then catch them in the very act; and send them packing with this new version of the thing in their minds, after a pretty good fright, and under oath not to reveal the story.”
“Yes, it will serve; but it will want adroit management,” said Zoiloff.
“You say my steward is a man to be trusted?”