“Absolutely. I know him well.”
“Good. Then leave that part to me, while you hurry off and bring in about a dozen of our men. Let their arrival be a little dramatic, to give colour to the drama, so that the spies may think the meeting too important to be missed; and I will answer for the rest.”
As soon as he had gone I called my steward and told him plainly that there was a spy in the house, and that we suspected one of the three men I named. Then I outlined the arrangements he was to make—to get as many of the other servants out of the house as he could without creating suspicion, and to give those who remained work to do in other parts of the house, so that the three should be free to spy upon us; that then he should set them separately some light kind of work close to the room in which I directed the meeting was to be held, of which he was to drop a hint. He was a shrewd fellow, and entered readily into the matter.
“One of them is no traitor, sir,” he said, naming him. “I can answer for him with my life. I have known him for many years, and I am sure of him. The others I do not know and do not like.”
“Never mind, test all three; and as the clock strikes eleven be at hand to watch them and await my orders.”
He went at once to do as I ordered; and that he did the work shrewdly the sequel showed.
Zoiloff returned very soon with Spernow and another man, and I received them in the room which had been prepared as the stage for our little drama. When the others came, I noticed with a smile that each was cloaked; and in all we made a party of fourteen. We smoked and had wine until I calculated that the spies would be at their posts; and then, speaking in a tone lowered but sufficiently distinct to reach any eaves-dropper, I told them that the hour had come when we thought it necessary to make a most important disclosure of our plans. While working apparently for the Princess, we were, in fact, Russian agents pledged to the Czar, and bent upon putting the Princess upon the throne solely in his Majesty’s interests; and I went on to declare that the hour had come to strike the blow, and so on.
A discussion followed, in which objections were raised and answered, while I kept my eye upon the clock until the hand was approaching the hour of eleven, when I rose and declared that this was the moment when each man must declare himself.
My rising was, in fact, an agreed signal, and Zoiloff, Spernow, and another man stole noiselessly to the spots where I knew any listeners would be sure to post themselves.
As the clock was on the point of striking, the two doors and a window opening to a conservatory beyond were flung open, and one of the spies was caught in the very act of eavesdropping.