In the Name of a Woman: A Romance

by Arthur W. Marchmont

Then I followed the way she had told me, and found myself close to the street in which my hotel was situated. I walked slowly from that point, my brain in a whirl of excitement at all that had happened in the crowded hours of that night.

When I reached my hotel it was only to pace my room in restless, anxious, brain-racking thought of the net of complications in which I found myself involved, and the hundred dangers which appeared to have sprung up suddenly to menace me. It was in vain that I threw myself on my bed. I could not sleep. If I dozed, it was only to start up at the bidding of some dream danger, threatening me with I know not what consequences. It was long past the dawn before I slept, and when the servant called me, I sprang up, thinking it was my instant arrest that was intended.

But my wits were cooler and more collected for the rest, and when hour after hour of the anxious day passed and nothing happened, I began to think I had exaggerated the risks of my position.

In the cool of the evening I rode out, and on my return ventured to find out and pass through the street of the previous night’s adventure. Nothing unusual was astir. No one paid the least heed to me. I might have been an ordinary tourist without the least interest in anything but the scenery. So it was at my hotel. Nothing happened that evening nor on any of the three remaining days of the week, and I occupied myself with the business of preparing the large house which I had taken for my residence.

Yet, even the lack of any consequences to me had a grim significance. It seemed a fearsome thing, indeed, that murder could be attempted openly, and two of the would-be assassins shot dead in the effort, and yet the life of the city flow on without the least interruption, and, as it appeared, with never a person to ask a question about them or show the faintest interest in the event. Truly, as my strange companion in the adventure had said, death counted for little in the grim game of intrigue that was being played in the country.

I had provided myself with a few letters of introduction, and, knowing the average poverty of the people and the high esteem set on riches, I had dropped a number of judicious hints that I was a man of considerable wealth. I had taken the largest house I could find in the city, and by these means had opened a way into a certain section of society. It had been my original intention to use such opportunities as would thus be afforded to carry out my original intention. But the adventure with the Countess Bokara would render this less necessary should I resolve to accept the offer of close service with the Prince which she had made me; and the few guarded inquiries I was able to make as to her influence confirmed completely my previous belief in her power to fulfil all she had promised.

Several days passed, and I was in this condition of comparative uncertainty when, toward the close of the week following my adventure, an incident occurred which gave me startling proof that, for all the apparent quietude, I myself was, as she had declared, a marked man.

I was sitting alone in a café one evening, my friends having left me, when my attention was attracted to the movements of three men, two being in uniform, at a table in a far corner of the place. They were busily occupied over some papers, and a constant succession of men kept coming to them, as it seemed to me, for some kind of instructions. As business was constantly transacted in this way at the cafés, I had at first no more than a feeling of idle curiosity; but when the thing had continued for an hour or more, my interest deepened, and I watched them closely, although, as I thought, unobserved by them.

At length a message was given them which appeared to cause great surprise, and they paid their score and hurried out of the place.

I followed them, still impelled mainly by curiosity; and as they were engrossed in conversation, talking and gesticulating, I had no difficulty in keeping them in sight as they passed through several streets, and at length entered a large house which filled one side of a small quadrangle, close on the street.