Chapter XI—CONVICTION AT LAST
EVENTS had so crowded the few minutes that I had not had time to think, except in those flashes of decision necessary in a crisis. My instinct in such times is to act first and think afterwards. Do something, whether right or wrong; but do it. And I have often found that the wrong thing done quickly may be less dangerous than the right thing done after a too careful deliberation.
The moment the man Vastic lay dead before my eyes, I regretted having shot him: a regret due not only to a naturally intense repugnance to take a fellow-creature’s life, but also to reasons of policy. So far as ethical considerations were concerned, I felt I was justified. He was going to kill me; and you cannot argue with a six shooter. It would have been just too soft to have asked him to put his gun down while we discussed the question of my identity. The positions would have been reversed. I should have been dead when he realized his mistake, instead of his being dead when I realized mine; and of the two, I preferred vastly the present sequence.
What I felt I ought to have done was to have winged and disabled him. He would have been just as effectually incapable of mischief, and we should all have been spared the embarrassment of having to deal with his dead body.
I did not anticipate any serious trouble with the authorities, for I had no doubt that old Kalkov would be able to arrange the matter. Vastic was in all probability known to the police; he had been killed in an attempt upon the life of the man he believed to be the Emperor; and his death was not unlikely to be welcome enough to the Government.
But there were his comrades to consider; and that they would set about avenging him there was no room to doubt. There had been an eye-witness who, unless Ivan caught him, would carry the news straight to them; and their anger was as certain to fall upon Helga as to be directed against me.
This prompted a number of disquieting and perplexing considerations.
My first thought was for Helga’s safety; and obviously the only thing to do was to get her away to some hiding-place where these men would be unable to find her. To induce her to leave would, however, be so difficult, that I could think of but one means of influencing her—and that was to encourage her mistaken belief that I was the Emperor. It meant deceit on my part; but in such a case the end must justify the means. She must be saved; and if no other way was open, I must be content with that.
There was another consideration, moreover. My own safety depended to a great extent upon these members of the Nihilist brotherhood continuing to regard me as the Emperor. It was true I should probably be the object of attack so long as they believed I was virtually at their mercy at Brabinsk, and divorced from the usual safeguards and precautions which fenced off the Emperor in the Palace. But that danger was temporary, and would cease the moment I got back to the Palace, and resumed my own character.