Chapter XXV—THE LUCK WAVERS
I WAS very preoccupied with my plans as I left the Foreign Embassy, and, crossing the side path quickly, ran against a man, who turned, stared, started, and muttering some words I did not catch, passed on.
Something about him struck me as familiar, and I glanced after him with half a mind to follow and speak to him. But time was pressing. It was already mid-day, and I had yet to devise a means of getting at the Emperor; so I entered my carriage and drove back to the hotel.
The incident had served to revive my caution, however, and when I alighted I had a good look about me. There were but few people about, and none to take any notice of me; but while I still stood in the lobby, a drosky drove rapidly past, and in it was the man whom I had jostled some minutes before.
Obviously I had been followed; and having ordered my lunch to be sent to my rooms, I went up feeling vaguely uneasy and worried.
The man’s face would obtrude itself into my thoughts, and my vain efforts to place him in my memory troubled me. In the last few crowded days I had seen such a number of different faces that my recollection of this one was lost in the crowd.
That any one should have recognized me at such a moment was annoying; and whoever the man might be, and whatever his object in following me, I foresaw the possibility of embarrassing complications, and even of dangerous ones.
Without interference from any one, the difficulties in the path of getting to the Czar’s presence were of themselves likely to tax my ingenuity to the utmost. Even when I had been his guest in the Palace they had proved insuperable, and now they threatened to be no less troublesome. A hundred different suggestions occurred to me, only to be put on one side.
You cannot walk up to an Emperor’s door, send in your card, and see him without any fuss; and if I was to succeed now, it would only be as a result of some ruse.