“Now they are there again,” he commenced.
“The Strelitzil? [Footnote: a Russian body-guard first established by Ivan the Terrible.] Have I not rooted them out?”
“They grow like the dragon’s seed, and now they want to deliver Alexis.”
“Have you any more exact information?”
“The conspirators meet this evening at five o’clock.”
“Where?”
“Number fourteen the Strandlinje, at an apparently harmless meal.”
“Strand—14,” wrote the Czar on his tablets. “Any more?”
“To-night at two o’clock they fire the city.”
“At two o’clock?” The Czar shook his head, and his face twitched.