“Come in,” she said, much relieved, as a discreet footstep, and a rap at the door caught her ear, still on the alert. She took up a cigarette from a little case that lay close to her hand; she felt it would calm her nerves, and steady her voice.
A man entered—a flat-nosed, high cheek-boned Russian of the lower classes, whose low forehead betokened an absence of what is usually called intellectuality, but whose piercing, cold, grey eyes, deeply sunk between the thinnest of lids, spoke of cunning and of alacrity. A useful man, no doubt. Madame Demidoff seemed more calm the moment she spoke to him.
“Eugen,” she said, “listen to me, for something very mysterious has happened at the opera ball to-night, and there is some work you must do for me now, at once, and also during the course of to-morrow.
“The Tsarevitch went to the opera ball to-night disguised as a black domino.… Yes! he was in Vienna.… Incognito.… No one knew it.… The whole thing was foolish in the extreme, and I am beginning to fear some foul agency must have been at work. He was decoyed from his opera-box by a woman dressed as an odalisque… in red and gold, I think… no matter the description.… There were hundreds in that guise at the opera. Nicholas Alexandrovitch followed her; a fiaker was waiting for them; he jumped in, and it drove off at great rapidity towards the old town.”
“Yes, barina?”
For she had paused a moment to collect her thoughts before giving him her final directions.
“You must find out for me first whether the Tsarevitch has returned to his hotel, and if not, what steps Count Lavrovski is taking to discover the key to the mystery. You must dog the old man’s every footstep, and if he goes to the police, or sends any telegraphic message across to Petersburg, you must apprise me of it at once. Moreover, both outside the opera house, at the fiaker stations, and at the various railways, you must glean what scraps of information you can relating to the flying domino and odalisque, or the fiaker that drove them. I leave by the express for Petersburg to-morrow at midnight; you must come and tell me what you have learnt in the early part of the evening.”
She dismissed him now, and when once more alone she sat and thought over the occurrences of to-night. Then it was that ever and anon the wistful look—almost of yearning, that rendered her aristocratic face so inexpressibly sweet and tender—crept into her eyes; but when it came, the impatient little sigh and self-contemptuous frown invariably accompanied it. Surely this worldly woman, this elegant grande dame, would not allow even the faintest vestige of sentiment to creep up among her recollections of the gay carnival ball, more especially as that sentiment was evidently directed towards one who——
“Ah me!” Madame Demidoff sighed again, threw away her cigarette, and rang for her maid, all with the idea of putting an end to any more thinking that night.