Madame Demidoff, vainly striving to appear calm, feverishly seized one of the two candlesticks, wildly hoping that luck would favour her in her choice, and left the room, followed by the astonished stare of the spectators, who instinctively made way to allow her to pass with her precious burden.
Volenski, who had not noticed the lady’s look of dismay, nor realised the cause of it, only saw what he thought was the identical candlestick that contained his secret papers standing there before his very eyes. Hardly crediting his senses, alternating between fear and hope, he took it up, and carried it away with him.
CHAPTER XXI.
“Monsieur,—I feel sure that the receipt of this letter will cause you no surprise.
“We are in each other’s power. Obviously it would not answer either of our purposes to fight out this duel. Shall we exchange our pièces de conviction, monsieur, to-night at my hotel—after the walnuts and wine. I dine at 7.30.
“Yours,
“Anna Demidoff.”
Iván Volenski held the delicately scented little pink note in his hand, and read and re-read it till he knew its brief contents by heart. It was such a strange ending to his terrible adventures of the last fortnight, culminating in that fierce struggle under the auctioneer’s desk, and Iván, who was not thirty, and was a man before he became a Socialist, thought of that foe whom he had known and dreaded so long, as she stood imploringly by his side, with the tiny, gloved hand resting on his coat-sleeve.
Since that moment he seemed to remember every subsequent event but as a half-distinct dream. He had grasped the candlestick which he believed held the secret papers with a wild feeling of exultation, and carried it home to his hotel. Once there, and his door securely locked, he had touched the hidden spring and seen the papers resting within the depths of the receptacle. With trembling hands he took them out, and his aching eyes travelled over them feverishly.
Oh! the first feeling of nameless horror when he realised that that writing, those papers, were not the ones he had fought for so valiantly, now, after so bitter a struggle; the hopeless sensation of utter despair, that seemed to numb his faculties, and deaden them even to the extent of not realising the contents of the papers he held in his hands!
It was not till fully half an hour afterwards, when he heard Mirkovitch’s heavy step on the stairs, that he succeeded in rousing himself from this strange apathy.
The old Socialist had tried Iván’s door, but finding it locked, had evidently gone away again. Iván did not want to see him then; he was beginning to think, and think he must alone, in peace, without fear, and with complete calm.
Madame Demidoff, the agent of the Russian Government, held the papers of the Socialistic brotherhood. True, but in exchange he, Volenski, held what would brand her before all the world as the spy of the Russian police, and for ever prevent her following that calling again. If made publicly known that her papers had fallen into wrong hands, her Government would, as is customary in such cases, disown their agent, and probably wreak vengeance upon her for her carelessness.