All night she paced up and down her room in restlessness and terror. At times she thought she could hear her father’s footsteps creeping stealthily towards the prisoner’s room, and then she had to stop her ears not to hear the last agonised cry of the young man, surprised and helpless in the hands of his assassin.
It was broad daylight before her nerves and brain found a short respite from the terrible anxiety that had tortured her, since that last decisive speech of her father’s at the meeting last night. Woman-like, she had obstinately pondered till she thought she saw a way out of the difficulty. Being a Russian she was very devout. She prayed long and earnestly for the success of her scheme, which was to save the prisoner from murder, and her comrades, her father, the great cause itself from eternal shame.
CHAPTER XVI.
It had been a weary, an anxious time of waiting for Count Lavrovski, while forced to sit patiently at the hotel, watching for news of the truant, and sending reports of the Tsarevitch’s imaginary attack of measles to the authorities at home.
But obviously the deception could not be carried on much longer. Already the Tsaritsa had spoken of coming herself to Vienna and nursing her son, and one or two imperious demands had been made through the ambassador for bulletins, signed by the great physicians, who no doubt had been called in to attend upon the illustrious patient. A day or two more would see the catastrophe, all the more terrible as Lavrovski’s deceit would be taken as a sure sign of complicity; and the old Russian now cursed his own weakness in not having immediately shifted the responsibility of this fearful calamity from his own shoulders, which would have been, as events proved, by far the wisest course to pursue. Disgrace would have been the result then—perhaps an order to spend a couple of years abroad; but now he saw no hope before him, only a vision of Siberia, there to end the last years of his life.
He had looked, half shudderingly, half resolutely, at the tiny revolver that would be his supreme and forlorn hope. No doubt, in consideration of his long years of faithful service to the family, his Imperial master would grant him the inestimable boon of death, instead of the slow tortures of a Siberian prison.
Oh! how Count Lavrovski wished he had never consulted that French detective, or having done so, had confided the whole truth to him, for had he not led him into these additional days of deception, which he felt would prove his ruin?
While Volenski, stricken down by his persistent ill-luck, had at last found in physical prostration merciful oblivion from the harrowing anxieties of the past few days, Count Lavrovski, in no less pitiable a plight than the young Pole himself, sat meditating as to whether he would once more seek out the old detective, this time armed with the determination to tell him all, or whether he would send a wire at once to Petersburg asking for immediate help. The latter was undoubtedly the wiser course. Prudence and duty both dictated it, but human nature, ever prone to put off an evil moment to some more distant time, begged inwardly for more delay.
It was, therefore, with a mixture of buoyant hope and surprise that Count Lavrovski heard that a lady desired to speak with him on a matter of urgent business. She had refused to give her name, the waiter said, but had asked him to tell the Count that she was the bearer of a message from M. Furet.
“Show her up at once,” said Lavrovski eagerly.