"Stephen was my brother," she said, "the one person who belonged to me after father died. Mother I don't remember. She came of a high Russian family who were sent to Siberia as political prisoners. She was only sixteen, and father saved her by making her his wife. I was named 'Olga' after her. But for that dreadful journey from Albuquerque I had to have some name that wouldn't give me away when my ticket was bought. Stephen and I were called Bevan, because father used that name for his business in Russia, but his own name was Beverley. For travelling that day I was 'Miss B. White.' Once I'd told you I was Beverley, I had always to be Beverley for you.
"Stephen—or Stephan, his Russian name—and I, were born in Russia, where father superintended an immense tract of oil wells for Mr. Heron. When my father was killed in an explosion (I was fourteen and Stephen twelve) Mr. Heron felt it his duty to look after our future. He had just married at that time. You must know Mrs. Heron well enough to understand that she wouldn't like to have two half-grown-up children thrust upon her. Why, she used to be jealous even of her husband's first wife, an Irish girl, who died years and years ago, in Ireland! It seems Mr. Heron hadn't told her about his old love story. She came across a picture of him taken with the girl, and some letters from people Mr. Heron had employed to search for his wife, whom he had quarrelled with and left. I was staying at their house when Dolores discovered the photograph and letters. She rushed into the room where I was with Mr. Heron. He had to seize her hands to keep her from tearing the picture in pieces; and he held them while he told her his sad story. He'd been visiting Ireland, it seemed, years before, and met a girl, very poor but very lovely, and married her when they'd known each other a few weeks. It seemed the girl had been engaged to someone else; and that someone took a cruel revenge on Heron. By a plot which he confessed afterward when it was too late, he made it appear that the girl had been his mistress. The evidence was so strong Heron could hardly help believing, so he came back to America and tried to forget. Years after the other man, dying of typhoid, confessed to a priest that he had lied, and forged letters. The priest wrote to Heron. But the poor, deserted girl was dead, and all that Heron could learn when he dashed back to Ireland to find her was that a baby girl had been born a few months after he left his wife. He tried for years to trace the child, but could not. And it was only after he'd given up all hope that he married Dolores Moreno. I think Mr. Heron felt tender over us children because of his lost little one. After leaving us in Russia at school for a while, and a year in England, to learn the language better than we knew it, another year in France and another in Italy (in families whom he paid to educate and take care of us) he must have had a longing to see what we were like. He and Dolores, his wife, came abroad, and brought us back to America with them, much against Dolores' will, I know. I was nearly eighteen, and I realized the first minute we met that Dolores was going to hate me. We went straight to a house near Albuquerque, which belongs to Mrs. Heron. Her brother Louis always lived there. He was an invalid, you know; about a year younger than Dolores; something wrong with his heart, and almost a hunchback—but oh, what a handsome face! When he took a violent fancy to me her one thought was to get me out of his way. Louis had money of his own. He was rich, and I suppose Dolores was afraid I might try to marry him, as I hadn't a penny. It was bad enough for her that Mr. Heron should have a tenderness for me, because of his lost child; but that Louis should love me was more than she could stand. I was sent to a boarding-school, and when I was twenty I began to teach. Dolores didn't like Stephen, either. She grudged every penny her husband spent for us.
"Mr. Heron used his influence, and got Stephen work in Los Angeles as a reporter on a newspaper, when he was only eighteen. He was tall and handsome, and could pass for two years older at least. I was very unhappy at this time, for I'd begun to worry about Stephen. I was sure he was keeping some secret from me. But I found out nothing till the crash came. Oh, Roger, it was horrible. He'd fallen under the influence of those anarchists—those dynamiters, who had been terrorizing all America for years. They'd persuaded him that they were noble reformers. Poor Stephen was a useful tool. He never did any of the dynamiting with his own hands, but he used to make bombs, and carry them from place to place, and take letters it wasn't thought safe to send through the post. It was the blowing-up of the Times buildings in Los Angeles and all those innocent men being killed that sickened him, he confessed afterward, when at last he opened his heart to me. But he was too deep in to free himself. It's now two years ago that the break happened, and all our life collapsed—Stephen's and mine.
"Some of the old lot he'd worked with were left—men who had managed to keep clear and never be suspected when William Burns, the detective, was fighting the Macnamaras and their gang. Only one or two who'd been under suspicion wriggled out from Burns' clutches. A man named Carl Schmelzer was the cleverest. He went abroad, and was supposed to die in Germany. But he didn't die. By that time they were engaged in new enterprises, as the old ones were too risky; but they always pretended to be working for Labour against Capital. John Heron was their target two years ago. The war cry was that he was the master, a tyrant, a plutocrat, ruthlessly crushing the weak. The Comrades knew our history—Stephen's and mine—and they tried to inflame Stephen against Mr. Heron because he'd failed to do for us what our father's services and death merited. But they made a big mistake when they ordered my brother to dynamite a railway bridge, just as a train with Heron's private car was due to pass over it. He refused, and threatened to warn Heron unless they abandoned all their schemes against him. That gave the gang a fearful fright. They thought their one chance of safety was to suppress Stephen. A friend of his who lived at Home Colony warned him that there was a plot to kill him. He came straight to me and told me the whole story. Neither of us had much hope. We thought the Comrades were sure to get him in the end. Then a wonderful thing happened. The train Stephen took, after his visit to me, was wrecked. Everybody in the car with Stephen was killed except himself. An idea came to Stephen. He put a silver cigarette-case with his name on it into the pocket of a man burnt past recognition—a man of about his own size. Then he crept away and hid for many days. When he hoped it might be fairly safe, he wrote to me, knowing I mourned for him as dead. He asked if I'd risk going with him to Russia to begin a new life there under another name. Of course I said 'Yes.'
"I left the school, and some jewellery I had kept us going for a while till there was a ship we could take for Japan, and so get back to Russia. We'd have to sail from San Francisco, so presently we went to Oakland, travelling at night by local trains. We hoped in that way we should not be seen by any one we knew.
"Whether someone did see us or not, I can't tell. Anyhow, from the day Stephen left me to buy our cabins on the ship I've never seen him again. He was kidnapped by the gang; and then began my martyrdom. They gave me a week of suspense. Then I got a letter. It told me that Stephen had been caught and would be punished by death for his treachery unless I'd agree to buy his life. I was warned that if I went to the police, it would be known to them, and Stephen instantly killed. If I consented to bargain I must put a 'personal' in a San Francisco paper, saying 'Steve's sister says yes'; in that case an appointment would be made with a man who would tell me what to do to save Stephen.
"Of course, I obeyed. Next day the same paper told 'Steve's Sister' where to go for instructions, and at what time. I think the man who met me must have been Schmelzer himself, just back from Europe. He had the authoritative manner Stephen had spoken of, and a great deal of gesture. He didn't give himself any name then, but afterward I knew him as Cheffinsky. To save my brother I had only to get a bundle of papers which were in the possession of John Heron. They were at Albuquerque in Mrs. Heron's house. Heron kept them there because he believed no one would suspect; but a spy the 'Comrades' had hired to act as a gardener there overheard a conversation, and knew the hiding-place. Unfortunately he couldn't put his hand on the papers without killing a man to get at them. For me, it would be simple, because Louis Moreno was in love with me. Louis had charge of the papers, and would let me see them if I treated him the right way. How Cheffinsky found out about Louis and me I never heard; perhaps from Stephen. I was given a day to think the matter over. Then there was to be another meeting in the same place. When I went to the rendezvous for the second time—it was in a park—I hadn't made up my mind. But, oh, Roger, the wretch showed me a snapshot of Stephen in a room, with a rope round his neck, standing on tiptoe. The rope was fastened to a ring in the ceiling, where a chandelier had been. If Stephen had dropped from fatigue he would have choked to death. 'Six hours a day of this medicine,' Cheffinsky said, 'till you've handed us the papers we want.'
"I promised to go to Albuquerque and get them. What the papers were I wasn't told. Afterward I heard more about them—from Louis himself. The day of the second meeting in the park I was given directions what to do, but they were changed in a hurry. The Comrades got warning to 'clear out' and go East as quick as they could. A telegram reached me only a few hours before I was to start for Albuquerque. It said, 'Delay journey. Writing,' and a letter came the same night to the quiet little boarding-house where I stayed. My brother had been taken East, where I should meet him when I handed over the papers. I was told what train to take to Albuquerque, and what train to leave in: the Santa Fé Limited. I was to find reservations on board for 'Miss B. White.' At Chicago I was to get out of the train and find a man waiting for me. You know all about that, and what happened. There was money in the letter of instructions, enough to see me through to Chicago, otherwise I couldn't have started. What I had was almost all gone. Oh, I can hardly bear to think of that day, and what I went through—before I met you."
"Don't think of it—don't go on if you'd rather not," Roger begged.
But Beverley wished to go on.