“Very well. The officer in whose command I was placed chanced to be an old friend—a young man, rather, who had served under me and had come to think of me highly.”
“The more fool he,” the Czar interrupted.
“So you may think. At any rate, he did not believe the charges against me, apparently plain though they were. I played upon his credulity to such an extent that he at last agreed to allow me to escape.”
“As I suspected,” Lord Hastings interrupted a second time; and a second time the Czar exclaimed:
“Continue, Count.”
“It was easily arranged,” the count went on. “One night, while the camp slept, this officer came to my prison tent—we had not yet started for Siberia—unbound me, gave me one of his own uniforms and permitted me to go free. I walked out boldly and without being accosted. I immediately left Moscow and came to St. Petersburg—I should say Petrograd—where I have remained unrecognized until I was seen by these two English upstarts in a restaurant to-night. That is all there is to the story.”
“Plainly and briefly told, Count,” said the Czar approvingly. “You may be pleased to know, perhaps, that you shall leave my Empire as quickly and as satisfactorily.”
“You mean?” questioned the count, raising an eyebrow.
“Exactly,” replied the Czar significantly. “In the morning at daybreak.”
Count Blowinski shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.