After all, this was but another illustration of the fact that nothing succeeds like success. Danevitch had been singularly successful, though his success was due to talents only one remove from genius.
He has already, in his own words, made it plain that, in the case of the missing treaty, he believed, and in fact felt certain, that the culprit would be found amongst the Prince’s household, though this did not prevent him availing himself of all the resources of the police department, which of course he had a right to do. But necessarily he was hampered by the secrecy it was so important to observe. What he did was to request by telegraph that the authorities in all the principal towns, seaports, and frontier stations should issue orders for a more than ordinarily strict examination of the passports and papers of people passing out of the country; that every person from St. Petersburg should be closely questioned, and should suspicion be aroused by his answers, he should be detained, and his luggage searched.
This is a measure permissible in Russia, but would not be tolerated in England. But in the vast dominion over which the Czar rules it is a necessity, and through its means many a crime has been detected and many a plot frustrated. It is right to say that the seizure of luggage is only resorted to when there is strong reason for believing that the owner is a dangerous person.
Although Danevitch took the steps indicated, he did not believe for a moment that anything would result beyond a great number of people being seriously inconvenienced, some innocent persons being arrested, and a great deal of blundering on the part of jacks in office, and of boorishness on the part of local police, who, dressed in a little brief authority, like to exercise it with all the brutal brusqueness peculiar to ignorant minds. He relied upon his own methods, and felt convinced that, if the mystery was ever to be unravelled, it could only be done by his own individual efforts. The more he dwelt upon all the details of the case as he had gathered them, the more he was convinced the guilty person would be found to be somebody who was in close communication with the Prince. Working on this basis, he classified the household under three heads for the purpose of giving his theory a somewhat practical form:
Firstly, there were the lower servants of the ménage.
Secondly, the upper servants.
Thirdly, the body servants of the Prince and his close personal attendants, including his secretaries, clerks, shorthand-writers, and amanuenses.
Those in the first category he dismissed from his calculations altogether, since it was so highly improbable that any one of them could have had the opportunities for committing such a crime. Obviously, in an establishment so constituted as the official residence of the Prince was, an inferior servant could not have gained access to the Prince’s private rooms without running the gauntlet of many vigilant eyes, and incurring so much risk as to make it all but impossible that he could succeed.
Those who fell into the second category were not passed over without a little more consideration and a critical examination of the possibilities which were presented, when they were weighed individually and collectively. But when all this had been done, Danevitch scored them off the slate, too, and the sphere of his inquiry was so far narrowed.
In the third category there were necessarily included persons of intelligence which ranked higher than that to be found in the other two. But, as Danevitch progressed with the working out of his theory, he deemed it important to subdivide this third category, because his investigations made it clear that only a few of these individuals were so situated as to have the chance of abstracting the document.