When the servants entered the room, they found Catarina fully dressed, lying on the bed. Her face was ashen in its hue. Her eyes seemed starting from her head. Foam was oozing from her mouth; her limbs were convulsed. The servants did what they could, but Catarina never spoke. When the doctor came, she was dead. He examined her, and said she had died from the effects of some powerful poison. There was a strange smell in the room; there was a broken glass on the floor. Before leaving the house, however, he changed his opinion, and certified that she had died from apoplexy.
Some nuns were brought from a neighbouring convent to pray and watch by the body. Three days afterwards it was quietly and unostentatiously buried in a plain grave in the little village cemetery. The Prince followed as chief mourner. An hour later he was a changed man. He seemed to have grown ten years older. About three weeks later it was officially announced in the Gazette and other papers that Prince Ignatof had retired from the Foreign Office by the advice of his physicians, his health having completely broken down.
Some few particulars have yet to be told. The letter which Danevitch intercepted and handed to the Prince was written by Catarina. It was addressed to Madame Kasin at Smyrna. There are reasons why the letter should not be given in extenso, but its substance can be indicated. The writer made it evident that Madame Kasin, who was as strongly embittered against her father as he was against her, conspired with her husband and Buroff and Catarina to obtain the information contained in the secret treaty, and sell it for a large sum of money to Turkey, to whom it was of immense value. Kasin, it appeared, had learnt that a treaty was being negotiated; and though Buroff would not undertake to purloin the document himself, he was heavily bribed to inform Catarina that he had brought it.
Between Catarina and Madame Kasin a very strong friendship existed. Catarina considered the daughter had been very badly treated. This sympathy and friendship had led to great ill-feeling between Catarina and the Prince, who had threatened to send her adrift. She undertook to abstract the document, but she went to work so clumsily that, as the saying is, she gave herself away. And her incautiousness in writing that condemnatory letter showed that she had not in her the qualities of a trickster and a thief. She told the whole miserable story in the letter, and said that she herself would convey the precious document to Smyrna. She did not mention Nicolayeff’s name, but Danevitch felt certain that the Clerk of the Keys had been corrupted in order that the key of the Prince’s bed-chamber safe should be procured, and to put his belief to the test he accosted the unfortunate porter in the street in the way we have seen. His intention was, if the porter betrayed himself, to place him at once under arrest. He was not prepared, however, for the sudden collapse of the wretched man, who did not long survive the shock and the disgrace.
The whole matter, of course, was hushed up as much as possible. It was deemed advisable that the details should not reach the ears of the public. It is perhaps needless to say that the Kasins, who were ready to prove traitors to their country, never again set foot on Russian soil. Danevitch confesses that he was anxious, if possible, to save the Prince the disgrace of having his own daughter arrested, hence the telegram. He was sure that telegram recalling Kasin would sound a note of alarm to him, and he would take himself off. That proved to be the case. When some months had elapsed, Buroff was quietly packed off to Siberia.
The Prince when he had sold off a large proportion of his estates, went abroad—to France, it is said—where he spent the rest of his days in strict retirement. Before leaving Russia, he erected a magnificent and costly marble monument over the grave of the beautiful Catarina, the mystery of whose death will never be solved until the secrets of all hearts are known.
HOW PETER TRESKIN WAS LURED TO DOOM.
THE FIRST ACT—THE PLOT.
The period was the reign of Alexander II. The time, the afternoon of a day in early summer. The place, an office in the huge building in St. Petersburg known as the Palace of the Admiralty, one of the finest and most imposing structures of the kind in the world. Its principal front is more than a quarter of a mile in length, while its wings, which extend to the Neva, are nearly seven hundred feet long. In this palace an enormous number of people are employed, including many women; and here the whole business in connection with the Imperial navy is transacted.
The office referred to was a large room lighted by several long windows. Running the whole length of the room was a flat-topped mahogany desk, on which were spread a number of plans of vessels, tracing-papers, compasses, squares, pencils, and other things of a like kind usually found in the office of a draughtsman. To give the place its official description, it was ‘Department H, Left Wing, Second Floor, Room 12. Imperial Yachts.’