‘That you will learn later on. Sufficient for you to know that you are a prisoner. Come, rise and dress yourself.’
She recognised the hopelessness of resistance, and, of course, she understood that her faithful watch-hound Roko had been rendered powerless. She was trapped; that she knew. But it did not dawn upon her then that the Count and Danevitch were one and the same. Consequently she was puzzled to understand how her downfall had been brought about.
With a despairing sigh she rose and put on her clothes. Half an hour later she was being conveyed to the gaol with Roko, accompanied by Danevitch and three of his colleagues. The other five had been left in charge of the house. When madame had somewhat recovered her presence of mind, she assumed a bravado which she was far from feeling, and asked Danevitch airily if he knew how her guest the Count was.
‘Oh yes,’ answered Danevitch. ‘He is perfectly well, as you may judge for yourself; for I it was who played the part of the Count so effectively.’
With an absolute scream madame bit her lip with passion, until the blood flowed, and dug her nails into the palms of her hands.
‘What a fool, a dolt, an idiot I’ve been! But tell me, how was it Peter Trepoff asked me to invite you to the ball?’
‘Peter Trepoff is my agent, madame.’
With a suppressed cry of maddening rage, the wretched woman covered her face with her hands and groaned, as she realized how thoroughly she had been outwitted.
That same night, or, rather, some hours before the widow and Roko were swept into the net which had been so cleverly prepared for them, Alexander Vlassovsky was arrested in Moscow. Danevitch learned that fact by telegraph when he went out in the afternoon. He had first begun to suspect Vlassovsky after that interview when he was making inquiries about the death of Captain Baranoff. The result was that he intercepted letters from Madame Julie St. Joseph, who had returned to St. Petersburg. She had a small house in Moscow, which she occasionally visited in order to secure victims. In Moscow, where he was well known, the wily Vlassovsky did not go near her, but he helped her as far as he could in her fiendish work. He had been very cleverly trapped by the notes which he relieved the supposed Count of. Those notes were not genuine, and when he attempted to pass them he was arrested, for Danevitch had notified the Moscow police.
Subsequent revelations brought to light that the wretched woman had been in the habit of luring men to their doom by means of her fatal beauty. She bled them of their money, her plan being to cajole them into giving her a lien on any property they might possess. This was most artfully worked by the aid of Vlassovsky, and when the victim had been securely caught, he was poisoned. The poisons were concocted by Madame St. Joseph herself, and when she could not do it herself, Roko administered the fatal dose or doses. She had picked up this man in Spanish America, where she had been for some time, and, weaving her spell about him, had made him absolutely her slave.