Danevitch made no comment on his chief’s remark, but at once betook himself to the Treasury, where he found everybody in a state of great excitement. He was at once conducted into the presence of the Minister of Finance, with whom he had a long interview, and from whom he learnt all the details of the transit of the money. Necessarily the detective sifted these details, examined them one by one, and took such measures as occurred to him to prove that they were absolutely correct. In the end he was satisfied that they were. The Minister then showed him a long telegram he had received from the Treasury Office in Moscow, in which it was stated that the money was packed in the usual way in the presence of the cashier-in-chief, six of his subordinates, and a large staff, all of them proved and tried servants. Every box was numbered, registered, and sealed, and there was not the shadow of a doubt that when the boxes left Moscow each contained the full sum marked against it in the books of the department. Danevitch saw at once that if that was correct it proved that the robbery must have occurred in transit, which obviously necessitated a prearranged plan of a very ingenious nature; moreover, it pointed to the confederacy of every man, including the gendarmes, engaged in safe-guarding the treasure. It was difficult to believe in such a conspiracy; but on the first blush it seemed the only rational conclusion that one could come to, otherwise the officers and the police must have been culpably negligent of their duty to have allowed a stranger to have walked off the boxes, leaving dummy facsimiles in their place. However, Danevitch would express no opinion then, although the Minister was anxious that he should do so; but it was the detective’s invariable rule to keep his opinions to himself until he was in a position to speak with something like certainty. As he himself was in the habit of saying, he never prophesied until he knew. It was a safe rule, and it saved him from many an error.

Having completed his investigations in St. Petersburg so far as he could at that stage, he proceeded without loss of time to Moscow, where he satisfied himself, from the evidence laid before him, that the money really left the Moscow Treasury all right; and it was impossible the boxes could have been exchanged between the Treasury and the station. The treasure was conveyed in a closed waggon, which was locked and barred, and in its passage through the city it was guarded by twelve mounted soldiers specially told off for the duty. At the station the waggon was backed right up to the railway-carriage, and was unpacked in the presence of quite a little army of officials. Again, unless there had been a huge conspiracy, the boxes could not have been abstracted there. This narrowed the inquiry somewhat, because it made it clear that the exchange must have been effected while the train was on its journey between the two cities. But admitting that to be the case, it at once suggested that the eight men, that is, the four officers and four gendarmes, were in league together. To that, however, was opposed the fact that the gendarmes were only told off for the duty an hour before they started, and up to that time had had no intimation they were going. Therefore, assuming the four clerks had prearranged the matter, they must have corrupted the gendarmes en route. That, however, was such a far-fetched theory that Danevitch would not entertain it.

The next phase of inquiry upon which Danevitch entered was that of ascertaining as much as possible about the four Government officials who travelled in charge of the treasure. These inquiries elicited the fact that they bore irreproachable characters, and were held in high esteem in the department. Popoff was a married man with a family. He was in receipt of a good salary, and appeared to be free from financial worries of any kind. The same remarks applied to Basilovitch and Strogonoff. They were both married and family men, and to all appearances in comfortable circumstances. Briazga was unmarried, but he was regarded as a very steady, well-to-do young fellow, and was known to be the main support of his father, mother, and an only sister, whose name was Olga. She was younger than her brother, and, owing to an injury to the spine when she was a child, she had been more or less an invalid all her life.

Danevitch realized at this stage, even as the chief of the police predicted he would, that he was called upon to crack a very hard nut indeed, and he did not feel confident about being able to crack it at all. The minutest investigation had failed so far to elicit anything that would have justified a suspicion of a conspiracy amongst the eight men. And yet without the connivance of them all it seemed impossible that the boxes could have been changed. But there was the indisputable fact that they had been changed; nevertheless, there was not a single item in the list of circumstances that supported the hypothesis of a conspiracy. How, then, had the robbery been worked? Of course the Treasury people, as well as everyone connected with the Finance Department, to say nothing of the higher authorities themselves, were in a very perturbed state of mind, for apart from the largeness of the sum carried off, the robbery proved that, in spite of the safeguards employed when money was being conveyed from one town to another, there was a risk which up to that time had not been suspected. It was decided at last by the head officials to offer a reward of ten thousand roubles for any information that would lead to the capture of the thieves and the recovery of the stolen money. Danevitch was opposed to the offering of a reward, and pointed out the absurdity of it; as he said, even supposing the whole of the eight men of the escort had been concerned, they were not likely to betray each other for the sake of ten thousand roubles, when they had a million to divide amongst themselves. And if anyone else had come to know who the thieves were, he would not be blind to the fact that he could blackmail them to the tune of a much greater sum than ten thousand roubles to induce him to hold his tongue. Therefore, as Danevitch anticipated, the reward brought forth no informer. In the meantime he had been working on his own lines, and had satisfied himself the money had been put into the train all right at Moscow, and that, unless with the connivance of ever so many people, the boxes could not have been changed between the St. Petersburg station and the Treasury Office; consequently, the business must have been done while the money was in transit between the two towns. Further than that, it was as clear as daylight that the robbery had been prearranged, because the facsimile boxes had been prepared beforehand; the cord used to bind the false boxes was Government cord, and the Government seal was so cleverly imitated that the forgery could only be detected after close inspection. All this proved unmistakably that there was a traitor in the camp.

In one of many interviews that Danevitch had with the Minister of Finance, that gentleman said:

‘Danevitch, you must bring the thief to light. It is absolutely necessary that an example should be made of him as a deterrent. Although the loss of the money would be a serious one, we would rather lose it than let the thief escape.’

‘I think, sir, that the thief will not escape; and it is possible, even probable, that the money may be recovered.’

‘Have you any clue?’ asked the Minister quickly.

‘None whatever.’

‘Then, why do you speak so hopefully?’