CHAPTER XXI
"FOREWARNED, FOREARMED"
Gleikstein looked as utterly puzzled as his companion. They glanced at one another in a guilty kind of way. Evidently the allusion to the Hotel Petersburg mentioned by Lechmere conjured up some painful and none too creditable associations.
"There was only one other man present, and he has totally disappeared," said Gleikstein. "Now how did that man come to know all about it? One never seems quite to get away from the past."
Somebody attracted Gleikstein's attention, and Mazaroff wandered off into the garden. He was uneasy and disturbed in his mind, and anxious over the failure of his plot. It seemed as if the whole affair was little better than an open secret. As an agent of Russia, he was anxious to see the abdication of the throne by the King of Asturia. Asturia was a stumbling-block south in the path of Russian progress. Once the king had abdicated or been forced from his throne by a revolution, Russia would certainly step in under the plea of the maintenance of peace in a notoriously turbulent region. They might concede to European opinion by placing a puppet on the throne, but henceforth Asturia would be no better or worse than a Russian province. If this was accomplished, then Mazaroff netted a fortune. Only to-day it had seemed in his grasp.
And with the swiftness of a lightning flash, everything had changed. The puppet had been torn from Mazaroff's hands; those compromising papers had vanished from Countess Saens's drawer. At the present moment Lord Merehaven was in a position to shrug his shoulders, and say that those suspicions must be verified before he was prepared to admit anything. It was a comedy on both sides, but it remained a comedy so long as those papers were not forthcoming.
Mazaroff was brought back out of the grave of these gloomy reflections by a footman who tendered him a note. There was no answer, the servant said, he had merely had to deliver the letter to Prince Mazaroff. With a new interest in life, Mazaroff recognized the Countess Saens's neat writing. He read the letter slowly and thoughtfully, then tearing it in small pieces he dropped the fragments into the heart of a laurel bush. A slow, cruel smile spread over his dark face.
"So that is the game," he muttered. "Strange that I did not spot it before. Still, the marvellous likeness would have deceived anybody. The maid was not far wrong after all. Well, at any rate, I shall have some sport out of this. Who knows what it may lead to?"