"No, Miss Hilman, not dying," responded Poubalov quickly, "but he is a very sick man. Thanks, Paul Palovna, but I can get on better with him alone. You may go ahead of me, if you please, and try to find a physician——"
"I saw a doctor's sign near the street corner," interrupted Palovna.
"Summon him at once, then," said Poubalov who was bearing old Dexter as tenderly as a nurse might carry a sick child; "I will await you at the door and," addressing Clara, "be with you here in a moment if you would hear the hidden history of your troubles."
"Better here, sweetheart," whispered Strobel, "here where I passed my week of death than in any other place!"
It was several minutes before Poubalov returned. He carried Dexter not only to the door but through the street to the physician's house where medical skill was promptly applied with a view to restoring the miser's wreck of a body to something like life. If Dexter's course had run tranquilly he might, perhaps, have lingered like a noxious weed, for a long time upon the earth, but after the complex shocks of disappointment, imprisonment and fear, he had thrown the total of his nervous and physical energies into that mad attack upon Clara. There remained, then, but the dregs of his vicious vitality, and these sustained him less than the length of the night. He was still alive but the end was plainly in sight when Poubalov left him to rejoin the lovers.
"Miss Hilman," he said the moment he came in, "your judgment of me has been marvellously correct. It is true that you have erred in detail and believed me deceiving you when I was doing my utmost to put the truth before you; but it is impossible for me to be straightforward. Mr. Strobel has said that his deliverance is due to me; that is true, but no credit is due me for generosity or nobility of conduct. What I have done in the way of searching for him and restoring him to liberty, has been done entirely in accordance with my nature. My desire to appear well in your eyes might lead me to vain reflections on what my nature might have been if the circumstances of my life had been other than they were, but past circumstances cannot be changed and nothing can palliate the fact that long practice as a detecter of stealthy criminals has made me habitually devious in my methods."
"Mr. Poubalov," Clara began gently, but the Russian would not let her utter the deprecating words that were on her lips.
"I could not change my methods," he said, "and moreover, there were circumstances connected with this matter that made it impossible for me to take you fully into my confidence. Don't you recall how I refused to answer, or evaded your questions? I would not lie to you, and I could not tell you the truth, for I was charged with a message from the czar to Mr. Strobel and to none other could I give it, and not to him unless I were satisfied of certain things, which, until Litizki's attempt upon my life were in doubt."
"You must have suffered keenly," said Clara softly; "tell me all now if you can."
"His imperial majesty, whom God preserve," resumed Poubalov, "saw fit to effect a complete restoration of the estates of the Strobel family, which had been confiscated on account of supposed treason, and to recall all the members of the family from exile. There was but one doubt in his august mind, and that related to your lover, Ivan. If he were engaged in sending pernicious literature to Russia, or in any other way fomenting the discontent that affects some of our people, the decree of restoration could not issue. I came to America solely to discover what Ivan Strobel was doing and thinking. I could not leave the country until I had found him unless I chose to disregard the wishes of my sovereign. Therefore, when he disappeared, I bent every energy to finding him. It is the habit of men like Litizki to invest me in their imaginations with extraordinary if not superhuman powers, and it is a part of my policy to encourage their delusion. But I am only an ordinary man, Miss Hilman, and in your hands I have proved to be as weak as the weakest."