“Of course I’m not!” I said with some warmth. Soper was chief proprietor of several newspapers in direct opposition to the group controlled by Southbourne, and he certainly had made me more than one advantageous offer,—the latest only a week or two back, just after my Russian articles appeared in The Courier.
“I didn’t suppose you were, though I know he wants you,” Southbourne rejoined. “I should rather like to know what you are up to; but it’s your own affair, of course, and you’re quite right to keep your own counsel. Anyhow, good luck to you, and good-bye, for the present.”
I was glad the interview was over, though it left me in ignorance as to how much he knew or suspected about my movements and motives. I guessed it to be a good deal; or why had he troubled to tell me the news he had heard from Von Eckhardt? If it were true, if Anne were no longer in danger from her own party, and was again actively associated with it, her situation was at least less perilous than it had been before, when she was threatened on every side. And also my chances of getting into communication with her were materially increased.
I related what I had learned to Mishka, who made no comment beyond a grunt which might mean anything or nothing.
“Do you think it is true?”
“Who knows? It is over a fortnight since I left; and many things may happen in less time. Perhaps we shall learn when we return, perhaps not.”
In some ways Mishka was rather like a Scotsman.
A few days later his preparations were complete. The real or ostensible object of his visit to England was to buy farm implements and machinery, as agent for his father, who, I ascertained, was land steward of part of the Zostrov estates, and therefore a person of considerable importance. That fact, in a way, explained Mishka’s position, which I have before defined as that of “confidential henchman.” I found later that the father, as the son, was absolutely devoted to their master, who in his turn trusted them both implicitly. They were the only two about him whom he could so trust, for, as he had once told me, he was surrounded by spies.
Mishka’s business rendered my re-entry into the forbidden land an easily arranged matter. Several of the machines he bought were American patents, and my rôle was that of an American mechanic in charge of them. As a matter of fact I do know a good deal about such things; and I had never forgotten the apprenticeship to farming I had served under my father in the old home. Poor old dad! As long as he lived he never forgave me for turning my back on the farm and taking to journalism, after my college course was over. He was all the more angry with me because, as he said, in the vacation I worked better than any two laborers; as I did,—there’s no sense in doing things by halves!
It would have been a very spry Russian who had recognized Maurice Wynn, the physical wreck that had left Russia in the custody of two British police officers less than three months back, in “William P. Gould,” a bearded individual who spoke no Russian and only a little German, and whose passport—issued by the American Minister and duly viséd by the Russian Ambassador in London—described him as a native of Chicago.