He did not wait for her answer. “Then you are the famous Princess Valenko!” he cried.
“I am Princess Valenko,” she returned quietly.
“Wonderful!” he ejaculated. “But all St. Petersburg thinks you are dangerously——”
The expression of his amazement was cut short. The footsteps and low voices of the gendarmes sounded without. The four, all with pistols drawn, grimly waited the gendarmes’ action.
It came in a moment. A heavy fist pounded on the door and a deep bass bellowed to them: “Open the door! Surrender!”
Sonya caught Drexel’s arm. “Captain Nadson’s voice!”
“Yes.”
“If I’m captured he’ll recognise me, and I’ll have to face that charge of trying to kill Prince Berloff,” she said.
“You’re that woman?” cried Freeman—and added fiercely in the same breath: “The person who tried to do that to Prince Berloff will not be taken while I’m alive!”
“The gendarmes with him must be Nadson’s Hundred!” breathed Drexel.