“She was its leader.”
“Its leader! You did not tell me that, Berloff!”
“I was only summarizing what I had been told,” was the quiet reply. “I of course know nothing at first hand and can make no charges. The evidence is all Nadson’s and Freeman’s.”
Berloff was playing his game with his utmost skill. When it came out in time who these two prisoners were, as it must, no blame could attach to him; he had merely laid the case before the military governor, as in duty bound, and had himself given no evidence and taken no action.
“Who is this woman? What is she like?” the general continued of Freeman.
“She calls herself Sonya Varanova,” was the ready answer. “She is in the early twenties and is rather good-looking. She belongs, by her appearance, to the common classes—is, in fact, a working woman.”
“Yes, that is what all these trouble-makers are—the riff-raff of Russia!” the general wrathfully exclaimed. “Do you know anything else about her?”
“Nothing material to the case, Your Excellency.”
A moment later Freeman was dismissed.
“My business is of course only to discover political criminals,” Berloff began quickly but without the appearance of haste. “It rests wholly with you, as the possessor of absolute power in such cases, to decide what action shall be taken upon the information I lodge with you. But I did feel, when I discovered these things, that here were cases that you would consider should be immediately and rigorously dealt with. The revolutionists are getting bolder every day; this attempted jail-delivery is but a single instance. We have struck consternation into them by the way we foiled that plot. If right on top of that we could deliver them another sudden and severe blow, nothing else would do so much to frighten them into quiet.”