“Worth trying—yes. I was not against the plan. I was merely pointing out that we should be conservative in our hopes—that there is only a bare chance.”
“A bare chance, yes—but an only chance! I shall go at once!”
Sabatoff caught his arm. “Wait! It’s walking into the lion’s den. He may put his duty above his love. If he does, he will surely arrest the messenger as being another revolutionist. I shall go myself.”
There was a debate upon this point, but Sabatoff had to yield. “Very well. But you must not go to him in that uniform; that may suggest to him that you are the stranger who escaped last night as a gendarme. I shall send my servants away on errands for half an hour, and in the meantime you can get into some of my clothes and leave the house unobserved.”
Twenty minutes later Drexel slipped cautiously from the house, and after walking swiftly for a block caught a sleigh. As he sped along he built a plan upon his hope that Sonya’s sentence might be commuted to exile to Siberia. He would organize a secret expedition, manage her escape from the mines of Eastern Siberia or from some stockaded prison above the Arctic circle, fly with her to the Pacific coast and carry her to safety in America.
As he drew up before the Valenko palace he cast a glance up at the softly glowing windows of the princess’s sick-room, then hurriedly rang. Luckily the general was in and Drexel was ushered back into his home office.
The general rose from his papers and greeted Drexel with that finished courtesy which even the harshest of Russia’s high officials bestow upon foreigners. “You left us very suddenly out at Prince Berloff’s, Mr. Drexel,” he said. “You have just got back from Moscow, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Drexel.
“In good time for Miss Howard’s marriage. And how is my niece?”
“I have not yet seen her.”