“That is the study there,” she said quickly, leading the way through a door opening off the library.
They had decided there was no necessity for one to keep guard; the records were in French, as Sonya knew, and they could make double speed by searching together. In case anyone interrupted them, Sonya was to remark casually that Drexel was helping her look for a volume of genealogy.
The study was distinctly a workroom. There were no vaults here, no heavily locked cupboards, no air of secrecy, for all the prince’s work was done upon the theory that the surest way to escape suspicion of harbouring a secret is to make a quiet show of having nothing to conceal. Shelves reaching to the ceiling were crowded with the government reports of a dozen nations, and with rows of semi-official files. It was frankly the room of such a man as Berloff appeared to be—a statesman without a post, an unofficial adviser to the Czar.
“When here a week ago,” whispered Sonya, “I barely got into this room when I had to fly. So we’ll have to begin at the very beginning—on those files.”
Scarcely breathing, their ears quickened for the faintest step, they set swiftly to work. The danger was great; discovery for Sonya, at least, would mean complete disaster.
As each file was examined it was thrust back, so that in case they were suddenly interrupted there might be no disorder to betray what they had been about. There were digests of reports on the railroads, on the peasants, on the wholesale corruption in the army commissariat, on a hundred things of vital interest to the statesman at large Berloff ostensibly was—but nothing relating to what they knew to be his real business.
“After all, he must have some secret hiding-place for his records of the political police,” whispered Drexel.
“Perhaps. But we must first make sure they are not here.”
The faint, musical jangling of bells without caused Drexel to glance through the window. Already the brief daylight was beginning to wane.
“What is it?” asked Sonya.