The Princess passed through her drawing-room, a vast, round room, with a superb view over the Arc de Triomphe, and went into her bedroom where she switched on the electric light.
"Nadine," she called, in her grave, melodious voice, and a young girl, almost a child, sprang from a low divan hidden in a corner. "Nadine, take off my cloak and unfasten my hair. Then you can leave me: it is late, and I am tired."
The little maid obeyed, helped her mistress to put on a silken dressing gown, and loosened the masses of her hair. The Princess passed a hand across her brow, as if to brush away a headache.
"Before you go, get a bath ready for me; I think that would rest me."
Ten minutes later Nadine crept back like a shadow, and found the Princess standing dreamily on the balcony, inhaling deep breaths of the pure night air. The child kissed the tips of her mistress's fingers. "Your bath is quite ready," she said, and then withdrew.
A few more minutes passed, and Princess Sonia, half undressed, was just going into her dressing-room when suddenly she turned and went back to the middle of the bedroom which she had been on the point of leaving.
"Nadine," she called, "are you still there?" No answer came. "I must have been dreaming," the Princess murmured, "but I thought I heard someone moving about."
Sonia Danidoff was not unduly nervous, but like most people who live much alone and in large hotels, she was wont to be careful, and wished to make sure that no suspicious person had made his way into her rooms. She made a rapid survey of her bedroom, glanced into the brilliantly lighted drawing-room, and then moved to her bed and saw that the electric bell board, which enabled her to summon any of her own or of the hotel's servants, was in perfect order. Then, satisfied, she went into her dressing-room, quickly slipped off the rest of her clothes, and plunged into the perfumed water in her bath.
She thrilled with pleasure as her limbs, so tired after a long evening, relaxed in the warm water. On a table close to the bath she had placed a volume of old Muscovite folk tales, and she was glancing through these by the shaded light from a lamp above her, when a fresh sound made her start. She sat up quickly in the water and looked around her. There was nothing there. Then a little shiver shook her and she sank down again in the warm bath with a laugh at her own nervousness. And she was just beginning to read once more, when suddenly a strange voice, with a ring of malice in it, sounded in her ear. Someone was looking over her shoulder, and reading aloud the words she had just begun!
Before Sonia Danidoff had time to utter a cry or make a movement, a strong hand was over her lips, and another gripped her wrist, preventing her from reaching the button of the electric bell that was fixed among the taps. The Princess was almost fainting. She was expecting some horrible shock, expecting to feel some horrible weapon that would take her life, when the pressure on her lips and the grip upon her wrist gradually relaxed; and at the same moment, the mysterious individual who had thus taken her by surprise, moved round the bath and stood in front of her.