"You have never failed me yet, Derrington;" and he grasped me by the hand.
"And I never will, monsieur."
"Well, go. I shall expect you soon after daylight."
In reality there was little for me to do that night, more than I had already done, and yet it was impossible that I should be shut up in the palace with so much taking place throughout the city, immediately under my direction, and over which it was imperative that I must retain supervision. I knew that there would be frequent demands upon me for authority to do and perform certain things, and it was important that I should be on hand. I was always provided with the necessary papers for anything in the official line that I might be called upon to perform. This had been arranged in the beginning, the better to preserve the secret of my business in St. Petersburg. I had innumerable imperial passports signed and sealed in blank, and there was no outside authority exercised by any official of the realm which I was not prepared to meet. In short, my power was in many respects greater than that of the czar himself for I was always prepared for whatever I might have to do in any or all of the departments of the empire.
The wholesale arrests which I had ordered for that night, I had long had under consideration, and that I had decided to make them a little sooner than was my first intention, was due in part to the danger surrounding the princess; in part to my own suddenly formed determination to complete my business there and return to the United States; and lastly, to the fact that the last few reports that I had received so nearly completed the knowledge I had striven to attain, that I came to the conclusion that my work was about done, and that it was time to draw the net. My salary was enormous, and already amounted to a competence, and I knew that if I remained in Russia, sooner or later somebody would find me out; and then there would be short shrift for me, between the nihilists on one hand, and the jealous nobility on the other, for the latter saw in me nothing but an interloper who had stolen their prerogatives.
My first business on leaving the emperor, was to call upon Jean Morét, for now his usefulness was past, and the time had come for me to keep my word with him, and set him free. Somewhere in the world he would be able to find a safe haven of shelter from the enemies who would claim vengeance; and now, after my net was drawn this night, there would be few active nihilists remaining to seek his life.
"Well, Jean," I said, as I entered the room where he was confined, "would you like to leave prison and Russia?"
"Indeed I would, sir," he replied. "There is nothing that would make me quite so happy as that. Has the time come to let me go?"
"I think so. Are you quite sure that there is nothing that would make you as happy as permission and passports to leave the country?"
"Quite."