The newspapers of the following evening contained a sensational item of news, headed “Suicide of an M.P.’s wife.” It ran as follows:—
“Mrs. Elworthy, wife of Mr. Harold Elworthy, M.P., of Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, was discovered dead in her dressing-room this morning. A small bottle containing arsenic was found at her side, together with a letter which leaves no doubt that she committed suicide. The contents of the letter have not been made public, but it is rumoured that the confession is of a very remarkable character.”
An inquest was held, and a verdict of “suicide whilst temporarily insane” returned. Immediately following this came the announcement that the member for North-west Huntingdon had accepted the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds and gone abroad, accompanied by his daughter Wanda. They have never returned.
CHAPTER XV.
THE TZAR’S SPY.
A chaos of terrible recollections bewilders me. I have the sense of having trodden a stony highway during long years, but have now taken my last step for the present in the blood-spotted pathway to Revolution.
The windows at the rear of the Château de Trélatête, a quaint old-world place, near the high road from St. Germain to Paris, look out upon a wide, well-kept lawn, flanked by dark yew hedges, and backed by the winding Seine, on the opposite bank of which a sparsely timbered slope leads up to a small farm. Zigzag up this slope runs a path—probably it has so run for centuries, for at the foot of it is a ford across a small stream—which in spring is almost invisible, but in autumn is brown and rutty.
Two men strolled down this path one September evening not long ago. One, a young fellow under thirty, fair-haired and pink-cheeked, was something of a fop, while the other was a tall man, about fifty-five, of military bearing, with a pair of keen eyes, sharply cut features, and hair and moustache turning grey. Attired in a rather shabby velvet coat and gaiters, he looked like a gamekeeper, but was, in fact, General Martianoff, late Governor of Mstislavl, and now Chief of the Russian Secret Police in Paris.
“I really can’t make you out, Gaston,” he said, as they sighted the Château; and, shifting his gun to the other shoulder, he took occasion to glance searchingly at his companion. “How confoundedly glum you are!”
The younger man laughed, but not very merrily, and there was a touch of sullenness in his tone as he answered—