“How can that be?” I asked. “I was present when he entered the room, and when he left the house after the assassination.”
“Exactly. But although he sought the spy intending to carry out the sentence of death that had been passed, he did not commit the deed. It was through me that the tyrant of Mstislavl was killed. On the night previous to the tragedy I was with Paramòn Pouzàtov who, as you know, was one of my admirers. I related to him the story of my life at Mstislavl, and the brutal treatment you and I had received at the hands of Martianoff. My description of his brutality, coupled with the vile conspiracy against Lebedeff, so incensed him that he swore he would remove the Tzar’s chief spy with his own hand. I did not regard his words seriously, but on the following morning, while I was waiting in the Boulevard in order to follow Martianoff when he emerged from his house, he approached me. He was wild-looking and haggard-eyed. ‘I have killed him!’ he whispered, at the same time handing me some papers. Then he hurried along the Boulevard and was quickly lost to view. The next I heard was that Shiryàlov was suspected.”
“But Paul fled to America.”
“True. But only in order to baffle the police. He has not committed suicide, for I have here a letter which he wrote from New York to my husband only a week ago.”
I took the note and read it. There was no doubt it was from him, for I recognised the handwriting.
Subsequent inquiries I made fully confirmed Mascha’s solution of the mystery. It had fallen to Paul Shiryàlov’s lot to encompass the death of General Martianoff, but prompted by vengeance Pouzàtov—one of the most desperate of the Terrorists—had entered the room and assassinated the Chief of Secret Police while I was absent delivering the letter in the Avenue de l’Opéra.
After Shiryàlov had made good his escape, and Pouzàtov considered himself secure, he pressed Mascha to marry him. But she refused, and kept her promise to Gaston.
Count Guéneau having died, she now lives happily at the Château with her husband. Both are still enthusiastic and sanguine as to the ultimate success of the struggle for freedom, and being possessed of an ample fortune, contribute generously to the Revolutionary Fund.
The Terrorists are now pausing. They believe that the ravages caused by recent famines in Russia can never be repaired. The vast Empire of the Tzar has now no alternative but to resign herself and gradually sink to the position of a decaying power like Turkey, or to throw open her gates to European progress, that goes hand in hand with freedom. At present there is no corner in the Russian Empire where the moujik is not moaning. In the fields and along the highways, in prisons and dungeons, at the mines in shackles of iron, by the side of hayricks and empty barns, under the waggons and on the steppes, the air is everywhere filled with groaning—groaning in hovels, cursing even the sunlight, groaning before the palaces of justice, and buffeted at the entrance of garish mansions, groaning alike in town and village, the wretched moujik is even ready to rise and strike a desperate blow for liberty. Sounds of woe float over the mighty Russian rivers from Archangel to the Caspian. They call it a song, the chant of the bourlaki (workmen) dragging the boats along, but alas! it is the sorrowful dirge of an endless agony.