“It was quite simple,” she said, in reply to my eager questions. “I always was a little inventative. You remember that on the night you told me of my doom you found me alone reading? Well, that night Nina was ill, and I had been attending her. I did not call a doctor, as I had no idea that she suffered from a weak heart. She died, poor girl, shortly before five o’clock on the afternoon you had promised to return. Then a thought occurred to me that, as her hair was the same colour as my own, I might pass off her body as mine. I took Ivan into my confidence, telling him of the attempt which would be made upon my life——”
“You did not mention my name?” I asked anxiously.
“Of course not. After I had dressed the body in one of my own wraps, we carried it to my room and placed it upon the couch. Nina was about my build, therefore I attired myself in her clothes, and taking the most valuable of my jewels, left at once for Paris. Meanwhile Ivan remained. From what he has told me it appears that he watched and saw a middle-aged man enter the flat by means of a latch-key. After searching several rooms he went into my bedroom. There the man saw a female form which he thought was myself, and stabbed it to the heart. All this occurred within half an hour of Nina’s death.”
“And it was the mutilation of the face that prevented me from discovering that it was Nina,” I remarked.
“Exactly. Yet no crime has been committed, and I have escaped.”
“Wonderful!” I exclaimed, astounded at the curious combination of circumstances.
“The Prince thinks me dead; therefore I am a free woman,” she said, as we walked up Villiers Street. “I am no longer Princess, but Madame Valakhina. I still love you, Vladimir, but I can see it is useless, for if we met often the Nihilists would discover how they have been tricked. I must therefore leave you. To-night I go to Brussels and afterwards to Yvoir, on the Meuse, where I have taken a villa. Ivan is there already. When you can safely leave London, come to me.”
We had ascended the steps and entered the Charing Cross terminus. The hands of the great clock pointed to twenty-five minutes past eight.
“See,” she added, “I must go to the carriage. The train leaves at eight-thirty.”
We walked along the platform, and she entered an empty first-class compartment, in which a porter had already arranged her wraps.