"Exactly."
"And who is this Mademoiselle Pauline?" asked Rasputin, his clever criminal brain already at work to defeat a revelation of the truth.
"Pauline Lahure, the little French dancer at the Villa Rode."
"Lahure!" cried Rasputin. "I know her, of course, a music-hall artiste. She has been lately taken up by the old Countess Bronevski. She was at my house only a fortnight ago, and wanted to become a 'sister'!"
"As spy of Kokovtsov—eh?"
"Without a doubt," I chimed in. "From all I hear His Excellency is a gay dog."
"True, my dear Féodor," remarked the monk, fingering the cross nervously, and then taking a cigarette which the general offered him. "But had not our friend Rogogin been on the alert and opened the dainty dancer's letters, what a trap we should have fallen into—not only ourselves, but the Empress also! Vladimir would have presented the documents to the Emperor, and an unholy domestic scene would have resulted. This fellow Botkine must never reach Russia!" he added seriously.
"I agree," replied the general. "Let us see Gutchkoff at once," he added. General Gutchkoff was a Jew and the director of the dreaded political police, with whom Rogogin, of course, worked hand-in-glove.
It was then nearly eleven o'clock at night, but we all three drove to General Gutchkoff's house in the Spaskaya. He was out, his man informed us.
"I must see him at once," said the monk loftily. "Where is he?"