“We do not administer justice here in Siberia, Excellency,” was the man’s quiet reply. “They do that in Petersburg.”
“But surely it is a scandal to put a sick woman on the road and compel her to walk four hundred miles in this weather,” I cried angrily.
“Alas! That is not my affair,” replied the man. “I am merely chief of police of this district and governor of the étape. The captain of Cossacks has entire charge of the prisoners on their journey.”
What he had told me maddened me. In all that I heard I could plainly detect the sinister hand of General Markoff.
Indeed, when I carefully questioned this official, I felt convinced that the captain in question had received instructions direct from Petersburg regarding Madame de Rosen. The chief of police admitted to me that to the papers concerning the prisoners there had been attached a special memorandum from Petersburg concerning Madame and her daughter.
I smoked a cigarette with him and drank a cup of tea—China tea served with lemon. Then I was shown to a rather poorly-furnished but clean bedroom on the ground floor, where I turned in.
But no sleep came to my eyes. Such hard travelling through all those weeks had shattered my nerves.
While the bright northern moon streamed in through the uncurtained window, I lay on my back, pondering. I reflected upon all the past, the terrible fate of Madame and her daughter, the strange secret she evidently held, and the peril of the Emperor himself, so helpless in the hands of that circle of unscrupulous sycophants, and, further, of my little madcap friend, so prone to flirtation, the irrepressible Grand Duchess Natalia.
I reviewed all the exciting events of those many months which had elapsed since the last Court ball of the season at Petersburg—events which I have attempted to set down in the foregoing pages—and I was held in fear that my long journey might be in vain—that ere I could catch up with the poor wretched woman who, though ill, had been compelled to perform that last and most arduous stage of the journey through the snow, she would, alas! be no longer alive. The vengeance of her enemy Markoff would have fallen upon her.
A sense of indescribable oppression, combined with the hot closeness of the room, stifled me. For hours I lay awake, the moonlight falling full upon my head. At last, however, I must have dropped off to sleep, fagged out after twenty hours of those jingling bells and hissing of the sled-runners over the frozen snow.