“She had a train to catch, remember.”
“Yes. I put that point before the girl, but she remains unshaken in her conviction that Her Highness met the man there by appointment. In any case,” he added, “we have been unable to discover any trace of her since.”
I was silent for a moment.
“But, surely, Hartwig, this is a most extraordinary affair!” I cried. “She may have been decoyed into the hands of Danilovitch!”
“That is, alas! what I very much fear,” the police official admitted. “This I believe to be some deeply-laid plot of Markoff’s to secure her silence. You have been across Siberia, and arrived too late, yet Her Highness is still in possession of the secret. She is the only living menace to Markoff. Is it not natural, therefore, that he should take steps to seal her lips?”
“We must discover her, Hartwig—we must find her, either alive or dead,” I said resolutely.
This news staggered me, fagged and worn out as I was. I had been compelled to leave Luba in the hands of the Governor-General, who had promised, because I was the guest of His Majesty, that he would do all in his power to render her lot less irksome. Indeed, she had been transferred to one of the rooms in the prison hospital in Yakutsk, and was under a wardress, instead of being guarded by those brutal, uncouth Cossacks.
But this sudden disappearance of Natalia just at the very moment when her presence was of greatest importance held me utterly bewildered. All my efforts had been in vain!
Should I telegraph the alarming news to the Emperor?
Hartwig explained to me how diligently he had searched, and at once I realised the expert method with which he was dealing with the remarkable affair, and the wide scope of his inquiry. No man in Europe was more fitted to institute such a search. He had, in confidence, invoked the aid of New Scotland Yard, and being known by the heads of the Criminal Investigation Department, they had allowed him to direct the inquiry.