“He has, Sire,” I replied. “The sole reason of my journey to Yakutsk was in order to see Marya de Rosen on Her Highness’s behalf and obtain permission for her to speak and reveal to Your Majesty all that the Grand Duchess has now told you. Her Highness had promised strictest secrecy to her friend, but now that the lady is dead I have at last induced her to speak in the personal-interests of Your Majesty, as well as in the interests of the whole nation.”
“Yes, yes, I quite understand,” said His Majesty very gravely.
“By returning here, by abandoning my incognita, I—I have been compelled to sacrifice my love,” declared the girl in a low, faltering voice, her cheeks blanched, her mouth drawn hard, and her fine eyes filled with tears.
“Ah! Tattie! If what you have revealed to me be true, then the reason of Markoff’s unsatisfactory reports concerning, you is quite apparent,” His Majesty said, slowly folding his arms as he stood in thought, a fine commanding figure with the jewelled double eagle at his throat flashing with a thousand fires.
“And so, Trewinnard,” he added, turning to me, “all this is the reason why, more than once, you have given me those mysterious hints which have set me pondering.”
“Yes, Sire,” I replied. “You have been blinded by these clever adventurers surrounding you—that circle which, headed by Serge Markoff, is always so careful to prevent you from learning the truth. The intrigue they practise is most ingenious and far-reaching, ever securing their own advancement with fat emoluments at the expense of the oppressed nation. Their basic principle is to terrorise you—to keep the bogy of revolution constantly before Your Majesty, to discover plots, and by administrative process to send hundreds, nay thousands, into exile in those far-off Arctic wastes, or fill the prisons with suspects, more than two-thirds of whom are innocent, loyal and law-abiding citizens.”
He turned suddenly and, pale with anger, struck his fist upon his table.
“There shall be no more exile by administrative process!” he cried, and seating himself, he drew a sheet of official paper before him, and for a few moments his quill squeaked rapidly over the paper.
Thus he wrote the ukase abolishing exile by administrative process—that law which the camarilla had so abused—and signed it with a flourish of his pen.
The first reform in Russia—a reform which meant the yearly saving of thousands of innocent lives, the preservation of the sanctity of every home throughout the great Empire, and which guaranteed to everyone in future, suspect or known criminal or Revolutionist, a fair and open trial—had been achieved.