“No, Sire,” was the answer. “The last genuine plot was the one in Samara, nearly two years ago. Your Majesty escaped only by a few seconds.”
“When the railway line was blown up just outside the station; I remember,” said the Emperor, with a grim smile. “Four of your fellow-conspirators were killed by their own explosives.”
“That was the last genuine plot. All the recent ones have been suggested by General Markoff, head of the Secret Police.”
“With your assistance?”
The man nodded in the affirmative.
“Then you betray your fellow-conspirators for payment—eh?”
“Because I am compelled. I, alas! took a false step once, and His Excellency the General has taken advantage of it ever since. He forces me to act according to his wishes, to conspire, to betray—to murder if necessity arises—because he knows how I dread the truth becoming known to the secret revolutionary committee, and how I fully realise the terrible fate which must befall me if the actual facts were ever revealed. The Terrorists entertain no sympathy with their betrayer.”
“I quite understand that,” remarked the Sovereign. And then, in gracious words, he closely questioned him regarding the assassination of the Grand Duke Peter outside the Opera House in Warsaw, and heard the ghastly truth of Markoff’s crime from the witness’s own lips.
“I read the letters which I secured from the Palace of the Grand Duke Nicholas,” he admitted. “They were to the same effect as Your Majesty has said. In one of them His Excellency the General confessed his crime.”
“You threw the bomb which killed my brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas?”