“Just this. That you followed a certain lady who accompanied this gentleman here—followed and watched them for two hours.” And then, fixing his big, expressive eyes upon the man he was interrogating, he added: “You followed them because your intention was to carry out the plot conceived by your master—the plot to kill them both!”
“It’s a lie!” cried the traitor. “There is no plot.”
“Listen,” exclaimed Hartwig, in a low, firm voice. “It is your intention to commit an outrage, and having done so, you will denounce to the police certain persons living in this house. Arrests will follow, if any return to Russia, the General will be congratulated by the Emperor upon his astuteness in laying hands so quickly upon the conspirators, and half-a-dozen innocent persons will be sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, if they dare ever go back to their own country. You see,” he laughed, “that I am fully aware of the remarkably ingenious programme in progress.”
The man’s face was pale as death. He saw that his secret was out.
“And now,” Hartwig went on: “when I tell these people who live below—your comrades and fellow-workers in the revolutionary cause—what will they say—eh? Well, Danilo Danilovitch, I shall, when I’ve finished with you, leave you to their tender mercies. You remember, perhaps, the fate of Boutakoff, the informer at Kieff, how he was attached to a baulk of timber and placed upon a circular saw, how Raspopoff died of slow starvation in the hands of those whom he had betrayed at Moscow, and how Mirski, in Odessa, was horribly tortured and killed by the three brothers of the unfortunate girl he had given into the hands of the police. No,” he laughed, “your friends show neither leniency nor humanity towards those who betray them.”
“But you will not do this!” gasped the man, his eyes dilated by fear, now that he had been brought to bay.
“I have explained my intention,” replied Hartwig slowly and firmly.
“But you will not!” he cried. “I—I implore you to spare me! You appear to know everything.”
“Yes,” was the reply. “I know how, by your perfidious actions, dozens, nay hundreds, of innocent persons have been sent into exile. To the revolutionists throughout the whole of Russia there is one great leader known as ‘The One’—the leader whose identity is unknown, but whose word is law among a hundred thousand conspirators. You are that man! Your mandates are obeyed to the letter, but you keep your identity profoundly secret. These poor misguided fools who follow you believe that the secrecy as to the identity of their fearless leader whom they only know as ‘The Wonder Worker,’ or generally ‘The One,’ is due to a fear of arrest. Ah! Danilo Danilovitch,” he laughed, “you who lead them so cleverly are a strong man, and a clever man. You hold the fate of all revolutionary Russia in your hand. You form plots, you get your poor, ill-read puppets to carry them out, and afterwards you send them to Siberia in batches of hundreds. A clever game this game of terrorism. But I tell you frankly it is at an end now. What will these comrades of yours say when they are made aware that ‘The One’—the man believed by so many to be sent providentially to sweep away the dynasty and kill the enemies of freedom—is identical with Danilo Danilovitch, the bootmaker of Kazan and police-spy. Rather a blow to the revolutionary organisation—eh?”
“And a blow for you,” I added, addressing the unkempt-looking fellow for the first time. Though I confess that I did not recognise him as the man who threw the bomb in Petersburg, I added: “It was you who committed the dastardly outrage upon the Grand Duke Nicholas, and for which many innocent persons are now immured in those terrible cells below the water at Schusselburg—you who intend that His Imperial Highness’s daughter and myself shall die!” I cried.