“Ah, no. I have only told you in order that you should be forewarned. Let that pass; yet remember the words I have uttered, proof of which you shall have some day. The fact is, I want you to do me a favour. I am tired of this exile from my friends; I have no one as companion except old Akoulina, and I want to return to Russia for a month or so to visit my relatives, and to transact some legal business connected with my poor father’s estate.”
“But is it safe for you to return?” I hazarded.
“Not unless you will procure me a passport. This you can do if you will,” she answered earnestly.
“You would be arrested on the frontier,” I said. “Is it wise to run such risk?”
“Of course the passport must not be in my own name,” she went on. “You alone can obtain one from your friend at the Embassy.”
I shook my head dubiously, feeling assured that I could never induce Verblioudovitch to issue a false passport to a woman he had denounced as a dangerous criminal.
“Ah, you will try, will you not?” she implored, rising and gripping my arm. “It is necessary that I should be in St Petersburg within fourteen days from now, in order to give instructions regarding my late father’s property. His brother, my uncle, is endeavouring to cheat me of it, and I must return, or I shall lose everything. I shall be ruined utterly.”
She spoke so rapidly, and upon her pale face was a look so wistful, that I felt assured she was in earnest. Hers was not the face of a malefactor, but rather that of a modest girl whose spirit had been broken by her bereavement.
“I obtained your immunity from arrest here in England, it is true,” I said. “But I fear that in my efforts to obtain for you a false passport I shall fail. If the police discover you within Russian territory, then nothing can save you from Siberia.”
“But they will not find me,” she cried hastily. “Obtain for me a passport that will carry me across the frontier, and within an hour I shall be as dead to the police as the stones in the wall.”