Some Surprises.
Several weeks passed uneventfully. In fulfilment of my promise to Sonia I had obtained the required permit and taken it personally to Pembroke Road on the same evening, but on arrival there discovered that the pretty Russian had been unexpectedly summoned to the bedside of a sick friend. She had, however, left a note with the English maid asking me to enclose the document in an envelope and leave it.
“I regret it is impossible for me to be at home to receive you,” she wrote in French, “but I have every confidence that you will secure me what I require. If you leave it for me I will, in return, write down and send you the facts I promised to reveal. Time presses, therefore kindly excuse my haste. I shall always remember your kindness and be ready to render you any service in return.”
This was disappointing. I had hoped to hear from her own lips her promised revelations, but this being impossible, I enclosed the special permit in an envelope, sealed it and left it, together with a brief note warning her that she was being carefully watched by police agents, and promising to call next day and bid her farewell.
When on the following morning I presented myself at her house, I was informed by the maid that mademoiselle had left early to visit her sick friend, and that she would not return till evening. Inquiry showed that she had received my letter, and when at eight o’clock that night I again called in the expectation of obtaining the fulfilment of her promise to tell me of Ella, I found her still absent, and gathered from the servant that she had taken a travelling-trunk with her. I concluded that she had left secretly for Russia.
From day to day I waited in the expectation of a letter from her, but although I remained in anxiety and doubt for more than a month, none came, and I was at last compelled to admit that I had actually been tricked, as Paul had predicted. He was right after all. Sonia, the innocent-looking girl with the sad, dark eyes and dimpled chin, was a woman internationally notorious, who, soft-voiced, had posed as my friend in order to attain her own ends, and had then departed without carrying out her part of the compact. As the weeks passed I gradually began to realise the force of Paul Verblioudovitch’s words when he had tried to impress upon me the necessity of accepting her statements with caution. Without doubt she was a heartless adventuress, therefore I bitterly reproached myself for having allowed her libellous allegations against Ella to arouse suspicion within me, and at length determined upon regarding all her words as false, uttered merely for the purpose of enlisting my assistance to procure here re-entry into her own country. My anger that I should have allowed myself to fall into such a trap, and make such a demand upon a friend’s goodwill, knew no bounds. I went to the Embassy, and to Paul admitted that my hopes had not been realised. In reply, he laughed heartily, saying,—
“I warned you, my dear fellow, of the kind of woman with whom you were dealing. Thank your stars that she has discarded you so easily, and be careful of pretty refugees in future. No harm has apparently been done, for inquiries I’ve made showed that she crossed the frontier at Verjbolovo without detection.”
“I must confess I doubted the truth of your words before you issued the permit, but of course it is all plain now,” I said.
“You don’t believe her lies about Miss Laing, eh?” he inquired bluntly, but a trifle earnestly, I thought.
“No, I don’t,” I smiled; and then our conversation had drifted into a different channel. It was clear enough now, patent to everybody, that the girl I had fancied so pure, so unworldly—the goddess that sat in the clouds regarding all earth with clear, immaculate eyes—was simply an adventuress, a wretched creature, on the lookout for victims.