Her eyes swept the room with cold hauteur

The Shears of Destiny

By
Leroy Scott

Author of
“To Him That Hath,” “The Walking Delegate”

Illustrated by Alexander Popini

New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1910

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910, BY THE SUCCESS COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1910, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1910

CHARACTERS

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE SHEARS OF DESTINY

THE SHEARS OF DESTINY

CHAPTER I
THE WOMAN IN BROWN

INSTEAD of the week Drexel had thought his business would keep him in Moscow, two days sufficed. They were a pleasant two days, rich with promise of future profit, and it was with regret that he settled down in his compartment of the day express to St. Petersburg. He would have been glad had his business denied him a little longer the company of his aunt and his cousin Alice and the polished Prince Berloff.

Drexel gave little heed to the country through which his train shrieked and rumbled. And there was small reason that he should, for the land was monotonously flat, and made more monotonous by its vast blanket of sunless snow, beneath which it had been asleep these two months and which it would not throw aside with the awakening gesture of Spring for three long months to come. As far as the eye could reach there was only this gray-white, frozen desert—desolate emptiness, save where forests of spruce and hemlock lifted their myriad whited peaks toward the sullen sky, or a distant peasant village huddled low as if shivering with the bitter cold.

The pictures before his inward eye were far more interesting than this unvaried panorama unrolled by the snowbound land of his exile. He had reserved an entire compartment that he might think uninterrupted, and as the white miles flew behind him new visions of fortune, of power, of position, shaped and reshaped themselves in his rapid incisive mind. He longed impatiently to be back in Chicago—back with his uncle in the midst of things!

Running through all his thoughts and visions was his last talk with his uncle. That talk had risen from this very business of his coming to Russia. While in Paris the preceding summer Alice and her mother had met Prince Berloff, then in France on a secret diplomatic mission. He was one of Russia’s greatest titles, Alice one of America’s greatest fortunes, so the engagement that followed was possibly pre-ordained. Alice’s mother had written her husband that she desired to see the country where her daughter was to be so exalted a figure, and had declared that they would be perfectly safe, even though smouldering revolutions did threaten to flame forth, under the protection of so great a nobleman as Prince Berloff. But old John Howard would not permit their visit without a nearer escort; and since he himself could not leave the great traction deal which then engrossed him, he had shunted his duties upon his convenient nephew.

Drexel had rebelled. He protested against leaving the traction deal and the other vast interests his uncle was drawing him into. And on another ground he protested with even greater vehemence. He had thought himself in love with his pretty cousin, and he now urged to his uncle the ironic incongruity of the rejected suitor being compelled to escort his inamorata about the land, and among the honours, of his successful rival.

His uncle had put a hand upon his arm. “See here, Henry,” he said with brusque affection, “you don’t really care for Alice, and never did care. You just thought you did.”

“We’ll pass that. But even if I cared, you would have turned me down just the same.” His tone was bitter, for the thing still rankled. “Of course I realize that your sister’s son is a poor man.”

“No poorer than my son would be, if I had one, if I had died twenty-five years ago like your father. In this marriage business, it wasn’t that you haven’t any money. It was because your aunt—well, you know as well as I do how keen she was about a title. But forget all that, my lad. I like you just as if you were my own boy. And I’m proud of you. Ten years from now, you’ll be the biggest young business man in America!”

Drexel gave a dry laugh. “I don’t look much like that picture at present. What have I got? Only the little my mother left me!”

And then his uncle had said the great words. “Eh, but, boy, you’re only twenty-six; and so far you’ve just been in training! In training to take my place when I step out. Your training is over; when you come back from Russia, your real career begins—and a big one, too! Oh, your fifty thousand is nothing”—he brushed it aside with a contemptuous hand—“but you know you’re coming in for a good part of what I have and you’re going to manage the whole pile. One of these princes may be all right for a son-in-law, but he don’t get control of my business! The things I’ve spent my life in building up, I’m not going to have sold, or ruined by mismanagement. No, sir!”

The old man had brought the flat of his hand down upon the table. “See here, Henry—forget your grouch—look me straight in the eye. That’s right. Now, down in the bottom of your heart, don’t you know that you’ve got the biggest business chance of any young fellow in America?”

The keen young gray eyes looked steadily into the keen old gray eyes. “I do,” he admitted.

“And is there anything you’d like better than to control great industries—to make millions on millions—to know that though you don’t live in Washington you’ve got as big a say-so in running things as any man that does?”

The young man’s face had glowed, his voice had rung with perfect confidence. “I’m going to be all that, uncle. I feel it in me! It’s the dream of my life!”

And it was about this great future that Drexel’s thoughts revolved as his train roared onward across the snow. His ironic duty was all but done. For three months he had grimly played his part, and now in two weeks Alice would be Princess Berloff. Originally the marriage was to have taken place in Chicago, but the disturbed state of affairs would not permit the prince to leave his country, so it had been decided that the wedding should be in St. Petersburg—and Mr. Howard, set free by a business lull, was now lunging through wintry seas to be present at the ceremony. Two more weeks, and Drexel and his uncle would be speeding back to Chicago—back to giant affairs.

But some of his business thoughts centred here in Russia; for, after all, his banishment from business promised to be a fortunate misfortune. Drexel had not been in Russia two days before he had seen the tremendous opportunities the future would offer capital in this the most undeveloped of civilized countries. He had begun to project great schemes—schemes to be inaugurated years hence, when the success of the Czar or the revolutionists had given the country that stability necessary for business enterprise. And it was characteristic of his energy, and of the way he prepared for distant eventualities, that he had applied himself to the study of the Russian tongue the better to fit himself for these dim-seen Russian successes.

At Bolgoîé his meditations were interrupted by the pause of the express for lunch. The platform was crowded with soldiers and gendarmes, and standing about in attitudes of exaggerated indifference were men whose furtive watchfulness betrayed them as spies of an inferior grade. At Drexel’s table in the station dining-room sat several officers of the gendarmerie, to whom he mechanically listened. They were discussing the greatest of the Government’s recent triumphs—the arrest a week before of Borodin, one of the chief revolutionary leaders, who immediately following his seizure had been secretly whisked away, no one knew whither save only the head of the spy system and a few other high officials. In what prison the great leader was held was a question all Russia was then asking.

“Ah,” exclaimed the officers, “if the same prison only held The White One!”

That was a name to arouse even such indifferent ears as Drexel’s, for he felt the same curiosity as did the rest of Russia concerning the person concealed behind this famous sobriquet. The little that he knew had served only to quicken his interest. He joined in the officers’ conversation, but they could add nothing to his meagre knowledge. The White One was the great general who planned and directed the outbursts from the underworld of revolution—a master of daring strategy—the shrewdest, keenest brain in the Empire. That was all. For the rest The White One was shrouded in complete mystery. To Russia at large The White One was just a great, invisible, impersonal power, and to the Czar the name most dreaded in all his realm.

Back in his compartment, Drexel renewed his eager planning, and his mind did not again turn from business till St. Petersburg was but some two hours ahead, and the short, dull-hued day had long since deepened into night. He heard a voice in the corridor of his coach remark that near the station at which the train had just paused was the great estate of Prince Berloff. He peered through the double-glazed window out of casual interest in the place he knew from several visits. But he could see nothing but a long shed of a station building and a few shaggy peasants in sheepskin coats, so as the train started up he settled back and his brain returned to its schemes.

A few moments later he became aware that the portière at the door of his compartment had been drawn aside. Irritated that anyone should intrude upon the privacy he had paid high to secure himself, he looked up. In the doorway stood a young woman, twenty-two or three perhaps, slender but not too slender, with hair of the colour of midnight, long black eyelashes and a smooth dark skin faintly flushed with the cold. The eyes were of that deep clear blue that is sometimes given a brunette. She wore a long loose fur coat of a rich dark brown, and a cap of the same dark fur, and she carried a brown muff, and over her wrist a leather bag.

For only an instant did she pause, with the portière in one hand. Then without a word to Drexel, who had half risen, she entered the compartment and took the opposite seat.

CHAPTER II
CAUGHT IN THE CURRENT

WITH her chin in one slender, exquisitely gloved hand, she stared out into the flying darkness. As for Drexel, not another thought went to America or to fortune-building. The moment he had seen that darkly beautiful figure a thrill had gone through him and a dizzying something that choked him had risen into his throat.

Her fixed gaze into the outward blackness gave him his chance and he was not the man to squander it. He eyed her steadily, noticed that she breathed quickly, as though she had hurried for the train—noticed how white and even were the teeth between her barely parted lips—noticed again how smooth was the texture of her skin and how like rich old marble was its colour—noticed how finely chiselled were all her features, how small the ear that nestled up in her dark hair. He wondered who she was, and what. But who, or what, she was decidedly a Russian, and decidedly the most beautiful woman he had seen in all the Czar’s wide realm.

Once he gazed out the window, with the purpose that he might look back upon her with the freshness of a first glance. When he turned, it was to give a start. She was gazing straight at him. And her eyes did not fall or turn when met by his. She continued to gaze straight into his face, with those black-lashed blue eyes of hers, such a blue as he had never before seen—with no overture in her look, no invitation, no whit of coquetry—continued peering, peering, as though studying the very fibre of his soul.

What her outward eye saw was a figure of lithe strength, built as the man should be built who had been his university’s greatest tackle, and a dark-mustached, square-chinned, steady-eyed face that bespoke power and one used to recognition and authority.

Drexel met her gaze with held breath, in suspense as to what remarkable event this remarkable look would the next minute lead to. But it led to none. She merely turned her eyes back into the darkness.

He noticed now that she seemed a little tense, as though mastering some emotion. But other things claimed his thoughts above this. He wanted to speak to her—wondered if he dared; but, despite that long direct look, despite her walking into his private compartment, he knew she was not the woman with whom one could pick up acquaintance on a train. He saw what was going to happen; they would ride on thus to St. Petersburg—part without a word—never see each other again.

The train sped on. At length they neared the environs of the capital. They stopped at a station where lay a train from St. Petersburg, then started up again. It seemed to Drexel that her tensity was deepening.

“Pardon,” suddenly said a voice at the door.

Both Drexel and the girl looked about. There stood a big-bodied, bearded man in the long gray coat of a captain of gendarmes.

“What is it?” Drexel curtly demanded in his broken Russian. The young woman said nothing.

The captain entered. He had the deference which the political police show the well-dressed and the obviously well-born, but can never spare the poor.

“Excuse me,” said he, “I must examine madame.”

The young woman paled, but her voice rang with indignation. “What do you mean?”

It was a distinct surprise to Drexel that her Russian was also broken—but little better than his own.

“It is my duty, madame,” returned the officer. “I am sorry, but I must discharge my duty.”

She rose in her superb beauty and flashed a look at the captain that made Drexel’s heart leap, so much of fire and spirit did it reveal.

“Duty or no duty, I shall accept no indignity at your hands!” she cried.

The officer hesitated. “My orders are my orders, as madame must know. What I do here I must do through all the train; no woman can leave till she has been examined. But I shall go no farther than necessary. Perhaps madame’s passport will be sufficient. That, madame knows, she must always show upon request.”

The young woman’s indignation subsided, and she sat down and reached for her leather bag. Drexel had been in Russia long enough to know this searching of a train meant that something had happened. And he knew how formidable was this officer—not in himself, but in what he represented, what was massed behind him: a quarter of a million of political police and spies, hundreds of prisons, Siberian exile, the scaffold, blindfolded death from rifle volleys.

Both Drexel and the captain closely watched the young woman. She went through the notes and few articles for the toilet in the little bag; and then a look of annoyance came over her face. Drexel’s heart beat high. He knew what faced the person who had no passport.

She went through the little bag again—and again found nothing.

The captain’s eyes had grown suspicious. “Well, your passport, madame!” he cried roughly. “Or you come with me!”

Drexel knew she was in danger, and in a flash he thought of a dozen wild things that he might do to aid her. But he thought of nothing so wild as what next occurred.

She looked up from her bag and turned those wonderful eyes straight into his face—and smiled! The intimate, domestic, worried smile that a wife might give her husband.

“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport must have been packed in among your things.”

Henry Drexel may have been unconscious for some portion of an instant. But the captain, who had turned to him, saw never a blink, never a falter.

“Why, perhaps it was, Mary,” said he, and he reached for his bag.

The world whizzed about him as he went through the form of searching his suit-case; but he showed only a perplexed, annoyed face when he looked up.

“We must have left it out altogether, Mary,” he said, speaking in Russian for the sake of the captain.

“How provoking!” cried she, likewise in Russian.

But this play-acting, good though it was, was not enough to counterbalance “orders.” “I’ve got nothing to do with forgotten passports,” said the captain. He seized her arm. “You’ll have to come with me!”

She gave Drexel a quick look. But he did not need it. Already he was on his feet.

“Don’t you dare touch my wife!” he cried, and he furiously flung the captain’s hand away.

The captain glared. “I’ll do what—”

“You won’t!” snapped Drexel. He pressed his chest squarely against that of the officer. “You dare touch my wife—the wife of an American citizen—and see what happens to you when I make my complaint! It will be the worst mistake of your life! As for this passport business, as soon as we get to Petersburg I shall fix it up with the chief of police.” He pointed at the door. “Now—you leave us!”

The captain looked at the broad-shouldered young fellow, with the determined face and the flashing eyes. Looked and hesitated, for Drexel’s dominant bearing was not only the bearing of wrathful innocence, but it was eloquent of power to carry out his threat.

The captain wavered, then broke. “I hope monsieur will excuse——”

“Good-bye!” said Drexel sharply.

The captain bowed and stumbled out. When Drexel turned the young woman was breathing rapidly and her face spoke many sensations—relief, excitement, gratitude, perhaps a glint of admiration.

She gave him that direct gaze of hers and held out her hand. “Thank you—very much,” she said simply, in English.

“I’m afraid I was rather melodramatic,” returned Drexel, somewhat lamely.

“You could not have done it better. Thank you.”

“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport must have been packed among your things”

They sat down and for a moment looked at each other in silence. Her breath still came sharply. He was eager to know the meaning of all this; he was sure she would explain; but he said nothing, leaving it to her to speak or keep silent, as she would.

She saw his curiosity. “You are surprised?”

“I confess it.”

“I am sorry so poorly to reward what you have done. But I cannot explain.”

He inclined his head. “As you please.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

If Drexel had thought this incident was to establish them at once in close acquaintance, that hope soon began to suffer disappointment. There was no lack of courtesy, of gratitude, in her manner; he was already so far in her confidence that she dropped her mask of perfect control, and let him see that she was palpitantly alert and fearful; but she spoke to him no more than a bare monosyllable or two. Her fear spread to him. Mixed with his wonderment as to who she was, and what was this mysterious danger that menaced her, was a trembling apprehension lest the captain, recovered from his intimidation, should reappear in the compartment.

But the captain did not reappear, and they rode on in their strange, strained silence. When the train drew into the Nicholayevsky Station in St. Petersburg, Drexel started to help her from the coach. She tried to check him, but he had her out upon the platform before she could say a word.

She quickly held out her hand. “Good-bye,” she said hurriedly.

“Good-bye?” he cried in dismay.

“Yes. We shall not meet again.”

An icy chill swept through him. “Not meet again! Why, I had hoped that you would let me come—”

“You cannot come,” she went on swiftly. “And you must not try to follow me.”

That was the plan that had instantly shot into his head. “But—” he pleaded.

“You must not!”

He hesitated.

A look from those blue eyes, straight into his own. “You will not. I trust you.”

He bowed his head. “I shall not.”

“Good-bye—and thank you,” said she.

He gripped her hand. “Good-bye,” he said. And he gathered in his last look of her.

But suddenly, when he thought he had lost her, her hand slipped through his arm—slipped through it as with wifely habit—and she was saying to him in a hurried whisper:

“Don’t look back. That gendarme captain is working this way. I think he’s not wholly satisfied. I must at least leave with you. Come.”

Again Drexel did not blink. Instantly he was leading her along the platform, arm in arm, with the easy manner of four or five married years. In the open square before the station scores of bearded drivers, swathed in blankets till they looked like bulky mummies, were clamorously shouting, “Isvochtchik! Isvochtchik!” One of these Drexel signalled. He was helping her into the little sleigh when he saw her give a calm, steady look to some one behind him. Turning, he saw the captain, for whom a sleigh was drawing up to the curb. Drexel gave him a curt nod, stepped into the foot-high sleigh and drew the fur robe about them. The driver cracked his whip and the horse sprang away.

“After a few blocks you can set me down,” she whispered.

For even that respite Drexel was grateful.

“Where shall I take my lord?” came over the driver’s shoulder.

“Up Nevsky Prospect,” Drexel ordered.

They turned into bright-lit Nevsky Prospect, thronged with flashing sleighs, and glided without speech over the polished snow. After a few moments she glanced back. She clutched his arm.

“He is behind us!”

He did not need to be told not to turn his head. “The captain?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he is following us?”

“Perhaps he is only taking the same direction by chance. Let us stop a few times. That will show us.”

Drexel gave the necessary orders. They made a stop at a fruit store, another at a confectioner’s—but when she looked back, there, at a distance, was the captain jogging in their tracks.

“He is following—that’s certain!” she breathed.

“He is suspicious, but hesitates to do anything, and thinks it wisest to watch us. Apparently there is no shaking him.”

Suddenly a new idea rushed into Drexel’s head. He looked down into her face; he tried to speak steadily—tried to keep his joy out of his voice.

“Do you remember what we told that officer—that we were husband and wife?”

“Yes.”

“Till we can get rid of him, our only safety is in keeping up that pretence. If we make one suspicious move he will pounce upon us. You and I, we must stay together.”

She was silent.

“Don’t you see that?” he asked.

“Yes. But the danger to you?”

“That? That is nothing!” he cried. “Will you come with me?”

She looked steadily at him a moment.

“I will come,” she said.

For an instant he considered at what hotel there was least danger of his being recognized. “Isvochtchik, to the Hotel Metropole—straight!” he ordered.

Ten minutes later they were standing in the hotel lobby, her arm in his, two porters industriously brushing the snow off their long fur coats, and a gold-braided major-domo before them.

“I suppose,” said Drexel, “you have a room for myself and wife?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the bowing major-domo.

“Ah—say two rooms, with a connecting door?”

“Certainly. I will show you.”

Drexel followed, and the young woman, with perfect poise, with a grace that made him marvel, swept up the stairway at his side. The two rooms were large, each with a great white-tiled stove filling one corner from floor to ceiling, with long windows looking out upon the street—and with, between the two, the required door.

Were the rooms satisfactory? Entirely so. Would madame or monsieur desire anything for their comfort? If they did they would order it later.

When the major-domo and the porter who had brought up Drexel’s suit-case were gone, and Drexel was left standing alone in the larger room with that brilliantly beautiful creature, he was swept with a desire that this marriage game they played—a game involving life and death, and far, far more, for aught he knew—were not a game at all, but a reality.

But he mastered himself. It was only a game—and he had to see the game through to the end.

“This room will be yours,” said he.

“Very well,” said she.

He stepped to the connecting door and changed the key to her side of the lock. She thanked him with a look.

“Perhaps you would like something to eat?” he suggested.

“Nothing.”

He wanted to remain and talk with her, yet the situation was such that the suggestion had to come from her. He hesitated near the door, waiting—but the invitation did not come.

“I shall put out my light,” he said, “but I shall not go to bed. If you need me, just call. Good-night.”

Suddenly she came across the room to him, her hand outstretched, her dark face glowing.

“Forgive me if I seem unthankful,” she said in her rich low voice. “I am not. And forgive me because I can say so little. Perhaps the time will come when I can tell you all, and thank you as you deserve. But please understand that I understand, and that I appreciate, what you have done for me, and the danger you are now incurring in being here.”

As he looked into her glowing eyes, his words burst out of their own accord. “I would rather be here than any place else in the world!”

She flushed slightly under his gaze. “Good-night—” and she pressed his hand.

“Good-night,” said he.

He stepped into the other room, and the next moment the key turned in the lock.

CHAPTER III
A LONG JOURNEY THAT WAS SOON ENDED

DREXEL walked to one of the long windows and gazed down into the bright street through which those absurd-looking yet comfortable little sleighs, the winter cabs of Russia, were still whizzing to and fro. Less than three hours had passed since the young woman had entered his compartment, and hardly more than a quarter since this strange adventure had taken a new turn by sending them together to the Hotel Metropole. Dazed, tingling, he began dimly to wonder what they would do on the morrow, and what was to be the outcome of it all.

But his thoughts were not to be completed. He had been in the room no more than a couple of minutes when a rap sounded at his hall door. He opened it and there stood a hotel porter.

The porter held out a pad of paper. “Will monsieur please write his and madame’s name for the registry?”

Drexel took the pad. She had called him John. So without hesitation he wrote, “Mr. and Mrs. John Davis, New York, U. S. A.” As he wrote he heard the rasping of the lock of the connecting door, and looking about he saw that “Mrs. John Davis” had entered.

He handed back the pad. “Thank you,” said the porter. “And will monsieur oblige us with his and madame’s passports?”

For a moment Drexel stood nonplussed. In the excitement of the last fifteen minutes he had completely forgotten one great essential fact—that no person can stay over night in a Russian hotel, or sleep as a guest in a private house, without sending his passport to police headquarters to be registered.

For the moment he knew not what to say. It was the young woman who saved the situation. She came forward calmly.

“Our passports are in our bag,” she said in her broken Russian, motioning to Drexel’s suit-case. “As soon as we have unpacked, monsieur will bring down our passports in person.”

“Very well,” said the porter, and closed the door.

Drexel looked at her in dismay. “I had forgotten all about passports!”

“So had I. But I thought of them the instant you left me. I knew what was wanted the moment I heard the knock.”

“If we only had a passport for you!”

“I had unexpectedly to turn mine over as a credential to gain admission to—to—a certain place this afternoon. I had no time to get it back.”

“They have your passport! Can’t they trace you through that?”

She shook her head. “It was a false passport.”

“What can we do now?”

“I must leave, somehow.”

“Then I leave, too!” cried Drexel.

“I cannot let you risk yourself further.”

“You cannot prevent me!”

“But you must have guessed that that gendarme captain is not the only man searching for me.”

“I don’t care if there are a hundred!” he cried recklessly.

She looked at him queerly a moment.

“By this time,” she remarked quietly, “I dare say there are fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand!” he slowly ejaculated, and stared at her. “Then,” cried he, “all the greater is your need for passing as an American! They have a description of you?”

“I’m sure they cannot have a clear one.”

He began to pace the room. “What shall we do?” he asked himself. “What shall we do?”

Suddenly he paused. “I have it. Passports are not required for travelling on trains. Except in such rare cases as this afternoon. We shall go upon a trip—as Americans—one lasting for days, or till we can think of something better. If any trouble rises, I’ll bluff it out. Are you willing?”

“It is I who should ask the question of you.”

“Then it is settled!” He was fairly swept out of himself by the prospect of days spent in her company. The danger—that was nothing!

“But how can we leave the hotel, without its looking queer?” she asked. “There is your bag, you know.”

“We’ll not take it. Luckily there’s nothing about it to reveal my identity. The things in it we really need I can put in the big pockets of my shuba,” and he pointed at his great loose fur coat. “We’ll simply saunter out with the air of going for a stroll. A bag and anything else we want we can buy at some little shop.”

She nodded. “And I noticed there was a side entrance, out of which we might slip without being seen.”

“Yes. One minute, and we’ll be off!”

He slipped on his shuba, threw open the bag, stuffed his pockets, then closed the bag again.

“Come now,” he cried, almost gaily, starting for the door.

“But wait.” He looked at her with a quizzical smile. “Don’t you think it’s—er—rather nice for a husband and wife to know one another’s name?”

She smiled back. “Why yes, it would be a convenience.”

“Well—?”

“You called me Mary.”

“Yes, but that—”

“My name is Mary Davis,” she said. And for all that she still smiled, he knew he would get no other name.

“Then I’m to remain John Davis, I suppose. But in my case there’s no reason you should not know my real name. It’s Henry Drexel.”

At his name the smile faded from her face, and one hand slowly reached out and caught the back of a chair.

“Henry Drexel!” she breathed.

“You seem to know it.”

“You are—ah—the American who has been here as the guest of Prince Berloff? Whose cousin is going to marry the prince?”

“Yes.”

She was quite calm again. “Yes, I have heard of you. That’s only natural, for the marriage has been much talked about. Shall we start?”

They were at the door, when she stopped him with a hand upon his arm.

“Something just occurs to me. Would it not be wiser to learn about the trains before we leave? We can better regulate our actions then.”

“Of course. I should have thought of that. I can make inquiries down at the hotel office—as though I were finding out in advance about trains for to-morrow or the next day.” He laid aside his cap and coat. “I’ll be back immediately.”

It was perhaps a dozen minutes since Drexel had entered the hotel. He strolled coolly enough down the stairway, but, the lobby gained, it was only with an effort that he maintained his calm exterior. Near the desk where he could see all who went and came, was the burly captain of gendarmes, his bearded face still ruddy with the outer cold. Reciting some story to him stood the major-domo. Upon the instant Drexel had to alter his plans.

“Pardon me,” he said to the major-domo, giving the captain a short nod.

“Yes, monsieur.” The major-domo turned to him.

“Through some oversight my wife’s passport was left behind when we threw a few things together to run up here for a day. I suppose if I make explanations directly to the police department, there will be no trouble. I am quite willing to pay.”

“It can be arranged, monsieur.”

“I am tired and do not feel inclined to go out,” he went on with haughty indolence. “Would you please, when you get time, get the proper official on the telephone, explain, and ask him to come here? My wife is resting now; let him come in an hour. You can say to him that it will be worth his trouble.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said the major-domo, who surmised this rich American would also make it worth his own trouble. “Anything else, monsieur?”

“Send me the head waiter.”

A porter went scurrying for that functionary. Drexel half turned away, and the major-domo resumed his recital to the captain.

“The report says, Captain Nadson, that the woman gained admittance on the pretext of having an engagement. The servants could not clearly make out her face, for the light was dim and she was veiled; but her dress and manner made them believe her a lady of importance, and they told her to wait.” Drexel pricked up his ears. “It is certain she knew he was away, and chose her time accordingly, and it is certain she must have known the house well, for she slipped into his study and got into his private papers. When Prince Berloff—”

“Prince Berloff!” exclaimed Drexel. He saw Captain Nadson give him a sharp look. Instantly he was under control. “He came in and found her?” he queried casually.

“Yes,” said the major-domo. “But she fired two shots at him.”

“Kill him?” Drexel nonchalantly asked.

“No. She did not even touch him. And in the hubbub, she got away. The report says it was probably a plot of The White One.”

“The White One!” A shiver crept through Drexel at that dread name.

“The White One—yes,” nodded the major-domo. “Obviously a scheme to get some State papers which were temporarily in Prince Berloff’s possession. But the young woman failed. I wonder if they’ll capture her?”

“I wonder,” Drexel repeated indifferently.

To the head waiter, who just then appeared, he gave an order for an elaborate supper that would be a good hour in preparing. Then he casually inquired about the trains for the morrow, and learned that he could get a train for the south of Russia in half an hour.

All the while Drexel had kept Captain Nadson in the corner of his eye. He perceived that his cool front had had its effect; the officer was half reassured, and plainly was afraid to take any immediate action lest it might prove a mistake disastrous to himself. Drexel nodded curtly at the captain and walked away, feeling that suspicion was rendered inactive till the police official should arrive upon the business of the passport. By that time they would be miles out of St. Petersburg.

As he sauntered up the stairway he wore the same cool, careless front; but within him was turmoil. How about the story the major-domo had told? But that, even were it true, that was nothing! The great thing, the only thing, was that for days he was to be constantly near the wonderful woman awaiting him above. It went through him with a thrilling sweep; and it was with a tense eagerness such as he never before had felt that he threw open the door.

But she was not in the room where he had left her. Nor in the other room. He rushed from one to the other, looking even into the closets. There was no doubt of it. She was gone.

CHAPTER IV
THE PRISONER OF THE WHITE ONE

AS Drexel realized that she was gone, a pang of dizzy agony shot him through. What his uncle had said about his liking for Alice was perfectly true; it had been but a boy-and-girl affair at its best, never warmed by the least fervour; and it had been weakly, sentimentally cherished by him only because no true love had ever come to show him what thin moonshine stuff it was. But this was different—a thousand times different! The danger he had stood in, mortal danger perhaps, had been nothing to him in his anticipation of days of companionship with her. That he had seen her for the first time but three hours before, that she was an unknown personage to him, that she was hunted by the police, that the report said she had tried to shoot his cousin-to-be, Prince Berloff—these things counted also as nothing.

Shrewd, cool-headed, imperturbable, with such an eye for the main chance as insured his getting it—thus was Drexel already widely known in Chicago. His uncle had more than once remarked to him in his blunt fashion, “Henry, you’ll never let your heart boss your brain cells!”

And yet this was exactly what his heart was doing. He was wildly, recklessly in love!

From the first he realised she must have gone wholly of her own accord—slipped out by the second staircase—and slipped out, to face alone what dangers? And why had she gone? This puzzled him for several moments, for she had seemed glad of the refuge offered by the plan of travelling as his wife. Then suddenly he bethought him of the instant-long change in her manner when he had told her his name, and the truth flashed home. She was afraid of Henry Drexel, and her sending him down to inquire about the train was but a ruse to give her a chance to escape him.

Why she should hold him in equal fear with the police and throw away the aid he was so eager to give, was a mystery his excited mind did not even try to solve. It was plain she did not want to see him, yet his sudden, overmastering love, made reckless by his loss of her, roused in him one resistless impulse—to try to find her again. What he should do when she was found he did not pause to consider.

Putting on his big overcoat and fur cap, and assuming his best air of composure, he sallied forth into the hall and descended the minor stairway that led to the side entrance. That he knows he is on a wild-goose chase, is no check to the search of a frantic man. Every bit of sense told Drexel he would not find her he sought, yet he cautiously glanced into such side-street shops as were still open; he scrutinised each woman who hurried through the bitter cold on foot and the robe-buried occupants of the tiny whizzing sleighs; he watched each prowling group of gendarmes to see if they held her in their midst; he peered in at the doors of cafes—into poor ones where only tea was drunk—into rich ones, dazzlingly bright, where jewelled gowns and brilliant uniforms were feasting on Europe’s richest foods and wines. But it was as his sense had foretold. No sight of her was anywhere.

Toward midnight the thought came to him that it was barely possible she had left the hotel for but a moment, and that she had returned and was perhaps in distress because of his desertion. He turned back toward the Metropole. But as he drew near it, his steps slowed. He remembered the dinner he had ordered, the police official he had sent for; both had doubtless arrived long since and found him gone. The danger ahead cleared his mind, and, going hesitatingly forward, he was pondering whether he should risk himself anew on so slight a chance of giving aid, when the matter was decided in a wholly unexpected manner.

As he was passing a street lamp, a young fellow with a few papers under his arm stepped before him. “Buy a paper, Your Excellency,” he snuffled, shooting a keen upward glance at Drexel.

“Don’t want any,” Drexel curtly returned, and pushed by him.

“Mr. Drexel?” the young fellow called in a cautious voice.

Startled, Drexel pivoted about. His interceptor was perhaps nineteen or twenty, squat of build and very poorly dressed.

“See here—what do you want?”

“Don’t go back to the Metropole.”

“Why?”

“You’ll be arrested.”

This warning might be intended as a service, and again it might be a new trap. “How do you know?” Drexel asked suspiciously.

“I, and others, have been on the watch for two hours.”

“What for?”

“To warn you. We were afraid you might not understand your danger and might try to come back.”

Drexel stepped nearer. “What do you know about this?”

“That you went to the Hotel Metropole with a girl, as your wife—that she ran away—that you went out to hunt her—that the disappearance of you both has aroused the police.”

Drexel stared, and in the dim light he could see that the shivering ragamuffin was grinning at his mystification. Was there some link between this lad and the young woman?

“What do you want?”

“I want you to come with me.”

“Go with you!”

“Yes. A description of you has gone to all the police. Everywhere they are looking for you. You are safe only if you come with me.”

The young fellow certainly did know a lot; but when Drexel looked over his poor five feet four inches, and thought of him as a protector, his suspicion was all alive. He was in one danger, no doubt—but it would be foolishness to let himself be duped into another.

“I’m not so certain I want to go with you. Who told you to do this?”

“A woman.”

“A woman! Do—do I know her?”

“You do.”

The chance to find the young woman swept for the moment all suspicious fear aside. “Will I see her?”

“Maybe.” The young fellow grinned and winked. “I’ll ask Mary Davis.”

“Come on!” cried Drexel.

With the young fellow leading the way they worked about in a semi-circle, that had the hotel as its centre, till at length his guide thrust Drexel into a dark doorway.

“Wait here, while I get my comrade; he was watching the other entrance of the hotel,” he said, and disappeared.

Two minutes later he was back, with him a slender figure of medium height. “This is Nicolai; my name’s Ivan,” whispered the young fellow. He threw his newspapers into the blackness of the doorway. “Come on—we must hurry.”

They walked rapidly through by-streets, Ivan chattering in a low voice all the time, calling Nicolai “comrade” whenever he addressed him. Drexel took close notice of his two conductors by the light of the infrequent gas lamps. The one called Nicolai was pale, with regular and refined features and a soft, thin, boyish beard; he was silent, but there was a set to his face that made Drexel feel that though Ivan talked the more, he did not dominate the pair. Compared to Nicolai, Ivan was something of a grotesque. He was pock-marked, his large ears stood flappingly out, his mouth was wide and lopsided and showed very brown and jagged teeth; his hair was light and close-cropped, and he had no more eyebrows than if his forehead had just been soaped and razored. His eyes were small and had a snapping brightness, and they flashed in all directions, watching always for policemen or squads of man-hunting gendarmes, seeing a spy in that shifty-eyed cabman waiting for a fare, or that little shopkeeper who at this late hour had not yet put up his shutters.

They crossed the broad and frozen Neva and zigzagged through obscure and narrow streets. Presently they passed through a gateway and crossed a cobble-paved court with houses vaguely outlining its sides. At a door at the court’s farther end Nicolai gave three low raps; the door opened, they slipped quickly in, and it closed and locked behind them.

A lighted candle revealed a big brown-bearded man, who gave Drexel a searching look. “All’s well, I see,” he said.

“Yes,” said Ivan.

The man silently turned over the candle to Nicolai and disappeared. “Who is he?” Drexel asked, as they mounted a flight of stairs.

“The keeper of this boarding-house,” answered Ivan.

Nicolai unlocked a door. They entered and crossed to another door, Drexel seeing nothing of the room save that it was almost bare. This second door entered and locked behind them, and an oil lamp with blackened chimney lighted, Drexel found himself in a square, low-ceilinged room furnished with a hunchbacked couch on one side, a bed of dubious comfort on the other, a wooden table in the centre with a battered and tarnished brass samovar upon it, three chairs—and that was all.

“Here we are at last,” said Ivan, rubbing his cold bare hands. “Now for a bite to eat. I’ll fix the samovar, comrade. Mr. Drexel, sit down.”

“But,” said Drexel, “I thought you were going to bring me to—to—Mary Davis.”

“It’s not time for her to come yet,” returned Ivan. “You’ll have to wait.”

It occurred to Drexel that this was a strange place to meet such a woman, but he brushed the thought aside. Afire with eagerness as he was, he realised that there was nothing for him but to command such patience as he could. So he took one of the rickety chairs and watched Ivan start the charcoal going in the samovar, and Nicolai take paper bags from the sill of the one window and from these bags take big sour pickles, a loaf of black bread and a roll of sausage, which last two he proceeded to slice. Presently the tea was brewed, and Drexel was asked to draw his chair to the table.

In all his life Drexel had never tasted such uninviting fare. “I’m not hungry, thank you,” he said.

But the sharp eyes of Ivan read him. “Hah! Bring out the caviar and the champagne, comrade. What nine-tenths of the world eats always is too poor for the rich American to eat once!”

“Is it!” said Drexel. He pulled his chair forward, seized a chunk of the sausage and a slab of the black bread, and filled his mouth with a huge bite from each.

Ivan clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s right!” said he, through his gag of bread and meat. “Either I like a man, or I want to fight him. Come—let’s be friends while we’re together!”

Drexel smiled amusedly at the bristling, excited little fellow, and took the outstretched hand. “All right. Since you know who I am, you might tell me who you are.”

“You already know we’re revolutionists,” said Ivan in his rapid, choppy way. “We’re fighters for freedom—hey, comrade? Down with Autocracy!—on come that glorious day when there’ll be a chance for every man! Hey, comrade?”

Nicolai nodded.

“But,” said Drexel, “that doesn’t tell me who you are personally.”

“Ah, you want to be introduced!” Ivan sprang up, a hunk of bread in one hand and of sausage in the other, and his little eyes gleamed with a wild, humorous twinkle. “Allow me to present myself”—he bowed low, the hand with the sausage to his heart—“Ivan, the son of I don’t know who, cradled in the gutter, rocked to sleep on the toe of a policeman’s boot, schooled with the dogs, my income the luxurious sum of 60 kopeks a day drawn from my stock in a lace factory. Glad to meet me, hey?”

He grinned lopsidedly at Drexel. “That’s me,” he nodded. “But with Nicolai”—his sausaged hand made a wave toward his comrade—“it’s another story. He’s educated—he was rich—he—but tell him, comrade.”

“Do,” urged Drexel.

“Very well,” said the other with his quiet shrug; “but it’s little more than Ivan’s story. My parents were well-to-do, yes—but very conservative. While I was in the gymnasium preparing for the university, all the country became excited about gaining freedom. I was loyal enough to the Czar at that time, for I was only seventeen and had been shielded by my parents from liberal opinions. But I was caught by the general spirit and took part in a meeting of the students to demand a constitution. Several of us were arrested and exiled to Siberia.”

“Been sent to Siberia! Think of that!” cried Ivan proudly, and half envious of the distinction of his friend. Then his tone changed to fierce hatred. “Think of exiling a schoolboy—and for that!” His brown teeth clenched.

“But it did me good,” went on Nicolai’s quiet voice. “I wasn’t a revolutionist before, but that made me one. After six months I managed to escape, and came back, and——”

“And then we met each other,” broke in Ivan. “And ever since we’ve been brothers. Hey, comrade?” And in an instant he was skipping nimbly about the table patting Nicolai affectionately on the shoulder. But the next instant he was talking again to Drexel. “We’re always together, we two, both lace-makers—The Inséparables they call us. Oh, and what a lot he knows! Me, I only know this!”

Instantly he had whipped out a big pistol and was flourishing it in the air. “That’s the only argument that will ever win us liberty”—lovingly patting the black chamber of the weapon. “The Duma—bah! We’ve got to fight—to die!”

The pocked-marked little fellow began excitedly to pace the low room, a chunk of sausage in one hand, the pistol in the other. Nicolai quietly filled himself another glass of tea. Now that there was no speech for a few moments the purpose of his being here came again to the fore of Drexel’s mind. He looked at his watch.

“It’s one o’clock,” he said. “Are you sure she is coming?”

Ivan glanced at Nicolai. “You must have patience,” answered Nicolai.

Drexel’s burning curiosity could not refrain from a question concerning this woman that he loved. “You know her?”

Both nodded.

“Do you mind telling me about her—anything, that is, you don’t object to telling?”

“I don’t object to telling you everything we know,” said Nicolai. “We are comrades. We have met a few times. As for her personality, you know that as well as we do. That is all.”

“All!” exclaimed Drexel in disappointment. But he saw that Nicolai was speaking the truth. The story he had heard the major-domo tell came back to his mind. “Then you do not know what her mission was?”

“No. We are only privates. We obey the orders that are given us.”

“Then she is something more than a private?”

Nicolai nodded.

Time ticked on. Drexel became restless with the suspense of waiting; then his first thought on entering the shabby room, that this was a strange place to meet such a woman, began to grow into a vague suspicion.

There was a little intermittent talk. More time dragged on. He grew more restless and suspicious. At length he rose and drew on his coat. Instinctively his hand slipped into one of the coat’s outside pockets and gripped the pistol there.

“I think I’ll walk around a bit,” he said.

“Better not,” advised the quiet voice of Nicolai. “You know the police are looking for you.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid.” The thought rose that, once out of here, his wisest course would be to make a quick dash for the Hotel Europe where were staying his aunt and cousin. Once there, the police would never suspect the relative-to-be of Prince Berloff, and in no danger from them he could continue his search for the young woman. “She may be here when I get back,” he added easily to Nicolai, and turned toward the door.

“Ivan!” snapped out the voice of Nicolai.

But Ivan was already at the door, his back against it, and pointing at Drexel was Ivan’s big revolver.

Drexel started to jerk out his own pistol.

“Move that hand, and he’ll shoot!” said the sharp voice of Nicolai.

“Oh, I know when a man has the drop on me,” said Drexel. “What do you want?”

“First, your pistol,” said Nicolai, and himself took it from Drexel’s overcoat pocket.

When Ivan saw the black compact weapon, his eyes shone enviously. “A Browning!” he cried. “What a beauty!”

“What does this mean?” demanded Drexel.

“That you are going to stay here,” said Nicolai.

“A prisoner?”

“A prisoner.”

“What for?”

“That we were not told when the order was given us,” said Nicolai.

“Then I am being held at some one’s order?” demanded Drexel.

“Yes.”

“By whose order?”

“By the order of The White One,” said Nicolai.

CHAPTER V
THE HOUSE IN THREE SAINTS’ COURT

“BY order of The White One!” Drexel repeated—and the name of that great, impersonal, hidden leader went through him with a thrill of awed consternation. This was a serious situation indeed! He looked from the quiet, tense Nicolai, to the gleaming-eyed, alert Ivan.

“So I am the prisoner of The White One?”

They nodded.

“But why? What have I done?”

“I have already said we do not know,” returned Nicolai. “We have merely done what we were told.”

Drexel’s poise began to return to him. He took off his shuba and tossed it upon the crookbacked couch.

“All right, boys,” he said drily. “Just as you say. It’s a rule of my life to be obliging to the man who’s got the drop on me.”

“Will you be quiet, or”—Nicolai motioned toward a few pieces of rope in a corner.

“Oh, I’ll be quiet—for the present.” He sat down. “By the way—who is this White One?”

“We do not know,” said Nicolai. “We have never seen him. Our orders came through a second person.”

Ivan moved from the door across to Nicolai, begged Drexel’s Browning pistol with a mute look, and gave in exchange the big revolver. “That was really Nicolai’s, but he let me carry it,” he explained to Drexel. He patted the black, fearsome weapon, his face glowing on Nicolai. “Ah, comrade, what a beauty!”

Suddenly Drexel leaned back and roared with laughter. That he should on the one hand be searched for by the police, and on the other hand be held prisoner by the revolutionists—the absurdity of the situation was too much for him. And the situation seemed all the more absurd as he considered the personality of his captors—two starveling, threadbare lads. Yet even as he laughed he did not forget the grimness of his state—the prey of both contending parties. And ere his humour had subsided, he was beginning to rate his guards a little higher; for Ivan, hunched up on the floor with his back to the door, Drexel’s weapon on his knees, was as watchful as a terrier, and there was a high and purposeful determination in Nicolai’s pale face that could but command respect.

It was a quality of Drexel’s, one of the several on which his uncle based his predictions of his nephew’s business success, that when in a plight where he could not help himself, he could easily throw off all strength-exhausting thought and worry. He now stretched himself on the sofa, whose bones all painfully protruded through its starved skin, and drew his coat over him. “You fellows can make a night of it if you want to, but I’m going to sleep,” said he, and a few minutes later he was peacefully unconscious.

When he awoke the niggardly light of a leaden-hued Russian morning was creeping through the single window. For a time he walked restlessly up and down the room. Then he paused before the double-glazed window, which was curtained at the bottom, and looked out.

“You see the pavement is of cobblestones, so to jump would be dangerous,” commented the quiet voice of Nicolai.

Drexel glanced back. “Huh!” he grunted. But all the same he was startled at the keenness with which Nicolai had read his mind.

“Besides,” Nicolai went on, “the windows are screwed down. And even if you burst them and got safely to the ground you would only be arrested by the police.”

Drexel shrugged his shoulders and continued gazing out into the court. It was a dreary enough area, with a few snow-capped houses huddling frozenly about it, its monotony relieved only by a little stuccoed church adjoining, with five dingy blue domes spangled with stars of weather-worn gilt—five tarnished counterfeits of heaven. Ivan, who had come to his side, volunteered that it was called The Church of the Three Saints, and that this court, by virtue of its adjacency, was known as Three Saints’ Court.

Drexel resumed his pacing of the room. “This is a pretty stupid party you have invited me to,” he yawned at length—whereupon Ivan got out an old deck of cards, remarking that they never had time to play these days, and proceeded to teach him sixty-six, Nicolai keeping a steady eye on them all the while. The game was too simple to be of much interest, but what with it, and eating, and more chatter from Ivan, the short dim day faded into sullen dusk, then deepened into the long northern night.

Around eight o’clock footsteps were heard in the adjoining room. Presently there was a knock and on Ivan opening the door there entered two men, one about thirty and the other possibly forty, in caps, high boots and belted blouses beneath their coats. Despite their workingmen’s dress, Drexel could tell by the deference given them by his guards (though they all called one another “comrade”) that they were not what their clothes pronounced them. The older might be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a professor. They informed Ivan and Nicolai that there would be a little meeting in the next room, and that they might have a couple of hours off duty. The two lads went out, and after them the two men, and locked the door behind them.

By this time Drexel had guessed that this place, which hid from the police behind the mask of a workingmen’s boarding-house, was in reality a conspirative headquarters of the revolutionists. His first thought, on being left alone, was of escape. But after a little thinking he realised that what Nicolai had said of the window was quite true, that his only avenue of escape was through the next room, and that he was quite as securely guarded as if the men were in this room beside him.

He was wondering what all this strange business was about, grimly smiling at the situation in which he found himself, when the sound of low voices in the next room set him on a new train of thought. Perhaps in that talk he might learn something that would explain the mystery, and would aid his escape.

The nicest etiquette could hardly require that a prisoner of war should not eavesdrop upon his captors. He put out his oil lamp for a moment. From over the top of the door a thin knife’s edge of light cut into his darkness. He lit his lamp, drew a chair noiselessly to the door, and got upon it. Yes, fortunately for him, the house was old, the door sagged, and he had a very sufficient crack. At the table, on which stood a single candle, the room’s only light, sat the two men, and, her back to him, a woman of whom he could see nothing but that she wore the shapeless, quilted jacket, and the brown, coarse-knit shawl wound tightly about her head, which he had grown accustomed to seeing on workingwomen.

“What time was the American coming?” the woman whispered.

“At about nine, Sonya,” one of the men replied.

Their voices as they went on were low—so low that Drexel caught only fragments of sentences amid blanks of hushed unintelligibility. But from these fragments he pieced together two series of facts. First, that the revolutionists he had met, and hundreds of others, guided by the brain of the great invisible White One, were trying to learn in what prison Borodin was confined, as the first step in an endeavour to bring about his escape. His capture was a paralyzing blow to freedom’s cause, for he was the revolutionists’ greatest statesman; his brain was needed now, and, once the Autocracy was overthrown, there was none who could rebuild as he. Thus far the Government knew him only as Borodin, and the charge on which he was arrested, writing revolutionary articles, would mean no worse than a few years in prison or exile to Siberia; but at any moment the Government might discover that he was also Borski, the sought-after leader of the uprising in Southern Russia, and this discovery would be followed by instant execution. So immediate rescue was imperatively necessary.

Second, the young woman of his last night’s adventure had made the bold attempt in Prince Berloff’s house because it was believed the prince had in his possession some document revealing Borodin’s whereabouts.

Presently there was a knock at the outer door. “That must be the American,” said one of the men.

Drexel could hardly restrain an exclamation of surprise as the door opened and his eyes lighted upon the newcomer. For this third man in workingman’s clothes he knew. He was an American correspondent, James Freeman, whom Drexel had met several times in St. Petersburg cafés. He was a rather tall, black-bearded man of thirty-five, with a lean suppleness of body, piercing black eyes and a daring face. Drexel had always felt an uncanny shrinking when in company with Freeman, so cold, sinister and cynical did he seem; here was a man, his instinct told him, who respected nothing, who feared neither God, nor man, nor devil.

Freeman apparently knew the two men well, and after being introduced to the woman, he sat down. “We received your word that you had something to propose,” began the older of the men. “We are ready to hear what it is.”

“You know me, Dr. Razoff, and you can guess its nature.” Drexel could see the correspondent’s black eyes glitter.

“If it is one of your terroristic plans, you could have saved us all the trouble of this meeting,” returned Razoff. “You know we do not approve of such action.”

“And that’s one reason you have not succeeded better! The only way you can move these despots is by fear. Fear of immediate and awful annihilation! Blow enough of them up, and you can’t get a man bold enough to hold office. Then the Government is yours!”

“You have been directing terroristic plots for two years; you are the most implacable terrorist——”

“And the most successful,” put in Freeman.

“And the most successful that Russia has known. And what have you gained?”

“Ah, but what am I, and the few that gather around me, and the few executions that we carry out, among a myriad of despots? Let there be a thousand terroristic groups, and then you shall see!”

Razoff shook his head. “But since we are here, we might as well hear what you have to propose.”

“They have Borodin, and most likely we cannot free him. Well—make them afraid to arrest another leader. An eye for an eye—a leader for a leader. They have removed one of our men; as a lesson, let us remove one of theirs.”

“Which one?”

“The highest possible. The Czar himself, if the coward had not imprisoned himself in his palace and surrounded himself with an army. Since not the Czar, then his highest representative in St. Petersburg. Let’s kill the military governor.”

“Kill Prince Valenko!” the three ejaculated together.

“Aye, Prince Valenko, the very arch-foe of freedom!” cried the terrorist. “That will teach them it is not safe to go too far!”

There was a short silence. “What do you say, Sonya?” Razoff asked the woman.

She shook her head.

“And you Pestel?”

“I am against terrorism.”

“And that, Mr. Freeman, would be the answer of the entire Central Committee,” said Razoff. “We would not assist in a terroristic plot.”

“But I do not want your aid. What I want is your sanction. To have the proper intimidating effect, the death of Prince Valenko should not be the act of an isolated individual, but the act of a great organization that stands ready to repeat it.”

“That sanction we cannot give you.”

“But if I could make the proposal direct to The White One, I’m sure he would see the matter differently. Can you not let me see him?”

“As I have told you on other occasions, we are not allowed to do so.”

An angry look flamed into the terrorist’s lean dark face. “Then you don’t trust me!” he burst out. “We may differ in methods, but have I not proved my devotion to our cause?”

“Do not take this refusal as a personal matter, Mr. Freeman. The circumstances are such that we are not allowed to reveal The White One’s identity to anyone. We are under oath.”

The terrorist was too keen a man not to see that some slight doubt of him was lurking in their minds. However, he silently swallowed his mortification, and took his double rebuff with a philosophic shrug. He said he would abandon for the present his plan against the military governor’s life, begged to be considered a willing coöperator in whatever activity they might devise, and then took his leave. To Drexel, outside one door, it was a distinct relief when that sinister figure was outside the other.

“To think of his proposing to us to kill Prince Valenko!” said Razoff, laughing grimly.

“But he may undertake the plan himself,” said the woman anxiously.

“If he does,” returned Razoff, “we will warn the governor ourselves.”

All this while the woman had been seated, her back to Drexel; but now she rose and went around the table to snuff the spluttering candle. At the graceful ease of her walk, which even her shapeless garments could not obliterate, a wild and sudden possibility leaped up in Drexel; and when the candlelight fell upon her face, though forehead and chin and cheeks were hidden by the shawl, the possibility became a breath-taking certainty. Nose, mouth, eyes, were the same!

She snuffed the candle. “Excuse me for a few minutes,” she said to the men, and crossed straight toward Drexel’s door.

CHAPTER VI
THE KING AND THE BEGGAR MAID

DREXEL slipped down and was standing at the table when the bolt shot back and she entered. She closed the door, and stood looking a moment at him, and he gazed back at her. Despite those beauty-murdering clothes, the spell of her personality was more sovereign even than yesternight.

She was the first to speak. “I have come,” said she in that low rich voice that set his every nerve to vibrating, “to thank you and apologize.”

He could only incline his head.

“To thank you for what you so gallantly did for me last night.”

Drexel found his voice, and he could not keep a little irony out of his words. “Your thanks seem rather oddly expressed.” He motioned about the imprisoning room.

“It is for that I would apologize. I am sorry. But it seemed to us necessary.”

“Necessary! Why?”

She looked him straight in the face. “Because I did not wholly trust you.”

“Not trust me?”

“You had seen me—you guessed what I had done—you could have identified me had you seen me again, and could have turned me over to the police. That would possibly have meant my death; certainly the destruction of all my plans.”

“Then you really tried to shoot Prince Berloff?”

“I did not. He fired the shots; so that he could say I fired and bring against me the charge of attempted assassination.”

“But,” said Drexel, reverting to her preceding statement, “you seemed to trust me at first.”

“Yes.”

“And then you did not?”

“Frankly—no.”

“You feared me as much as you did the police. Why?”

She did not answer.

“I am completely at a loss,” said he. “Come—why did you not trust me?”

“That,” said she steadily, “I cannot tell.”

He rubbed his forehead. “Well, of all situations a sane man ever got into!” he muttered. When he next spoke there was again a touch of irony in his voice. “At least,” he drawled, “would it be considered an intrusion into matters which are none of my concern, if I asked what is going to happen to me?”

“You will merely be detained till we feel it is safe to release you. Ivan and Nicolai are treating you all right? We had to act instantly, and they were the only persons we could upon the instant command.”

“Oh, they’re nice enough boys, I guess,” said Drexel. “But I wish they lived at a better hotel. The janitor here doesn’t know it is winter yet, and keeps the steam heat turned off; my bed, that sofa there, is upholstered with soft coal and soup-bones; and the chef—well, the chef’s repertoire is limited to tea and bologna. But I guess I can stand it.”

She smiled slightly, but the smile was instantly gone. “Your inconvenience is being suffered to render more secure a great cause.”

“And to render more secure your life?”

“And my life,” she added.

She held out her hand. “Again I apologize, and again I thank you. Good-bye.”

“You are not going!” cried Drexel—but he did not miss the opportunity of taking her hand. “Not yet—please! There is something I want to ask you.”

“Yes?”

He looked straight into her eyes. “It is this: Who are you?”

She drew her hand away. “You do not need to know.”

“Perhaps not,” said he. “But I wish to.”

“Well—I am one of a thousand girls”—there came a flush into her face and a ring into her voice—“ten thousand girls, yes, a hundred thousand! who are doing the same work.”

“Yes, I know now that you are a revolutionist. But who are you personally?”

“Any one of the hundred thousand.”

“But you are not just any one,” he persisted. “That’s plain. You are educated, refined, have had advantages far above the ordinary.”

“Do you not know,”—and her voice swelled with a more vibrant ring—“that our universities are filled with poor, obscure young women—poor, yet great souls just the same! who starve themselves, literally starve themselves, that they may gain an education, that they may become broad, cultured women? And do this that they may bring light and help and hope to their down-trodden people?”

But Drexel was seeing her as she appeared upon the train. “That may be so; but you are not of that kind,” he said confidently. “That kind does not look as you did last night.”

“But how do you know,” she cried, stretching wide her arms the better to display her clumsy garments, “that last night’s clothes are any truer index of my station than to-night’s?”

She saw the question struck home. “We revolutionists work in hourly danger from the police. Safety compels us to assume disguises, and we fit our disguises to our missions. My mission of yesterday required that I should seem what you call a lady.”

“You mean that your yesterday’s clothes were only a disguise?”

“Only a disguise.”

He pondered for a moment. No, a woman of position, which he had half guessed her to be, would have no reason for discontent; no reason for risking comfort, wealth, life even, in this struggle for better conditions. After all, she was probably one of those rarely beautiful, rare-spirited women who now and again flower among the common people.

“Then this is all I am to know?” he asked slowly.

“That I am just one of the hundred thousand—that is all.”

She started toward the door.

“Wait!” he cried. “Wait! Surely I shall see you again.”

She shook her head. “You are not to be released till after my mission has been accomplished. By that time I shall have disappeared. This is the last time we shall meet. Good-bye.”

Her hand was on the knob, when Drexel sprang forward and threw himself between her and the door.

“No! No! No!” his words burst forth. “I can’t lose you forever like this! I can’t! I can’t!”

She drew back and gazed at him with a flashing, imperious manner. “What does this mean?”

“It means I love you!” he cried. “It means I do not care who you are—what you are. I love you. I love you! With all my heart—with all my soul!”

At the sight of his big, strong, quivering body, his tense, working face, the hauteur all slipped out of her bearing.

“You are in earnest?” she asked slowly, in amazement.

“God strike me dead if I am not! And as never before in all my life!”

“I am sorry—sorry,” she said with true sympathy. “Even if I cared—it could not be. The liberty of my country has first place in my heart. That is my husband.”

“Then you refuse me?” cried Drexel.

“I must.”

“And this is final?”

“It is.”

“No! No! No!” he cried, inflamed with love and the danger of the loved one’s eternal loss, and seizing at every argument. “Listen!” He stepped nearer her. “Listen, before you speak finally. I can take you out of this poverty, this turmoil, this oppression! I can give you peace, and comfort, and position!”

“Ah!” she breathed. “Again the king stoops to the beggar maid.”

Swept madly on by his desire to win her, his dreams for a towering financial future rushed into the form of argument. He stood before her the impassioned embodiment of the American hero—the strong, masterful man of affairs, flashing forth an all-conquering confidence.

“Yes!” cried he, and he glowed dominantly down upon her. “You shall have everything! Everything! You and I, side by side, shall go breast to breast with the foremost. I tell you, with your beauty, you shall queen it over every woman in Chicago!”

He had not noted the strange, quiet look that had come into her face. “In substance, you mean to tell me that you can give me position.”

“I can give you the very highest!”

“You are of an old family, then?”

“None older in Chicago!”

She did not speak.

“Come!” he went on with the mighty rush of his schemes. “Mine is to be no trifling million-dollar success. I do not mean to boast—but I feel the power in me! No young man in America has a chance like mine! I shall become one of the first business men of America! It is sure—sure as that the years roll round. I shall become the master of railroads, of mines, of factories. All—all!—are going to yield me their wealth. And that means power, and more power—and position, and greater position. And this wealth, this power, this position, shall all be yours!”

As he spoke she had slowly unwound the shawl that tightly bound her head; and the beauty of her face, with its crown of rich dark hair, was before him unobscured, unconfined. She had drawn herself up, her breath was coming and going with slow tensity, and her eyes—those wonderful blue eyes—were blazing full upon him. But she did not speak.

“Well,” demanded Drexel, “what do you say?”

“I say,” said she, and her words came with slow, sharp distinctness, “that you are the most despicable man I ever met!”

“What!” he cried. And he stepped back against the door, as though she had struck him in the face.

The eyes still blazed with awful contempt into his own, and the slow words went on:

“You are a man of great gifts. I see that. Genius, maybe—perhaps great genius. And doubtless you will achieve all you say. But for a man with divine gifts, to devote those divine gifts to gigantic schemes for selfish gain, which means to the despoilment, to the misery, to the crushing down, of his fellows—I repeat, such a man is the most despicable man I ever met!”

The paleness of Drexel’s face began to redden with anger.

“I see,” said he grimly, “that you are one of these socialists!”

“Perhaps,” said she, steadily.

“Yes”—between his angry, clenched teeth. “There are some of your kind even in my country. Disappointed, snivelling failures, snarling at people who have succeeded!” His anger blazed fiercer. “Let me tell you this, young lady. You would not be so contemptuous of people with position, if you had a little of position yourself! Nor of wealth, if you had ever tasted a little of wealth’s comforts!”

But she did not quail before his fire. “Perhaps not,” she returned, quietly.

There was a moment of silence between the two.

“And now, will you please allow me to pass?” she said.

Her words sent all the anger out of him.

“But,” he besought desperately, “surely sometime I may meet you again?”

“This is the last time,” said she with quiet finality.

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

He leaned against the door and stared at her with dizzy pain; till she recalled him by repeating,

“Will you please allow me to pass?”

He dumbly stood aside and opened the door. She hesitated, then gave him her hand.

“Thank you once more. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said he.

She passed out. And the door closed and the bolt clicked into place.

CHAPTER VII
CONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF A PRINCE

IT was a dull room, Drexel’s prison, and Drexel’s presence did not brighten it. To have met and loved and lost a girl all within the space of twenty-four hours, was hardly an experience to make a man enlivening company. Most of the time he lay upon the old sofa, gruffly refusing when Ivan drew out the cards with the purpose of easing his tedium, paying no heed to the young fellow’s chatter, and no heed to the pair’s going and coming. His every nerve throbbed with the anguish of her loss, an anguish that he felt would never leave him.

And added to that anguish was the bitterness of humiliation. Brought up as one among the most exclusive and powerful, he could not escape a pride in his position; nor could he escape the knowledge that in Chicago those wise mothers who could calculate what a man would grow to be in a decade or two considered him the catch of the city. Yet he had been refused by an unknown girl, a girl whose rich clothes, possibly the only good ones she had ever worn, had been admittedly supplied her as a disguise. And more, this girl he loved with all his being had scorned him in scathing words—him and his giant projects.

Certainly enough to gloom any man. But Drexel had yet a further reason for despair. Many a man, refused, even scorned as he had been, had stuck grimly to his suit and in the end won her he loved. But, in faith, how was a lover stubbornly to persevere when there was no loved one against whom to aim his perseverance? Ah, that was the worst of it all—he was never to see her again.

Four more days he lived in this gloomy aloofness, and during this time Ivan and Nicolai settled into a routine management of their task; one would sleep and the other guard, and on two occasions one or the other had left the house for his period off duty. During these days, though there was no abatement of the anguish, Drexel thought often of the utter uselessness of his being held a prisoner. What intention had he of giving the slightest aid toward the capture of Sonya? Would she not be just as safe if he were free?

Plans for escape haunted his mind. But escape was not so easy. True, the one hundred and thirty pounds of either of his captors would have been nothing to his one hundred ninety, but Ivan or Nicolai, whichever it was, always had the black pistol in readiness, and always had his quick eyes upon him. Before he could leap upon his guard, or before he could burst the window and spring out or shout for the police, there would be a deadly bullet in him. Besides, leaping from the window, even should he escape the bullet, would probably mean serious injury upon the cobblestones below; and shouting for help would mean his capture, and the capture of Ivan and Nicolai. He did not wish to involve them in trouble, for he liked the queer pair. And, moreover, this move might endanger the safety of Sonya. No, if he escaped, his escape must bring no risk upon these hostile friends; it had to be an escape from the police as well as from revolutionists.

In the end his escape proved to be a comparatively simple matter. In the afternoon of the fifth day of his captivity Nicolai turned over the watch to Ivan and sallied forth. It had been part of Drexel’s craft to lie upon his couch, appearing to nap much of the time, thinking that thus he could best watch his jailers and throw them off their guard. He was now stretched upon the sofa, his semblance that of a sleeping man. Ivan looked at him, looked at the table which needed clearing after their late lunch, a chore which he could easily do if the prisoner slept—then tip-toed to Drexel’s side, gazed at him with his sharp eyes, then bent low to make certain.

Suddenly Drexel’s arms shot up. His left hand, with a powerful wrench, tore the pistol from Ivan’s grasp, the right closed upon the little fellow’s throat. Drexel had some knowledge of anatomy, and with all his force he pressed his thumb up under the jaw against the pneumogastric nerve. Ivan struggled convulsively beneath this paralyzing pressure—weakened—then quieted into limp unconsciousness. Instantly Drexel thrust his handkerchief into Ivan’s mouth, tied this gag securely, and by the time Ivan’s eyes fluttered open had him bound hand and foot with the ropes prepared for his own confinement.

“Excuse me, comrade,” said he, gazing down at his late captor. “But I did not want to impose upon your hospitality any longer, and I did not see any other way to leave. I really am sorry if I hurt you—for I like you, Ivan.”

As he slipped into his big coat, Ivan tugged impotently at his bonds. “Well—good-bye, my lad,” said Drexel. “And tell your people they have nothing in the world to fear from me. I’m as safe outside as I would be in here with your guns against my chest.”

He picked up his Browning and was putting it in his pocket when he caught a look of longing in Ivan’s eyes. He laid the pistol on the table.

“Keep it as a little souvenir,” he said, and with a friendly wave of the hand he unlocked the door and went out.

But misfortune was not yet done with him. As he started to creep down the stairway a step creaked and the boarding-house keeper came into the hall. “The devil!” he ejaculated and barred the foot of the stairs with his powerful body.

“Ivan! Nicolai!” he shouted.

For an instant Drexel regretted the pistol he had given Ivan, but there was no time to return for it. He plunged down at his big antagonist; the man set his body and opened his arms to grapple with the escaping prisoner. But Drexel was not minded to get into that detaining clutch. He sent his fist into the other’s chest; the boarding-house keeper, true Russian that he was, knew nothing of the art of boxing, and in the instant that he gasped and floundered Drexel drove a blow into his unguarded solar plexis. He went down in a heap, and Drexel sprang by him and out into the court.

Ahead of him lay danger from arrest by the police. But he knew that if once he could get back to the Hotel Europe he would be safe, for no police official would dream of identifying the hunted American with the cousin-to-be of Prince Berloff. Though but little after three, night had already fallen. The darkness was an aid, and with the shawl collar of his shuba turned up so that only nose and eyes were visible, he slipped across and out of the court, and hailed the first swift-looking sleigh he met. He offered the driver double fare, the driver laid on his whip, and half an hour later he walked nonchalantly into the official-filled Hotel Europe.

He found his uncle had arrived from America only that morning. The old man was overjoyed to see him, and Drexel would have felt a pleasure no less than his uncle’s had it not been for the pain of his love.

John Howard was a sturdy, upstanding old man of close upon seventy, with a shaggy-browed, clean-shaven face, and shrewd gray eyes that could twinkle humorously or glint like steel; a man feared and admired by his friends, feared and hated by his enemies. He had made his great fortune as America’s great fortunes have been made, by his superior might, by thinking solely of his own gain, and thinking little or none about such matters as law, or ethics, or the other fellow, or the public; and he believed his methods just and proper. There was no surface suavity about him, no hypocritical pretense; he was bluff and outspoken—he was just what he was.

Uncle and nephew went down to the cafe together, as Mrs. Howard and Alice were out making calls. Mr. Howard was full of the great traction deal—the deal that was to be his climatic exit, and Drexel’s triumphant entrance, as a great financial figure—and he rapidly sketched a summary of the developments of the three months that Drexel had been in Russia. They had practically got control of all the street-railway franchises of Chicago for a long term; and had acted so quietly that the city had not a guess of what was going on. They expected to break up the system into separate lines and discontinue the transfers, and thus get millions of extra nickels a year from the people; and to reorganize, and in that process to net some fifteen million dollars from unsophisticated investors by the everyday miracle of turning water into stock; and to perform some of the other feats of financial legerdemain by which kings of business win and maintain their sovereignty. All of which astute and mighty brigandage seemed as proper and legitimate to Drexel as it did to his uncle. One was a founder of a business school, the other an apt pupil; and the fundamental idea of that school was that one’s business concerned no one but one’s self.

“Now tell me about things here,” said Mr. Howard. “I’ve talked with your aunt, but I want to hear from you. You’ve quite got over that—eh—little feeling for Alice?”

“Quite,” said Drexel.

“I knew you would.” He nodded his head. “And Alice? You remember when the news of the engagement came to us in Chicago, you spoke of an affair—not like yours, but a real one—between her and Jack Hammond. Has she been acting much like the romantic damsel with a broken heart?”

Visions of his pretty cousin rose before Drexel’s mind—at balls splendid with brilliant uniforms and glittering gowns—at grand dinners where sat none but those of proud and noble lineage; and at all he saw Alice dazzled, happy, exulting with girlish pride that her place was soon to be among the highest of these.

“Much of a heartbreak?” persisted the old man.

“I must admit,” Drexel acknowledged slowly, “that Jack Hammond doesn’t seem to trouble her much.”

“Just as I told you it would be!”

They were silent a moment, during which Drexel bowed to a woman sitting at a near-by table; and he gave an inward start as he saw the tall, well-dressed man with a swart Mephistophelian handsomeness, who sat at table with her. It was Freeman, the terrorist.

Mr. Howard’s sharp eyes had followed his nephew’s glance. “Say, but she’s a stunner!” he ejaculated.

And she was—a superb compromise between blond and brunette, in the first fulness of womanhood, with the ease and grace and rather confident smile of the acknowledged beauty, and gowned in a green robe that had all the richness and distinction that the Parisian modistes of French St. Petersburg could give it.

“Who is she?” Mr. Howard asked.

“Countess Baronova. She’s a widow. Her husband was killed in the Japanese war.”

Mr. Howard looked the young man straight in the face. “Bevare o’ vidders, my boy,” he said solemnly.

“Needn’t worry—nothing doing there,” Drexel returned; but he did not see fit to add that it was not from lack of encouragement from the widow.

“Yes, sir, a stunner!” his uncle repeated. “And now, tell me, Henry—what do you think of our prince?”

“You have not seen him yet?”

“No. He had an audience with the Czar to-day, Alice told me. How do you size him up?”

Drexel’s eyes fell to the cloth and he hesitated. “As a prince? Or as a man?”

“Both. First as a prince. O. K., isn’t he? You remember that as soon as your aunt cabled me from Paris about the engagement, I cabled the proper parties to investigate him. They said he was the real thing.”

“Oh, he’s the real thing all right. He belongs to the highest nobility—hasn’t played the deuce with his fortune—is a man of great political power.”

“Good! Agrees exactly with the reports sent me. Just what sort of an official is he?”

“There you have me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t know.”

“Don’t know! And been knocking around with him for three months!”

“Oh, I have asked him, once or twice. But he answered he did not exactly know himself. He said he guessed he was a sort of consulting attorney to the Government. He is frequently closeted with this general and that governor, with the minister of this and the minister of that, and is summoned every now and then to see the Czar. That’s all I know, and the few people I’ve discreetly quizzed about him seem to know no more.”

“A sort of mystery, eh?”

“In a way—yes; though he makes light of there being anything mysterious in his position. He says he really has no official status at all, that he is no more than a private gentleman. In fact, if he were an official he’d have to be in St. Petersburg more than he is; most of his time he spends on an estate about fifty miles away.”

“Yes, Alice spoke of that estate; she said we were going out there to a house party day after to-morrow. The prince part of him sounds all right. How about the man?”

“He will doubtless call when he returns from the Czar. That will answer your question.”

The shrewd old eyes looked deep. “I see you don’t like him.”

“Put it the other way.”

“Don’t like you—eh? Why?”

“I can only give you a guess.”

“Your guess is as good as most men’s certainties. Go on.”

“Well—the fact is, he found out about—about Alice and me, you know.”

The uncle nodded. “And he’s a little suspicious—jealous. That’s one reason. What else?”

“Well, you know of course what he is marrying Alice for. Money. Not that he’s hard up. But he’s ambitious—terrifically ambitious. He dreams of becoming the greatest man in the empire, next to the Czar. He——”

“It sounds to me like we’d picked out a good one!” broke in his uncle.

“He knows that in this poverty-stricken country nothing will help him forward like money—for he already has birth and brains. Well, he has learned from aunt about the arrangement you have been so good as to make for me—about your going to give me a part of your fortune, and your going to leave its management, even when it’s Alice’s, in my hands. He wants entire control of it all as soon as he can get it; the use of the lump sum will forward his plans much better than the use of the income alone. So he looks upon me as an obstacle between him and his ambition. That’s the other reason for his not loving me.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Well, then—why don’t you like him? Not just because he’s marrying Alice?”

“I wouldn’t stop liking Jack Hammond if Alice were to marry Jack.”

“What is the reason then?”

Drexel hesitated. “I can’t explain. Nothing definite. He’s rather cold, and formal, and distant. But that isn’t it. It’s just a sort of uneasy feeling that I have when with him. I guess that’s really all. In fact— But there he comes now.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE PRINCESS OF HEARTS

BUT first came Alice. Snow was upon her light fluffy hair and her long fur coat, and her cheeks were pink with the cold and her eyes bright with the excitement of this first meeting between father and fiancé. Next came her mother, her matronly figure amplified by her thick Russian coat, exultant satisfaction on her proud face—the sense of having triumphantly done the thing she had started out to do. And behind them came the prince, whom the two had met at the entrance of the hotel.

The great financier took the slender hand of his ancient-blooded son-in-law. He looked him keenly over, all the while the words of getting acquainted were being exchanged—looked him over with growing satisfaction. The prince was a man, despite his forty years, who well might capture a young girl’s fancy. He was straight, with the easy grace of a courtier, and wore a dark green uniform of a colonel of the Czar’s Guards, with a heavy festoon of gold braid across his breast and with high patent-leather boots. He was the acme of ancient lineage and high breeding; his face was pale, his lips and nostrils were thin, his black moustache had just the proper upward lift, his slight baldness only made more suggestive of power a forehead naturally large, and the great scar on his left cheek (a Heidelberg scar) that might have disfigured a coarser man only added to his distinguished air. Diplomat, soldier, art connoisseur, student, it was said of him that the Czar’s domain held no more polished gentleman. No wonder Alice admired and her father was satisfied; this was no mere hang-lipped, chinless, stuttering, penniless title.

After the formal words natural to the situation had all been said, the talk ran to other matters—first to the house party the prince was giving in the Howards’ honour, and then to a ball which they all expected to attend that night at the palace of Prince Valenko, the military governor.

Alice turned to Drexel. “You are fortunate, Henry, to get back in time to meet Princess Valenko.”

“I think I shall not go,” he returned. Only one woman interested him, and she was of a sort far different from this great lady.

“Not go!” cried his aunt. “You must not miss meeting the princess!”

“No,” added Alice, darting a quick look at the prince, “you must not fail to meet Princess Valenko.”

“And what is so wonderful about this Princess Valenko?” put in Mr. Howard.

“She’s the handsomest young woman in St. Petersburg—so they say,” returned Alice, with a sceptical toss of her head. “We’ve heard nothing but Princess Valenko ever since we entered Russia.”

Again she darted a look at Berloff. The prince knew well the meaning of this glance; it was an open secret that he had been a suitor for the princess, and she had refused him. But he met Alice’s challenging look with an impassive smile.

“Also she is my cousin,” said he to Mr. Howard. But, he did not add, cousin on his mother’s side, and so of far older stock than he.

“Her father is the military governor of St. Petersburg,” added Mrs. Howard. “They say she is the proudest, haughtiest young—I beg your pardon, prince, but that’s just what people say.” She looked at her husband. “We haven’t met her yet. She has been travelling in France, Italy and Germany, and she returned only to-day.”

“I saw her,” Alice announced.

“You were at her house?” asked the prince.

“No. I was out driving this morning and I chanced to go near the Warsaw Station just after the Berlin Express had arrived. She had just come in from Berlin. I saw her drive by.”

“Was she as beautiful as people say?” Drexel asked mechanically.

Alice sniffed. “Oh, I suppose some men might think her moderately good-looking. Judge for yourself when you see her to-night.”

“You will have an even better chance to judge her day after to-morrow,” said the prince. “She has just written that she is coming to the house party.”

At this moment Countess Baronova, sweeping past, bowed to them. “And you are coming, too, countess?” added the prince.

She paused. “Coming to what?”

“To my house party.”

“Of course. Your parties, prince, are the sort one cannot afford to miss.”

They asked her to join the group, and as Freeman at this moment came up with her coat upon his arm, they could but include him in the invitation. Drexel felt a shiver as the lean, dark correspondent sat down among them; and he could but wonder what these women would think, what the prince would think, if they knew what he knew. Drexel watched him covertly. The lean, lithe grace of his figure, the reposeful alertness of his gleaming eyes, the cool indifference with which he met the prince’s thinly hid disdain—all these bore it in upon him again that here was a man who respected no one, who feared no one.

It was not long ere these qualities had exemplification. The three women presently withdrew, and Mr. Howard began to question the prince about Russia’s political situation. The prince answered that the Czar was kindly, that he loved his people and did only what was best for them; but like a father with an unruly son he had to chastise where he loved. As for the trouble, that was all made by the country’s scum—and it would be best for the country if it were exterminated.

Freeman’s eyes had begun to blaze. “Your last statement, prince, is quite true,” he said quietly. “Yet it is altogether misleading.”

“Misleading?” the prince queried coldly.

“Yes. You neglected to inform Mr. Howard that the trouble-making scum whose extermination would so benefit the country, is where the scum always is—at the top.”

“You mean?” said the prince.

“I mean the officials, the nobility—and royalty, if you please.”

The prince gave a start and slowly wet his thin lips. Drexel held his breath, and waited what should come next. He knew what temper of a man was the terrorist; and he knew, too, that a man who had merely refused to rise when the Czar had been toasted in a restaurant had been shot dead in his chair by an officer opposite—and the officer had been acquitted.

“Do you not think,” said the prince, with a steel-like edge to his voice, “that you are speaking a little rashly, considering you are in Russia?”

The terrorist was leaning insouciantly back in his chair, but his eyes were flaming. “An American, sir,” said he, “is not afraid to speak the truth, no matter in what tyrant’s land he finds himself.”

The prince’s face darkened. He again wet his lips, his long interlocked hands tightened and his eyes gleamed back into the terrorist’s.

“My advice to you, sir,” and there was an ominous threat in his voice, “and to all other foreign scribblers, is to keep a quieter tongue in your head!”

“You think you can cow me?” said Freeman, a contemptuous, defiant sneer upon his lips. “You can kill me—yes. But let me tell you, all you blood-sucking officials, all you nation-crushing aristocrats, you, and your snivelling, cowardly, blood-drenched little Czar——”

Berloff sprang to his feet. “What, you insult the Czar!” and like the dart of a serpent his hand flashed across the table and struck Freeman full in the mouth.

Freeman shot up like a released spring, his dark face livid, and made to hurl himself upon the prince. Drexel seized an arm. Its tense muscles were like steel wire, and it flung him aside with one violent sweep, and again the terrorist made for the prince. For an instant Drexel feared for Berloff’s life; but officers from an adjoining table threw themselves upon the terrorist, and a moment later he was securely held by gendarmes. He struggled and hurled fierce defiance at the prince, who stood erect and impassive, with just the faintest tinge in his white cheeks.

“You’ll remember this!” cried the terrorist, darkly.

Berloff did not answer—gazed at him with cold contempt as he was bundled out. Perhaps he did remember—perhaps not. But afterward Drexel remembered—and remembered well.

This sudden flare-up of passion drew upon them the curious stare of the dozens of people in the cafe, and the terrorist had not been five minutes gone before the other three withdrew, the prince going to the apartment he maintained for his occasional St. Petersburg visits, and Drexel and his uncle mounting to their rooms above. His uncle asked about Freeman, and Drexel told what was common knowledge, holding back the sinister information he had gained in Three Saints’ Court; for he had decided to say nothing, for the present at least, of his adventure with the young woman and the experiences into which it had led him.

They had just finished dinner—at which the prince had joined them—when a card was handed to Drexel. He looked at it, and for a moment hesitated.

“I’ll see him,” he said to the servant. “Have him shown to my sitting-room.”

He excused himself and left the Howards’ apartment for his own quarters. He paced the room excitedly. Perhaps here was a clue through which he might find the young woman! But he was cool enough when the visitor entered.

“Will you be seated, Mr. Freeman,” said he calmly.

“Thank you,” said the correspondent, taking the indicated chair. “I dare say you are surprised to see me at liberty, after what just happened. Were I a Russian I should not be; but Russia is careful how she treats citizens of powerful foreign countries.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “But enough of that. I have come on what I hope will prove an acceptable matter of business to you; on what is to me a matter of humanity, and— But we’ll pass my motives. May I trouble you for two minutes?”

“You may,” said Drexel.

Freeman drew his chair nearer. “I must begin by taking you into my confidence, a confidence I know you will respect. My real purpose in Russia is actively to help the revolutionists in their struggle. Perhaps you wonder at my confiding in a person who is to be the cousin of Prince Berloff. But I believe I am shrewd enough to have seen that no love is lost between Prince Berloff and yourself. Am I right?”

“Go on,” said Drexel.

“Well, then—let me tell you that I am in close touch with the revolutionists. The revolution is bound to succeed. But what it needs just now is money—money for arms. To gain liberty for their country the revolutionists can afford to pay a hundred per cent.—yes, a thousand per cent. Now to come straight to the point: would you consider undertaking to secure some large sum for the revolutionists, in return for which an authorized committee would bind themselves to give you certain business privileges and properties now controlled by the present Government—land, railroads, mines, and such? Would you consider it?”

A week before, had Drexel seen definite prospect of the revolutionists’ success, he would have leaped at this as a wonderful business opportunity. But it was quite another influence that now determined his reply. Freeman had been in conference with Sonya and her friends; he was going to be in further conference with them; to enter into this plan, even if he chose not to carry it out, would mean that somehow he would again come into contact with Sonya.

“I would consider it,” he answered.

“Would you meet with a duly authorized committee to talk it over?”

“Yes.” He thought of the conference he had witnessed four nights since, and he wondered if he would come before the same group. “Meet where?” he asked.

“I am supposed not to give the address, and I would rather not.”

“As you like,” Drexel returned stiffly. “But either I know where I am going, or I do not go.”

“Oh, very well;” and Freeman gave the address of the house in Three Saints’ Court. He rose. “This of course has been only a preliminary talk. I shall see you again in the course of two or three days. Good-night.”

Drexel, preoccupied with this new chance of his finding again the girl he loved, returned to the Howards’ apartment, and found them prepared to start to the ball at Prince Valenko’s. In his present mood he shrank from that brilliant show. He preferred to remain at home, kept company by thoughts of a beautiful, spirited young woman in the coarse, shapeless clothing of a factory girl. He tried to beg off; but Alice would not hear of losing a convenient cavalier whom she might have need of—and his uncle demanded, if he did not go, with whom was he to talk, with nobody around him except people that spoke only French and this fizz and pin-wheel business that they called Russian? So Drexel could do nothing but consent and follow to the carriage.

They drove past the Winter Palace, empty of royalty, for the Czar, in fear of those he ruled, dared not trust his person there—past huge grand-ducal palaces—and presently they entered a great mansion that looked forth upon the ice-bound Neva. Drexel was well accustomed to the luxury of the rich Russian nobility, but even he, with his double reason for being dull to impressions, could but note that he had been in no house so rich as this. And he recognized that, save for the Czar and his immediate family, there were none prouder and higher in all the empire than these haughty men whose breasts were a blaze of orders and these haughty women who seemed to walk amid a moving fire of jewels. And of them all, he well knew, none had lineage older, nobler, than Princess Valenko.

Drexel did not see the princess upon his entry, for interest in the famed beauty, long absent abroad, was high, and she had been swept aside into one of the drawing-rooms by an admiring group and was there the prisoner of her guests. Drexel ascended to the brilliant ball-room. A little later, while he was standing with his uncle and Prince Berloff, General Valenko, recognizing Berloff, paused a moment beside them. The military governor was straight, gray-haired, gray-bearded, a splendid figure of a soldier-statesman at sixty-five, his bearing and every feature marked with that pride which unbends only to equals, with strength, decision, dominance. There was also that in his face and bearing which suggested that his character was fibred with pitiless severity—with that despotic severity which becomes a mere matter of course after a lifetime of service to the most autocratic and cruel of Christian governments.

“You would not think to look at him, would you,” said Drexel after the general had passed on, taking Berloff with him, “that he loves his daughter more than he does his life? Yet that is what people say.”

Mr. Howard’s glance followed the straight, proud figure. “He looks to me more like that old Roman party—what do you call him, Brutus—that ordered his own son executed. The girl must be a wonder.”

“They say half the best young nobility of Russia have proposed to her—and been refused.”

“A sort of queen of hearts—eh?”

“You guessed close, uncle, to what they call her. She is known as ‘The Princess of Hearts.’”

“Well,” grumbled his uncle, “I wish she’d step lively. I’m getting anxious to see her.”

And so was Drexel, a little, even if his heart did belong to a woman of quite a different station.

But they had not long to wait. Of a sudden there fell a hush, and into the room through the wide entrance at the farther end, upon the arm of the gray, erect Prince Valenko, there swept a tall slender young woman in a shimmering, lacy gown, with gems twinkling from her corsage, from her throat, from the tiara on her high-done hair. Her chin was held high, her eyes swept the room with cold hauteur, in her every movement was knowledge of her ancient princely blood and of her peerless beauty.

“Well, well!” breathed Mr. Howard. “The Princess of Hearts—I should say so!”

The sudden clutch of Drexel’s hand made him turn. “Hello, there—what’s wrong?”

Drexel, suddenly cold, stood with bulging eyes fixed upon her. For four nights before she had worn a factory girl’s shawl and jacket, and he had told her that he loved her!

CHAPTER IX
ONE WOMAN—OR TWO?

AND so this famous beauty, this proud daughter of Russia’s proudest nobility, was the unknown girl of his strange adventure, was the working-girl who had talked so passionately of liberty! Now, in this almost royal circle, she was cold and haughty and disdainful, her manner as lofty toward all beneath her as could have been the highest of French noblewomen’s in the days before the Revolution overwhelmed France with its cataclysm;—and yet, how she had flamed forth in her love of the people! How it could all be was almost too much for Drexel’s reeling brain; but that wonderful grace, those wonderful eyes, that wonderful face—Russia held not their duplicate!

Until this moment it had not occurred to him that there had been anything unworthy in his proposal of marriage. But now, swift after the first blow of astonishment, he grew hot with shame through all his body. He had, in high-born, lofty fashion offered to lift her out of her poverty and give her wealth; he whose wealth was all yet to be made, to her one of Russia’s richest heiresses. He had spoken of his birth, and had offered her position and family; he who barely knew the name of his grandfather’s father, to her whose forebears were great nobles when the Norsemen made their storied voyage to America; whose line went back and back even to the mighty Rurick, and then disappeared into the mist of legend that hangs over all things Russian before the ninth century.

But there were too many stirring puzzles here for even shame to dominate him long. He had been with her in this same St. Petersburg in her role of working-girl but four evenings ago, yet how was it that to-day she had arrived in state from abroad? And why had she caused him to be held a prisoner? And what would be the effect on her, who thought him safe under guard, suddenly to face him?

But the questions that surged into his mind had no time to complete themselves, much less to find answers, for the princess had crossed the ball-room and was now but a few yards distant. He was certain she had not seen him, and he turned his back to avoid her for a double reason; because, in his shame he shrunk from the meeting, and because he feared seeing him there unexpectedly might deeply startle her and even be her betrayal. But a hand fell upon his arm, and a voice in French—Prince Berloff’s voice—fell upon his ears:

“Drexel, I want you to meet my cousin, Princess Valenko.”

He would have spared her this public show of her dismay if he could, but now it was beyond him. Hating himself that it fell to his part thus to be her undoing, he turned and looked her in the face.

But there was no falling back, no consternation, not so much as a start. She gave him a straight cold look, in which there was not the faintest recognition of a previous meeting.

So surprised was he by her self-command that he could only mumble his way through the introduction, and he only vaguely heard her express in composed, formal phrases her pleasure at meeting one who was in a manner to be a relative. Then the others who had surrounded her were for a moment swept away, and they two were left alone together, face to face.

The few sentences they had exchanged had been in French. “Princess, I want to apologize—yes, a thousand times,” Drexel said hurriedly in English, “for the caddish way I spoke to you four nights ago.”

Her answer was to gaze at him with a puzzled, blank expression.

“I cannot tell you how ashamed I am,” Drexel hurried on. “And I want to assure you”—this barely above a whisper and with all his earnestness—“that I shall never breathe a word of your secret.”

Still the puzzled, blank expression.

“Won’t you—after a time—forgive me? And won’t you trust me?”

Still she wore the same non-understanding look.

Suddenly a dazing idea flashed into him. “Perhaps you do not speak English?” he asked in French.

She smiled faintly, in amused bewilderment. “Yes—a vair leetle,” she said, in anything but Sonya’s pure and fluent English. “I understand Meestair Drexel’s words. But what he means—” She shook her head. “I think you make some meestake.”

She was carried away from him before he could speak again, giving him a half-friendly nod from her imperious head. After all, had he made a mistake? After all, was it possible that she was not Sonya? Could it be that he was the witness and victim of one of those strange caprices of nature which now and again casts two unrelated persons, perhaps from the extremes of the social scale, in the same mould? Could it be that Sonya was merely the double of Princess Valenko? Or was this just an unparalleled exhibition of nerve on the princess’s part—a marvellous bit of acting?

Never was a man more mystified than Drexel. All during the ball the questions ran through his mind, and sometimes the answers were yes, and sometimes no. Once he danced with the princess, but that relieved his bewilderment not at all, for she was perfectly at her ease, smilingly remarked once or twice in her hesitating English upon his mistake, and accorded him that faintly gracious treatment such a high-born beauty might naturally bestow upon a relative of a relative-to-be.

Finally, toward two o’clock, Drexel decided he could best think the matter over in solitude, and he started home, walking for the sake of the brain-clearing fresh air. He had gone but a hundred yards or so when he became conscious that two shadowy forms were moving ahead of him, and one was lurking in the rear. The first two suddenly vanished, but the events of the last few days had made him alert for danger; his eyes went everywhere, and he held himself in tense readiness, so that when the two made a sudden rush at him from a breach in the river-wall, he quickly side-stepped, and sped along the river till he sighted a wandering sleigh. Back in the security of his room, he realized that the revolutionists were not through with him, and that he was in danger every time he left his four walls.

But he had greater matters to consider than this. During most of the night, and all the next morning, he was thinking over the many questions that beset his mind. Foremost, was or was not Sonya identical with Princess Valenko? He considered their points of similarity—weighed this against that. But at every turn he was balked by the fact that Sonya had tried to seize documents from Berloff’s house, and yet Berloff had last night treated the princess with most deferential courtesy—by the fact that only the day before she had arrived in aristocratic splendour from abroad—by her cool, smiling ignorance of him and what he talked of.

But finally, casting all bewildering pros and cons aside, he concluded that if such a high-spirited woman as the princess had been leading such a dangerous double life and had found herself in such a situation as last night’s, her behaviour would have been identical with the princess’s—she would have tried to brazen it through and make him think himself mistaken. They were one and the same, he decided; two such rare women, so similar, could not exist. And if they were the same, he could well understand why she had feared him and caused his capture. He had known her in the role of revolutionist, there was likelihood of his meeting her as Princess Valenko—and his discovery of their identicality would, as her fear viewed it, be disaster for her.

He at length shaped a plan, based on his love for her, on his desire to relieve her of her needless fear, and on the constant danger in which he stood. That afternoon he drove to the Princess Valenko’s. On the way he gave a look over his shoulder. A block behind in a sleigh he saw two men wrapped to the eyes, yet not so bundled up but that he recognized Ivan and Nicolai; and near them in another sleigh were two other men whom he instinctively felt to be their confederates.

Before his ring at the Valenko palace had been answered, he saw the two sleighs draw up across the street half a block ahead. Once admitted, he had not long to wait, but was ushered up a broad stairway into a great front drawing-room. He had hoped to find the princess alone; great, therefore, was his disappointment when he found himself with four gorgeous young officers and three women, all centring about her.

Without rising she gave him her hand, and smiled with distant, condescending friendship. “Ah—the American who is almost my relative,” she said in French; and proceeded with imperious languor to introduce him to the women and to the immaculate, gilded officers, to all of whom he bowed—though the latter he inwardly cursed as the brainless handiwork of tailors and valets.

She smiled amusedly into his face, and then about at the others. “He thinks, my almost relative”—with a little gesture toward him—“that he met me a few days ago here in St. Petersburg. And that—in what manner he has not said—he misconducted himself on that occasion. And that he shares some great secret of mine.”

Drexel fairly gasped. She had flung away her secret—and there she sat, easy, unconcerned, smiling.

“But impossible!” cried one of the officers. “The princess has been abroad since August.”

“Why it is simply absurd, monsieur,” said a stupid-looking, richly-dressed woman. “You remember, Olga—” this to the princess—“it’s only two weeks since you and I heard Tannhäuser together in Berlin. Ugh—what a wretched Elizabeth she was! And we came back yesterday from Berlin on the same train!”

“Yes,” returned the princess, smiling her slight, amused smile at Drexel. “But still I would not think of disputing the matter with Monsieur Drexel. Americans are so clever, you know.”

They all laughed at this. Drexel felt his conclusions going all to pieces, felt himself plunged again into the old uncertainty.

“Just a stupid mistake on my part, of course,” he said, rather doggedly. “I hope the princess will pardon me.”

After that the talk ran back to its subject before Drexel had entered—welcome to the princess—gossip about this person and that—chat about functions to come. Drexel was left quite out of the conversation, but this gave him time to form a determination to outstay all the others and have it out with the princess in private. This plan, however, was not so easy of achievement. The others, to be sure, took their leave in ones and pairs, but more callers came in their stead. He got a polite glance from the princess now and then, which, being interpreted, meant that he had far exceeded the limits of a call. But he sat grimly on.

At length he had his reward. But he was certain of having her to himself for no more than a moment, so the instant the last back was out of the door he drew his chair before her, leaned forward, and looked her squarely in the face.

“Princess,” said he in English, “you have the makings of the greatest poker player in the world.”

“Pokair playair!” returned she in her halting English. Her face was puzzled. “I not understand.”

“Do you know what a ‘bluffer’ is?”

“‘Bluffair’? Yes, I know. A vair American word.”

“Well, you could make the biggest bluffer in America seem a naïve child.”

“Excuse”—with a shrug. “What you mean?”

He spoke with sharp decision. “Your pretending not to know me, and all the rest, is what we would call a bluff. You are the woman I met on the railroad train six nights ago. You are the woman I talked with five nights ago. I know! There’s no use denying it!”

Her eyes did not flinch from his determined gaze; rather they took on a bored look.

“Pardon me,” said she quietly, “perhaps Meestair Drexel is one—what you call it—one bluffair?”

Drexel was not at all certain he was not just that. But his face showed none of his doubt.

“You are afraid of me because chance revealed to me your secret,” he went on. “Now I have come here to tell you that you have no reason to fear me. To tell you that you can trust me.”

She rose and looked at him haughtily. “You carry your amusement too far,” she said, lapsing into French. “I am tired. I beg that you will excuse me.”

She started to sweep out of the room, but Drexel blocked her way.

“I have come to tell you,” he went on doggedly, “that to relieve you of any sense of danger from me, I am willing, this minute, to yield myself your prisoner, to be held as long as you desire.”

“Will you let me pass!” said she.

“As soon as you have answered me.”

Her lips curled with contempt. “Even were I what you say, even had I the wish to take you prisoner, how could I take and hold you in this house? Again you must excuse me.”

He blocked her way once more. “At least, you will cross with me to the window?”

“If you will then be so kind—”

“Yes, I will then go, princess. Come!”

He crossed the drawing-room, parted the curtains at one of the windows, and pointed down to where along the river-wall, through the falling twilight, could be seen the two sleighs.

“In those sleighs, princess,” said he, “Ivan and Nicolai—you know them—followed me here. They and two others. See that man lounging across the street; that is Ivan, waiting for me to come out. I desire that you shall have no fear of me. So I am going over there to deliver myself back into their hands. I will send a note to my people saying I have been called to Moscow on business for an indefinite time. That is all. I wish you good-afternoon.”

With that he bowed, and not waiting for a reply he strode from the room. Two minutes later he was across the street and beside one of the sleighs.

“Hello, comrades!” he cried with a reckless laugh. “Get in. I’m going with you.”

Nicolai and Ivan eyed him with silent suspicion, but they crawled in, one on either side. The sleigh was so narrow that Drexel had to sit upon their knees.

“Now, comrades,” he went on, as they were drawing the robes high about them, “as I’m going to be a guest at that hotel of yours for some time, let’s stop along the way and get a mattress that isn’t paved with cobblestones. I don’t exactly fancy— Hello! What’s that?”

A blunt object had suddenly been thrust against the middle of his back.

“That,” explained Ivan, “is the muzzle of your Browning.”

“If you’re going to return my property,” said Drexel, “I wish you’d return it by some less direct route. You might hand it around me, for instance.”

“We don’t know your game,” said Nicolai, “but if you make one suspicious move, or one cry, that pistol will go off.”

“All right. But say there, Ivan, be careful, will you! I’ve got used to that spinal column of mine, and if you spoiled it I might never get another that suited me as well. Drive on.”

The horse started up. But before it had fairly swung into a trot, some one running behind cried out, “Wait! Wait!”

They drew up, and a man thrust a piece of paper into Nicolai’s hand and immediately turned back. Nicolai opened the paper and glanced at it.

“Of all the strange things!” he cried, and turned the paper over to Ivan.

“The devil!” exclaimed Ivan. “Where did it come from?”

“The man who brought it looks like a servant,” said Nicolai, who was peering over his shoulder. “He is entering that great house.”

“More wonderful still!” cried Ivan. “But the writing is certainly hers!”

“And the signature! And an order is an order.”

“Yes.”

“See here, boys,” spoke up the mystified Drexel. “What does all this mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Nicolai, as he threw open the robes. “But the order says you are to go back to the person you were talking to.”

Drexel sprang from the sleigh. “Good-bye,” he shouted, and made for the Valenko door.

The footman ushered him up past the drawing-room, where he had so lately sat, and in which he glimpsed several new callers, and on back into a small rear drawing-room. Here an open fire was blazing, and beside it stood the tall slender figure of the princess, the same haughty, magnificent pride in her bearing. She did not give Drexel a look. He paused within the door, wondering, palpitant.

“Andrei,” said she to the footman, “give my excuses to any persons waiting and any who may come, and say that for the present I am engaged.”

“Yes, princess.”

“And, Andrei—shut the door.”

“Yes, princess.”

As the door closed the pride and hauteur suddenly faded out of her, and there she was smiling at him brightly, half-mischievously.

“Well, John—” said she, in easy English.

CHAPTER X
“YOU AND I—AGAINST THE WORLD”

HE drew slowly near her.

“So after all, you are——”

The smile grew more mischievous. “Mary Davis, of course. Whom did you think?”

He was pulsing with exultant wildness; but he knew well that he had to hold himself under control.

“Then,” said he, “you at last trust me?”

“What you were just about to do proved your sincerity. I could not let you go further with it. But come—please sit down.”

He first pushed a chair for her before the fireplace, then drew one up beside her. Her smile sobered and she looked at him steadily.

“Yes, I think I can trust you. There are your actions as proof. And then, had you wanted to betray me, you have had plenty of time to do so. Our ideals are separated by the width of the world—but I trust your honour.”

“You can indeed!” was all he could say.

Her smile came back. Till this last minute he had never seen her really smile, so had never seen but half her beauty.

“If I am not mistaken, you are a little curious?”

“I am dumbfounded!”

“You know so much already, there is no reason you should not know more—provided it goes no further than yourself. First question?”

“I—I don’t know where to begin. Five days ago I saw you in St. Petersburg. Yet it seems that all the while you have been in Berlin. I think I can make a guess at the explanation, but——”

“Yes, it’s simple enough. First let me say that I was supposed to be abroad for pleasure; in reality I was there on business affairs of the revolutionists. Two weeks ago I suddenly announced that I was leaving Berlin to visit a friend in France. I am known as very self-willed; that explains and excuses much. I secretly entered Russia, as a poor student, on a false passport. When I left you, five nights ago, I took a train; three days ago I reappeared in Berlin from my French visit; the next day I set out for Russia.”

“That’s much as I guessed,” said Drexel.

“I would have remained here in disguise longer,” she continued, “but last night’s ball had been long arranged for, the invitations had been out for a month, and I had already once postponed my homecoming. To postpone it further was impossible.”

“But why did you, and not some less important person, undertake that dangerous mission at Prince Berloff’s?”

“For two reasons. First, I was best qualified. And then——”

She paused and gazed at him keenly. “Yes, I shall tell you that. You know the Government does not know who the prisoner Borodin is.”

“So I have been told.”

“And only half a dozen persons do know who he is. You have heard that I have an older brother?”

“Who became involved with the revolutionists and disappeared four or five years ago. And how your father—”

“Yes, to have a revolutionist in his family—that almost broke my father’s proud heart. Well—Borodin is my brother.”

“Your brother!” Drexel ejaculated. “Ah, I see now why you were ready to risk so many dangers. To save your brother!”

“To save my brother. And to save a leader whom the cause of liberty cannot spare.”

“You must love him.”

“Dearly!” said she, and her blue eyes lighted up. “He is so noble, single-hearted, brilliant!”

“But your father does not guess that Borodin is his son?”

“No.”

“And of course he does not know what you are at heart, what you have done?”

“No. If he knew!” Her face saddened. “And sometime he must know, for I cannot always successfully play this double part.”

Drexel, remembering the stern, proud old man, and knowing the love that existed between the two, could but wonder what would happen on that day when the general should learn the truth.

“It was the news of my brother’s arrest that brought me flying back to Russia,” she went on. “I was best fitted for the mission of going to Prince Berloff’s house.”

“But was it necessary for you to go to Berloff’s?” he broke in. “Could you not have learned, without risk, Borodin’s whereabouts from your father?”

“My father did not know and does not know. The heads of the secret police were, for their own purpose, keeping the place of his imprisonment a close secret. I was best suited for going to Prince Berloff’s because, while my father was governor of a Siberian province, Prince Berloff was in a way my guardian. I once lived at his house, and since then I have visited there much, though not recently. So I knew his house, and knew it well. I planned my call at a time when I knew he was expected to be absent for a few hours.”

“Yes, but the servants,” said Drexel. “There was the danger that you might be recognized by them.”

“But none had ever seen me before. He changes his servants every few months.”

“Changes them?”

“That they may not learn too much and begin to suspect.”

“Suspect?”

“Yes. Who he is. Rather, what he is.”

“And what is he?”

She gazed at him steadily a moment. “Prince Berloff is the actual head of Russia’s spy system.”

“What!” cried Drexel. And he sprang to his feet and stared at her.

“The master of Russia’s hundred thousand human bloodhounds,” she went on with a sudden fierce abhorrence. “The cunningest, cruellest, most unscrupulous man between Germany and the Pacific Ocean!”

“And this is the man that my cousin—” He looked at her blankly.

“Yes,” said she. “And the man I would have married, too, could my father have had his way. He was after my money, just as he is after your cousin’s. His ambition knows no limit—nor his unscrupulousness. He uses his office to further his own ends. If any stand in the way of his ambition, his control of the infamous machinery of the secret police gives him power to do away with them in a dozen ways—by death, exile, or imprisonment.”

“And he has done that?”

“Again and again. He would wipe me out of existence without a moment’s hesitation could he safely do it; with my brother outlawed, that would make him heir to my father’s estate. He will either be Russia’s prime minister, or else, before then, some terrorist—” The lifting of her shoulders spoke the rest.

A mystery that had puzzled Drexel for near a week was suddenly illumined. “I see now why you feared me, that night in the hotel, when I told you who I was!”

“Yes. The friend, the guest, the kinsman of Prince Berloff seemed indeed a man to flee from.”

“To think that we have never guessed what he is!”

“Only a very few in the Government know the office he fills, and only a few of us. He works through one or two trusty subordinates who are nominally the head of the system.”

“But what are his reasons for this concealment?”

“In the first place, since no one suspects what he is, he can work more craftily. In the second place—well, you can guess that a chief of spies is not exactly a popular idol. Von Plevhe spent a million rubles a year to protect his person, and even with that he died by a terrorist’s bomb. Instead of defending himself by the vain expenditure of a million on personal guards, Prince Berloff defends himself by keeping his hated office a secret.”

“I see. But why have you revolutionists not exposed him?”

“We have kept the matter a secret for much the same reason that he has kept it secret. So long as he believes himself unsuspected, we can work all the better against him.”

He stared at her. He remembered how calmly, how haughtily she had stood beside Prince Berloff, who had never a thought that the woman upon his arm was his bitter enemy, was fighting him with her very wit. And then, with a thrill of wonderment, he began to consider what a marvel it was that this young woman who had everything—great wealth, princely birth, such homage as was given to but few in a nation—everything that the world prized, should care so little for them all.

“I cannot understand, princess—” he began slowly.

“Do not call me princess!” she interrupted, her face beginning to glow. “I hate the word! Since you know me for what I am, call me what my comrades call me. Call me Sonya.”

“It is hard for me to understand then, how you are willing to risk position, rank, wealth—”

She rose and stood before him, her beauty heightened by the deepening glow of her face, by the flash of her eyes.

“My position!” cried she, opening wide her arms. “My position! What won me my position, my rank, my wealth? I will tell you. A thousand years ago, and more, one of my ancestors was a strong man. He made himself great by seizing the rights and property of others. The Government helped him hold on to what he had seized, and during all the thousand years since the Government has helped his descendents hold on to that power and property and keep the disinherited ones, the robbed ones, in subjection. And to-day it is helping me!

“People call me beautiful, cultured, noble. If this be true, why is it true? Because for a thousand years thousands of people have toiled, suffered, starved, been beaten down! I am the product of all that misery! Not for a day, not for an hour, would I keep my position were it not for one thing alone. I have a large income, all of which, except what I need to maintain appearances, is now turned over to the revolutionists; were I openly to join the revolutionists, that money, which we need so much, would be confiscated and lost to us. The need of this money forces me to hold my place; otherwise I would be openly in the fight to regain the people their lost rights, to gain them rights they have never had! To win their liberty, and all that liberty will mean! Ah, the people! Our poor maimed and mourning people!”

As she spoke there was a vague sense in Drexel of the contrast between them: she the apex of old-world aristocracy, giving her whole soul to the people; he of the over-night American aristocracy, trampling upon the people, giving his whole soul to winning that which she would so gladly throw away. As she finished, standing before him a-tremble with sympathy and passion, her superb beauty illumined by the inspiration of her purpose, he felt himself fairly lifted to his feet; and thrilled, he stretched out an eager hand to her.

“And I—I will help you!” he cried.

“You help?” Her lips half curled with scorn. “You with such ideals as you expressed the other night!”

“Never mind ideals! I will help!”

Those eyes of blue searched him narrowly.

“If not impelled to help by ideals, then by what?”

He well knew by what; by her spirit, her personality, by his love—but he cried:

“What impels me matters not, so long as I serve well and ask no reward!”

She considered a space, then said slowly: “No, we have no right to refuse any trustworthy aid. And I know that I can trust you; and that you have courage and readiness of wit. But, you have counted the risk?”

“I am ready for the risk!”

She was silent a moment. “You know what we are trying to do now. Our present endeavour is but an incident of the great struggle; but the future of the cause, the liberation of the people, depend largely upon saving my brother from death.”

“I understand.”

“To-morrow I go to Prince Berloff’s house party, and so do you. The reason I accepted the invitation was the opportunity offered for continuing the search, interrupted the other day, for some document revealing the whereabouts of my brother. You could help me, and help me much.”

She held out her hand. “Shall it be you and I against Prince Berloff?”

He pressed her hand.

“You and I,” he half whispered, “against—” He checked the words that rushed to his lips, but they sounded through all his being: “Against the world!”

CHAPTER XI
A BARGAIN IS RENEWED

THE next day they all went down to Prince Berloff’s—the Howards, Sonya and her father, Countess Baronova, Drexel, the prince, and besides them half a dozen high-born men and women who, Drexel soon discovered, had the grace and polish of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, and a paste-jewel sparkle of talk, but who were just narrowness and stupidity surfaced with fine manners and fine clothes.

As Drexel had anticipated, Sonya wore toward him an air of haughty negligence—an air that held no faintest hint that they were on terms of friendship, much less that between them was a secret pact. He could but compare this cold creature of imperious indifference that the world saw with the frank, glowing, inspiring and inspired woman who the afternoon before had opened her soul to him. Though his uncle drew him aside and talked traction deal, and though he nodded now and then, Drexel took in hardly one of the fortune-pregnant sentences; his mind was all with Sonya. But he did not allow himself to think of love, though all his being tingled with it. After the manner in which he had proposed to her, offering to lift her to his shining heights out of her poverty and insignificance, he hardly dare again approach the subject. Besides, for all his American pride, he felt her to be immeasurably beyond his reach.

But if Sonya was distant, there was one who was not. In the latter half of the short journey Mr. Howard was summoned forward by his wife, and Drexel was following his uncle, when he was met in the corridor by Countess Baronova.

“I know your uncle was sent for; are you, too, under orders?” she asked lightly, with a smile.

“No.”

“Then, sir, I put you under orders. Come, talk to me.”

He fell in with her playful spirit, and bowed with an air that mocked the St. Petersburg courtiers. “Madame, I obey.”

“Come, then.”

She led the way back to a compartment in the rear of the car and they sat down facing each other. She was in a travelling gown of black velvet with long sweeping lines, and the black note was repeated with staccato effect by the studs of jet in her ears, and by her brilliant eyes; a darkly fascinating being whose gaze was open and direct, whose clear-skinned beauty was honest, owing not a tittle, as does most noble St. Petersburg beauty, to the false testimony of bleaching compounds and rouge-pots.

She leaned back with luxurious grace and smiled at him with frank good humour. “I know I’m very brazen to capture you in this manner, but that’s the privilege of an elderly widow.”

“Elderly?”

“Twenty-seven, sir!”

“Then that puts me, too, in the decrepit class.”

“Oh, a single man never grows too old for woman to smile at. He’s comparatively immortal.”

“Hum. And the moral to that is——”

“No, it isn’t. Be mortal—for some one woman’s sake. Thus the elderly widow advises. But besides my old age,” she went on, “I have another excuse for taking you prisoner. For a week or more I’ve been waiting to have a little chat with you.”

“I’ve—ah—been in Moscow, you know,” explained Drexel.

“Yes, I know. But now at last I have you at my mercy.” Her smile faded away, her face leaned nearer, and her rallying tone sank to a serious whisper. “I want to talk on an important matter, Mr. Drexel, and I am going to speak to you openly, frankly. I can play the diplomat, but with a man of affairs like you, I know it is best to come straight to the point.”

Since he had first met the countess, Drexel had known her as a popular figure in the brilliant society frequented by the high officials that surround the Czar and fill the ministries, by the smart and noble officers of the Imperial Guard, by that ever-changing influx of officers who, after representing for a year or two the Czar’s autocratic might in some stupid, provincial town, or in some remote army station, come to St. Petersburg to renew themselves with a few months of the capital’s thoughtless gaiety. Yet he had guessed there was something beneath her surface of society devotee. She had piqued his curiosity, so now he felt a sudden flutter of interest as he said, “Please go on.”

Her dark, lustrous eyes searched deep into his own for a silent moment—then the elbow that supported her smooth cheek slipped yet nearer along the window-sill, and her voice dropped to a yet softer tone.

“You are a man to be trusted. I put myself, my life, in your hands.”

She glanced quickly at the door and back again. “I am a revolutionist.”

“A revolutionist!” he breathed.

“All my soul is with those who fight the Czar.”

He stared at her. Indeed, there was something beneath the surface! And that two such women as she and the princess should——

She interrupted his surprise with her rapid, barely audible words. “There is a noble part open to you, if you will only take it.”

“And that?”

“To help us.”

“How?”

“You have heard about Borodin—his arrest—what he means to the revolutionary cause?”

“Yes.”

“To rescue him is what at this moment we revolutionists desire most of all to do. If you would join us in that attempt, our chance of success would be greatly increased.”

“Increased? How?”

“You are shrewd,” she whispered. “And you could attempt bolder things than other men, for, your position being what it is, no one would suspect you. Yes, you could do much—much!”

She took his silence as a wish for something further before he answered. “If you will be with us I can arrange for you to meet our active leaders at once, and take part in their secret plannings. I can see from your face that you are wondering what, in return for all this, will be your reward. You would have a life-long sense of having helped a struggling nation to win the light.”

She hesitated—a soft red tinged her cheeks—her eyes fluttered down.

“And if the—the gratitude of a simple woman will mean anything—that gratitude you would ever have.”

There was no mistaking what she meant. Here was a situation, indeed, for a man newly in love! In his embarrassment Drexel knew not what to say that would carry him swiftly and safely by this delicate crisis in a manner to give no offense to the countess, whom he liked and admired. He was floundering about in his mind for the proper phrase when she raised her bright, flushed face and met his gaze frankly.

“If you decide to be with us,” she went on, “I have a definite plan to suggest—one calling for immediate action. A plan I, personally, am trying to carry through. I am sure we could make it succeed—you and I.”

All her warm, excited beauty, all her fascination, were directed at him. He hardly knew how to parry.

“Before I decide,” he temporized, “I should want to know what the plan is.”

“Lean nearer. It is this. I am trying—s-s-sh! Some one is coming! I’ll tell you later, when the person goes.”

Her voice and face were all disappointment, but when Mr. Howard walked into the compartment, she greeted him with an easy, good-humoured smile. However, her plan Drexel was not then to know, for the journey ended without giving her an opportunity to finish what she had begun.

At the station were waiting four two-seated sleighs, each with three splendid blacks hitched abreast. It fell out that Drexel, the countess, Sonya and Berloff got into one sleigh, Sonya and Berloff in the front seat. As they flashed over the flat white country, tucked away in frozen sleep, Drexel involuntarily compared these two women, the one he did not love and felt sure he could have, and the one he did love and knew he could not have—both beautiful, both clever, both so different from what they seemed to the world—both involved in the dangerous underground struggle against the Czar.

He could but notice with what ease Sonya talked with Berloff, that powerful antagonist with whom she was in deadly duel. He studied Berloff anew in the light of her startling revelation, and he saw anew the power, the resourcefulness, the relentless cunning behind that pale, refined face. In a struggle of wits against wits, he was an adversary that only the cleverest could hope to hold his own against. Moreover, he did not fight alone. Fighting with him, and for him, was his own army of near a hundred thousand spies, and besides these was the million of the standing army, and all the vast civil machinery of the State. Drexel drew a long breath.

The prince’s mansion sat in a great park of snow-drooped evergreens. It was a big, box-like, sprawling pile, as are most of the older country seats of the Russian nobility, but the plainness of its exterior prepared a surprise for him who entered for the first time. The furnishings were rich and quiet in their tone; the walls of the main rooms were hung with paintings, studies, etchings, chiefly works from the hands of the big Frenchmen of the nineteenth century; and everywhere were exquisite little bronzes, the best private collection in Russia. Berloff, so said his friends, could have been an eminent artist himself, had birth not destined him to greater things.

Drexel’s eyes were ever covertly watching Sonya—thrilled with the sense that he alone of all here knew the double part she played. Sonya at once became the dominant figure of the party. She did not seek attention, rather she seemed to disdain it; but, nevertheless, it focussed upon her, and with a magnificent indifference she accepted it as her due.

In the evening, when they were all in the music room, the countess surprised one of Drexel’s surreptitious glances at Sonya. “You seem to think with the rest of the men, that there is only one woman present, the princess,” she whispered.

“I had heard so much of her that I was curious,” Drexel returned.

“Allow the elderly widow to tell you that attention paid the princess is attention wasted. She will smile on nothing less than royal blood. Since we left Petersburg she has given you one casual glance and two casual words. Are my statistics correct?”

“They agree with my own.”

Her voice sank to a bare whisper. “And of course you know she has no sympathy with our movement to gain freedom. She believes in the divine rights of the high-born—that they are superior and should rule and have the earth, and that the many should be their footstool.”

He saw it was her wish to draw him into some retired corner and continue the conversation of the train; but this was not permitted her, for just then the debonair young lieutenant of the Czar’s Guards who had been tripping airily among the perfumed heights of tenor arias from the Italian opera, left the piano, and there arose a demand that she should sing. In rebuke to these sweet soulless intricacies, so it seemed to Drexel, she sang several of the folk songs of little Russia—simple, plaintive airs that were the voice of the people’s heart speaking its joys and woes and aspirations—and sang them in a rich and soft contralto charged with feeling.

Drexel, stirred by her voice, felt his heart pulsing in warm sympathy with the beat of the song. The applauding guests thought she was moved by mere artistic sentiment. He knew better, and when he had a moment alone with her after she had finished, he told her how truly splendid had been her singing. She caught the sympathy in his voice and flashed at him a quick, bright look. “We’ll have you yet!” she whispered.

Prince Berloff, coming up, reminded her that he had promised to show her some new etchings that he had shown the other guests in the afternoon while she had been lying down, and he led her off to the library.

Could Drexel have only followed her!

The countess bestowed herself in a corner of a great leather divan, leaning back in luxurious grace, her cheek in one finely modeled hand. The prince closed the door and drew up a chair in front of her. There was controlled eagerness in his pale face.

“Well?” he asked in his low voice.

Triumph gleamed through the fringe of her half-closed eyes, but her manner was languorously reposeful.

“Well, I think we have him!”

“A-a-h!” breathed the prince. “You have definitely involved him in some plan?”

“Not yet. I’m leading him gently toward one. But he’s ready. He said as much to-night.”

“Good! And what plan?”

“I thought the one we knew was uppermost in the revolutionists’ minds would be the best—the freeing of Borodin.”

“You must use haste. Drexel is to be in Russia less than two weeks longer. When are you going to lead him definitely into the thing?”

“That depends,” she answered.

“On what?”

“On you.”

“On me?”

“On the reply you make to a pair of requests.”

“And what are they?”

“When you arranged with me to undertake this matter, you merely ordered me to lead Mr. Drexel into some revolutionary plot. You did not tell me why you wanted him to be involved in a plot, and I did not ask. But I ask now.”

The prince’s white brows drew together. “Countess, you are going too far!”

But the menace of his looks did not even ripple the countess’s repose.

“Then you refuse?”

“Most emphatically!”

“Well, anyhow, this first request was of minor importance,” she said easily. “And besides, for that matter, I know my question’s answer.”

He gave a slight start, then his face was again a cold mask.

“Indeed,” he said calmly. “How?”

“Oh, I could not help doing a little thinking—guessing—putting this and that together.”

“And my purpose?”

“To get Mr. Drexel out of the way.”

“Well?”

“And get him out of the way so that no suspicion or blame could attach to you,” she went on. “Get him involved in some revolutionary plot you were watching, have the gendarmes break in upon the plotters and kill Mr. Drexel in the struggle, or have him immediately executed with the others before his identity should be learned. Then when his fate became known, the Government would be very sorry—but really, you know, no one would be to blame but Mr. Drexel’s own rashness. And you could be very sympathetic with his family, and they would never guess that you were the man behind it. Very safe, prince—and very, very clever!”

The prince’s face was still a cold, impenetrable mask.

“Am I not right?”

“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” he said.

Her head slowly nodded. “Oh, I am right!” She gazed into his face with keen, analyzing thought. “They say Richard the Third of England murdered cousins, uncles, all sorts of relatives, to get to the throne. Our own Catherine the Great had her husband, Czar Paul, killed that she might become ruler of Russia. You have a family likeness to them, prince. I should not care to stand between you and anything you desire.”

“I have not noticed any particular strain of tenderness in the Countess Baronova,” he returned dryly. “You spoke of a second request.”

“Yes. The important one. If I am to go ahead, you must pay me more.”

“Pay you more! I have offered you ten thousand rubles for this above your regular salary!”

“I know. I must have fifty thousand.”

“Fifty thousand! Never!”

“You are in earnest?” she asked quietly.

“Of course! I have thousands of persons who will do this for what I offered you—or a tenth the sum.”

“But do it as well? Anyone else who could draw him into a revolutionary plot—so that it will be safe for you—so that the blame will all be on him? Eh, prince?”

“Your demand is absurd!” he said.

“Then I will go no further with Mr. Drexel. You and I are through with this matter, I suppose. Well, I’m quite as well pleased with your refusal.” She started to rise. “Let us return to the others.”

“Wait, sit down,” he said sharply. She did so. “Tell me why you are just as well pleased with my refusal?”

“Perhaps,” said she calmly, “it may be in my mind that by breaking with you I may get something I prefer above your fifty thousand.”

“And that?”

“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” she said, mimicking his cold sentence of a moment before.

At this “checkmate” he bit the inner edge of his thin lip.

“Oh, I’d just as soon tell you,” she went on. “The fact is, I’m getting tired of my work. Not tired of the pleasure of society, nor tired of my particular friends, the young officers who come to St. Petersburg to spend their furloughs. But tired of having it whispered about secretly that I have liberal views, and thereby drawing to me the officers who hold revolutionary opinions. Tired of sympathetically leading them on, little by little, to confide in me. Tired of telling you, and having them disappear—poor fellows!”

“Um. What would have been the position of the widow of the bankrupt Count Baronoff but for this salary?”

“I have needed the money, yes. But now, I’m tired. Besides, if I’m found out, or if a few wrinkles come, my usefulness to you is over and the salary stops. I’ve been doing a little serious thinking, and here’s what I’ve decided. If I have so infatuated Mr. Drexel that I can lead him into a plot that will make him your victim, why should I not——”

She stopped, and her eyes gleamed tantalizingly at the prince.

“Well?”

“Well, instead of that, why should I not make myself your cousin?”

“You mean marry him?”

“He’s rich—has a big career before him—and I rather like him. Why not?”

“Why not?” cried the prince in a low, harsh voice, leaning towards her. “Because I will not have my plans interfered with! Because I will not have you for a relative!”

“Thanks for the compliment, prince,” she said dryly. “But how will you prevent it?”

“By telling him what you are—the cleverest, keenest, most heartless woman spy in Russia!”

“Perhaps I also might tell something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I might tell Miss Howard who you are—the ruthless, secret——”

He rose and stood above her, his eyes glittering.

“Be careful, countess,” he said slowly, ominously. “You yourself have said that I would hesitate at nothing. Well, be warned by your own words!”

Her daring had carried her too far. She knew this man, and knew that if he but willed it she would mysteriously disappear never to be seen again. Her face kept its calm, but inwardly she could but flinch before the dark menace of his look.

After a moment, she spoke again.

“I think we will both go farther, prince, if we go together and in harmony. Come, which is it to be—fifty thousand—or am I to withdraw from the affair?”

Berloff did not answer at once; then he said:

“Fifty thousand.”

“So be it,” said she.

“But you must finish this at once.”

“I’ll claim the money within three days.” She rose and took his arm. “Come, let us go back to the others.”

Two minutes later she was again with Drexel, trying with look and veiled words to win his sympathy for her cause.

CHAPTER XII
IN THE PRINCE’S STUDY

AFTER several more of the countess’s songs of Little Russia, and more vocal trapeze work by the lieutenant among his Italian arias, the company adjourned to the hall, a room so large that a fair-sized house could have been erected therein. Here tables had been placed, and the company eagerly set about playing cards, the great pastime of the blasé Russian nobility. The stakes were moderate, Berloff purposely announcing a low limit that none might leave his house with feelings of regret; but nevertheless the play continued with a silent intensity far into the morning hours.

The countess tried in vain to have a few minutes alone with Drexel during the evening. The next morning, however, she was more fortunate, for when she came down at eleven for her tea and two sugared rolls she found Drexel alone in the breakfast room—no other of the guests had as yet appeared. She assumed command of the great silver samovar, which would be steaming all day, and made Drexel a fresh glass of tea. When she had said the night before to Berloff that she liked Drexel, she had spoken more of truth than the prince imagined—more, perhaps, than even she herself was aware of—and this liking lent a peculiar excitement, a tang, to the game she was now playing.

Before two minutes had passed she had led the talk to Borodin. To shrewd, hard-headed Henry Drexel, whose secret pride it had always been that no one had ever bested him in the game of wits, this frank, handsome woman seemed flushed with excited devotion to her cause. He had a momentary impulse to avoid the risk of working at cross purposes by taking her as an ally into his and Sonya’s plan; but he was restrained by the sense that to do so would be to reveal Sonya’s secret to a third person, and none but she had that right. On the other hand to tell the countess he was not interested would have been false to his attitude—so he temporized.

“Do you know where Borodin is imprisoned?” he asked.

“No—not yet.”

“Should not your first effort be to find out?”

“It is going to be.”

Drexel did some quick thinking. Perhaps she had some information worth knowing. “Where do you think his whereabouts can be learned?” he inquired.

“There is undoubtedly a record of it in the Ministry of the Interior.”

“But the difficulty of getting it!”

“I know. But we have plans for searching the ministry’s records.”

He hesitated; then in his eagerness he went farther than he had intended.

“But might there not be some easier, simpler plan?”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I have been doing some thinking—ah—apropos of what you said. Is there not some man intimate with the secrets of the Government who may have record of Borodin?”

“Like whom?”

“Well, say like our host. I merely use him for an illustration. He seems to be informed on every detail of what the Government does.”

The countess’s quick mind decided that if this idea interested him, it would be well to lure him on through that interest. “Yes,” she returned, nodding her head. “I think you may be right. And as for the prince, he may be the very man. It is entirely possible he may know where Borodin is.”

She leaned nearer, and her manner was excitedly joyous. “Since you have been doing this thinking, that means you are at heart already one of us!”

“I am not saying yet, countess,” he smiled.

The voices of Prince Berloff and Mr. Howard sounded without.

“Come—you will be with us!” she said quickly, appealingly.

“Perhaps.” And then, half ashamed of his enforced reticence, he whispered: “Who knows? I may do all you ask—some day.”

Her eyes glowed into his. “Ah—thank you!” she breathed as the others entered.

Drexel excused himself, leaving the countess pouring tea for the two men, and withdrew into the hall, where under pretense of examining some etchings from Corot he kept watch upon the broad staircase. As he had hoped, Sonya soon came down the stairway, alone. She responded to his “Good-morning, princess,” with a formal smile.

“What kind of a day is it?” she asked perfunctorily, and crossed into the embrasure of a window and gazed out into the park. He followed her, half doubtful if there really was the secret tie of a common purpose between this haughty being and himself. But once within the alcove she smiled at him again—this time a comradely, half-whimsical smile.

“Well, sir, how do you feel now about being in the lion’s den?”

“Like getting out as soon as we get what we want.”

“Then you are ready to go on?”

“Do I look like a man who wishes to withdraw?”

She searched his face with its quiet, determined eyes.

“No,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and a warm glow went through him.

The countess’s recent words were strong upon him. He was curious to learn Sonya’s impression, and there was not the same reason for absolute secrecy in the countess’s case as there was in Sonya’s. “Tell me, what do you know of Countess Baronova?” he asked.

“No more than you probably do.”

“Perhaps, then, not so much. We have—well—been friends, and have had many talks. And at last, after working her way toward it, she has confided to me that she is secretly a revolutionist.”

“Indeed! But I really cannot say that I am surprised. She is just another example of how the revolt against the Government is penetrating even the nobility. But why did she tell you?”

“To try to enlist my aid in some such plan as we now have in hand. She thought because of my peculiar situation I could be of exceptional assistance.” He did not want the countess as a third partner in the scheme—he wanted to carry this thing through alone with Sonya; so he quickly added: “But I suppose there is no reason for our taking her in.”

She shook her head. “It is always unwise to take in a single unnecessary person—and especially a person who has not been tested.”

“When shall we make the trial?”

“To-day. We must watch till the prince and all the others are occupied in some distant part of the house. Perhaps there will be an opportunity before the rest come down—that might be our best chance.”

But this last was not to be. After breakfast the prince excused himself, saying that he had some papers to which he was forced to give immediate consideration, and withdraw to his study, the very room Drexel and Sonya were to search. Moreover, Alice wanted her father to see something of the estate which was to be her main country seat, and since she had a headache and her mother felt disinclined to brave the cold, it fell upon Drexel to accompany Mr. Howard. Until two o’clock the pair of them, barricaded against the cold with layers of furs, and drawn by three swift blacks, flew across broad fields, through long, huddling villages, past forests of snow-shrouded pine and spruce and hemlock.

Half an hour before the afternoon dinner Drexel and Sonya had another moment together in the embrasure of the window. After this interview Drexel went out to make a solitary inspection of the prince’s famous stable, asking them to excuse him, as he had nibbled rather generously after his drive and so was not hungry. Just before dinner was announced Sonya, pleading a slight indisposition, retired to her room. Minus these two, the company filed into the dining-room.

They were midway in the first course when Drexel returned to the house, slipped quietly through the corridor that led to the library, and taking a book at hazard from the French section, settled himself in one of the leather chairs. A few minutes later Sonya entered.

“That is the study there,” she said quickly, leading the way through a door opening off the library.

They had decided there was no necessity for one to keep guard; the records were in French, as Sonya knew, and they could make double speed by searching together. In case anyone interrupted them, Sonya was to remark casually that Drexel was helping her look for a volume of genealogy.

The study was distinctly a workroom. There were no vaults here, no heavily locked cupboards, no air of secrecy, for all the prince’s work was done upon the theory that the surest way to escape suspicion of harbouring a secret is to make a quiet show of having nothing to conceal. Shelves reaching to the ceiling were crowded with the government reports of a dozen nations, and with rows of semi-official files. It was frankly the room of such a man as Berloff appeared to be—a statesman without a post, an unofficial adviser to the Czar.

“When here a week ago,” whispered Sonya, “I barely got into this room when I had to fly. So we’ll have to begin at the very beginning—on those files.”

Scarcely breathing, their ears quickened for the faintest step, they set swiftly to work. The danger was great; discovery for Sonya, at least, would mean complete disaster.

As each file was examined it was thrust back, so that in case they were suddenly interrupted there might be no disorder to betray what they had been about. There were digests of reports on the railroads, on the peasants, on the wholesale corruption in the army commissariat, on a hundred things of vital interest to the statesman at large Berloff ostensibly was—but nothing relating to what they knew to be his real business.

“After all, he must have some secret hiding-place for his records of the political police,” whispered Drexel.

“Perhaps. But we must first make sure they are not here.”

The faint, musical jangling of bells without caused Drexel to glance through the window. Already the brief daylight was beginning to wane.

“What is it?” asked Sonya.

“A sleigh driving up with one man in it. Another guest, I suppose.”

Sonya, who had been turning swiftly through crop reports from the Ministry of Agriculture, gave a low cry and stared at a paper.

“We’re finding something! Think of it! Prince Berloff was behind that attempt a month ago to kill the prime minister with a bomb! The revolutionary leader who urged it on was in reality one of his spies!”

“Berloff try to kill the prime minister! Why?”

“Because that would be to kill two birds with one stone—make the revolutionists unpopular because of their inhuman methods, and make vacant the position he covets. But here are more! Examine the bottom of the files.”

“Here it is!” cried Drexel.

“What does it say? Quick!”

“Arrested in the dress of a railway porter——”

“But the prison!”

“Put in Central Prison.”

She gave a sharp moan of disappointment. “He was put there at first. But we know he was secretly removed to some other prison. Quick—we’ll find it!”

They went feverishly at the files. But suddenly both straightened up. Indistinct voices were heard in the corridor that opened into the library. In an instant the files were back in their places and all looked as before.

“I did not expect you to-day,” said a voice in the library.

“Berloff!” whispered Drexel.

“We’ll carry it off before him,” said Sonya, confidently, and she took down a volume of genealogy.

“Count Orloff was very eager you should have the reports at once,” a rumbling bass responded to Prince Berloff.

“That voice!” breathed Sonya.

“I, too, have heard it before! But where?”

The library filled with light. They crept to the half-open door. Sonya put her eyes to the crack and peered in. The next instant she had clutched Drexel with tense, quivering hands and was drawing him back. Even the deepening twilight could not hide her sudden pallor.

“Who is it?” Drexel whispered.

“The captain of gendarmes!”

“The one who pursued us? Captain Nadson?”

“Yes.”

They stared at each other in deepest consternation.

“If he finds us here together——” breathed Drexel.

“The destruction of our plans—trouble for you—ruin for me, and who knows what worse!”

“We must escape, then.”

“Yes—but how?”

“The windows, perhaps.”

“They are double, and are screwed down. The only way would be to break the glass. And then they would seize us before we could get out.”