CHAPTER XVI
UNDER SURVEILLANCE
I paid my bill, strolled out, and in the doorway encountered a man I knew slightly – a young officer – with whom I paused to chat, thereby blocking the doorway temporarily, with the result that I found my friend the spy – as I was now convinced he was – at my elbow. My unexpected halt had pulled him up short.
“Pardon!” I said with the utmost politeness, stepping aside, so he had to pass out, though I guessed he was angry enough at losing my conversation, for I was telling Lieutenant Mirakoff of my arrest, – as a great joke, at which we both laughed uproariously.
“They should have seen that you were a foreigner, and therefore quite mad, – and harmless,” he cried.
“Now, I ought to call you out for that!” I asserted.
“At your service!” he answered, still laughing, as we separated.
The spy was apparently deeply interested in the contents of a shop window near at hand, and I went off briskly in the other direction; but in a minute or two later, when I paused, ostensibly to compare my watch with a clock which I had just passed, I saw, as I glanced back, that he was on my track once more.
This was getting serious, and I adopted a simple expedient to give him the slip for the present. I hailed a droshky and bade the fellow drive to a certain street, not far from that where Mishka’s café was situated. We started off at the usual headlong speed, and presently, as we whirled round a corner, I called on the driver to stop, handed him a fare that must have represented a good week’s earnings, and ordered him to drive on again as fast as he could, and for as long as his horse would hold out.
He grinned, “clucked” to his horse, and was off on the instant, while I turned into a little shop close by, whence I had the satisfaction, less than half a minute after, of seeing a second droshky dash past, in pursuit of the first, with the spy lolling in it. If my Jehu kept faith – there was no telling if he would do that or not, though I had to take the risk —monsieur le mouchard would enjoy a nice drive, at the expense of his government!
In five minutes I was at the café, where I dropped my coin; it rolled to a corner and the waiter picked it up, while I sipped my tea and grumbled at the scarcity of lemon. I asked the prescribed question when he restored the piece; and almost immediately Mishka himself joined me. This was better than I had dared to hope, for I knew I could speak to him freely; in fact I told him everything, including the ruse by which I had eluded my vigilant attendant.
“You must not try that again,” he said, in his sulky fashion. “It has served once, yes; but it will not serve again. When he finds that you have cheated him he will make his report, and then you will have, not one, but several spies to reckon with; that is, if they think it worth while. Still you have done well, – very well. Now you must wait until you hear from my master.” Mishka never mentioned a name if he could avoid doing so.
“But can’t you give me some idea as to where she is likely to be?” I demanded. To wait, and continue to act my part, as if there was no such person as Anne Pendennis in the world and in deadly peril was just about the toughest duty imaginable.
“I can tell you nothing, and you, by yourself, can do nothing,” he retorted stolidly. “If you are wise you will go about your business as if nothing had happened. But be in your rooms by – nine o’clock to-night. It is unlikely that we can send you any word before then.”
Nine o’clock! And it was now barely noon! Nine mortal hours; and within their space what might not happen? But there was no help for it. Mishka had spoken the truth; by myself I could do nothing.
It was hard – hard to be bound like this, with invisible fetters; and to know all the time that the girl I loved was so near and yet so far, needing my aid, while I was powerless to help her, – I, who would so gladly lay down my life for her.
Who was she? What was she? How was her fate linked with that of this great grim land, – a land “agonizing in the throes of a new birth?” If she had but trusted me in the days when we had been together, could I have saved her then? Have spared her the agony my heart told me she was suffering now?
Yes, – yes, I said bitterly to myself. I could have saved her, if she had trusted me; for then she would have loved me; would have been content to share my life. A roving life it would have been, of course, for we were both nomads by choice as well as by chance, and the nomadic habit, once formed, is seldom broken. But how happy we should have been! Our wanderings would never have brought us to Russia, though. Heavens, how I hated – how I still hate it; the greatest and grandest country in the world, viewed under the aspect of sheer land; a territory to which even our own United States of America counts second for extent, for fertility, for natural wealth in wood and oil and minerals. A country that God made a paradise, or at least a vast storehouse for the supply of human necessities and luxuries; but a country of which man has made such a hell, that, in comparison with it, Dante’s “Inferno” reads like a story of childish imaginings.
Yes, Russia was a hell upon earth; and Petersburg was the centre and epitome of it, I said in my soul, as I loitered on one of the bridges that afternoon, and looked on the swift flowing river, on the splendid buildings, gleaming white, as the gilded cupolas and spires of the churches gleamed fire red, under the brilliant sunshine. A fair city outwardly, a whited sepulchre raised over a charnel-house. A city of terror, wherein every man is an Ishmael, knowing – or suspecting – that every other man’s hand is against him.
There was a shadow over the whole land, over the city, over myself, the stranger within its gate; and in that shadow the girl I loved was impenetrably enveloped.
I raised my eyes, and there, fronting me across the water, sternly menacing, were the gray walls of the fortress-prison, named, as if in grim mockery, the fortress of “Peter and Paul.” Peter, who denied his Lord, though he loved Him; Paul, who denied his Lord before he knew and loved Him! Perhaps the name is not so inconsistent, after all. The deeds that are done behind the walls of that fortress-prison by men who call themselves Christians, are the most tremendous denial of Christ that this era has witnessed.
Sick at heart, I turned away, and walked moodily back to my hotel. The proprietor was in the lobby, and the whole staff seemed to be on the spot. They all looked at me as if they thought I might be some recently discovered wild animal, and I wondered why. But as no one spoke to me, I asked the clerk at the bureau for my key.
“I have it not; others – the police – have it,” he stammered.
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” I said. “They’re up there now? All right.”
I went up the stairs – there was no elevator – and found a couple of soldiers posted outside my door.
“Well, what are you doing here?” I asked, in good enough Russian. “This is my room, and I’ll thank you to let me pass.”
The one on the right of the door flung it open with a flourish, and motioned me to enter.
As I passed him he said, with a laugh to his fellow, “So – the rat goes into the trap!”
CHAPTER XVII
THE DROSHKY DRIVER
Inside were two officials busily engaged in a systematic search of my effects. Truly the secret police had lost no time!
I had already decided on the attitude I must adopt. It was improbable that they would arrest me openly; that would have involved trouble with the Embassies, but they could, if they chose, conduct me to the frontier or give me twenty-four hours’ notice to quit Russia, as they had to Von Eckhardt, and that was the very last thing I desired just now.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” I said amiably. “You seem to be pretty busy here. Can I give you any assistance?”
I spoke in French, as I didn’t want to air my Russian for their edification, though I had improved a good deal in it.
One of them, who seemed boss, looked up and said brusquely, though not exactly uncivilly: “Ah, Monsieur, you have returned somewhat sooner than we expected. We have a warrant to search your apartment.”
“That’s all right; pray continue, though I give you my word you won’t find anything treasonable. I’m a foreigner, as of course you know; and I haven’t the least wish or intention to mix myself up with Russian affairs.”
“And yet you correspond with the Grand Duke Loris,” he said dryly.
“I don’t!” I answered promptly. “I’ve never written a line to that gentleman in my life, nor he to me.”
“There are other ways of corresponding than by writing,” he retorted. I guessed I had been watched to the café after all, but I maintained an air of innocent unconcern, and, after all, his remark might be merely a “feeler.” I rather think now that it was. One can never be sure how much the Russian Secret Police do, or do not, know; and one of their pet tricks is to bluff people into giving themselves away.
So I ignored his remark, selected a cigarette, and, seeing that he had just finished his – I’ve wondered sometimes if a Russian official sleeps with a cigarette between his lips, for I fear he wouldn’t sleep comfortably without! – handed him the case, with an apology for my remissness. He accepted both the apology and the cigarette, and looked at me hard.
“I said, Monsieur, that there are other ways of corresponding than by writing!” he repeated with emphasis.
“Of course there are,” I assented cheerfully. “But I don’t see what that has to do with me in the present instance. I only know the Grand Duke very slightly. I was hurt in that railway accident last month, and his Highness was good enough to order one of his servants to look after me; and he also called to see me at an hotel in Dunaburg. I thought it very condescending of him. Though I don’t suppose I’d have the chance of meeting him again, as there are no Court festivities now; or if there are, we outsiders aren’t invited to them. Won’t your friend accept one of my cigarettes?”
This was addressed to the other man, who seemed to be doing all the work, and was puzzling over some pencil notes in English which he had picked out of my waste-paper basket. They were the draft of my yesterday’s despatch to the Courier, a perfectly innocuous communication that I had sent openly; it didn’t matter whether it arrived at its destination or not. As I have said, Petersburg was quiet to stagnation just now; though one never knew when the material for some first-class sensational copy might turn up.
“I’ll translate that for you right now, if you like,” I said politely. “Or you can take it away with you!”
I think they were both baffled by my apparent candor and nonchalance; but the man who was bossing the show returned to the charge persistently.
“Ah, that railway accident. Yes. But surely you have made a slight mistake, Monsieur? You incurred your injuries, from which, I perceive, you have so happily recovered.”
He bowed, and I bowed. If I hadn’t known all that lay behind, this exchange of words and courtesy – a kind of fencing, with both of us pretending that the buttons were on the foils – would have tickled me immensely. Even as it was I could appreciate the funny side of it. I was playing a part in a comedy, – a grim comedy, a mere interlude in tragedy, – but still comic.
“You incurred these, I say, not in the accident, but while gallantly defending the Grand Duke from the dastards who assailed him later!”
I worked up a modest blush; or I tried to.
“I see that it is useless to attempt to conceal anything from you, Monsieur; you know too much!” I confessed, laughing. “But I’m a modest man; besides, I didn’t do very much, and his Highness seemed quite capable of taking care of himself.”
I saw a queer glint in his eyes, and I guessed then that the attempt on the life of the Grand Duke had been engineered by the police themselves, and not, as I had first imagined, by the revolutionists.
My antagonist waved his hand with an airy gesture of protestation.
“You underrate your services, Monsieur Wynn! I wonder if you would have devoted them so readily to his Highness if – ”
He paused portentously.
“If?” I inquired blandly. “Do have another cigarette!”
“If you had known of his connection with the woman who is known as La Mort?”
That wasn’t precisely what he said. I don’t choose to write the words in any language; but I wanted to knock his yellow teeth down his throat; to choke the life out of him for the vile suggestion his words contained! I dared not look at him; my eyes would have betrayed everything that he was seeking to discover. I looked at the end of the cigarette I was lighting, and wondered how I managed to steady the hand that held the match.
“I really do not understand you!” I asserted blandly.
“Perhaps you may know her as Anna Petrovna?” he suggested.
“Anna Petrovna!” I repeated. “Now, that’s the second time to-day I’ve heard the lady’s name; and I can’t think why you gentlemen should imagine it means anything to me. Who is she, anyhow?”
I looked at him now, fair and square; met and held the gimlet gaze of his eyes with one of calm, interested inquiry. We were fighting a duel, to which a mere physical fight is child’s play; and – I meant to win!
“You do not know?” he asked.
“I do not; though I’d like to. The officer at the bureau this morning – I don’t suppose I need tell you that I was arrested and detained for a time – seemed to think I should know her; but he wouldn’t give me any information. You’ve managed to rouse my curiosity pretty smartly between you!”
“I fear it must remain unsatisfied, Monsieur, so far as I am concerned,” he said suavely. “Well, we will relieve you of our presence. I congratulate you on the admirable order in which you keep your papers.”
His subordinate had risen, with an expressive shrug of his shoulders. I knew their search must be futile, since I had fortunately destroyed Mary Cayley’s letter the day I received it; and there was nothing among my papers referring either directly or indirectly to Anne.
“You’ll want to see this, of course,” I suggested, tendering my passport. He glanced through it perfunctorily, and handed it back with a ceremonious bow. So far as manners went, he certainly was an improvement on the official at the bureau; and of course he already knew that my personal papers were all right.
He gave me a courteous “good evening,” and the other man, who hadn’t uttered a syllable the whole time, saluted me in silence. I heard one of them give an order to the guards outside, and then the heavy tramp of their feet descending the staircase.
I started tidying up; it would help to pass the time until I might expect some message from the Grand Duke. Mishka had said nine o’clock, and it was not yet seven.
Presently there came a knock at my door. I wondered if this might be another police visitation; but it was only one of the hotel servants to say a droshky driver was below, demanding to see me. He produced a dirty scrap of paper with my name and address scrawled on it, which the man had brought. I thought at once of the man who had driven me in the morning, and wondered how on earth he got my name and address. I was sure it must be he when I heard that he declared “the excellency had told him to call for payment.” This was awkward; the fellow must be another police spy, probably doing a bit of blackmailing on his own account. Well, I’d better see him, anyhow. I told the man to bring him up.
“He is a dangerous looking fellow,” he demurred.
“That’s my lookout and not yours,” I said. “If he wants to see me he’s got to come up. I’m certainly not going down to him.”
He went off unwillingly, and a minute or two later returned, showing in my queer visitor, a big burly chap who seemed civil and harmless enough.
I didn’t think at first sight he was the man who drove me, but they all look so much alike in their filthy greatcoats and low-crowned hats. He had a big grizzled beard and a thatch of matted hair, from which his little swinish eyes peered out with a leer. Yes, he looked exactly like any other of his class, but —
As he entered behind the servant, touched his greasy hat, and growled a guttural greeting, he opened his eyes full and looked at me for barely a second, but it was sufficient.
“Oh, it is you, Ivan; why didn’t you send your name up?” I said roughly. “How much is it I owe you? Here, wait a minute; as you are here, you can take a message for me. Wait here while I write it. It’s all right; I know the fellow,” I added to the servant. “You needn’t wait.”
He went out, and for a minute my visitor and I stood silently regarding each other. His disguise was perfect; I should never have penetrated it but for the warning he had flashed from those bright blue eyes, that now, leering and nearly closed, looked dark and pig-like again.
The droshky driver was the Grand Duke Loris himself.
CHAPTER XVIII
THROUGH THE STORM
I moved to the door and locked it noiselessly. I dared not open it to see if the servant had gone, for if he had not that would have roused his suspicions at once. The Duke had already crossed to the further side of the room, and I joined him there.
He wasted no time in preliminaries.
“Mishka has told me all,” he began, speaking in English, though still in the hoarse low growl appropriate to his assumed character. “And I have learned much since. There is to be a meeting to-night, and if things are as I suspect she will be brought before the tribunal. We must save her if we can. Will you come? To say it will be at the risk of your life is to put it mildly. It will be a forlorn hope.”
“I’ll come; tell me how,” I said.
“You will go to the place where you met Mishka to-day, dine there, and change your clothes. They will have some for you, and you need not use the formula. They expect you already; I knew you would come! Mishka will join you, and will accompany you to the rank where I shall be waiting with my droshky. You will hire me in the usual way; and we will tell you my plans when we are clear of the city. Have you any weapon?”
“No.”
He felt in an inner pocket of his filthy greatcoat and brought out a revolver and a handful of spare cartridges.
“It’s loaded; you can have these, too, though if there’s any shooting I doubt if you’ll have the chance of reloading. Let’s hope you won’t fall in with the police for the third time to-day! Mishka will join you between nine and ten. We need not start till then, – these light nights are a drawback, but that cannot be helped. The meeting will be held as usual, after midnight. That is all now. I must not stay longer. Give me the note you spoke of. A blank sheet – anything – I will destroy it immediately.”
I put a sheet of note-paper into an envelope, and addressed it to Lieutenant Mirakoff at his barracks. His was the first name that occurred to me.
“You know him?” he asked, pointing to the name.
“Very slightly.”
He nodded and picked up the note, holding it carefully by one corner between his filthy thumb and finger.
I unlocked the door as quietly as I had locked it, and a moment later he opened it noisily and backed out, growling guttural and surly thanks; backed right up against the servant, who, as we both guessed, was waiting just outside. Even I was surprised at the altercation that followed. A Russian droshky driver has a bigger command of bad language than any other cabby in the world, and the Grand Duke Loris had evidently studied his part from life. He was letter perfect in it!
I strode to the door and flung it open.
“Here, stop that!” I shouted. “Be off with you, Ivan; you impudent rascal!”
He leered at me and shambled off, but I could hear the coarse voice growling ribaldries all the way down the staircase.
It was a masterpiece of impersonation!
I waited a while, till I judged it safe to start on the first stage of my expedition. I meant to take a circuitous route to the café, in case I was still being watched. I would run no unnecessary risks, not for my own sake, but I guessed that the success of our enterprise – whatever it was – would depend on the exercise of infinite caution, at the beginning, anyhow. I felt strangely elated, happier than I had done for many a long day; although I knew that the worst, or almost the worst, had come to pass, and that Anne was here, in the power of her enemies. But we were going to save her, – we would save her. “A forlorn hope” even Loris Solovieff had called it. Nothing of the kind. Could anything that such a man as he attempted be a forlorn hope; and together, working loyally side by side, what could we not dare, and accomplish? Nothing seemed impossible to-night.
“Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part!”
I kept a wary lookout as I made my way along the streets, most of them thronged at this hour of the summer evening. The air was sultry, and huge masses of cloud were piling up, ominous of a storm before long.
I reached the café eventually and, so far as I knew, unobserved, and came out of it an hour or so later, looking, I hope, as like a shabbily attired Russian student as the Grand Duke Loris looked like a droshky driver, accompanied by a man of the artisan type, who might have been my father, – none other than Mishka himself.
The sky was overcast, and already, above the rumble of the traffic, one could hear the mutter of distant thunder. It reminded me of that eventful night in London, little more than a month ago, though I had seemed to live a lifetime since then.
“The storm comes soon,” said Mishka. “That is well, very well.”
We came to a rank where several droshkys were standing; and he paused irresolute, fumbling in his pocket.
“We will drive, Paul,” he asserted aloud, with the air of a man who has just decided to indulge in an extravagance. “Yes, I say we will; the storm comes soon, and thy mother is alone.”
He began to haggle, after the usual fashion, with the nearest driver; and again I marvelled at the Duke’s disguise; for it was he, of course.
Once clear of the city Mishka unfolded the plan.
“Presently we turn across country and come to a house; there we leave the droshky; and there also will be horses for us in readiness if we should need them – later. Thence we go on foot through the forest to the meeting-place. We must separate when we get near it, but you will keep close to Ivan” – we spoke always of the Duke by that name – “and I will come alone. You will be challenged, and you will give the word, ‘For Freedom,’ and the sign I showed you. Give it to me, now.”
He held out his hand, palm upwards; and I touched it with my thumb and fingers in turn; five little taps.
“Good, you are a quick learner – Paul! The meeting will be in an old chapel, – or so we imagine; the place is changed many times, but it must be there, or in the clearing. Either way there will be little light, there among the pines. That is in our favor. If she is there, we shall know how to act; we must decide then. She will be accused – that is certain – but the five may acquit her. If that comes to pass – good; we shall easily get speech with her, and perhaps she may return with us. At least she will be safe for the moment. But if they condemn her, we must act quickly and all together. We must save her and get her away, – or – die with her!”
“Well said!” growled “Ivan.”
The rain was pattering down now in big drops, and the lightning flashes were more frequent, the thunder nearer each time. The horse shied as there came a more vivid flash than before, followed almost instantly by a crackling roll – the storm was upon us.
As the thunder ceased, I found “Ivan” had pulled the horse up, and was listening intently. I listened also, and above the faint tinkle of our bells and the slight movements of the horse, I heard, faint, as yet, but rapidly approaching, the thud of hoofs and the jangle of accoutrements.
“A patrol,” said “Ivan” quickly. “They are coming towards us; I saw them by the lightning flash. They will challenge us, and I shall drive on, trusting to the darkness and storm. If they follow – as they probably will – and shoot, you two must seize your opportunity, and jump. There is just the chance that they may not see you; I shall drive on. If I distance them, I will follow you. But we must not all be taken, and it will be better for me than for you.”
He started again on the instant, and another flash showed several mounted figures just ahead.
A challenge rang out, and “Ivan’s” reply was to lash the horse into a gallop. We charged through them, and they wheeled after us, and fired. I heard the “zsp” of a bullet as it ripped through the leather hood close to my ear; but in the darkness and confusion they fired wildly. And, for the present at any rate, our gallant little horse was more than a match for theirs, and was distancing them rapidly.
Another flash, and “Now!” roared “Ivan,” above the roar of the thunder. I had already sprung up, knowing that I must jump before the next flash came; and Mishka, as I found afterwards, did the same.
Steadying myself for a moment, I let myself drop, stumbled backward for a few steps, fell, and rolled into the ditch, just as the pursuers clattered past, in a whirlwind of oaths.
For the moment I, at least, had escaped; but where was Mishka?