CHAPTER XI
THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.
"Where are we going?" I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only whispered:
"Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young Englishwoman."
So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current, steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.
After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one corner—an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had undoubtedly been placed there as signal.
With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers until it was wholly consumed.
Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.
I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping, and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.
My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper, and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:
"Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger."
I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival and watching our signal.
Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps, with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.
The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character, and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken figure.
"The sister speaks French?" I hazarded in that language, knowing that in most convents throughout Europe French is known.
"Oui, m'sieur," was her answer. "And a leetle Engleesh, too—a ve-ry leetle," she smiled.
"You know why I am here?" I said, gratified that at least one person in that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.
"Yes, I have already been told," was her answer with a strong accent, as we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the tower, once perhaps a prison. "But are you not afraid to venture here?" she asked.
"Why?"
"Well—because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive—so I warn you."
"I am prepared to risk that," I said, smiling; at the same time my hand instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe. "I wish to see Miss Elma Heath."
The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.
"Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all blame?" she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her keen gray eyes. "By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I should not have done were it not compulsory."
"Compulsory! How?"
"The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend him."
So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order the closed door of the convent had been opened.
"Of course not," I answered. "Russian officialdom is all-powerful in Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?"
"You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?" she asked in a hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.
"I am," I said. "Lead me to her."
"And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise me that."
"Ah, Sister!" I cried. "You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be permitted to speak with her?"
"You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman. "I thought you were her lover—that you merely wished to see her once again."
"No, I am not her lover," I answered. "Indeed, we have never yet met. But I am in search of the truth from her own lips."
"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.
"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here from England."
The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my impetuosity.
"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours, and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed Baron Oberg to be Governor-General–" and she shrugged her shoulders without finishing her sentence.
"Baron Oberg—Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.
"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us."
"And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?"
"Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His niece—poor young lady!—can that be? Surely not!"
"Why not?" I asked.
But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart was really softer than I had believed it to be.
"Where does this Baron live?" I asked, surprised that he should occupy so high a place in Russian officialdom—the representative of the Czar, with powers as great as the Emperor himself.
"At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors."
"And Elma Heath is here—in this grim fortress! Why?"
"Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They account for so much, you know."
"That is exactly my opinion," I said. "She has been brought here against her will."
"Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from civilization and see no new face."
"Terrible!" I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place. "And have you been here long?" I asked.
"Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well."
The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.
"Ah, m'sieur," she declared, "they call him 'The Strangler of the Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until four of them died—and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for it—he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and 'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is submissive and is Russianized!"
I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was "The Strangler of Finland," the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country to a state of ruin and revolt!
"Cannot I see her?" I asked, feeling that we had remained too long there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped from it the better.
"Yes, come," she said. "But silence! Walk softly," and holding up the old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages, all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right angles, I saw that we were in a kind of cul de sac, before the door of which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then, motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her, and leaving me in the pitch darkness.
I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving within. No word was uttered, or if so, it was whispered so low that it did not reach me. For nearly five minutes I waited in impatience outside that closed door, until again the handle turned and my conductress beckoned me in silence within.
I stepped into a small, square chamber, the floor of which was carpeted, and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment; then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown, a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders, and as her hands were clasped before her she looked straight at me in surprise as she was led towards me.
She walked but feebly, and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress, as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed them to be. I stood before her dumbfounded in admiration.
In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required of her.
"Miss Elma Heath, I presume?" I exclaimed at last. "May I introduce myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question—a question that concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you."
I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.
Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness. No sound escaped her.
I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.
She was both deaf and dumb!
She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in her splendid eyes.
I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.
"What is this place?" I demanded of the woman in the religious habit, when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction. "Where am I?"
"This is the Castle of Kajana—the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland," was her answer. "The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and hearing."
"Deaf and dumb!" I cried, looking at the beautiful original of that destroyed photograph on board the Lola. "But she has surely not always been so!" I exclaimed.
"No. I think not always," replied the sister quietly. "But you said you intended to question her, and did I not tell you that to learn the truth was impossible?"
"But she can write responses to my questions?" I argued.
"Alas! no," was the old woman's whispered reply. "Her mind is affected. She is, unfortunately, a hopeless lunatic."
I looked straight into those sad, wide-open, yet unflinching brown eyes utterly confounded.
Those white wrists held in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was slowly being driven to suicide? She had kept her secret, and she wished the man Hornby—the man who was to marry Muriel Leithcourt—to know.
The room in which we stood was evidently an apartment set apart for her use, for beyond was the tiny bedchamber; yet the small, high-up window was closely barred, and the cold bareness of the prison was sufficient indeed to cause anyone confined there to prefer death to captivity.
Again I spoke to her slowly and kindly, but there was no response. That she was absolutely dumb was only too apparent. Yet surely she had not always been so! I had gone in search of her because the beauty of her portrait had magnetized me, and I had now found her to be even more lovely than her picture, yet, alas! suffering from an affliction that rendered her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so full of blank unutterable despair.
She placed her clasped hands to her mouth and made signs by shaking her head that she could neither understand nor respond. I therefore took my wallet from my pocket and wrote upon a piece of paper in a large hand the words: "I come from Lydia Moreton. My name is Gordon Gregg."
When her eager gaze fell upon the words she became instantly filled with excitement, and nodded quickly. Then holding her steel-clasped wrists towards me she looked wistfully at me, as though imploring me to release her from the awful bondage in that silent tomb.
Though the woman who had led me there endeavored to prevent it, I handed her the pencil, and placed the paper on the table for her to write.
The nun tried to snatch it up, but I held her arm gently and forcibly, saying in French:
"No. I wish to see if she is really insane. You will at least allow me this satisfaction."
And while we were in altercation, Elma, with the pencil in her fingers, tried to write, but by reason of her hands being bound so closely was unable. At length, however, after several attempts, she succeeded in printing in uneven capitals the response:
"I know you. You were on the yacht. I thought they killed you."
The thin-faced old woman saw her response—a reply that was surely rational enough—and her brows contracted with displeasure.
"Why are you here?" I wrote, not allowing the sister to get sight of my question.
In response, she wrote painfully and laboriously:
"I am condemned for a crime I did not commit. Take me from here, or I shall kill myself."
"Ah!" exclaimed the old woman. "You see, poor girl, she believes herself innocent! They all do."
"But why is she here?" I demanded fiercely.
"I do not know, m'sieur. It is not my duty to inquire the history of their crimes. When they are ill I nurse them; that is all."
"And who is the commandant of this fortress?"
"Colonel Smirnoff. If he knew that I had admitted you, you would never leave this place alive. This is the Schusselburg of Finland—the place of imprisonment for those who have conspired against the State."
"The prison of political conspirators, eh?"
"Alas, m'sieur, yes! The place in which some of the poor creatures are tortured in order to obtain confessions and information with as much cruelty as in the black days of the Inquisition. These walls are thick, and their cries are not heard from the oubliettes below the lake."
I had long ago heard of the horrors of Schusselburg. Indeed who has not heard of them who has traveled in Russia? The very mention of the modern Bastille on Lake Ladoga, where no prisoner has ever been known to come forth alive, is sufficient to cause any Russian to turn pale. And I was in the Schusselburg of Finland!
I turned over the sheet of paper and wrote the question—
"Did Baron Oberg send you here?"
In response, she printed the words—
"I believe so. I was arrested in Helsingfors. Tell Lydia where I am."
"Do you know Muriel Leithcourt?" I inquired by the same means, whereupon she replied that they were at school together.
"Did you see me on board the Lola?" I wrote.
"Yes. But I could not warn you, although I had overheard their intentions. They took me ashore when you had gone, to Siena. After three days I found myself deaf and dumb—I was made so."
Her allegation startled me. She had been purposely afflicted!
"Who did it?"
"A doctor, I suppose. They put me under chloroform."
"Who?"
"People who said they were my friends."
I turned to the woman in the religious habit, and cried—
"Do you see what she has written? She has been maimed by some friends who intended that the secret she holds should be kept. They feared to kill her, so they bribed a doctor to deliberately operate upon her so that she could neither speak nor hear. And now they are driving her to suicide!"
"M'sieur, I am astounded!" declared the nun. "I have always believed that she was not in her right mind, yet assuredly she seems to be as sane as I am, only willfully mutilated by some pretended friend who determined that no further word should pass her lips."
"A shameful mutilation has been committed upon this poor defenseless girl!" I cried in anger. "And I will make it my duty to discover and punish the perpetrators of it."
"Ah, m'sieur. Do not act rashly, I pray of you," the woman said seriously, placing her hand upon my arm. "Recollect you are in Finland—where the Baron Oberg is all-powerful."
"I do not fear the Baron Oberg," I exclaimed. "If necessary, I will appeal to the Czar himself. Mademoiselle is kept here for the reason that she is in possession of some secret. She must be released—I will take the responsibility."
"But you must not try to release her from here. It would mean death to you both. The Castle of Kajana tells no secrets of those who die within its walls, or of those cast headlong into its waters and forgotten."
Again I turned to Elma, who stood in anxious wonder of the subject of our conversation, and had suddenly taken the old nun's hand and kissed it affectionately, perhaps in order to show me that she trusted her.
Then upon the paper I wrote—
"Is the Baron Oberg your uncle?"
She shook her head in the negative, showing that the dreaded Governor-General of Finland had only acted a part towards her in which she had been compelled to concur.
"Who is Philip Hornby?" I inquired, writing rapidly.
"My friend—at least, I believe so."
Friend! And I had all along believed him to be an adventurer and an enemy!
"Why did he go to Leghorn?" I asked.
"For a secret purpose. There was a plot to kill you, only I managed to thwart them," were the words she printed with much labor.
"Then I owe my life to you," I wrote. "And in return I will do my utmost to rescue you from here, if you do not fear to place yourself in my hands."
And to this she replied—
"I shall be thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day. Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But," she wrote, "I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined here on a life sentence."
"But you are English, and if you have had no trial I can complain to our Ambassador."
"No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England when I was a girl."
That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.
Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!
A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her, but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me, notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was, perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.
Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in insanity.
"I have decided," I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the calm attitude of the religious.
"You will not act with rashness?" she implored in quick apprehension. "Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own."
"Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!" I answered, looking straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath a spell. "They have drawn her into their power because she had no means of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector."
"How?"
"The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with me."
"But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!" cried the old woman in a hoarse voice. "If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both night and day they would shoot you both."
"I will risk it," I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle bed.
Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to accompany me.
The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.
"Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here, for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will not dare to accept such responsibility."
"Come," I said to Elma, although, alas! she could not hear my voice. "Let us at least make a dash for freedom."
She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and making no noise.
I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her faith in me as her deliverer.
I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my side.
Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep voice cried out of the darkness in Russian—
"Halt! or I fire!"
And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded carbine.
A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder within six feet of us.
The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.
My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous Governor-General—fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very cleverly prepared for me.
I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save the guards had ever been known to emerge—the Bastille of "The Strangler of Finland!"
I saw I was lost.
The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.
"Speak!" cried the fellow. "Who are you?"
At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it, but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close with him was my only chance.
Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow, she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and nearly fell.
An oath escaped him, yet in that moment Elma succeeded in twisting the gun from his sinewy hands, which I now held with a strength begotten of a knowledge of my imminent peril. My whole future, as well as hers, depended upon my success in that desperate encounter. He was huge and powerful, with a strength far exceeding my own, yet I had been reckoned a good wrestler at Uppingham, and now my knowledge of that most ancient form of combat held me in good stead.
The man shouted for help, his deep, hoarse voice sounding along the stone corridors. If heard by his comrades-in-arms, then the alarm would at once be given.
We struggled desperately, swaying to and fro, he trying to throw me, while I, at every turn, practiced upon him the tricks learned in my youth. It seemed an even match, however, for he kept his feet by sheer brute force, and his muscles seemed hard and unbending as steel.
Suddenly, however, as we were striving so vigorously and desperately, the English girl slipped past us with the carbine in her hand, and with a quick movement dragged open the heavy door that gave exit to the lake.
At that instant I unfortunately made a false move, and his hand closed upon my throat like a band of steel. I fought and struggled to loose myself, exerting every muscle, but alas! he gained the advantage. I heard a splash, and saw that Elma no longer held the sentry's weapon in her hands, having thrown it into the water.
Then at the same moment I heard a voice outside cry in a low tone: "Courage, Excellency! Courage! I will come and help you."
It was the faithful Finn, who had been awaiting me in the deep shadow, and with a few strokes pulled his boat up to the narrow rickety ledge outside the door.
"Take the lady!" I succeeded in gasping in Russian. "Never mind me," and I saw to my satisfaction that he guided Elma to step into the boat, which at that moment drifted past the little platform.