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Nello leaned forward in a state of agitation. For an instant, on hearing that it was the Princess and not La Belle Quéro who had sent that letter, a similar doubt had occurred to him.
“I took the bull by the horns. I sent a message by the maid that I would call upon her mistress that same day, that she was to inform her of what she had confessed.”
“And you went and interviewed the Princess?” asked Corsini.
“Yes; fortunately I found her alone; her mother was in bed with a feverish cold. She was nervous and agitated, as was to be expected, but one moment’s glance at her face convinced me that she was no guilty woman, enmeshed with her own consent in her brother’s vile schemes.”
The young man drew a deep breath of relief. He had always held the highest opinion of her character. There would be some satisfactory explanation forthcoming of her actions.
A little note of pomposity and self-congratulation crept into Beilski’s voice. “I need hardly tell you that an innocent and inexperienced girl like this was as wax in my hands. With a woman of Madame Quéro’s experience, my task might have been more difficult.”
“I can quite believe it,” murmured Corsini.
“In five minutes I had the whole truth out of her. Well, perhaps, not quite the whole truth,” admitted the General reluctantly, “for, woman-like, although she has no love for her brother, she did not want to give him away, to render certain the punishment which he richly deserves.”
“And her story, your Excellency?” asked the young man eagerly.
“Briefly it was this. Madame Quéro called upon her to report that there was a plot to decoy you and convey you to an unknown destination – she did not know, or pretended she did not know, your ultimate fate, neither did she know where the carriage was to start from; she was only sure that the first stoppage was to be at Pavlovsk. This of course was Nada’s version. It at once occurred to me that these ladies, if they knew so much, would know a little more. They were not both of them ignorant, but, of course, one might be. Which was the ignorant one?”
“The Princess, of course,” said Corsini at once. “La Belle Quéro knew where the carriage started from, but did not want to implicate Zouroff, as it was drawn up so close to his residence. She pretended ignorance.”
The General leaned back in his chair and laughed genially. He was very pleased with himself, for what he was about to relate was really his own master-stroke. It owed nothing to the more inventive genius of Golitzine.
“That is, of course, what would occur to you, what would occur to, I dare say, ninety-nine persons out of a hundred. I am the hundredth, and I have had great experience.” The General spoke with an air of profound wisdom. “La Belle Quéro had only certain suspicions, fostered by some random remark dropped by Zouroff in a moment of intense rage and irritation. As a matter of fact, she knew no details. She did not know of a carriage at all, and consequently she was ignorant of where it started from or where it was going to.”
“The Princess, then – !” interrupted Nello, in a voice of the most intense surprise.
“The Princess, then – !” repeated Beilski. “I saw that poor little Nada’s story was lame and halting; of course I guessed the reason why. I pressed her with the question why, if La Belle Quéro, from whom she got her information, knew where the carriage was going to, she did not know where it started from. Both her answer and demeanour were too evasive to deceive me. I could not break her any more on the wheel; I saw she had had about as much as she could stand. I selected another victim.”
“Madame Quéro, of course,” cried Corsini.
“Wrong again, my friend; you have not yet quite got the analytical faculty that makes a great detective. I had the maid before me again, this time more terrified than before. If I had stretched her on the rack, she could not have poured it forth more fully.”
“And the outcome?” was Corsini’s eager question.
“What I had made up my mind was the fact. Zouroff is not the man to impart the details of his plans to any but his immediate instruments. He imparted them neither to Quéro nor his sister.”
He related to Corsini what the reader already knows. The visit of the singer to the Princess, of her suspicion that a plot was on foot against the Italian, of her suggestion that Nada should institute some inquiries in the Zouroff household, of the valet, Peter’s, confidence to Katerina, the Princess’s swift deductions from these revelations.
“I have gone farther,” concluded the General. “I have interrogated that scoundrel, Peter, as to what he knows about his master’s general projects, and more especially your abduction. But I have not given poor little Katerina away, or the young Princess. I have led him to infer that I was acting on the confession of the two scoundrels we have got in custody.”
“And what attitude did he take?”
“At first, one of stupidity, complicated with sullen defiance. But towards the end of the interview, I could see that his heart was being softened. I told him to consider it carefully; full confession and a full pardon, or – the utmost rigour of the law.”
“And he will at once tell Zouroff,” suggested Corsini. “That is, if he is really loyal to the Prince.”
Beilski shrugged his shoulders. “He may and he may not. I expect he will be thinking chiefly of his own skin. On the other hand, ruffians like the Prince have a remarkable knack of attracting loyalty. At any rate, it does not matter. In a couple of days I should have laid my hands on him for this matter alone – I have no doubt they would have taken you to some lonely place and finished you off – but I shall wait, if necessary, a little longer for the report of your visit to the villa. If that is what we expect it to be, we will have done with this gentleman, once and for all.”
“Amen!” cried Corsini, fervently. In spite of his English upbringing, he had in him the true spirit of Italian revenge. He loved the Princess Nada, but for her brother, who would have taken his life, he had no mercy.
He walked home to his hotel, followed at an unobtrusive distance by his guards. His heart was singing happily within him, as a result of his interview with the bluff, but genial General.
He was grateful to La Belle Quéro for her unselfish interference on his behalf: she had braved detection, Zouroff’s vengeance, on his account. When his lips were unsealed he would express to the singer his thanks.
But it was the Princess who had more fully schemed and plotted, set to work her woman’s wit, and ultimately triumphed on his behalf. Was it due to a kind pure woman’s compassion only, or – delicious thought – was she attracted to him as he was to her? Was it love that had stimulated her brain, urged her to that desperate measure of the anonymous note to the Chief of Police?
A letter was handed to him by the hall-porter as he entered the hotel. He was told that it had been delivered by a shabbily-dressed man, who would not wait for his return.
It was from Ivan, no longer an outlaw, and ran as follows:
“Come to my lodging with your guards at twelve-thirty to-night. The meeting is an hour later. I will give you full instructions. Your Friend.”
CHAPTER XX
Peter the valet was a man of criminal instincts, cunning, avaricious, and unscrupulous. Perhaps his sole remaining qualities were his devotion to his master, Zouroff, and his ardent love for the Princess’s maid, Katerina.
His interview with the formidable and awe-inspiring Beilski had shaken him considerably. His faith in Zouroff was great, but in that brief conversation he had begun to realise the sinister power of the police, at which body, the Prince, in his arrogance, was wont to snap his fingers.
He returned home full of thought and much perturbed. He had already determined in his own mind the cause of the failure to remove Corsini. In an unguarded moment, he had revealed to Katerina certain facts about a travelling carriage whose first stoppage was to be at Pavlovsk. Katerina had blabbed all this to somebody.
But, until his interview with Beilski, he had been content to let matters stand where they were. It did not greatly concern him that Corsini had been rescued and was back again in St. Petersburg. His master would never suspect him: he would rather suspect one of the four other men of having given it away, for the sake of the reward that he would claim. So reasoned Peter in his narrow, but cunning brain. Therefore, for many reasons, he did not tax Katerina at once with the betrayal of his misplaced confidence.
Beilski’s threat set his thoughts working vigorously in the direction of self-preservation. He was devoted to the Prince, but he was still more devoted to himself. If he could have saved Zouroff, he would, but that seemed impossible, the Police knew too much. But he could save himself by telling what he knew. It was necessary therefore to earn that free pardon. It was only a matter of hours before he would go to the General and make a full confession.
It hurt him very much that he should crown so many years of fidelity with such a black act, but it seemed a question of sauve qui peut. Loyal as he had been to his master, he knew enough of his character to be sure that the Prince, in a similar emergency, would have thrown him, and a dozen like him, to the wolves in order to purchase a moment’s respite. Why should he pursue a different policy?
Beilski had promised a free pardon, and also not to implicate him in the transaction. Still Zouroff was a man of extraordinary shrewdness, and when he began to work it out in his mind, might quickly focus his suspicions in the right direction.
How to avert Zouroff’s suspicions from himself! That was the question. His narrow, but cunning brain bent itself upon this for some time. At the end of his cogitations, he sought Katerina, and bluntly taxed her with the betrayal of his confidence.
At first, Katerina, with the natural adroitness of her class and sex, protested indignant denial; she vowed that she had forgotten the incident altogether.
“You are lying,” said her lover sternly. “If you do not confess this instant, I will take you to the Prince himself, and he will wring the truth out of you.”
Katerina’s face went white. She had been very frightened at Beilski, but her terror of Zouroff was greater even than her fear of the Head of the Police. If she saw him in one of the corridors, she would scuttle away like an alarmed rabbit. If he came into her young mistress’s room, she was agitated till he was gone.
In a few moments, what with her fear of Zouroff and her genuine love for Peter, the artful valet had her reduced to a state of tears. It was not long before he forced out of her everything he wanted to know. How she had conveyed the information to the Princess, how she had taken her mistress’s note to Beilski, how, later on, she had been summoned to the presence of that formidable person and confessed much as she was doing now.
Peter uttered no word of reproach; the time of reproaches was past; but he saw clearly that the game was up, so far as the abduction of Corsini was concerned. The sooner he made a clean breast of it to Beilski, the better. At the same time, he wanted to throw suspicion upon somebody else.
He loved Katerina genuinely, too well to harm a hair of her head, even to save himself. In this respect he was several degrees better than his master, who would have sacrificed the whole world for such a laudable purpose.
And to the charming young Princess, with her gracious ways, her sweet friendliness to all, he was also strongly attached. He would not harm a hair of her head, if he could help it. But still, his first instinct was for self.
Besides, if he gave them away, he would be giving himself away, also. What these two women knew, mistress and maid, they must have learned from some member of the Zouroff household.
Was there any member of that household, except himself, who had foreknowledge of the Prince’s plans? He was inclined to doubt it. Confidants he must have, when engaged in so many dark schemes, but Zouroff chose as few as possible. Yet, and yet – if only he could throw suspicion in a likely quarter, on somebody else!
Katerina, embarked on the full tide of confession and genuinely alarmed for her lover’s safety, babbled on artlessly. Peter had drawn a gloomy picture of the vengeance he might expect at the hands of his master for that innocent gossip of a few moments, when discovery came home to him, as it was sure to do. In her revelations she let fall the fact that the celebrated Madame Quéro had paid a visit to the Princess, during her brother’s temporary absence.
Peter pricked up his ears at the information. He knew full well the relations between the Prince and the handsome singer. Here was a fact that might be turned to his advantage. Madame Quéro, he felt assured, participated in all her lover’s secrets.
“Have you any proof of that?” he asked eagerly.
Katerina opened wide her tear-dimmed eyes. “Proof? Do you doubt my word? Why, she gave me her card, and the Princess handed it me back and told me to return it to her, with her excuses for not receiving her. I did not like to be so rude, and I put it in my pocket.”
“Have you still got that card, Katerina?” questioned the valet anxiously.
“Of course I have. I kept it as a souvenir. I regard her as a very distinguished person, and I hear she came from our own class. The Princess, of course, looks upon her as the dirt under her feet, but in her position there is no blame, perhaps, for her doing that.” Thus poor Katerina, divided between loyalty to her young mistress and admiration for the beautiful woman who had overcome such formidable obstacles.
The artful valet put his arm round her waist and imprinted a fond kiss on her pretty cheek.
“Katerina, my little sweetheart, I think you will admit you owe me some amends for your foolish indiscretion. Give me that card, and we will cry quits. But not a word to the Princess. But I forgot. You cannot tell her; you ought to have returned it to Madame Quéro.”
Katerina was glad to be reconciled to her lover on such cheap terms. Five minutes later, the card of La Belle Quéro was in Peter’s hands.
And then Peter thought long and cunningly. He had made up his mind to betray his master – it was a matter of necessity – but he was very particular that his master should not know by whom he was betrayed. There was Fritz, the German, one of the four men implicated in the abduction of Corsini. Fritz was always a shifty person, ready to sell himself to the highest bidder. Peter felt assured that Zouroff’s suspicions were already centred on Fritz. He was one of the two men who had escaped, no doubt with the connivance of the police; anyway, that would be Zouroff’s view.
The possession of Madame Quéro’s card had suggested new lines of thought. Of course, Peter did not know to what extent the beautiful singer was in the Prince’s confidence. Here, naturally, he was groping wildly in the dark. But the more he diverted Zouroff’s attention from himself on to other people, the better.
In divulging what he proposed to do to the Prince, it was more than probable that he would implicate the young Princess Nada. And Peter had a very soft spot in his heart for her. Still, it was simply a question of saving himself. If Zouroff saw red and laid all about him, as it were, Nada must protect herself. Even a ruffian like Zouroff would exercise some compunction when his sister was in question. With regard to La Belle Quéro, who had, at times, treated him a little disdainfully, with the slight arrogance of a person who had emerged from his own class into a superior one, Peter felt no qualms. The Prince and she could adjust their own differences at the proper time and hour.
Later on, he approached Zouroff with his fawning and cringing aspect, and handed him Madame Quéro’s card.
“You know that my eyes and ears are always open in your Excellency’s service,” he whined. “That is what I have found.”
Zouroff’s face grew as black as thunder as he read it. “She has been here, then. To see whom?”
Peter shrugged his shoulders. He wanted to be as non-committal as possible. “That I cannot tell. Your Excellency may guess better than I.”
The Prince looked at him long and intently. Peter was a very cunning rogue; that he knew full well; but he was the last man he was inclined to suspect.
“How did you come into possession of this?” he thundered.
But Peter was determined not to implicate his sweetheart, Katerina. In this respect he was a slightly better man than his master.
“Your Excellency will excuse me; my lips are sealed. One must be faithful to one’s comrades. There are wheels within wheels, as you well know.”
The Prince nodded. He knew Peter well. In many ways he was docile and obedient, but it was always politic not to push him too far; on such occasions the valet was apt to take on a spirit of sturdy independence which his master was compelled to respect. Wild horses would not draw from him how, or through whom, he had discovered that card.
“Leave me, Peter, if you please,” commanded Zouroff. “I must be alone to think this thing over, since you say your lips are sealed.”
He shook his fist angrily in the direction of the retreating valet. “Ah, for my good old father’s days,” he murmured regretfully. “I would have had it out of you with the knout then, my excellent friend.”
Left alone, Zouroff pondered out all these things in his subtle brain. The treacherous Madame Quéro had come to the Palace, to seek whom, and to what purpose?
Rumour, gathered at the stage door, and in the more intimate circles of the profession, averred that the handsome singer was in love with Corsini. He had also his impressions of his sister in connection with the handsome young Italian. He had watched them together in that prolonged conversation on the night of the concert at the Zouroff Palace, on quitting which, Corsini had been abducted.
Rapidly in his own mind, he reconstructed the sequence of events. Madame Quéro was in love with Corsini. He gnashed his teeth as he remembered he had been fool enough to suggest to the Spanish woman that Corsini must disappear. She had acted on that hint and come straight to the Palace to invoke his sister’s assistance in rescuing Corsini.
His sister was in love with Corsini herself. The two rivals had united to save their common lover, and their measures had been well taken. The police had met the carriage at Pavlovsk, rescued the drugged and inanimate Director of the Imperial Opera, and brought him safely back to St. Petersburg. And, in the capital, so Zouroff was assured by his spies, he was being safely guarded by Beilski’s men. The Government and the police were proving themselves very cunning, almost as cunning as Zouroff himself.
So far he had reasoned things out very logically. Now came the one thing for which he could not account. To La Quéro he had given no details, and as he had not given them to her, she could not communicate them to his sister. Here was a final stop.
And yet, the carriage containing Corsini, drugged and bound, had been surrounded at Pavlovsk by the police. Somebody, then, had given information. Who was that somebody?
His suspicion fell at once on Fritz, the German, chiefly, perhaps, because Fritz had been found guilty of minor acts of disloyalty in previous transactions. For a man of his acute intelligence, it was, perhaps, a little surprising that he did not, at first hand, suspect Peter.
But Peter had just disarmed his suspicions by handing to him Madame Quéro’s card. Yes, Peter was loyal, if every other person was tainted with treachery.
There emerged from his strenuous efforts to get at the truth some clear and certain facts, according to his own deductions, which were, of course, erroneous.
Madame Quéro had been informed by Fritz of the actual facts: that Corsini was to be kidnapped just outside the precincts of the Palace, that the carriage was to stop on its first stage on the Moscow road at Pavlovsk.
He had to admit that there were flaws in his reasoning. If Madame Quéro had got this information from Fritz, and she was resolved to save Corsini, she could have informed the police herself. Why had she come to the Palace, to invoke the assistance of Nada?
Pending his cogitations, he had recourse to stimulants, as was his wont on such occasions. Amid the fumes of alcohol he solved the problem, as he thought. Quéro, not wishing to appear herself, had made his sister her instrument. He ground his teeth, and vowed implacable revenge upon his once sweetheart, La Belle Quéro.
But his anger against his sister was hardly less burning. To think that this innocent young girl, only just out of the schoolroom, should dare to thwart his plans.
He burst into her sitting-room, his face red and inflamed from his secret drinking. She recognised the symptoms at once. He had one of his wild fits of brutal and unreasoning rage.
He attacked her at once, in unmeasured language.
“You are a disgrace to your sex,” he shouted wildly, “a disgrace to the noble house of Zouroff, to the name you bear.”
The young Princess looked at him calmly and steadfastly, with her clear gaze. He was a wild beast at the moment – she saw that; also gathered that he had been drinking heavily. Wild beasts are sometimes tamed by the eye. She never took her glance off him.
“Of what do you accuse me?” she asked in cold and cutting accents. “In what way have I, of all the members of our family, disgraced the house of Zouroff?”
The Prince spluttered forth his accusations. “You have disgraced yourself by falling in love with a strolling player, that mountebank, Corsini.”
Of course he was still master enough of himself not to reveal all he knew, or thought he knew.
The Princess drew herself up haughtily. It was not the first time she had encountered her brother in this mood.
“I don’t think you know what you are talking about, Boris; I can see your condition very plainly. Signor Corsini is not a strolling player – that description applies to the destitute members of the theatrical profession. Corsini is a musician, an artist, and the Director of the Imperial Opera. Think of some other expression that will vent your rage and spite, but don’t call him ‘a strolling player.’”
“But whatever he is, you love him,” thundered the Prince, now fairly consumed with rage.
The young Princess kept her temper, her tone was as cutting as before.
“You insult me with these questions,” she said calmly. “Return to me when you are sober and I may perhaps be able to talk with you, reason with you.” She was thinking of a few hints dropped by General Beilski on his brief visit to her.
“And if I do not choose to leave at your bidding,” retorted the Prince, in a jeering tone. “Suppose I insist upon remaining and finishing our conversation!”
“In that case I shall leave the Palace for good.” And suddenly her woman’s strength gave way, opposed to that of this resolute ruffian and bully. “If our dear mother were here, you would not dare to stay in this room a moment longer. You take advantage of my weakness,” she cried tearfully.
“Our dear mother,” mimicked Zouroff, in mocking accents. “You and your mother have always held together against me; you always held against my dear father in the old days.”
“Of whom you are a worthy son,” flashed the Princess, with an angry gesture. She had poignant memories of those old days, when her mother had suffered untold indignities at the hands of Prince Zouroff the elder, indignities which had bitten into the souls of both wife and daughter. Boris was the only member of the family who reverenced the name of his father, for the very simple reason that he partook of his worst qualities.
And then a softer mood came to her. After all, he was her brother, son of the same kind, gentle mother. She went across to him and placed a hand upon his shoulder.
“Be reasonable, Boris, and prudent. I can guess more than you think. I am sure you are playing a very dangerous game. Be certain on your side that your opponents are not stronger than you.”
But Zouroff was in no mood to listen to the tender expostulations of a woman, especially a woman whom he despised as much as his sister, this frail girl who took after her gentle mother, who had in her none of the iron qualities of his brutal father.
He flung her aside, and spoke in a grating voice.
“You will leave the Palace, will you? Yes, you shall, but when and how I choose. There is your own little comfortable Castle of Tchernoff. Perhaps if I sent you there, it might cool your hot blood.”
The Princess flamed up. “You dare not think of such a thing. Brute as you are, you would not dare to do it.”
“We shall see. Remember I am still your legal guardian,” cried the Prince, with a mocking laugh, as he left the room.
The interview had sobered him. All that was now working in his mind was, first, a scheme of revenge upon La Belle Quéro; second, a milder scheme of revenge against his sister.
An hour later Peter, the valet, reported himself to General Beilski and obtained his free pardon by a full confession. And the General, waiting for further developments, stayed his hand for the moment.
