Kitabı oku: «The Price of Power», sayfa 3
“Hush!” I cried anxiously, for at that moment a tall man, in the bright green uniform of the Lithuanian Hussars, whose face I could not see, passed close by us, with a handsome middle-aged woman upon his arm. “Hush! Do, for heaven’s sake, be careful, I beg of you!” I exclaimed. “Such intention should not even be whispered. These Palace walls have ears, for spies are everywhere!”
Chapter Five.
The Man in Pince-Nez
Next day was Wednesday.
At half-past five in the afternoon I was seated in my room at the Embassy, busy copying out the last of my despatches which were to be sent that week by Foreign Office messenger to London.
The messenger himself, in the person of my friend Captain Hubert Taylor, a thin, long-limbed, dark-haired cosmopolitan, was stretched lazily in my chair smoking a cigarette, impatient for me to finish, so that the white canvas bag could be sealed and he could get away.
The homeward Nord express to Ostend was due to leave at six o’clock; therefore he had not much time to spare.
“Do hurry up, old man,” he urged, glancing at his watch. “If it isn’t important, keep it over until Wednesday week. Despatches are like wine, they improve with keeping.”
“Shut up!” I exclaimed, for I saw I had a good deal yet to copy – the result of an important inquiry regarding affairs south of the Caspian, which was urgently required at Downing Street. Our Consul in Baku had been travelling for three months in order to supply the information.
“Well, if I miss the train I really don’t mind, my dear Colin. I can do quite well with a few days’ rest. I was down in Rome ten days ago; and, besides, I only got here the night before last.”
“I do wish you’d be quiet, Taylor,” I cried. “I can’t write while you chatter.”
So he lit a fresh cigarette and repossessed himself in patience until at last I had finished my work, stuck down the long envelope with the printed address, and placed it with thirty or forty other letters into the canvas bag; this I carefully sealed with wax with the Embassy seal.
“There you are!” I exclaimed at last. “You’ve plenty of time for the train – and to spare.”
“I shouldn’t have had if I hadn’t hurried you up, my dear boy. Everyone seems asleep here. It shows your chief’s away on leave. You should put in a day in Paris. They’re active there. It would be an eye-opener for you.”
“Paris isn’t Petersburg,” I laughed.
“And an attaché isn’t a foreign service messenger,” he declared. “Government pays you fellows to look ornamental, while we messengers have to travel in hot haste and live in those rocking sleeping-cars of the wagon-lits.”
“Horribly hard work to spend one’s days travelling from capital to capital,” I said, well knowing that this remark to a foreign service messenger is as a red rag to a bull.
“Work, my dear fellow. You try it for a month and see,” Taylor snapped.
“Well,” I asked with a laugh, “any particular news in London?” for the messengers are bearers of all the diplomatic gossip from embassy to embassy.
“Oh, well – old Petheridge, in the Treaty Department, is retiring this month, and Jack Scrutton is going to be transferred from Rome to Lima. Some old fool in the Commons has, I hear, got wind of that bit of scandal in Madrid – you know the story, Councillor of Embassy and Spanish Countess – and threatens to put down a question concerning it. I hear there’s a dickens of a row over it. The Chief is furious. Oh! – and I saw your Chief in the St. James’s Club the day I left London. He’d just come from Windsor – been kissing hands, or something. Well,” he added, “I suppose I may as well have some cigarettes before I go, even though you don’t ask me. But they are always pro bono, I know. The Embassy at Petersburg is always noted for its hospitality and its cigarettes!” And he emptied the contents of my cigarette-box into the capacious case he took from his pocket.
“Here you are,” I said, taking from my table another sealed despatch bearing a large blue cross upon it, showing that it was a confidential document in cipher upon affairs of State.
“Oh, hang!” he cried. “I didn’t know you had one of those.”
And then, unbuttoning his waistcoat, he fumbled about his waist, and at last placed it carefully in the narrow pocket of the belt he wore beneath his clothes, buttoning the flap over the pocket.
“Well,” he said at last, putting on his overcoat, “so long, old man. I’ll just have time. I wonder what old Ivanoff, in the restaurant-car, will have for dinner to-night? Borstch, of course, and caviare.”
“You fellows have nothing else to think about but your food,” I laughed.
“Food – yes, it’s railway-food with a vengeance in this God-forgotten country. Lots to drink, but nothing decent to eat.”
And taking the little canvas bag he shook my hand heartily and strode out.
I stood for some time gazing through the open window out upon the sunlit Neva across to the grim fortress on the opposite bank – the prison of many terrible tales.
My thoughts were running, just as they had run all day, upon that strange suspicion which the Emperor had confided to me. It seemed too remarkable, too strange, too amazing to be true.
And again before my vision there arose the faces of those two refined and innocent ladies, Madame de Rosen and her daughter, who had been so suddenly hurried away to a living tomb in that far-off Arctic region. I remembered what the little Grand Duchess had told me, and wondered whether her allegations were really true.
I was wondering if she would permit me to see those incriminating letters which Madame had given to her for safe-keeping, for at all costs I felt that, for the safety of the Emperor and the peace and prosperity of Russia, the country should be rid of General Serge Markoff.
And yet the difficulties were, I knew, insurmountable. His Majesty, hearing of these constant plots being discovered and ever listening to highly-coloured stories of the desperate attempts of revolutionists, naturally believed his personal safety to be due to this man whom he had appointed as head of the police of the Empire. To any word said against Serge Markoff he turned a deaf ear, and put it down to jealousy, or to some ingenious plot to withdraw from his person the constant vigilance which his beloved Markoff had established. More than once I had been bold enough to venture to hint that all those plots might not be genuine ones; but I had quickly understood that such suggestion was regarded by the Emperor as a slur cast upon his favourite official and personal friend.
The more I reflected, the more unwise seemed that sudden outburst of my pretty little companion in the winter garden on the night before. If anyone had overheard her threat, then no doubt it would reach the ears of that man who daily swept so many innocent persons into the prisons and étapes beyond the Urals. I knew, too well, of those lists of names which he placed before the Emperor, and to which he asked the Imperial signature, without even giving His Majesty an opportunity to glance at them.
Truly, those were dark days. Life in Russia at that moment was a most uncertain existence, for anyone incurring the displeasure of General Markoff, or any of his friends, was as quickly and effectively removed as though death’s sword had struck them.
Much perturbed, and not knowing how to act in face of what the Emperor had revealed to me, I was turning from the window back to my writing-table, when one of the English footmen entered with a card.
“Oh, show him up, Green. And bring some cigarettes,” I said.
My visitor was Ivan Hartwig, the famous chief of the Russian Criminal Detective Service – an entirely distinct department from the Secret Police.
A few moments later he was ushered in by Green, and, bowing, took the hand I offered him.
A lean, bony-faced man, of average height, alert, clean-shaven, and aged about forty-five. His hair was slightly streaked with grey, and his eyes, small and shrewd, beamed behind a pair of round gold-rimmed pince-nez. I had never seen him in glasses before, but I only supposed that he had suddenly developed myopia for some specific purpose. As he smiled in greeting me, his narrow jaws widened, displaying an even row of white teeth, while the English he spoke was as perfect as my own. At that moment, in his glasses, his black morning-coat and grey trousers, he looked more like a grave family physician than a police officer whose career was world-famous.
And yet he was a man of striking appearance. His broad white forehead, his deep-set eyes so full of fire and expression, his high, protruding cheek-bones, and his narrowing chin were all characteristics of a man of remarkable power and intelligence. His, indeed, was a face that would arrest attention anywhere; hence the hundred and one disguises which he so constantly adopted.
“I have had private audience of His Majesty this afternoon, Mr Trewinnard,” he said, as he took the chair I offered him. “He has sent me to you. You wish to see me.”
“Yes,” I said. “I need your assistance.”
“So His Majesty has told me, but he explained nothing of the affair. He commanded me to place myself entirely at your disposal,” replied the man, who, in himself, was a man of mystery.
His nationality was obscure to most people, yet we at the Embassy knew that he was in reality a British subject, and that Ivan Hartwig was merely the Russian equivalent of Evan Hardwicke.
I handed him the box of cigarettes which Green had replenished, and took one myself.
As he slowly lit his, I recollected what a strange career he had had. Graduating from Scotland Yard, where on account of his knowledge of German and Russian he had been mainly employed in the arrest of alien criminals in England, he had for several years served under Monsieur Goron, Préfet of Police of Paris, and after being attached to the Tzar on one of his visits to the French capital, had been personally invited by the Emperor to become head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Russia.
He was a quiet-spoken, alert, elusive, but very conscientious man, who had made a study of crime from a psychological standpoint, his many successes being no doubt due to his marvellously minute examination of motives and his methodical reasoning upon the most abstruse clues. There was nothing of the ordinary blunt official detective about him. He was a man of extreme refinement, an omnivorous reader and a diligent student of men. He was a passionate collector of coins, a bachelor, and an amateur player of the violin. I believe that he had never experienced what fear was, and certainly within my own knowledge, he had had a dozen narrow escapes from the vengeance of the Terrorists. Once a bomb was purposely exploded in a room into which he and his men went to arrest two students in Moscow, and not one present escaped death except Hartwig himself.
And as he now sat there before me, so quiet and attentive, blinking at me through those gold-rimmed pince-nez, none would certainly take him for the man whose hairbreadth escapes, constant disguises, exciting adventures and marvellous successes in the tracking of criminals all over Europe had so often amazed the readers of newspapers the world over.
“Well, Mr Hartwig,” I said in a low voice, after I had risen and satisfied myself that Green had closed the door, “the matter is one of strictest confidence – a suspicion which I may at once tell you is the Emperor’s own personal affair. To myself alone he has confided it, and I requested that you might be allowed to assist me in finding a solution of the problem.”
“I’m much gratified,” he said. “As an Englishman, you know, I believe, that I am ever ready to serve an Englishman, especially if I am serving the Emperor at the same time.”
“The inquiry will take us far afield, I expect – first to England.”
“To England!” he exclaimed. “For how long do you anticipate?”
“Who knows?” I asked. “I can only say that it will be a very difficult and perhaps a long inquiry.”
“And how will the department proceed here?”
“Your next in command will be appointed in your place until your return. The Emperor arranged for this with me yesterday. Therefore, from to-morrow you will be free to place yourself at my service.”
“I quite understand,” he said. “And now, perhaps, you will in confidence explain exactly the situation, and the problem which is presented,” and he settled himself in his chair in an attitude of attention.
“Ah! that, I regret, is unfortunately impossible. The Emperor has entrusted the affair to me, and to me alone. I must direct the inquiry, and you will, I fear, remain in ignorance – at least, for the present.”
“In other words, you will direct and I must act blindly – eh?” he said in a rather dubious voice. “That’s hardly satisfactory to me, Mr Trewinnard, is it? – hardly fair, I mean.”
“I openly admit that such an attitude as I am compelled to adopt is not fair to you, Hartwig. But I feel sure you will respect the Emperor’s confidence, and view the matter in its true light. The matter is a personal one of His Majesty’s, and may not be divulged. He has asked me to tell you this frankly and plainly, and also that he relies upon you to assist him.”
My words convinced the great detective, and he nodded at last in the affirmative.
“The problem I alone know,” I went on. “His Majesty has compelled me to swear secrecy. Therefore I am forbidden to tell you. You understand?”
“But I am not forbidden to discover it for myself?” replied the keen, wary official.
“If you do, I cannot help it,” was my reply.
“If I do,” he said, “I promise you faithfully, Mr Trewinnard, that His Majesty’s secret, whatever it is, shall never pass my lips.”
Chapter Six.
Relates a Sensation
Ten days had gone by. I had applied to Downing Street for leave of absence, and was awaiting permission.
One afternoon I had again been commanded to private audience at the Palace, and in uniform, had spent nearly two hours with the Emperor, listening to certain confidential instructions which he had given me – instructions for the fulfilment of a somewhat difficult task.
Twice during our chat I had referred to the case of my friends Madame and Mademoiselle de Rosen, hoping that he would extend to them the Imperial clemency, and by a stroke of that well-worn quill upon the big writing-table recall them from that long and weary journey upon which they had been sent.
But His Majesty, who was wearing the undress uniform of a general with a single cross at his throat, uttered an expression of regret that I had been friendly with them.
“In Russia, in these days, a foreigner should exercise the greatest caution in choosing his friends,” he said. “Only the day before yesterday Markoff reported it was to those two women that the attempt in the Nevski was entirely due. The others, thirty or so, were merely tools of those clever women.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, when I say that General Markoff lies,” I replied boldly.
“Enough! Our opinions differ, Trewinnard,” he snapped, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
It was on the tip of my tongue to make a direct charge against his favourite official, but what was the use when I held no actual proof. Twice recently I had seen Natalia, but she refused to allow me sight of the letters, telling me that she intended herself to show up the General in her own way – and at her own time.
So the subject had dropped, for I saw that mention of it only aroused the Emperor’s displeasure. And surely the other matter which we were discussing with closed doors was weighty enough.
At last His Majesty tossed his cigarette-end away, and, his jewelled cross glittering at his throat, rose with outstretched hand, as sign that my audience was at an end.
That eternal military band was playing in the grey courtyard below, and the Emperor had slammed-to the window impatiently to keep out the sound. He was in no mood for musical comedy that afternoon. Indeed, I knew that the military music often irritated him, but Court etiquette – those iron-bound, unwritten laws which even an Emperor cannot break – demanded it. Those same laws decreed that no Emperor of Russia may travel incognito, as do all other European sovereigns; that at dinner at the Winter Palace there must always be eight guests; and that the service of gold plate of Catherine the Great must always be used. At the Russian Court there are a thousand such laws, the breach of a single one being an unpardonable offence, even in the case of the autocratic ruler himself.
“Then you understand my wishes – eh, Trewinnard?” His Majesty said at last in English, gripping my hand warmly.
“Perfectly, Sire.”
“I need not impress upon you the need for absolute and entire discretion. I trust you implicitly.”
“I hope Your Majesty’s trust will never be betrayed,” I answered fervently, bowing over the strong outstretched hand.
And then, backing out of the door, I bowed and withdrew.
Through the long corridor with its soft red carpet I went, passing Calitzine, a short, dark man in funereal black, the Emperor’s private secretary, to whom I passed the time of day.
Then, reaching the grand staircase with its wonderful marble and gold balustrades and great chandeliers of crystal, I descended to the huge hall, where the echoes were constantly aroused by hurrying footsteps of ministers, officials, chamberlains, courtiers and servants – all of them sycophants.
The two gigantic sentries at the foot of the stairs held their rifles at the salute as I passed between them, when of a sudden I caught sight of the Grand Duchess Natalia in a pretty summer gown of pale-blue, standing with a tall, full-bearded elderly man in the brilliant uniform of the 15th Regiment of Grenadiers of Tiflis, of which he was chief, and wearing many decorations. It was her father, the Grand Duke Nicholas.
“Why, here’s old Uncle Colin!” cried my incorrigible little friend in pleased surprise. “Have you been up with the Emperor?”
I replied in the affirmative, and, bowing, greeted His Imperial Highness, her father, with whom I had long been on friendly terms.
“Where are you going?” asked the vivacious young lady quickly as she rebuttoned her long white glove, for they had, it seemed, been on a visit to the Empress.
“I have to go to the opening of the new wing of the Naval Hospital,” I said. “And I haven’t much time to spare.”
“We are going there, too. I have to perform the opening ceremony in place of the Emperor,” replied the Grand Duke. “So drive with us.”
“That’s it, Uncle Colin!” exclaimed his daughter. “Come out for an airing. It’s a beautiful afternoon.”
So we went forth into the great courtyard, where one of the Imperial state carriages, an open one, was in waiting, drawn by four fine, long-tailed Caucasian horses.
Behind it was a troop of mounted Cossacks to act as escort.
We entered, and the instant the bare-headed flunkeys had closed the door the horses started off, and we swung out of the handsome gateway into the wide Place, in the centre of which stood the grey column of Peter the Great.
Turning to the left we went past the Alexander Gardens, now parched and dusty with summer heat, and skirted the long façade of the War Office.
“I wonder what tales you’ve been telling the Emperor about me, Uncle Colin?” asked the impudent little lady, laughing as we drove along, I being seated opposite the Grand Duke and his daughter.
“About you?” I echoed with a smile. “Oh, nothing, I assure you – or, at least, nothing that was not nice.”
“You’re a dear, I know,” declared the girl, her father laughing amusedly the while. “But you are so dreadfully proper. You’re worse about etiquette than father is – and he’s simply horrid. He won’t ever let me go out shopping alone, and I’m surely old enough to do that!”
“You’re quite old enough to get into mischief, Tattie,” replied her father, speaking in French.
“I love mischief. That’s the worst of it,” and she pouted prettily.
“Yes, quite true – the worst of it, for me,” declared His Imperial Highness. “I thought that when you went to school in England they would teach you manners.”
“Ordinary manners are not Court manners,” the girl argued, trying to rebutton one of her gloves which had come unfastened.
“Let me do it,” I suggested, and quickly fastened it.
“Thank you,” she laughed with mock dignity. “How charming it is to have such a polished diplomat as Mr Colin Trewinnard to do nice things for one. Now, isn’t that a pretty speech? I suppose I ought to study smart things to say, and practise them on the dog – as father does sometimes.”
“Really, Tattie, you forget yourself, my dear,” exclaimed her father, with distinct disapproval.
“Well, that’s nothing,” declared my charming little companion. “Don’t parsons practise preaching their sermons, and lawyers and statesmen practise their clever untruths? You can’t expect a woman’s mouth to be full of sugar-plums of speech, can you?”
My eyes met those of the Grand Duke, and we both burst out laughing at the girl’s quaint philosophy.
“Why, even the Emperor has his speeches composed and written for him by silly old Calitzine,” she went on. “And at Astrakhan the other day I composed a most telling and patriotic speech for His Majesty, which he delivered when addressing the officers of the Army of the Volga. I sat on my horse and listened. The old generals and colonels, and all the rest of them, applauded vociferously, and the men threw their caps in the air. I wonder if they would have done this had they known that I had written those well-turned patriotic sentences, I – a mere chit of a girl, as father sometimes tells me!”
“And the terror of the Imperial family,” I ventured to add.
“Thank you for your compliment. Uncle Colin,” she laughed. “I know father endorses your sentiments. I see it in his face.”
“Oh, do try and be serious, Tattie,” he urged. “See all those people! Salute them, and don’t laugh so vulgarly.” And he raised his white-gloved hand to his shining helmet in recognition of the shouts of welcome rising from those assembled along our route.
Whereat she bowed gracefully again with that slight and rather frigid smile which she had been taught to assume on public occasions.
“If I put up my sunshade they won’t see me, and it will avoid such a lot of trouble,” she exclaimed suddenly, and she put up her pretty parasol, which matched her gown and softened the light upon her pretty face.
“Oh, no, Uncle Colin!” she exclaimed suddenly, as we turned the corner into the Yosnesenskaya, a long, straight street where the throng, becoming greater, was kept back by lines of police in their grey coats, peaked caps and revolvers. “I know what you are thinking. But it isn’t so. I’m not in the least afraid of spoiling my complexion.”
“Then perhaps it is a pity you are not,” I replied. “Complexions, like all shining things, tarnish quickly.”
“Just like reputations, I suppose,” she remarked, whereupon her father could not restrain another laugh.
Then again, at word in an undertone from the Grand Duke, both he and his daughter saluted the crowd, our horses galloping, as they always do in Russia, and our Cossack-escort clattering behind.
There were a good many people just at this point, for it was believed that the Emperor would pass on his way to perform the opening ceremony, and his loyal subjects were waiting to cheer him.
On every hand, the people, recognising the popular Grand Duke and his daughter, set up hurrahs, and while His Imperial Highness saluted, his pretty daughter, the most admired girl in Russia, bowed, and I, in accordance with etiquette, made no sign of acknowledgment.
As we came to the narrow bridge which spans the canal, the road was flanked on the left by the Alexander Market, and here was another huge crowd.
Loud shouts of welcome in Russian broke forth from those assembled, for the Grand Duke and his daughter were everywhere greeted most warmly.
But as we passed the market, the police keeping back the crowd, I saw a thin, middle-aged man in dark clothes lift his hand high above his head. Something came in our direction, yet before I had time to realise his action a blood-red flash blinded me, my ears were deafened by a terrific report, a hot, scorching breath swept across my face, and I felt myself hurled far into space amid the mass of falling débris.
It all occurred in a single instant, and I knew no more. I had a distinct feeling that some terrific explosion had knocked the breath clean out of my body. I recollect seeing the carriage rent into a thousand fragments just at the same instant that black unconsciousness fell upon me.
