Dick Donovan

“ It was remarkable about Danevitch that, while he was often mistrustful about his own instincts, he seldom erred. He had made human nature so close a study that the person who, as the saying is, could have thrown dust in his eyes would have had to have been preternaturally clever. He maintained, and proved it over and over again, that the face was so certain an index to what was passing [181] in the mind that every thought of the brain was communicated instantly to the features, which indicated it as unmistakably as a delicately-balanced needle notes the slightest current of electricity. ”

“ Ferguson should be strangled to death in a place considered to be so well policed and watched as Riga; and yet all the vigilance and all the cleverness of the police were powerless alike to stay the crime and to bring the criminal to justice when the crime had been committed.
‘Our lives and property are not safe,’ exclaimed the rabble. ‘The police are supine; they are useless; they are in league with the knaves who prey upon honest citizens. ”

“ The clear, pellucid waters of the Neva glistened and glinted as they flowed to the sea, emblematic of the Stream of Time, which silently but surely sweeps all men into the great ocean of eternity, and obliterates even their memory.
Man’s life is a little thing indeed when compared with the stupendousness of Time and Eternity. The bright stars shine, the rivers roll for ever; but man is born to-day; to-morrow he is dust and forgotten. No such feeling or sentiment, however, stirred Peter Treskin’s emotion as he hurried along to his lodgings. ”

“ Treskin’s face turned to an ashen grayness, and, springing to his feet, he rushed to the door, but found his exit barred by armed men. In another instant he was seized, and heavily ironed. He knew then that his fate was sealed, and his heart turned to lead with an awful sense of despair.
Steaming as hard as she could steam, the yacht rounded Point de Galle, and when about fifteen miles due east of Ceylon she suddenly stopped. A Russian gunboat was lying in wait. To this gunboat the prisoner was transferred, but Anna remained on board the yacht. ”

“ The theory of accident was at once negatived. It was like an outrage on common-sense to ask anyone to believe that two men, related to each other, should each die within a year from precisely the same cause. The coincidence was too remarkable to be admitted as probable; therefore the matter resolved itself into murder—it was an ugly word, and all the incidents suggested a tragedy of no ordinary kind. The case was placed in the hands of the chief of police, who was instructed to use every means possible to unravel the mystery. ”

“ He visited Anna Plevski in her dungeon. She knew nothing at this time of the fate of her lover, though she did know that he had not been captured. Danevitch, by skill and artifice, aroused in her that strongest of all female passions—jealousy. He began by telling her that Treskin had deserted her in a cowardly and shameful manner on the night of the crime, and did not care whether she perished or lived. Then he laid before her Lydia Zagarin’s letters to Treskin, which had been seized at Treskin’s lodgings, and he watched the effect on the girl as she read them. ”

“ Danevitch had learnt the great lesson of patience. He did not aim at accomplishing the impossible, but he knew where it was a case of human ingenuity he had the best chance, inasmuch as he was an expert in the ways of criminals. From the moment that he had gathered up all the details of the robbery, he had set a watch upon the movements of every one of the eight men who had travelled with the treasure from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The gendarmes belonged to Moscow, and had returned, but they were watched, nevertheless; though not a movement of theirs was calculated to arouse suspicion. ”

“ Suddenly there was a tremendous shock as if a great gun had been fired, and in a few moments a cry arose from a hundred throats that something had happened on board the Imperial yacht. The air about her was filled with splinters of wood. Men could be seen running along her decks in a state of great excitement, and she appeared to be heeling over to the starboard side. ‘Her boilers have burst,’ cried the people, as they rushed pell-mell to the quay, while from all parts of the harbour boats were hurriedly making their way to the North Star, as it was thought that she was foundering. ”

“ Isaac and Jacob were sworn foes of the Government. They were clever mechanics, and their cleverness was used to build up a destructive instrument of death, contrived with devilish ingenuity and diabolical cunning.
These men represented a large party, which included women as well as men; but Treskin was the head, the leading light, the impelling spirit. His influence, his restless energy, his ambition, his vanity, made him one of the most dangerous men in all Russia. ”

“ The bound man is dragged out, for he is powerless to move. He is pushed and dragged up the ladder, followed by the priest. As soon as he reaches the platform and sees the noose, he utters a suppressed cry of horror, and shrinks away.
Pitiless hands thrust him forward again, and he is placed on some steps; the noose is adjusted round his neck. No cap is used to hide his awful face. At a given signal the steps are drawn away, and the man swings in the air and is slowly strangled to death. A great cheer rises from the crowd, but it is mingled with groans.
Thus did Peter Treskin meet his doom. ”

“ Ferguson’s private life. There, of course, he was at once confronted with great difficulty. Everyone spoke well of the victim. His family believed him perfect. For Danevitch, therefore, to have breathed a word calculated to tarnish, even by suggestion, the fair fame of this merchant prince and good citizen would have been to incur odium and ill-will. But he knew human nature too well to run any such risk for the sake of a mere hypothesis. The problem, however, had to be solved if possible, and he proceeded upon his own lines to search for a tangible clue. ”

“ It was obvious that wherever he had been to, or whoever were the people he had been with, somebody had an interest in keeping his movements dark, as the efforts of the police quite failed to elicit any information. It was the same in the Colonel’s case, and no one could discover where he had been to on the fatal night. Moscow is a large city, honeycombed with evil haunts; crime flourishes there to a greater extent than in any other town or city in the whole of Russia. It has been the scene of very many deeds of violence, for blackguardism is rampant, and numerous are the traps for the unwary. ”

“ To this place Charcot was followed by Danevitch and three French police officers, all heavily armed; and while Charcot and old Pierre were conferring together, the Russian and his companions entered, to the utter amazement of the two rascals, who were made prisoners before they could recover from their surprise. To both of them this coup must have been like a thunderbolt, but perhaps more particularly so to Charcot, who only the night before seemed to think he was in little or no danger. In a cellar or vault, below the level of the putrid stream, a man was discovered in a state of idiocy. ”

“ These good folks failed to explain why the Evil One should have stabbed Maggie with a stiletto, and have left more than half the blade in the wound, when he might have deprived her of life so much more easily. I found that even Captain Jarvis was not without some belief in this absurd theory.
‘If there is not something uncanny about the whole business, how is it you have failed to get trace of the man?’ asked Jarvis, with the air of one who felt he was putting a poser which was absolutely unanswerable. ”

“ That was his theory, and he lived up to it.
The first year of his married life, so far as was known, was a very happy one; the young couple revelled in each other’s society. Their social functions were attended by people from far and near, for Maria’s beauty was the talk of the town, and her husband was very happy and very proud. He believed that no such woman as his wife had ever walked the fair earth before. Romance, however, cannot last for ever, and joy must ever be evanescent in this wicked world. Vassilo Ivanoff was soon to prove the truth of this. ”

“ Furnished with these meagre particulars, Danevitch began his work. From the first he formed the opinion that there was a deep and underlying motive for the crime, which, however, he did not consider was premeditated. And his reason for so thinking was this: A man who deliberately sets forth to slay another in cold blood generally provides himself with some lethal weapon. In this case the slayer would hardly have trusted entirely to his hands, unless he was a man of gigantic strength; for though Ferguson was well advanced in years, he was not only unusually vigorous, but unusually powerful. ”

“ Boruff was not well off. Such officials are poorly paid in Russia; and as he was forced to keep up two establishments, and moreover was extravagant, his resources were severely taxed.
So much did Danevitch learn of Boruff. Not much, if anything at all, to suggest a probability that Boruff had any guilty knowledge. He was a poor man; that was the worst that could be said about him. But poverty lays a man open to many temptations. Starving virtue is sorely tested when gold is jingled in its ears. It is so easy to be honest when one wants for nothing. ”

“ A woman’s jealousy, on the other hand, finds expression in a different way. In her bitterness she would sully the reputation of a spotless angel, and her mother-tongue has no words strong enough wherewith to express her hatred. No wonder that the old painters, in depicting jealousy, always took a female as a model. Of course Madame Julie St. Joseph’s beauty, and the power it enabled her to wield, made the women very jealous indeed; but if her female guests lacked quality, the deficiency was amply compensated for by the high standing of many of the men. ”

“ Joseph’s career came to an end. From the moment that Danevitch entered her house her doom was sealed. Believing him to be the person he represented himself to be, she begged of him to help her financially; and, seeming to yield to her entreaties, he drew up a document which purported to make over to her at his death certain estates in Poland. Of course, these estates had no existence. Having secured him, as she thought, her next step was to poison him by small doses of black hellebore, so that he might gradually sicken and die. Her devilish cunning was evidenced in every step she took. ”

“ It was the only place in which a man could be concealed. Brodie opened the door, and found nothing but clothes there. The mystery, therefore, was as far from solution as ever, apparently, as now there wasn’t a corner of the house that had not been examined thoroughly and exhaustively.
As Brodie was in the act of leaving the room, his eye was attracted by something glittering on the hearthstone, where the cold, white ashes of a wood-fire still remained. ”

“ It is a plain statement of fact to say that, of all the countries which boast of their civilization, Russia is the least civilized. The Russians themselves are a most hospitable people, they are clever, they make good friends and good neighbours; but their laws are antiquated, the method of government is barbarous, while the system of espionage which is in force all over the country would irritate a Briton into madness. ”

“ He seemed thoroughly ashamed of himself, and undecided whether to bolt at once or gather up the wreckage. Nor was his confusion and distress lessened by the torrent of abuse and passionate scolding which fell from Mrs. Sherard Wilson’s lips. In the choicest of Russian she told him he was a ‘dolt,’ an ‘idiot,’ a ‘fool,’ a ‘brute beast.’
‘Leave the things, you stupid!’ she exclaimed fierily. ‘Ever since you entered the house, you have done nothing but make mistakes and smash things up. But it’s the last chance you’ll have of doing mischief here. In ten minutes you’ll be out. ”

“ Ferguson upon a pinnacle of greatness, and to speak of him almost as if he were a martyred saint. The rulers in Russia are peculiarly sensitive to, and intolerant of, criticism, and the authorities in Riga, stung by the lashings of the local organ, lunged out, so to speak, and grabbed the first person they could lay their hands on. The Russian police have a habit of doing this when driven to desperation. ”

“ It is right to say that the seizure of luggage is only resorted to when there is strong reason for believing that the owner is a dangerous person.
Although Danevitch took the steps indicated, he did not believe for a moment that anything would result beyond a great number of people being seriously inconvenienced, some innocent persons being arrested, and a great deal of blundering on the part of jacks in office, and of boorishness on the part of local police, who, dressed in a little brief authority, like to exercise it with all the brutal brusqueness peculiar to ignorant minds. ”

“ One night at the end of January, a night that, according to Russian reckoning, was New Year’s Eve, and usually celebrated with great ceremony in Russia, there was a reception [145] at the Count’s house. It was one of the few occasions when every nationality save Russian was excluded. It had been one of those trying and maddening days, peculiar to the English climate in January. A leaden sky, a choking, foggy atmosphere, a general gloominess, and a sense of that awful depression which seems to justify all the hard things said about our climate by foreigners. ”

“ Holding these views—and though he was a family man and one respected and honoured—Smolski had allied himself with a band of arch-conspirators, whose head was Peter Treskin. He was calm, dignified, and collected under his arrest, and when he was interrogated, in accordance with Russian law, by a judge of instruction, he frankly admitted that he had been concerned in an attempt to bring about a better form of government; but he steadfastly refused to denounce any of his accomplices. He could die bravely, as became a man, but no one should say he was a traitor. ”

“ Sufficient for you to know that you are a prisoner. Come, rise and dress yourself.’
She recognised the hopelessness of resistance, and, of course, she understood that her faithful watch-hound Roko had been rendered powerless. She was trapped; that she knew. But it did not dawn upon her then that the Count and Danevitch were one and the same. ”

“ She was told very bluntly that she had no business ever to have married such a man. These reproaches made her dreadful position still harder to bear; but when the first shock of the disclosure and the arrest had passed, she rose equal to the occasion, and startled everyone she knew by declaring her unalterable belief in her husband’s innocence. This seemed to most people like flying in the very face of Providence. The accused man’s guilt was so obvious that it was an outrage on intelligence to argue otherwise. But Maria Ivanoff was a young and newly-married woman. She had married for love. ”

“ Such was the construction put upon the case, and it seemed as if no one but an idiot could doubt for a moment that Ivanoff had committed the crime. And as a piece of strengthening evidence the words he had uttered in the café were raked up against him. ‘It’s a burning shame,’ he had said, ‘that I should be poor when there are thousands less worthy than I am rolling in wealth. ”