William Le Queux

“ You hold the fate of all revolutionary Russia in your hand. You form plots, you get your poor, ill-read puppets to carry them out, and afterwards you send them to Siberia in batches of hundreds. A clever game this game of terrorism. But I tell you frankly it is at an end now. What will these comrades of yours say when they are made aware that ‘The One’—the man believed by so many to be sent providentially to sweep away the dynasty and kill the enemies of freedom—is identical with Danilo Danilovitch, the bootmaker of Kazan and police-spy. ”

“ Miss West had been governess in the Emperor’s family for six years before she had entered the service of the Grand Duchess Nicholas, so life at Court, with all its stiff etiquette, had perhaps imparted to her a slightly unnatural hauteur.
Natalia looked inexpressibly sweet in an evening gown of fine black spotted net, the transparency of which about the chest heightened the almost alabaster whiteness of her skin. She wore a black aigrette in her hair, but no jewellery save a single diamond bangle upon her wrist, an ornament which she always wore. ”

“ Not a few of the women marched among the men as prisoners, while the rest trudged along into voluntary exile, holding the hands of their husbands, brothers, lovers or children. Some of the sick, aged and young were in springless carts, but all the others toiled onward through the snow like droves of cattle, bent to the icy blast, a grey-clad, silent crowd, guarded by a dozen Cossacks, with an officer taking his ease in a tarantass in the rear. ”

“ I knew that the love of an Imperial Grand Duchess of the greatest family in Europe is just as intense, just is passionate, just as fervent as that of a commoner, be she only a typist, a seamstress, or a serving-maid. ”

“ True, with a stroke of that grey quill pen lying there upon his blotting-pad he had sent many a man and woman without trial to their unrecorded doom, either in the frozen wastes of Northern Siberia, to the terrible mines of Nerchinsk, to the horrors of the penal island of Sakhalin, or to those fearful subterranean oubliettes at Schusselburg, whence no prisoner has ever returned. But, as an autocrat, he dealt with his revolutionary enemies as they would deal with him. ”

“ It is all so mysterious, so utterly incomprehensible, Mr Trewinnard. She is concealing something. She has some secret, and I feel sure that you, as an intimate friend of her family, are aware of it.” Then after a slight pause he grew calm and, looking me straight in the face, asked: “May I not know it? Will you not tell me the truth?”
“Why should I, Drury, when the truth must only cause you pain?” I queried. “You have suffered enough already. Why not go away and forget? Time heals most broken hearts.” ”

“ Little did that crowd of seaside idlers dream that this extremely pretty girl in black who was so much of a mystery to everybody was a member of the great Imperial House of Russia. She was believed to be Miss Gottorp, whose father had been German and her mother English, both of whom were recently dead.
Seeing her so often walking with me, everyone, of course, put me down as the lucky man to whom she was engaged to be married, and I have little doubt that many a young man envied me. How strange is the world! ”

“ You are an assassin. You killed my brother the Grand Duke Peter with your own dastardly hand in order to hide your disgraceful tactics. You sent your own wife to her grave, and you paid your catspaw to kill the Grand Duke Nicholas. To-day there is a plot afoot to close the lips of my niece and my good friend Trewinnard! These are only a few of your disgraceful crimes. No; do not attempt to deny them, brute and liar that you are. Rather reflect upon the terrible fate of the thousands of poor wretches who have been sent to the Arctic settlements by your relentless, inhuman hand. ”

“ I reviewed all the exciting events of those many months which had elapsed since the last Court ball of the season at Petersburg—events which I have attempted to set down in the foregoing pages—and I was held in fear that my long journey might be in vain—that ere I could catch up with the poor wretched woman who, though ill, had been compelled to perform that last and most arduous stage of the journey through the snow, she would, alas! be no longer alive. The vengeance of her enemy Markoff would have fallen upon her. ”

“ Yes, those were wonderful nights which will live for ever in my memory—nights when my thoughts wandered far away to the gay promenade at Hove, wondering how fared the little madcap, and whether her peril were real or only imaginary.
Ever obsessed by the knowledge that Markoff was aware of my journey, and would endeavour to prevent its successful issue, I existed in constant anxiety and dread lest some prearranged disaster might befall Madame de Rosen ere I could reach her.
Siberia is, alas! the country where, as the exiles say: “God is nigh, and the Tzar is far away.” ”

“ I said. “A girl of the people can act just as she likes; but you are a Grand Duchess—and you can’t.”
“Bother my birth. That’s my misfortune. I wish I were a shopgirl, or a typist, or something. Then I should be free!” she exclaimed impatiently. “As it is, I can’t utter a word or move a little finger without the whole of Russia lifting up their hands in pious horror. I tell you, Uncle Colin,” she added, her fine, big, dark eyes fixed upon me, “I’m sick of it all. It is simply unbearable. Ah! how I wish I were back at dear old Southdene College. I hate Russia and all her works!” ”

“ To the revolutionists throughout the whole of Russia there is one great leader known as ‘The One’—the leader whose identity is unknown, but whose word is law among a hundred thousand conspirators. You are that man! Your mandates are obeyed to the letter, but you keep your identity profoundly secret. These poor misguided fools who follow you believe that the secrecy as to the identity of their fearless leader whom they only know as ‘The Wonder Worker,’ or generally ‘The One,’ is due to a fear of arrest. ”

“ There was nothing of the modern young man, clean-shaven, over-dressed, with turned-up trousers and bright socks. He was tall, lithe, strong, well and neatly dressed as became a man in his station—a man with an income of more than ten thousand a year, as I had already secretly ascertained.
Had not Natalia been of Imperial birth the match would have been a most suitable one, for Dick Drury was decidedly one of the eligibles. But her love was, alas! forbidden, and marriage with a commoner not to be thought of. ”

“ Well, Danilo Danilovitch, I shall, when I’ve finished with you, leave you to their tender mercies. You remember, perhaps, the fate of Boutakoff, the informer at Kieff, how he was attached to a baulk of timber and placed upon a circular saw, how Raspopoff died of slow starvation in the hands of those whom he had betrayed at Moscow, and how Mirski, in Odessa, was horribly tortured and killed by the three brothers of the unfortunate girl he had given into the hands of the police. No,” he laughed, “your friends show neither leniency nor humanity towards those who betray them.” ”

“ Madame de Rosen and her pretty daughter had fallen victims of the bitter unscrupulousness of that short, stout, grey-moustached man, who at that moment was bowing so obsequiously before his Sovereign, the man who was one of the greatest powers in the Empire, General Serge Markoff, Chief of Secret Police.
The first dance was in progress. Pretty women, with their smart, good-looking cavaliers, were whirling about me to the slow, tuneful strains of one of the latest of Strauss’s waltzes, when Colonel Mellini, the Italian military attaché, halted before me to chat. ”

“ The Emperor consulted a slip of paper, and then replied:
“To Parotovsk.”
“The most far-distant and dreaded of all the Arctic penal settlements!” I cried. “It is cruel and unjust! It is death to send a woman there, where it is winter for nine months in the year, and where darkness reigns five months out of the twelve.”
“I regret,” replied the Emperor, with a slight gesture of the hand. “But they were conspirators.”
“With all respect to Your Majesty, I beg to express an entirely different opinion. Markoff has long been Madame de Rosen’s enemy.” ”

“ What a funny lover you would make, Uncle Colin! You fancy yourself as old as Methuselah, and your hide-bound ideas of etiquette, your straitlaced morality, and your respect of les convenances are those in vogue when your revered Queen Victoria ascended the throne of Great Britain. You’re not living with the times, my dear uncle. You’re an old-fashioned diplomat. ”

“ My whole career, from the days when I had been a clerk in that sombre old-fashioned room at Downing Street, through my service at Madrid, Brussels, Berlin and Rome to Petersburg—all went before me, like a cinema-picture. I looked upon myself as others saw me—as a man never sees himself in normal circumstances—a mere struggling entity upon the tide of that sea of life called To-day.
We are so very apt to think ourselves indispensable to the world. ”

“ Hence His Majesty relied upon Markoff for the safety of the dynasty. He looked upon him as a marvel of astuteness and cunning, as indeed he was. But, alas! the burly, grave-eyed man who led a life haunted by the hourly fear of death—an existence in armoured rooms and armoured trains, and surrounded by guards whom he even grew to suspect—was in ignorance that the greater part of the evidence of conspiracies, incriminating correspondence and secret proclamations put before him had been actually manufactured by Markoff himself! ”

“ But that afternoon she had utterly broken down and been overcome by blank despair.
“You are young, Natalia,” I said, with deep sympathy. “Enjoy your life to-day, and do not endeavour to meet the troubles of the future. As long as you remain here and are known as Miss Gottorp, so long may your friendship with young Drury be maintained. Live for the present—do not anticipate the future.” ”

“ Some Siberian roads are in summer infested with such gentry, but winter always drives them back to the towns, and consequently into prison again. Only a very few manage to survive the rigours of the black frosts of the Siberian winter.
Rather more amused than alarmed, I lay watching the dark figure engaged in rifling my pockets. I was contemplating the best method by which to secure him and hand him over to the mercies of my host. A sudden thought struck me. Unfortunately, being guest in the house of the chief of police I had left my revolver in the sled. ”

“ If he made any allegation against us, we should be caught like rats in a trap, and killed, as all police-spies are killed when denounced. The arm of the Russian revolution is indeed a long one—longer than that of the Secret Police itself.
“What has happened, Danilo?” demanded a man’s rough voice. “Who are those strangers? Let us in!”
“Speak!” commanded Hartwig. “Reassure them, and let them go away. I have still much to say to you in private.”
His arm with the revolver was upraised, his eyes unwavering. The informer saw determination in his gaze. ”

“ The souls of all those who have been worn out by the journey and died like dogs upon the Great Post Road, or in other ways have fallen innocent victims of your plots, call loudly for vengeance. And I tell you, Serge Markoff,” he said, his dark, heavy brows narrowing in fierce anger, “I tell you that I shall find means by which adequate punishment will be awarded to you. Here is your dismissal!” he added, taking the document from his table. “It will be gazetted to-morrow. Go back to Petersburg at once and there remain. ”

“ Then, after half an hour’s rest, again we went forward into the grey gloom of the snow, where on our left at the edge of the plain showed the pale yellow streak of the winter afterglow.
Through that long, interminable night we toiled on and ever on in deep snowdrifts. Vasilli ever and anon uttering curses in his beard, for the horses we had obtained at Pakrovskoe were terrible screws.
At length, however, just as the first grey of dawn appeared on the horizon our driver pointed with his whip, crying excitedly:
“Yakutsk! Excellency! Yakutsk! God be thanked for a safe journey!” ”

“ Much as we desired to approach the mysterious head of the so-called Revolutionary Organisation—the man known as “The One,” but whose identity was veiled in mystery—we dared not do so, knowing that he was our bitterest enemy.
One morning, in despair at obtaining no trace of the missing pair, I resolved to travel to Petersburg and there make inquiry. I realised that I must inform the Emperor, even at risk of his displeasure, for, after all, I had been compelled by my journey to Siberia to relax my vigilance, though I had left the little madcap under Hartwig’s protection. ”

“ As I approached the Lawns at Hove, those wide, grassy promenades beside the sea, I saw that many people were still lingering, enjoying the warm sunset, although the fashionable hour when women exercise their pet dogs, and idle men lounge and watch the crowd, had passed and the band had finished its performance.
My mind was filled by many serious apprehensions, as turning suddenly from the Lawns, I recrossed the road and entered Brunswick Square, that wide quadrangle of big, old-fashioned houses around a large railed-in garden filled with high oaks and beeches. ”