Drexel

“ Drexel replied in the same masked language. “You must have been surprised.”
The prince nodded. “I have no idea who this Captain Laroque is,” he went on, with a calm look into Drexel’s face; “and I have no wish to know, for it would be my official duty to hang him. But if by any strange twist of circumstances you should ever meet him, please inform him that he is the boldest man I ever heard of.”
“Should there be such a strange twist, I will,” said Drexel.
“Doubtless he is already on his way out of Russia,” the prince went on. ”

“ Drexel had been in Russia long enough to know this searching of a train meant that something had happened. And he knew how formidable was this officer—not in himself, but in what he represented, what was massed behind him: a quarter of a million of political police and spies, hundreds of prisons, Siberian exile, the scaffold, blindfolded death from rifle volleys. ”

“ Petersburg’s ten thousand police and spies be unloosed upon the chase. By the hour’s end they must all be safe in hiding, or stand in danger of wearing the Czar’s neckties.
Drexel had still urgent need of his wits. But as the grim shape of the Fortress withdrew into the rearward gloom, the breaking strain of the last half-hour began to relax, and he began to feel the reaction of the two nights he had not slept, and of the two nights and a day that he had been stretched upon the rack of an almost superhuman suspense. ”

“ Drexel,” said Sonya. She took his arm and led him forward. “And this is The White One.”
It was to the wheeled chair that she led him. Drexel looked at the chair and stood amazed. For The White One, the leader feared and hated by the Government, the master mind, the very heart of the revolution, was a woman!
Aye, and an invalid at that! Her hands were twisted, her body bent, and he had no guess of what infirmities lay hid beneath the rug that warmed her lower body. But disease had stayed its withering hands at her shoulders. ”

“ Drexel ascended to the brilliant ball-room. A little later, while he was standing with his uncle and Prince Berloff, General Valenko, recognizing Berloff, paused a moment beside them. The military governor was straight, gray-haired, gray-bearded, a splendid figure of a soldier-statesman at sixty-five, his bearing and every feature marked with that pride which unbends only to equals, with strength, decision, dominance. ”

“ He went down in a heap, and Drexel sprang by him and out into the court.
Ahead of him lay danger from arrest by the police. But he knew that if once he could get back to the Hotel Europe he would be safe, for no police official would dream of identifying the hunted American with the cousin-to-be of Prince Berloff. Though but little after three, night had already fallen. The darkness was an aid, and with the shawl collar of his shuba turned up so that only nose and eyes were visible, he slipped across and out of the court, and hailed the first swift-looking sleigh he met. ”

“ I'm sure they would have been delighted if we had gone over to Paris with them, and down to the Mediterranean: but I suppose that would have been a little too much—just a little too much!"
And if Miss Drexel was vivacious and talkative or her way out, she was equally so on the way back; so that Vincent, in such cheerful company, had little reason to regret their having captured and run away with him. Then again the night was surpassingly beautiful—the moonlight grey on the land and white on the sea; the heavens cloudless; the world everywhere apparently silent and asleep. ”

“ Drexel, preoccupied with this new chance of his finding again the girl he loved, returned to the Howards’ apartment, and found them prepared to start to the ball at Prince Valenko’s. In his present mood he shrank from that brilliant show. He preferred to remain at home, kept company by thoughts of a beautiful, spirited young woman in the coarse, shapeless clothing of a factory girl. ”

“ The train started up. Drexel slipped aboard, leaving the captain standing on the platform looking for a fugitive dressed in clothes that were now ashes in a peasant’s earthen stove.
A Russian train is a creature with a fine disdain for speed, and a third-class coach makes each mile seem five—but at length, toward morning, the train drew into St. Petersburg. All the suffocating journey Drexel had thought of little else but Sonya’s weak figure swaying across the platform upon her father’s arm ”

“ Drexel, and I am going to speak to you openly, frankly. I can play the diplomat, but with a man of affairs like you, I know it is best to come straight to the point.”
Since he had first met the countess, Drexel had known her as a popular figure in the brilliant society frequented by the high officials that surround the Czar and fill the ministries, by the smart and noble officers of the Imperial Guard, by that ever-changing [112] influx of officers who, after representing for a year or two the Czar’s autocratic might in some stupid, provincial town, or in some remote army station, come to St. ”

“ Drexel was well accustomed to the luxury of the rich Russian nobility, but even he, with his double reason for being dull to impressions, could but note that he had been in no house so rich as this. And he recognized that, save for the Czar and his immediate family, there were none prouder and higher in all the empire than these haughty men whose breasts were a blaze of orders and these haughty women who seemed to walk amid a moving fire of jewels. [84] And of them all, he well knew, none had lineage older, nobler, than Princess Valenko. ”

“ Drexel was always a generous giver. He was a large contributor to the University of Pennsylvania, to hospitals, to churches of all denominations, and to asylums. With Mr. Childs and others he built an Episcopal church at Elberon, Long Branch, where he usually went in the summer. ”

“ In 1864 he joined his friend George W. Childs in the purchase of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and with him in 1892 founded the Printers’ Home for union men at Colorado Springs. In 1891 he founded, and endowed with $2,000,000, the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia, the buildings for which he constructed at a cost of $750,000. This institution provides technical instruction for both night and day classes and public lecture courses, and has a good museum and a library of 35,000 volumes. Drexel died at Carlsbad, Germany, on the 30th of June 1893. ”

“ And as for you, Captain Laroque”—he almost frothed in his revengeful rage—“you’ll never leave here to trick another man!”
[305] He tore Drexel’s revolver from its holster, and with a quick stride toward his desk raised a hand above a bronze bell to sound the guard-summoning alarm. But though Drexel had thought all hope was gone, there was an instinct in him, deeper than consciousness, not to give up. He sprang desperately forward and caught the descending arm. At the same moment, as though this had been a signal, Razoff and Borodin seized Berloff in their manacled hands. ”

“ Three attempts they made, with young Drexel at the wheel; but the soft earth and the pitch of the grade baffled.
"She's got the power all right," young Drexel protested. "But she can't bite into that mush."
So far, they had spread on the ground the robes found in the car. The men now added their coats, and Wemple, for additional traction, unsaddled the roan, and spread the cinches, stirrup leathers, saddle blanket, and bridle in the way of the wheels. The car took the treacherous slope in a rush, with churning wheels biting into the woven fabrics ”

“ Weary as he was, he dared not ride the long four miles; no peasant such as he looked would spend forty kopeks for a sleigh.
The city was only beginning to rub sleep from its eyes when he slipped unnoticed across the court to the house he so well remembered, and rapped at the door. Presently it opened a few inches and he saw the boarding-house keeper.
“Good-morning,” said Drexel. “I want to see Ivan and Nicolai.”
“They’ve got nothing for beggars. If you want bread, here’s five kopeks. Now get away with you!” He tried to close the door in Drexel’s face. ”

“ Drexel stepped from his sleigh, his nerves as taut as violin strings, and crossed to the prison entrance. Suddenly from the blackness overhead there rushed down a wild tumult of bells. He stood frozen in his tracks. This was the signal, the alarm! He looked to see every door burst open and belch out scores of guards.
[289] The next moment his heart beat again. That horrific alarm was only the chimes of the Fortress Cathedral hymning “Glory to God in Zion,” and announcing that it was three of the night. ”

“ Berloff be “executed” and the “execution” be left to him; but Sonya opposed that sanguinary course. Whereupon he volunteered several suggestions bearing upon their immediate plan of freeing Borodin; and although Drexel felt an inward shrinking, he had to acknowledge that Freeman was an adviser of wonderful shrewdness, of endless expedient, of intimate acquaintance with the conditions with which their plan must deal. Drexel would have preferred to work with an ally of less fearsome temperament, but that he was an ally of supreme efficiency there was no denying. ”

“ Drexel continued to the governor, in a tone of cool comment, “that condemned revolutionists frequently lose their nerve at the last moment and go out of their head.”
“I’m no revolutionist, Colonel Kavelin,” Freeman retorted. “I’m a secret agent of the political police. I’m the man that laid bare this whole plot. And with this Captain Laroque, you’ve got them all!”
The governor wavered. Drexel saw it. He gave Freeman a black look—a Captain Laroque look. “You dog! Be careful, or you’ll go too far!” he warned. ”

“ Drexel nodded curtly at the captain and walked away, feeling that suspicion was rendered inactive till the police official should arrive upon the business of the passport. By that time they would be miles out of St. Petersburg.
As he sauntered up the stairway he wore the same cool, careless front; but within him was turmoil. How about the story the major-domo had told? But that, even were it true, that was nothing! The great thing, the only thing, was that for days he was to be constantly near the wonderful woman awaiting him above. ”

“ Colonel Kavelin did not deign to set the brother and sister right, and Drexel did not dare to, for the statement that they were to be removed, not executed, would be certain to rouse Freeman’s deadly suspicion.
“Let’s have those irons,” said the governor to the guard. Then he looked back at Drexel who had shrunk into the shadow near the door. “These prisoners are inclined to make trouble, Captain Laroque. To save time and a row, we’ll just put the irons on them ourselves. I’ll attend to the man. Women seem your specialty, so I turn her over to you.” ”

“ All of which astute and mighty brigandage seemed as proper and legitimate to Drexel as it did to his uncle. One was a founder of a business school, the other an apt pupil; and the fundamental idea of that school was that one’s business concerned no one but one’s self.
“Now tell me about things here,” said Mr. Howard. “I’ve talked with your aunt, but I want to hear from you. You’ve quite got over that—eh—little feeling for Alice?” ”

“ His largest and best gift, for which he will be remembered, is that of about three million dollars to found and endow Drexel Institute, erected in his lifetime. He wished to fit young men and women to earn their living; and after making a careful examination of Cooper [Pg 288] Institute, New York, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and sending abroad to learn the best methods and plan of buildings for such industrial education, he began his own admirable Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry in West Philadelphia. ”

“ She shook her head. “It was a false passport.”
“What can we do now?”
“I must leave, somehow.”
“Then I leave, too!” cried Drexel.
“I cannot let you risk yourself further.”
“You cannot prevent me!”
“But you must have guessed that that gendarme captain is not the only man searching for me.”
“I don’t care if there are a hundred!” he cried recklessly.
She looked at him queerly a moment.
“By this time,” she remarked quietly, “I dare say there are fifty thousand.”
“Fifty thousand!” he slowly ejaculated, and stared at her. “Then,” cried he, “all the greater is your need for passing as an American! ”

“ But Drexel was seeing her as she appeared upon the train. “That may be so; but you are not of that kind,” he said confidently. “That kind does not look as you did last night.”
“But how do you know,” she cried, stretching wide her arms the better to display her clumsy garments, “that last night’s clothes are any truer index of my station than to-night’s?”
She saw the question struck home. “We revolutionists work in hourly danger from the police. Safety compels us to assume disguises, and we fit our disguises to our missions. ”

“ Drexel shrugged his shoulders and continued gazing out into the court. It was a dreary enough area, with a few snow-capped houses huddling frozenly about it, its monotony relieved only by a little stuccoed church adjoining, with five dingy blue domes spangled with stars of weather-worn gilt—five tarnished counterfeits of heaven. Ivan, who had come to his side, volunteered that it was [47] called The Church of the Three Saints, and that this court, by virtue of its adjacency, was known as Three Saints’ Court.
Drexel resumed his pacing of the room. ”

“ Drexel caught at the chance. “Yes,” he panted. “I had arrested him, and he tried to shoot me. He’s a political.”
“An important one?”
A bold idea came to Drexel. “You heard of Captain Nadson’s great arrest to-night?”
[238] They had; in fact they had all been ordered to be on the watch for a man who had escaped from Nadson—a foreigner.
“That’s the very man,” said Drexel.
“Was he indeed!” they exclaimed. One stooped and put his ear to Freeman’s chest.
“Is he dead?” asked Drexel. ”