The shears of destiny

AFTER several more of the countess’s songs of Little Russia, and more vocal trapeze work by the lieutenant among his Italian arias, the company adjourned to the hall, a room so large that a fair-sized house could have been erected therein. Here tables had been placed, and the company eagerly set about playing cards, the great pastime of the blasé Russian nobility. The stakes were moderate, Berloff purposely announcing a low limit that none might leave his house with feelings of regret; but nevertheless the play continued with a silent intensity far into the morning hours.

The countess tried in vain to have a few minutes alone with Drexel during the evening. The next morning, however, she was more fortunate, for when she came down at eleven for her tea and two sugared rolls she found Drexel alone in the breakfast room—no other of the guests had as yet appeared. She assumed command of the great silver samovar, which would be steaming all day, and made Drexel a fresh glass of tea. When she had said the night before to Berloff that she liked Drexel, she had spoken more of truth than the prince imagined—more, perhaps, than even she herself was aware of—and this liking lent a peculiar excitement, a tang, to the game she was now playing.

Before two minutes had passed she had led the talk to Borodin. To shrewd, hard-headed Henry Drexel, whose secret pride it had always been that no one had ever bested him in the game of wits, this frank, handsome woman seemed flushed with excited devotion to her cause. He had a momentary impulse to avoid the risk of working at cross purposes by taking her as an ally into his and Sonya’s plan; but he was restrained by the sense that to do so would be to reveal Sonya’s secret to a third person, and none but she had that right. On the other hand to tell the countess he was not interested would have been false to his attitude—so he temporized.

“Do you know where Borodin is imprisoned?” he asked.

“No—not yet.”

“Should not your first effort be to find out?”

“It is going to be.”

Drexel did some quick thinking. Perhaps she had some information worth knowing. “Where do you think his whereabouts can be learned?” he inquired.

“There is undoubtedly a record of it in the Ministry of the Interior.”

“But the difficulty of getting it!”

“I know. But we have plans for searching the ministry’s records.”

He hesitated; then in his eagerness he went farther than he had intended.

“But might there not be some easier, simpler plan?”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I have been doing some thinking—ah—apropos of what you said. Is there not some man intimate with the secrets of the Government who may have record of Borodin?”

“Like whom?”

“Well, say like our host. I merely use him for an illustration. He seems to be informed on every detail of what the Government does.”

The countess’s quick mind decided that if this idea interested him, it would be well to lure him on through that interest. “Yes,” she returned, nodding her head. “I think you may be right. And as for the prince, he may be the very man. It is entirely possible he may know where Borodin is.”

She leaned nearer, and her manner was excitedly joyous. “Since you have been doing this thinking, that means you are at heart already one of us!”

“I am not saying yet, countess,” he smiled.

The voices of Prince Berloff and Mr. Howard sounded without.

“Come—you will be with us!” she said quickly, appealingly.

“Perhaps.” And then, half ashamed of his enforced reticence, he whispered: “Who knows? I may do all you ask—some day.”

Her eyes glowed into his. “Ah—thank you!” she breathed as the others entered.

Drexel excused himself, leaving the countess pouring tea for the two men, and withdrew into the hall, where under pretense of examining some etchings from Corot he kept watch upon the broad staircase. As he had hoped, Sonya soon came down the stairway, alone. She responded to his “Good-morning, princess,” with a formal smile.

“What kind of a day is it?” she asked perfunctorily, and crossed into the embrasure of a window and gazed out into the park. He followed her, half doubtful if there really was the secret tie of a common purpose between this haughty being and himself. But once within the alcove she smiled at him again—this time a comradely, half-whimsical smile.

“Well, sir, how do you feel now about being in the lion’s den?”

“Like getting out as soon as we get what we want.”

“Then you are ready to go on?”

“Do I look like a man who wishes to withdraw?”

She searched his face with its quiet, determined eyes.

“No,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and a warm glow went through him.

The countess’s recent words were strong upon him. He was curious to learn Sonya’s impression, and there was not the same reason for absolute secrecy in the countess’s case as there was in Sonya’s. “Tell me, what do you know of Countess Baronova?” he asked.

“No more than you probably do.”

“Perhaps, then, not so much. We have—well—been friends, and have had many talks. And at last, after working her way toward it, she has confided to me that she is secretly a revolutionist.”

“Indeed! But I really cannot say that I am surprised. She is just another example of how the revolt against the Government is penetrating even the nobility. But why did she tell you?”

“To try to enlist my aid in some such plan as we now have in hand. She thought because of my peculiar situation I could be of exceptional assistance.” He did not want the countess as a third partner in the scheme—he wanted to carry this thing through alone with Sonya; so he quickly added: “But I suppose there is no reason for our taking her in.”

She shook her head. “It is always unwise to take in a single unnecessary person—and especially a person who has not been tested.”

“When shall we make the trial?”

“To-day. We must watch till the prince and all the others are occupied in some distant part of the house. Perhaps there will be an opportunity before the rest come down—that might be our best chance.”

But this last was not to be. After breakfast the prince excused himself, saying that he had some papers to which he was forced to give immediate consideration, and withdraw to his study, the very room Drexel and Sonya were to search. Moreover, Alice wanted her father to see something of the estate which was to be her main country seat, and since she had a headache and her mother felt disinclined to brave the cold, it fell upon Drexel to accompany Mr. Howard. Until two o’clock the pair of them, barricaded against the cold with layers of furs, and drawn by three swift blacks, flew across broad fields, through long, huddling villages, past forests of snow-shrouded pine and spruce and hemlock.

Half an hour before the afternoon dinner Drexel and Sonya had another moment together in the embrasure of the window. After this interview Drexel went out to make a solitary inspection of the prince’s famous stable, asking them to excuse him, as he had nibbled rather generously after his drive and so was not hungry. Just before dinner was announced Sonya, pleading a slight indisposition, retired to her room. Minus these two, the company filed into the dining-room.

They were midway in the first course when Drexel returned to the house, slipped quietly through the corridor that led to the library, and taking a book at hazard from the French section, settled himself in one of the leather chairs. A few minutes later Sonya entered.

“That is the study there,” she said quickly, leading the way through a door opening off the library.

They had decided there was no necessity for one to keep guard; the records were in French, as Sonya knew, and they could make double speed by searching together. In case anyone interrupted them, Sonya was to remark casually that Drexel was helping her look for a volume of genealogy.

The study was distinctly a workroom. There were no vaults here, no heavily locked cupboards, no air of secrecy, for all the prince’s work was done upon the theory that the surest way to escape suspicion of harbouring a secret is to make a quiet show of having nothing to conceal. Shelves reaching to the ceiling were crowded with the government reports of a dozen nations, and with rows of semi-official files. It was frankly the room of such a man as Berloff appeared to be—a statesman without a post, an unofficial adviser to the Czar.

“When here a week ago,” whispered Sonya, “I barely got into this room when I had to fly. So we’ll have to begin at the very beginning—on those files.”

Scarcely breathing, their ears quickened for the faintest step, they set swiftly to work. The danger was great; discovery for Sonya, at least, would mean complete disaster.

As each file was examined it was thrust back, so that in case they were suddenly interrupted there might be no disorder to betray what they had been about. There were digests of reports on the railroads, on the peasants, on the wholesale corruption in the army commissariat, on a hundred things of vital interest to the statesman at large Berloff ostensibly was—but nothing relating to what they knew to be his real business.

“After all, he must have some secret hiding-place for his records of the political police,” whispered Drexel.

“Perhaps. But we must first make sure they are not here.”

The faint, musical jangling of bells without caused Drexel to glance through the window. Already the brief daylight was beginning to wane.

“What is it?” asked Sonya.

“A sleigh driving up with one man in it. Another guest, I suppose.”

Sonya, who had been turning swiftly through crop reports from the Ministry of Agriculture, gave a low cry and stared at a paper.

“We’re finding something! Think of it! Prince Berloff was behind that attempt a month ago to kill the prime minister with a bomb! The revolutionary leader who urged it on was in reality one of his spies!”

“Berloff try to kill the prime minister! Why?”

“Because that would be to kill two birds with one stone—make the revolutionists unpopular because of their inhuman methods, and make vacant the position he covets. But here are more! Examine the bottom of the files.”

“Here it is!” cried Drexel.

“What does it say? Quick!”

“Arrested in the dress of a railway porter——”

“But the prison!”

“Put in Central Prison.”

She gave a sharp moan of disappointment. “He was put there at first. But we know he was secretly removed to some other prison. Quick—we’ll find it!”

They went feverishly at the files. But suddenly both straightened up. Indistinct voices were heard in the corridor that opened into the library. In an instant the files were back in their places and all looked as before.

“I did not expect you to-day,” said a voice in the library.

“Berloff!” whispered Drexel.

“We’ll carry it off before him,” said Sonya, confidently, and she took down a volume of genealogy.

“Count Orloff was very eager you should have the reports at once,” a rumbling bass responded to Prince Berloff.

“That voice!” breathed Sonya.

“I, too, have heard it before! But where?”

The library filled with light. They crept to the half-open door. Sonya put her eyes to the crack and peered in. The next instant she had clutched Drexel with tense, quivering hands and was drawing him back. Even the deepening twilight could not hide her sudden pallor.

“Who is it?” Drexel whispered.

“The captain of gendarmes!”

“The one who pursued us? Captain Nadson?”

“Yes.”

They stared at each other in deepest consternation.

“If he finds us here together——” breathed Drexel.

“The destruction of our plans—trouble for you—ruin for me, and who knows what worse!”

“We must escape, then.”

“Yes—but how?”

“The windows, perhaps.”

“They are double, and are screwed down. The only way would be to break the glass. And then they would seize us before we could get out.”

Drexel thought. “Our only chance then is that they may go away without discovering us.”

“There is no other,” said she.

They crept back to the door, and this time Drexel put his eyes to the crack. The big captain was in the act of handing Berloff a large envelope.

“Here are the reports Count Orloff sent.”

“I suppose my advice is wanted soon?”

“Within two or three days, the count said.”

“Of course you can remain here until I have my advice ready. For a couple of days.”

“Just as you order, Your Excellency.”

“Very well. And now what have you to report concerning the young woman who made that attempt here a week ago?”

“I regret to say, nothing, Your Excellency.”

“Not even a clue?”

“She has completely disappeared. But her description is in the hands of our men all over Russia. We’ll get her sooner or later.”

“And the man who helped her? An American, you said.”

“We have only his word for that. He probably lied. He could have been English. As to him, also nothing.”

“You have had the police departments of the different cities send you the records of American and English passports?”

“Yes; but these foreign passports only give the age and the colour of one’s eyes and hair. That helps little to identify a man—especially since most of the Americans and Englishmen in Russia are between twenty-five and thirty, which was about the age of this woman’s confederate.”

“Well, keep after them, captain. There is another little matter on which I desire further information that I think you can give me, but I must refer to the record in the case. It is in my study. Come with me.”

The prince and Captain Nadson rose and started for the study door.

“It’s all up!” whispered Drexel. “I’ll attack them, and under cover of that you run.”

“No—no!” returned Sonya. “Don’t move—don’t breathe!”

And to Drexel’s consternation she calmly swept through the study door into the arms of the two men.