The shears of destiny

“BY order of The White One!” Drexel repeated—and the name of that great, impersonal, hidden leader went through him with a thrill of awed consternation. This was a serious situation indeed! He looked from the quiet, tense Nicolai, to the gleaming-eyed, alert Ivan.

“So I am the prisoner of The White One?”

They nodded.

“But why? What have I done?”

“I have already said we do not know,” returned Nicolai. “We have merely done what we were told.”

Drexel’s poise began to return to him. He took off his shuba and tossed it upon the crookbacked couch.

“All right, boys,” he said drily. “Just as you say. It’s a rule of my life to be obliging to the man who’s got the drop on me.”

“Will you be quiet, or”—Nicolai motioned toward a few pieces of rope in a corner.

“Oh, I’ll be quiet—for the present.” He sat down. “By the way—who is this White One?”

“We do not know,” said Nicolai. “We have never seen him. Our orders came through a second person.”

Ivan moved from the door across to Nicolai, begged Drexel’s Browning pistol with a mute look, and gave in exchange the big revolver. “That was really Nicolai’s, but he let me carry it,” he explained to Drexel. He patted the black, fearsome weapon, his face glowing on Nicolai. “Ah, comrade, what a beauty!”

Suddenly Drexel leaned back and roared with laughter. That he should on the one hand be searched for by the police, and on the other hand be held prisoner by the revolutionists—the absurdity of the situation was too much for him. And the situation seemed all the more absurd as he considered the personality of his captors—two starveling, threadbare lads. Yet even as he laughed he did not forget the grimness of his state—the prey of both contending parties. And ere his humour had subsided, he was beginning to rate his guards a little higher; for Ivan, hunched up on the floor with his back to the door, Drexel’s weapon on his knees, was as watchful as a terrier, and there was a high and purposeful determination in Nicolai’s pale face that could but command respect.

It was a quality of Drexel’s, one of the several on which his uncle based his predictions of his nephew’s business success, that when in a plight where he could not help himself, he could easily throw off all strength-exhausting thought and worry. He now stretched himself on the sofa, whose bones all painfully protruded through its starved skin, and drew his coat over him. “You fellows can make a night of it if you want to, but I’m going to sleep,” said he, and a few minutes later he was peacefully unconscious.

When he awoke the niggardly light of a leaden-hued Russian morning was creeping through the single window. For a time he walked restlessly up and down the room. Then he paused before the double-glazed window, which was curtained at the bottom, and looked out.

“You see the pavement is of cobblestones, so to jump would be dangerous,” commented the quiet voice of Nicolai.

Drexel glanced back. “Huh!” he grunted. But all the same he was startled at the keenness with which Nicolai had read his mind.

“Besides,” Nicolai went on, “the windows are screwed down. And even if you burst them and got safely to the ground you would only be arrested by the police.”

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 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. “This is a pretty stupid party you have invited me to,” he yawned at length—whereupon Ivan got out an old deck of cards, remarking that they never had time to play these days, and proceeded to teach him sixty-six, Nicolai keeping a steady eye on them all the while. The game was too simple to be of much interest, but what with it, and eating, and more chatter from Ivan, the short dim day faded into sullen dusk, then deepened into the long northern night.

Around eight o’clock footsteps were heard in the adjoining room. Presently there was a knock and on Ivan opening the door there entered two men, one about thirty and the other possibly forty, in caps, high boots and belted blouses beneath their coats. Despite their workingmen’s dress, Drexel could tell by the deference given them by his guards (though they all called one another “comrade”) that they were not what their clothes pronounced them. The older might be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a professor. They informed Ivan and Nicolai that there would be a little meeting in the next room, and that they might have a couple of hours off duty. The two lads went out, and after them the two men, and locked the door behind them.

By this time Drexel had guessed that this place, which hid from the police behind the mask of a workingmen’s boarding-house, was in reality a conspirative headquarters of the revolutionists. His first thought, on being left alone, was of escape. But after a little thinking he realised that what Nicolai had said of the window was quite true, that his only avenue of escape was through the next room, and that he was quite as securely guarded as if the men were in this room beside him.

He was wondering what all this strange business was about, grimly smiling at the situation in which he found himself, when the sound of low voices in the next room set him on a new train of thought. Perhaps in that talk he might learn something that would explain the mystery, and would aid his escape.

The nicest etiquette could hardly require that a prisoner of war should not eavesdrop upon his captors. He put out his oil lamp for a moment. From over the top of the door a thin knife’s edge of light cut into his darkness. He lit his lamp, drew a chair noiselessly to the door, and got upon it. Yes, fortunately for him, the house was old, the door sagged, and he had a very sufficient crack. At the table, on which stood a single candle, the room’s only light, sat the two men, and, her back to him, a woman of whom he could see nothing but that she wore the shapeless, quilted jacket, and the brown, coarse-knit shawl wound tightly about her head, which he had grown accustomed to seeing on workingwomen.

“What time was the American coming?” the woman whispered.

“At about nine, Sonya,” one of the men replied.

Their voices as they went on were low—so low that Drexel caught only fragments of sentences amid blanks of hushed unintelligibility. But from these fragments he pieced together two series of facts. First, that the revolutionists he had met, and hundreds of others, guided by the brain of the great invisible White One, were trying to learn in what prison Borodin was confined, as the first step in an endeavour to bring about his escape. His capture was a paralyzing blow to freedom’s cause, for he was the revolutionists’ greatest statesman; his brain was needed now, and, once the Autocracy was overthrown, there was none who could rebuild as he. Thus far the Government knew him only as Borodin, and the charge on which he was arrested, writing revolutionary articles, would mean no worse than a few years in prison or exile to Siberia; but at any moment the Government might discover that he was also Borski, the sought-after leader of the uprising in Southern Russia, and this discovery would be followed by instant execution. So immediate rescue was imperatively necessary.

Second, the young woman of his last night’s adventure had made the bold attempt in Prince Berloff’s house because it was believed the prince had in his possession some document revealing Borodin’s whereabouts.

Presently there was a knock at the outer door. “That must be the American,” said one of the men.

Drexel could hardly restrain an exclamation of surprise as the door opened and his eyes lighted upon the newcomer. For this third man in workingman’s clothes he knew. He was an American correspondent, James Freeman, whom Drexel had met several times in St. Petersburg cafés. He was a rather tall, black-bearded man of thirty-five, with a lean suppleness of body, piercing black eyes and a daring face. Drexel had always felt an uncanny shrinking when in company with Freeman, so cold, sinister and cynical did he seem; here was a man, his instinct told him, who respected nothing, who feared neither God, nor man, nor devil.

Freeman apparently knew the two men well, and after being introduced to the woman, he sat down. “We received your word that you had something to propose,” began the older of the men. “We are ready to hear what it is.”

“You know me, Dr. Razoff, and you can guess its nature.” Drexel could see the correspondent’s black eyes glitter.

“If it is one of your terroristic plans, you could have saved us all the trouble of this meeting,” returned Razoff. “You know we do not approve of such action.”

“And that’s one reason you have not succeeded better! The only way you can move these despots is by fear. Fear of immediate and awful annihilation! Blow enough of them up, and you can’t get a man bold enough to hold office. Then the Government is yours!”

“You have been directing terroristic plots for two years; you are the most implacable terrorist——”

“And the most successful,” put in Freeman.

“And the most successful that Russia has known. And what have you gained?”

“Ah, but what am I, and the few that gather around me, and the few executions that we carry out, among a myriad of despots? Let there be a thousand terroristic groups, and then you shall see!”

Razoff shook his head. “But since we are here, we might as well hear what you have to propose.”

“They have Borodin, and most likely we cannot free him. Well—make them afraid to arrest another leader. An eye for an eye—a leader for a leader. They have removed one of our men; as a lesson, let us remove one of theirs.”

“Which one?”

“The highest possible. The Czar himself, if the coward had not imprisoned himself in his palace and surrounded himself with an army. Since not the Czar, then his highest representative in St. Petersburg. Let’s kill the military governor.”

“Kill Prince Valenko!” the three ejaculated together.

“Aye, Prince Valenko, the very arch-foe of freedom!” cried the terrorist. “That will teach them it is not safe to go too far!”

There was a short silence. “What do you say, Sonya?” Razoff asked the woman.

She shook her head.

“And you Pestel?”

“I am against terrorism.”

“And that, Mr. Freeman, would be the answer of the entire Central Committee,” said Razoff. “We would not assist in a terroristic plot.”

“But I do not want your aid. What I want is your sanction. To have the proper intimidating effect, the death of Prince Valenko should not be the act of an isolated individual, but the act of a great organization that stands ready to repeat it.”

“That sanction we cannot give you.”

“But if I could make the proposal direct to The White One, I’m sure he would see the matter differently. Can you not let me see him?”

“As I have told you on other occasions, we are not allowed to do so.”

An angry look flamed into the terrorist’s lean dark face. “Then you don’t trust me!” he burst out. “We may differ in methods, but have I not proved my devotion to our cause?”

“Do not take this refusal as a personal matter, Mr. Freeman. The circumstances are such that we are not allowed to reveal The White One’s identity to anyone. We are under oath.”

The terrorist was too keen a man not to see that some slight doubt of him was lurking in their minds. However, he silently swallowed his mortification, and took his double rebuff with a philosophic shrug. He said he would abandon for the present his plan against the military governor’s life, begged to be considered a willing coöperator in whatever activity they might devise, and then took his leave. To Drexel, outside one door, it was a distinct relief when that sinister figure was outside the other.

“To think of his proposing to us to kill Prince Valenko!” said Razoff, laughing grimly.

“But he may undertake the plan himself,” said the woman anxiously.

“If he does,” returned Razoff, “we will warn the governor ourselves.”

All this while the woman had been seated, her back to Drexel; but now she rose and went around the table to snuff the spluttering candle. At the graceful ease of her walk, which even her shapeless garments could not obliterate, a wild and sudden possibility leaped up in Drexel; and when the candlelight fell upon her face, though forehead and chin and cheeks were hidden by the shawl, the possibility became a breath-taking certainty. Nose, mouth, eyes, were the same!

She snuffed the candle. “Excuse me for a few minutes,” she said to the men, and crossed straight toward Drexel’s door.