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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10102 ***
+
+THE CZAR'S SPY
+
+_The Mystery of a Silent Love_
+
+By CHEVALIER WILLIAM LE QUEUX
+_Author of "The Closed Book," Etc._
+
+
+
+ 1905.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+    I. HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE
+
+   II. WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED
+
+  III. THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"
+
+   IV. IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES
+
+    V. CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES
+
+   VI. THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS
+
+  VII. CONTAINS A SURPRISE
+
+ VIII. LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM
+
+   IX. STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE
+
+    X. I SHOW MY HAND
+
+   XI. THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
+
+  XII. "THE STRANGLER"
+
+ XIII. A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+  XIV. HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
+
+   XV. JUST OFF THE STRAND
+
+  XVI. MARKED MEN
+
+ XVII. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"
+
+XVIII. CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE
+
+
+"There was a mysterious affair last night, signore."
+
+"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Anything that interests us?"
+
+"Yes, signore," replied the tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking
+with a strong accent. "An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria
+about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought
+the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which
+managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the
+Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make
+away with the vessel."
+
+"To lose her, you mean?"
+
+The faithful Francesco, whose English had mostly been acquired from
+sea-faring men, and was not the choicest vocabulary, nodded, and, true
+Tuscan that he was, placed his finger upon his closed lips, indicative
+of silence.
+
+"Sounds curious," I remarked. "Since the Consul went away on leave
+things seem to have been humming--two stabbing affrays, eight drunken
+seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being
+cast away--a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people
+complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They
+should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and they'd soon alter their
+opinion."
+
+"Yes, they would, signore," responded the thin-faced old fellow with a
+grin, as he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Francesco Carducci was a
+well-known character in Leghorn; interpreter to the Consulate, and
+keeper of a sailor's home, an honest, good-hearted, easy-going fellow,
+who for twenty years had occupied the same position under half a dozen
+different Consuls. At that moment, however, there came from the outer
+office a long-drawn moan.
+
+"Hulloa, what's that?" I enquired, startled.
+
+"Only a mad stoker off the _Oleander_, signore. The captain has brought
+him for you to see. They want to send him back to his friends at
+Newcastle."
+
+"Oh! a case of madness!" I exclaimed. "Better get Doctor Ridolfi to see
+him. I'm not an expert on mental diseases."
+
+My old friend Frank Hutcheson, His Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at
+the port of Leghorn, was away on leave in England, his duties being
+relegated to young Bertram Cavendish, the pro-Consul. The latter,
+however, had gone down with a bad touch of malaria which he had picked
+up in the deadly Maremma, and I, as the only other Englishman in
+Leghorn, had been asked by the Consul-General in Florence to act as
+pro-Consul until Hutcheson's return.
+
+It was in mid-July, and the weather was blazing in the glaring
+sun-blanched Mediterranean town. If you know Leghorn, you probably know
+the Consulate with its black and yellow escutcheon outside, a large,
+handsome suite of huge, airy offices facing the cathedral, and
+overlooking the principal piazza, which is as big as Trafalgar Square,
+and much more picturesque. The legend painted upon the door, "Office
+hours, 10 to 3," and the green persiennes closed against the scorching
+sun give one the idea of an easy appointment, but such is certainly not
+the case, for a Consul's life at a port of discharge must necessarily
+be a very active one, and his duties never-ending.
+
+Carducci had left me to the correspondence for half an hour or so, and I
+confess I was in no mood to write replies in that stifling heat,
+therefore I sat at the Consul's big table, smoking a cigarette and
+stretched lazily in my friend's chair, resolving to escape to the cool
+of England as soon as he returned in the following week. Italy is all
+very well for nine months in the year, but Leghorn is no place for the
+Englishman in mid-July. My thoughts were wandering toward the English
+lakes, and a bit of grouse-shooting with my uncle up in Scotland, when
+the faithful Francesco re-entered, saying--
+
+"I've sent the captain and his madman away till this afternoon, signore.
+But there is an English signore waiting to see you."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"I don't know him. He will give no name, but wants to see the Signor
+Console."
+
+"All right, show him in," I said lazily, and a few moments later a tall,
+smartly-dressed, middle-aged Englishman, in a navy serge yachting suit,
+entered, and bowing, enquired whether I was the British Consul.
+
+When he had seated himself I explained my position, whereupon he said--
+
+"I couldn't make much out of your clerk. He speaks so brokenly, and I
+don't know a word of Italian. But perhaps I ought to first introduce
+myself. My name is Philip Hornby," and he handed me a card bearing the
+name with the addresses "Woodcroft Park, Somerset ------ Brook's." Then
+he added: "I am cruising on board my yacht, the _Lola_, and last night
+we unfortunately went aground on the Meloria. I have a new captain whom
+I engaged a few months ago, and he seems an arrant fool. Very
+fortunately for us a fishing-boat saw our plight and gave the alarm at
+port. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats and a tug, and after about
+three hours they managed to get us off."
+
+"And you are now in harbor?"
+
+"Yes. But the reason I've called is to ask you to do me a favor and
+write me a letter of thanks in Italian to the Admiral, and one to the
+Captain of the Port--polite letters that I can copy and send to them.
+You know the kind of thing."
+
+"Certainly," I replied, the more interested in him on account of the
+curious suspicion that the port authorities seemed to entertain. He was
+evidently a gentleman, and after I had been with him ten minutes I
+scouted the idea that he had endeavored to cast away the _Lola_.
+
+I took down a couple of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two
+letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when
+addressing Italian officialdom.
+
+"Fortunately, I left my wife in England, or she would have been terribly
+frightened," he remarked presently. "There was a nasty wind blowing all
+night, and the fool of a captain seemed to add to our peril by every
+order he gave."
+
+"You are alone, then?"
+
+"I have a friend with me," was the answer.
+
+"And how many of the crew are there?"
+
+"Sixteen, all told."
+
+"English, I suppose?"
+
+"Not all. I find French and Italians are more sober than English, and
+better behaved in port."
+
+I examined him critically as he sat facing me, and the mere fact of his
+desire to send thanks to the authorities convinced me that he was a
+well-bred gentleman. He was about forty-five, with a merry round,
+good-natured face, red with the southern sun, blue eyes, and a short
+fair beard. His countenance was essentially that of a man devoted to
+open-air sport, for it was slightly furrowed and weather-beaten as a
+true yachtsman's should be. His speech was refined and cultivated, and
+as we chatted he gave me the impression that as an enthusiastic lover of
+the sea, he had cruised the Mediterranean many times from Gibraltar up
+to Smyrna. He had, however, never before put into Leghorn.
+
+After we had arranged that his captain should come to me in the
+afternoon and make a formal report of the accident, we went out together
+across the white sunny piazza to Nasi's, the well-known pastry-cook's,
+where it is the habit of the Livornese to take their ante-luncheon
+vermouth.
+
+The more I saw of Hornby, the more I liked him. He was chatty and witty,
+and treated his accident as a huge joke.
+
+"We shall be here quite a week, I suppose," he said as we were taking
+our vermouth. "We're on our way down to the Greek Islands, as my friend
+Chater wants to see them. The engineer says there's something strained
+that we must get mended. But, by the way," he added, "why don't you dine
+with us on board to-night? Do. We can give you a few English things that
+may be a change to you."
+
+This invitation I gladly accepted for two reasons. One was because the
+suspicions of the Captain of the Port had aroused my curiosity, and the
+other was because I had, honestly speaking, taken a great fancy to
+Hornby.
+
+The captain of the _Lola_, a short, thickset Scotsman from Dundee, with
+a barely healed cicatrice across his left cheek, called at the Consulate
+at two o'clock and made his report, which appeared to me to be a very
+lame one. He struck me as being unworthy his certificate, for he was
+evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The
+owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly
+he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact,
+run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was
+running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he
+was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a very
+perilous position.
+
+"Very fortunate it wasn't more serious, sir," he added, after telling me
+his story, which I wrote at his dictation for the ultimate benefit of
+the Board of Trade.
+
+"Didn't you send up signals of distress?" I Inquired.
+
+"No, sir--never thought of it."
+
+"And yet you knew that you might be lost?" I remarked with recurring
+suspicion.
+
+The canny Scot, whose name was Mackintosh, hesitated a few moments, then
+answered--
+
+"Well, sir, you see the fishing-boat had sighted us, and we saw her
+turning back to port to fetch help."
+
+His excuse was a neat one. Probably it was his neglect to make signals
+of distress that had aroused the suspicions of the Captain of the Port.
+From first to last the story of the master of the _Lola_ was, I
+considered, a very unsatisfactory one.
+
+"How long have you been in Mr. Hornby's service?" I inquired.
+
+"Six months, sir," was the man's reply. "Before he engaged me, I was
+with the Wilsons, of Hull, running up the Baltic."
+
+"As master?"
+
+"I've held my master's certificate these fifteen years, sir. I was with
+the Bibbys before the Wilsons, and before that with the General Steam.
+I did eight years in the Mediterranean with them, when I was chief
+mate."
+
+"And you've never been into Leghorn before?"
+
+"Never, sir."
+
+I dismissed the captain with a distinct impression that he had not told
+me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal
+appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I
+wished he would bring them to me on the morrow.
+
+Was it possible that an attempt had actually been made to cast away the
+yacht, and that it had been frustrated by the master of the felucca, who
+had sighted the vessel aground? There certainly seemed some mystery
+surrounding the circumstances, and my interest in the yacht and its
+owner deepened each hour. How, I wondered, had the captain received that
+very ugly wound across the cheek? I was half-inclined to inquire of him,
+but on reflection decided that it was best to betray no undue curiosity.
+
+That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory,
+bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands
+of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant
+horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within
+the inner harbor, I found the _Lola_, one of the most magnificent
+private vessels I had ever seen. Her dimensions surprised me. She was
+painted dead white, with shining brass everywhere. At the stern hung
+limply the British flag, while at the masthead the ensign of the Royal
+Yacht Squadron. The yellow funnel emitted no smoke, and as she lay
+calmly in the sunset a crowd of dock-loungers and crimps leaned upon the
+parapet discussing her merits and wondering who could be the rich
+Englishman who could afford to travel in a small liner of his own--for
+her size surprised even those Italian dock-hands, used as they were to
+seeing every kind of craft enter the busy port.
+
+On stepping on deck Hornby, who like myself wore a clean suit of white
+linen as the most sensible dinner-garb in a hot climate, came forward to
+greet me, and took me along to the stern where, lying in a long wicker
+deck-chair beneath the awning, was a tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven man
+of about forty, also dressed in cool white linen. His keen face gave one
+the impression that he was a barrister.
+
+"My friend, Hylton Chater--Mr. Gordon Gregg," he said, introducing us,
+and then when, as we shook hands, the clean-shaven man exclaimed,
+smiling pleasantly--
+
+"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gregg. You are not a stranger by
+any means to Hornby or myself. Indeed, we've got a couple of your books
+on board. But I had no idea you lived out here."
+
+"At Ardenza," I said. "Three miles along the sea-shore. To-morrow I hope
+you'll both come and dine with me."
+
+"Delighted, I'm sure," declared Hornby. "To eat ashore is quite a treat
+when one has been boxed up on board for some time. So we'll accept,
+won't we, Hylton?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the other; and then we began chatting about the
+peril of the previous night, Hornby telling me how he had copied the two
+letters of thanks in Italian and sent them to their respective
+addresses.
+
+"Phil blasphemed like a Levant skipper when he copied those Italian
+words!" laughed Chater. "He had made three copies of each letter before
+he could get all the lingo in accordance with your copy."
+
+"I've been the whole afternoon at them--confound them!" declared the
+owner of the _Lola_ with a laugh. "But, of course, I didn't want to make
+a lot of errors in spelling. These Italians are so very punctilious."
+
+"Well, you certainly did the right thing to thank the Admiral," I said.
+"It's very unusual for him to send out torpedo-boats to help a vessel in
+distress. That is generally left to the harbor tug."
+
+"Yes, I feel that it was most kind of him. That's why I took all the
+trouble to write. I don't understand a word of Italian, neither does
+Chater."
+
+"But you have Italians on board?" I remarked. "The two sailors who rowed
+me out are Genoese, from their accent."
+
+Hornby and Chater exchanged glances--glances of distinct uneasiness, I
+thought.
+
+Then the owner of the _Lola_ said--
+
+"Yes, they are useful for making arrangements and buying things in
+Italian ports. We have a Spaniard, a Greek, and a Syrian, all of whom
+act as interpreters in different places."
+
+"And make a handsome thing in the way of secret commissions, I suppose?"
+I laughed.
+
+"Of course. But to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant,"
+declared the man with the fair beard. "In Greece and the Levant they are
+more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want
+squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and discovering mares'
+nests."
+
+"Did you have any trouble here?" I inquired.
+
+"They didn't visit us," he said with a smile, and at the same time he
+rubbed his thumb and finger together, the action of feeling paper money.
+
+This increased my surprise, for I happened to know that the Leghorn
+Customs officers were not at all given to the acceptance of bribes. They
+were too well watched by their superiors. If the yacht had really
+escaped a search, then it was a most unusual thing. Besides, what motive
+could Hornby have in eluding the Customs visit? They would, of course,
+seal up his wines and liquors, but even if they did, they would leave
+him out sufficient for the consumption of himself and his friends.
+
+No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to
+avoid the visit of the _dogana_. If he really had paid, he must have
+paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.
+
+Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly
+appointed craft?
+
+Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted
+saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone
+with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some
+artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles
+peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale
+blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely
+wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.
+
+Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him,
+chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked
+dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine of a
+brand which only a millionaire could keep in his cellar, while our host,
+apparently a most abstemious man, took only a glass of iced Cinciano
+water.
+
+The two smart stewards served in a manner which showed them to be well
+trained to their duties, and as the evening light filtering through the
+pale blue silk curtains over the open port-holes slowly faded, we
+gossiped on as men will gossip over an unusually good dinner.
+
+From his remarks I discerned that, contrary to my first impression,
+Hylton Chater was an experienced yachtsman. He owned a craft called the
+_Alicia_, and was a member of the Cork Yacht Club. He lived in London,
+he told me, but gave me no information as to his profession. It might be
+the law, as I had surmised.
+
+"You've seen our ass of a captain, Mr. Gregg?" he remarked presently.
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Well," I said rather hesitatingly, "to tell the truth, I don't think
+very much of his seamanship--nor will the Board of Trade when his report
+reaches them."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Hornby, "I was a fool to engage him. From the very first
+I mistrusted him, only my wife somehow took a fancy to the fellow, and,
+as you know, if you want peace you must always please the women. In this
+case, however, her choice almost cost me the vessel, and perhaps our
+lives into the bargain."
+
+"You knew nothing of him previously?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And he engaged the crew?" I asked.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Are they all fresh hands?"
+
+"All except the cook and the two stewards."
+
+I was silent. I did not like Mackintosh. Indeed, I entertained a
+distinct suspicion of both master and crew.
+
+"The captain seems to have had a nasty cut across the cheek," I
+remarked, whereupon my two companions again exchanged quick,
+apprehensive glances.
+
+"He fell down the other day," explained Chater, with a rather sickly
+smile, I thought. "His face caught the edge of an iron stair in the
+engine-room, and caused a nasty gash."
+
+I smiled within myself, for I knew too well that the ugly wound in the
+captain's face had never been inflicted by falling on the edge of a
+stair. But I remained silent, being content that they should endeavor
+to mislead me.
+
+After dessert had been served we rose, and in the summer twilight, when
+all the ports were opened, Hornby took me over the vessel. Everywhere
+was abundant luxury--a veritable floating palace. To each of the cabins
+of the owner and his guests a bathroom was attached with sea-water or
+fresh water as desired, while the ladies' saloon, the boudoir, the
+library, and the smoking-room were furnished richly with exquisite
+taste. As he was conducting me from his own cabin to the boudoir we
+passed a door that had been blown open by the wind, and which he
+hastened to close, not, however, before I had time to glance within. To
+my surprise I discovered that it was an armory crammed with rifles,
+revolvers and ammunition.
+
+It had not been intended that I should see that interior, and the reason
+why the Customs officers had been bribed was now apparent.
+
+I passed on without remark, making believe that I had not discerned
+anything unusual, and we entered the boudoir, Chater having gone back to
+the saloon to obtain cigars.
+
+The dainty little chamber was upholstered in carnation-pink silk with
+furniture of inlaid rosewood, and bore everywhere the trace of having
+been arranged by a woman's hand, although no lady passenger was on
+board.
+
+Just as we had entered, and I was admiring the dainty nest of luxury,
+Chater shouted to his host asking for the keys of the cigar cupboard,
+and Hornby, excusing himself, turned back along the gangway to hand them
+to his friend, thus leaving me alone for a few moments.
+
+I stood glancing around, and as I did so my eyes fell upon a quantity of
+photographs, framed and unframed, that were scattered about--evidently
+portraits of Hornby's friends. Upon a small side table, however, stood a
+heavy oxidized silver frame, but empty, while lying on the floor beneath
+a couch was the photograph it had contained, which had apparently been
+taken hastily out, torn first in half and then in half again, and cast
+away.
+
+Curiosity prompted me to stoop, pick up the four pieces and place them
+together, when I found them to form the cabinet portrait of a
+sweet-looking and extremely pretty English girl of eighteen or nineteen,
+with a bright, smiling expression, and wearing a fresh morning blouse of
+white piqué. Her hair was dressed low and fastened with a bow of black
+ribbon, while the brooch at her throat was in the form of a heart edged
+with pearls. Whether it was her sweet expression, or whether the curious
+look in her eyes had attracted my attention and riveted the face upon my
+memory, I know not. Perhaps it was the mystery of why it should have
+been so hastily torn from its frame and destroyed that held my
+attention.
+
+It seemed as though it had been torn up surreptitiously by someone who
+had been sitting on that couch, and who had had no opportunity of
+casting the fragments away through the port-hole into the water.
+
+I looked at the back of the torn photograph, and saw that it had been
+taken by a well-known and fashionable firm in New Bond Street.
+
+About the expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot
+describe--a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both
+attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were
+indelibly impressed upon my memory.
+
+Next second, however, hearing Hornby's returning footsteps, I flung the
+fragments hastily beneath the couch where I had discovered them.
+
+Why, I wondered, had the picture been destroyed--and by whom?
+
+The face of the empty frame had been purposely turned towards the
+panelling, therefore when he entered he did not notice that the picture
+had been destroyed; but after a brief pause, explaining that that cosy
+little place was his wife's particular nook, he conducted me on through
+the ladies' saloon and afterwards on deck, where we flung ourselves into
+the long chairs, took our coffee and certosina, that liqueur essentially
+Tuscan, and smoked on as the moon rose and the lights of the harbor
+began to twinkle in the steely night.
+
+As I sat talking, my thoughts ran back to that torn photograph. To me it
+seemed as though some previous visitor that day had sat upon the couch,
+destroyed the picture, and cast it where I had found it. But for what
+reason? Who was the merry-faced girl whose picture had aroused such
+jealousy or revenge?
+
+I purposely led the conversation to Hornby's family, and learned from
+him that he had no children.
+
+"You'll get the repairs to your engines done at Orlando's, I suppose?" I
+remarked, naming the great shipbuilding firm of Leghorn.
+
+"Yes. I've already given the order. They are contracted to be finished
+by next Thursday, and then we shall be off to Zante and Chio."
+
+For what reason, I wondered, recollecting that formidable armory on
+board. Already I had seen quite sufficient to convince me that the
+_Lola_, although outwardly a pleasure yacht, was built of steel, armored
+in its most vulnerable parts, and capable of resisting a very sharp
+fire.
+
+The hours passed, and beneath the brilliant moon we smoked long into the
+night, for after the blazing sunshine of that Tuscan town the cool
+sea-wind at night is very refreshing. From where we sat we commanded a
+view of the whole of the sea-front of Leghorn and Ardenza, with its
+bright open-air café-concerts and restaurants in full swing--all the
+life and gayety of that popular watering-place.
+
+Presently, when Hornby had risen to call a steward and left me alone
+with Hylton Chater, the latter whispered to me in confidence--
+
+"If you find my friend Hornby a little bit strange in his manner, Mr.
+Gregg, you must take no notice. To tell the truth, he is a man who has
+become suddenly wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and I fear
+it has had an effect upon his brain. He does very queer things at
+times."
+
+I looked at my companion in surprise. He was either telling the truth,
+or else he was endeavoring to allay my suspicions by an extremely clever
+ruse. Now I had already decided that Philip Hornby was no eccentric, but
+a particularly level-headed and practical man. Therefore I instantly
+arrived at the conclusion that the clean-shaven fellow who looked so
+much like a London barrister had some distinct and ulterior purpose in
+arousing within my mind suspicion of his host's sanity.
+
+It was past midnight when, having bade the strange pair adieu, I was put
+ashore by the two sailors who had rowed me out and drove home along the
+sea-front, puzzled and perplexed.
+
+Next morning, on my arrival at the Consulate, old Francesco, who had
+entered only a moment before, met me with blanched face, gasping--
+
+"There have been thieves here in the night, signore! The Signor
+Console's safe has been opened!"
+
+"The safe!" I cried, dashing into Hutcheson's private room, and finding
+to my dismay the big safe, wherein the seals, ciphers and other
+confidential documents were kept, standing open, and the contents in
+disorder, as though a hasty search had been made among them.
+
+Was it possible that the thieves had been after the Admiralty and
+Foreign Office ciphers, copies of which the Chancelleries of certain
+European Powers were ever endeavoring to obtain? I smiled within myself
+when I realized how bitterly disappointed the burglars must have been,
+for a British Consul when he goes on leave to England always takes his
+ciphers with him, and deposits them at the Foreign Office for
+safekeeping. Hutcheson had, of course, taken his, according to the
+regulations.
+
+Curiously enough, however, the door of the Consulate and the safe had
+been opened with the keys which my friend had left in my charge. Indeed,
+the small bunch still remained in the safe door.
+
+In an instant the recollection flashed across my mind that I had felt
+the keys in my pocket while at dinner on board the _Lola_. Had I lost
+them on my homeward drive, or had my pocket been picked?
+
+Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations
+upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his
+master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers
+in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend to the caller.
+
+In a few moments he returned, saying--
+
+"The English yacht left suddenly last night, signore, and the Captain of
+the Port has sent to inquire whether you know to what port she is
+bound."
+
+"Left!" I gasped in amazement "Why, I thought her engines were
+disabled!"
+
+A quarter of an hour later I was sitting in the private office of the
+shrewd, gray-haired functionary who had sent this messenger to me.
+
+"Do you know, Signor Commendatore," he said, "some mystery surrounds
+that vessel. She is not the _Lola_, for yesterday we telegraphed to
+Lloyd's, in London, and this morning I received a reply that no such
+yacht appears on their register, and that the name is unknown. The
+police have also telegraphed to your English police inquiring about the
+owner, Signor Hornby, with a like result. There is no such place as
+Woodcroft Park, in Somerset, and no member of Brook's Club of the name
+of Hornby."
+
+I sat staring at the official, too amazed to utter a word. Certainly
+they had not allowed the grass to grow beneath their feet.
+
+"Unfortunately the telegraphic replies from England are only to hand
+this morning," he went on, "because just before two o'clock this morning
+the harbor police, whom I specially ordered to watch the vessel, saw a
+boat come to the wharf containing a man and woman. The pair were put
+ashore, and walked away into the town, the woman seeming to walk with
+considerable difficulty. The boat returned, and an hour after, to the
+complete surprise of the two detectives, steam was suddenly got up and
+the yacht turned and went straight out to sea."
+
+"Leaving the man and the woman?"
+
+"Leaving them, of course. They are probably still in the town. The
+police are now searching for traces of them."
+
+"But could not you have detained the vessel?" I suggested.
+
+"Of course, had I but known I could have forbidden her departure. But as
+her owner had presented himself at the Consulate, and was recognized as
+a respectable person, I felt that I could not interfere without some
+tangible information--and that, alas! has come too late. The vessel is
+a swift one, and has already seven hours start of us. I've asked the
+Admiral to send out a couple of torpedo-boats after her, but,
+unfortunately, this is impossible, as the flotilla is sailing in an hour
+to attend the naval review at Spezia."
+
+I told him how the Consul's safe had been opened during the night, and
+he sat listening with wide-open eyes.
+
+"You dined with them last night," he said at last. "They may have
+surreptitiously stolen your keys."
+
+"They may," was my answer. "Probably they did. But with what motive?"
+
+The Captain of the Port elevated his shoulders, exhibited his palms, and
+declared--
+
+"The whole affair from beginning to end is a complete and profound
+mystery."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED
+
+
+That day was an active one in Questura, or police office, of Leghorn.
+
+Detectives called, examined the safe, and sagely declared it to be
+burglar-proof, had not the thieves possessed the key. The Foreign Office
+knew that, for they supply all the safes to the Consulates abroad, in
+order that the precious ciphers shall be kept from the prying eyes of
+foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it
+was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much
+relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing
+Street.
+
+His conjecture was the same as my own, namely, that the reason of
+Hornby's call upon me was to ascertain the situation of the Consulate
+and the whereabouts of the safe, which, by the way, stood in a corner of
+the Consul's private room. Captain Mackintosh, too, had taken his
+bearings, and probably while I sat at dinner on board the _Lola_ my keys
+had been stolen and passed on to the scarred Scotsman, who had promptly
+gone ashore and ransacked the place while I had remained with his master
+smoking and unsuspicious.
+
+But what was the motive? Why had they ransacked all those confidential
+papers?
+
+My own idea was that they were not in search of the ciphers at all, but
+either wanted some blank form or other, or else they desired to make use
+of the Consular seal. The latter, however, still remained on the floor
+near the safe, as though it had rolled out and been left unheeded. As
+far as Francesco and I could ascertain, nothing whatever had been taken.
+Therefore, we re-arranged the papers, re-locked the safe and resolved
+not to telegraph to Hutcheson and unduly disturb him, as in a few days
+he would return from England, and there would be time enough then to
+explain the remarkable story.
+
+One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
+station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
+lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which
+left at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They
+were foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as
+though they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed,
+however, that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in
+question. To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the
+Maremma, passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to
+any of the great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious
+pair who had come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had
+merely taken tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle
+Salvetti, the junction with that long main line which connects Genoa
+with Rome.
+
+The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the _Lola_ and
+first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
+alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
+first man who came aboard.
+
+"They were English!" remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
+sea, grinning knowingly. "And the English, when they drink their cognac,
+know not what they do."
+
+"Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?" I
+asked.
+
+"Reward!" echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. "Not a soldo!
+The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed that
+they were trying to make away with the vessel."
+
+The description of the _Lola_, its owner, his guest, and the captain
+were circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a
+request that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really
+one of mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across
+to some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
+vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
+that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any of
+the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
+first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
+tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
+evaded their watchers and got clean away.
+
+Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
+the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
+circumstances had prevented this and the _Lola_ had consequently
+escaped.
+
+For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
+and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris on
+to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
+extraordinary story.
+
+"The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident," he responded, holding up
+the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which contained
+his jealously-guarded ciphers. "By Jove!" he laughed, "how disappointed
+they must have been!"
+
+"It may be so," I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
+"But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
+that you possess."
+
+"What can my papers concern them?" exclaimed the jovial, round-faced
+Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper trading up and
+down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the most cultured and
+popular men in the British Consular Service. "I don't keep bank notes in
+that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't roll in gold as our
+public at home appears to think."
+
+"No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
+them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
+Englishmen abroad, you know."
+
+"Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
+registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
+papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon, depend
+upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it so as
+to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and sail
+merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave you a
+jolly good dinner and got nothing in return."
+
+"They might very easily have carried me off too," I declared.
+
+"Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had
+the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!"
+
+"But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she sailed,
+and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder who they were?
+Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were alone, and yet there
+was evidently a lady and a gentleman on board. I guessed there was a
+woman there, from the way the boudoir and ladies' saloon were arranged,
+and certainly no man's hand decorated a dinner table as that was
+decorated."
+
+"Yes. That's decidedly funny," remarked the Consul thoughtfully. "They
+went to Colle Salvetti, you say? They changed there, of course.
+Expresses call there, one going north and the other south, within a
+quarter of an hour after the train arrives from Leghorn. They showed a
+lot of ingenuity, otherwise they'd have gone direct to Pisa."
+
+"Ingenuity! I should think so! The whole affair was most cleverly
+planned. Hornby would have deceived even you, my dear old chap. He had
+the air of the perfect gentleman, and a glance over the yacht convinced
+me that he was a wealthy man traveling for pleasure."
+
+"You said something about an armory."
+
+"Yes, there were Maxims stowed away in one of the cabins. They aroused
+my suspicions."
+
+"They would not have aroused mine," replied my friend. "Yachts carry
+arms for protection in many cases, especially if they are going to
+cruise along uncivilized coasts where they must land for water or
+provisions."
+
+I told him of the torn photograph, which caused him some deep
+reflection.
+
+"I wonder why the picture had been torn up. Had there been a row on
+board--a quarrel or something?"
+
+"It had been destroyed surreptitiously, I think."
+
+"Pity you didn't pocket the fragments. We could perhaps have discovered
+from the photographer the identity of the original."
+
+"Ah!" I sighed regretfully. "I never thought of that. I recollect the
+name of the firm, however."
+
+"I shall have to report to London the whole occurrence, as British
+subjects are under suspicion," Hutcheson said. "We'll see whether
+Scotland Yard knows anything about Hornby or Chater. Most probably they
+do. Not long ago a description of men on board a yacht was circulated
+from London as being a pair of well-known burglars who were cruising
+about in a vessel crammed with booty which they dared not get rid of.
+They are, however, not the same as our friends on the _Lola_, for both
+men wanted were arrested in New Orleans about eight months ago, without
+their yacht, for they confessed that they had deliberately sunk it on
+one of the islands in the South Pacific."
+
+"Then these fellows might be another pair of London burglars!" I
+exclaimed eagerly, as the startling theory occurred to me.
+
+"They might be. But, of course, we can't form any opinion until we hear
+what Scotland Yard has to say. I'll write a full report in the morning
+if you will give me minute descriptions of the men, as well as of the
+captain, Mackintosh."
+
+Next morning I handed over my charge of the Consulate to Frank, and then
+assisted him to go through the papers in the safe which had been
+examined by the thieves.
+
+"The ruffians seem to have thoroughly overhauled everything," remarked
+the Consul in dismay when he saw the disordered state of his papers.
+"They seem to have read every one deliberately."
+
+"Which shows that had they been in search for the cipher-books they
+would only have looked for them alone," I remarked decisively. "What on
+earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports
+and things?"
+
+"Goodness only knows," replied my friend. Then, calling Cavendish, a
+tall, fair young man, who had now recovered from his touch of fever and
+had returned to the Consulate, he commenced to check the number of those
+adhesive stamps, rather larger than ordinary postage-stamps, used in
+the Consular service for the registration of fees received by the
+Foreign Office. The values were from sixpence to one pound, and they
+were kept in a portfolio.
+
+After a long calculation the Consul suddenly raised his face to me and
+said--
+
+"Then six ten shilling ones have been taken!"
+
+"Why? There must be some motive!"
+
+"They are of no use to anyone except to Consuls," he explained. "Perhaps
+they were wanted to affix to some false certificate. See," he added,
+opening the portfolio, "there were six stamps here, and all are gone."
+
+"But they would have to be obliterated by the Consular stamp," remarked
+Cavendish.
+
+"Ah! of course," exclaimed Hutcheson, taking out the brass seal from the
+safe and examining it minutely. "By Jove!" he cried a second later,
+"it's been used! They've stamped some document with it. Look! They've
+used the wrong ink-pad! Can't you see that there's violet upon it, while
+we always use the black pad!"
+
+I took it in my hand, and there, sure enough, I saw traces of violet ink
+upon it--the ink of the pad for the date-stamp upon the Consul's table.
+
+"Then some document has been stamped and sealed!" I gasped.
+
+"Yes. And my signature forged to it, no doubt. They've fabricated some
+certificate or other which, bearing the stamp, seal and signature of the
+Consulate, will be accepted as a legal document. I wonder what it is?"
+
+"Ah!" I said. "I wonder!" And the three of us looked at each other in
+sheer bewilderment.
+
+"The reason the papers are all upset is because they were evidently in
+search of some blank form or other, which they hoped to find," remarked
+my friend. "As you say, the whole affair was most carefully and
+ingeniously planned."
+
+We crossed the great sunlit piazza together and entered the Questura,
+that sun-blanched old palace with its long cool loggia where the sentry
+paces day and night. The Chief of Police, whom we saw, had no further
+information. The mysterious yacht had not put in at any Italian port.
+From him, however, we learned the name of the detective who had seen the
+two strangers leave Leghorn by the early morning train, and an hour
+afterwards the police-officer, a black-eyed man short of stature, but of
+an intelligent type, sat in the Consulate replying to our questions.
+
+"As far as I could make out, signore," he said, "the man was an
+Englishman, wearing a soft black felt hat and a suit of dark blue serge.
+He had hair just turning gray, a small dark mustache and rather high
+cheek-bones. In his hand he carried a small bag of tan leather of that
+square English shape. He seemed in no hurry, for he was calmly smoking a
+cigarette as he went across to the ticket office."
+
+"And his companion?" asked the Consul.
+
+"She was in black. Rather tall and slim. Her hair was fair, I noticed,
+but she wore a black veil which concealed her features."
+
+"Was she young or old?"
+
+"Young--from her figure," replied the police agent. "As she passed me
+her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in
+them--the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror."
+
+Next day the town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the
+Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the
+Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the
+night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had
+come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had
+maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic
+battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats,
+despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the
+coast.
+
+In the bright morning sunlight the sight was both picturesque and
+imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the
+great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all
+the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters
+was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the
+overwhelming force which upheld Britain's right in that oft-disputed
+sea.
+
+A couple of thousand British sailors were ashore on leave, their white
+caps conspicuous in the streets everywhere as they walked orderly in
+threes and fours to inspect the town. In the square outside the
+Consulate a squad from the flagship were setting up a temporary
+band-stand, where the ship's band was to play when evening fell, while
+Hutcheson, perspiring in his uniform, drove with the Admiral to make the
+calls of courtesy upon the authorities which international etiquette
+demanded.
+
+Myself, I had taken a boat out to the _Bulwark_, the great battleship
+flying the Admiral's flag, and was sitting on deck with my old friend
+Captain Jack Durnford, of the Royal Marines. Each year when the fleet
+put into Leghorn we were inseparable, for in long years past, at
+Portsmouth, we had been close friends, and now he was able to pay me
+annual visits at my Italian home.
+
+He was on duty that morning, therefore could not get ashore till after
+luncheon.
+
+"I'll dine with you, of course, to-night, old chap," he said. "And you
+must tell me all the news. We're in here for six days, and I was half a
+mind to run home. Two of our chaps got leave from the Admiral and left
+at three this morning for London--four days in the train and two in
+town! Gone to see their sweethearts, I suppose."
+
+The British naval officer in the Mediterranean delights to dash across
+Europe for a day at home if he can get leave and funds will allow. It is
+generally reckoned that such a trip costs about two pounds an hour while
+in London. And yet when a man is away from his _fiancée_ or wife for
+three whole years, his anxiety to get back, even for a brief day, is
+easily understood. The youngsters, however, go for mere
+caprice--whenever they can obtain leave. This is not often, for the
+Admiral has very fixed views upon the matter.
+
+"Your time's soon up, isn't it?" I remarked, as I lolled back in the
+easy deck-chair, and gazed away at the white port and its background of
+purple Apennines.
+
+The dark, good-looking fellow in his smart summer uniform leaned over
+the bulwark, and said, with a slight sigh, I thought--
+
+"Yes. This is my last trip to Leghorn, I think. I go back in November,
+and I really shan't be sorry. Three years is a long time to be away from
+home. You go next week, you say? Lucky devil to be your own master! I
+only wish I were. Year after year on this deck grows confoundedly
+wearisome, I can tell you, my dear fellow."
+
+Durnford was a man who had written much on naval affairs, and was
+accepted as an expert on several branches of the service. The Admiralty
+do not encourage officers to write, but in Durnford's case it was
+recognized that of naval topics he possessed a knowledge that was of
+use, and, therefore, he was allowed to write books and to contribute
+critical articles to the service magazines. He had studied the relative
+strengths of foreign navies, and by keeping his eyes always open he had,
+on many occasions, been able to give valuable information to our naval
+_attachés_ at the Embassies. More than once, however, his trenchant
+criticism of the action of the naval lords had brought upon his head
+rebukes from head-quarters; nevertheless, so universally was his talent
+as a naval expert recognized, that to write had never been forbidden him
+as it had been to certain others.
+
+"How's Hutcheson?" he asked a moment later, turning and facing me.
+
+"Fit as a fiddle. Just back from his month's leave at home. His wife is
+still up in Scotland, however. She can't stand Leghorn in summer."
+
+"No wonder. It's a perfect furnace when the weather begins to stoke up."
+
+"I go as soon as you've sailed. I only stayed because I promised to act
+for Frank," I said. "And, by Jove! a funny thing occurred while I was in
+charge--a real first-class mystery."
+
+"A mystery--tell me," he exclaimed, suddenly interested.
+
+"Well, a yacht--a pirate yacht, I believe it was--called here."
+
+"A pirate! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, she was English. Listen, and I'll tell you the whole affair.
+It'll be something fresh to tell at mess, for I know how you chaps get
+played out of conversation."
+
+"By Jove, yes! Things slump when we get no mail. But go on--I'm
+listening," he added, as an orderly came up, saluted, and handed him a
+paper.
+
+"Well," I said, "let's cross to the other side. I don't want the sentry
+to overhear."
+
+"As you like--but why such mystery?" he asked as we walked together to
+the other side of the spick-and-span quarter-deck of the gigantic
+battleship.
+
+"You'll understand when I tell you the story." And then, standing
+together beneath the awning, I related to my friend the whole of the
+curious circumstances, just as I have recorded them in the foregoing
+pages.
+
+"Confoundedly funny!" he remarked with his dark eyes fixed upon mine. "A
+mystery, by Jove, it is! What name did the yacht bear?"
+
+"The _Lola_."
+
+"What!" he gasped, suddenly turning pale. "The _Lola_? Are you quite
+sure it was the _Lola_--_L-O-L-A_?"
+
+
+"Absolutely certain," I replied. "But why do you ask? Do you happen to
+know anything about the craft?"
+
+"Me!" he stammered, and I could see that he had involuntarily betrayed
+the truth, yet for some reason he wished to conceal his knowledge from
+me. "Me! How should I know anything about such a craft? They were
+thieves on board evidently--perhaps pirates, as you say."
+
+"But the name _Lola_ is familiar to you, Jack! I'm sure it is, by your
+manner."
+
+He paused a moment, and I could see what a strenuous effort he was
+making to avoid betraying knowledge.
+
+"It's--well--" he said hesitatingly, with a rather sickly smile. "It's a
+girl's name--a girl I once knew. The name brings back to me certain
+memories."
+
+"Pleasant ones--I hope."
+
+"No. Bitter ones--very bitter ones," he said in a hard tone, striding
+across the deck and back again, and I saw in his eyes a strange look,
+half of anger, half of deep regret.
+
+Was he telling the truth, I wondered? Some tragic romance or other
+concerning a woman had, I knew, overshadowed his life in the years
+before we had become acquainted. But the real facts he had never
+revealed to me. He had never before referred to the bitterness of the
+past, although I knew full well that his heart was in secret filled by
+some overwhelming sorrow.
+
+Outwardly he was as merry as the other fellows who officered that huge
+floating fortress; on board he was a typical smart marine, and on shore
+he danced and played tennis and flirted just as vigorously as did the
+others. But a heavy heart beat beneath his uniform.
+
+When he returned to where I stood I saw that his face had changed: it
+had become drawn and haggard. He bore the appearance of a man who had
+been struck a blow that had staggered him, crushing out all life and
+hope.
+
+"What's the matter, Jack?" I asked. "Come! Tell me--what ails you?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear old chap," he answered hoarsely. "Really nothing--only
+a touch of the blues just for a moment," he added, trying hard to smile.
+"It'll pass."
+
+"What I've just told you about that yacht has upset you. You can't deny
+it"
+
+He started. His mouth was, I saw, hard set. He knew something concerning
+that mysterious craft, but would not tell me.
+
+The sound of a bugle came from the further end of the ship, and
+immediately men were scampering along the deck beneath as some order or
+other was being obeyed with that precision that characterizes the "handy
+man."
+
+"Why are you silent?" I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon my friend the
+officer. "I have told you what I know, and I want to discover the
+motive of the visit of those men, and the reason they opened Hutcheson's
+safe."
+
+"How can I tell you?" he asked in a strained, unnatural voice.
+
+"I believe you know something concerning them. Come, tell me the truth."
+
+"I admit that I have certain grave suspicions," he said at last,
+standing astride with his hands behind his back, his sword trailing on
+the white deck. "You say that the yacht was called the _Lola_--painted
+gray with a black funnel."
+
+"No, dead white, with a yellow funnel."
+
+"Ah! Of course," he remarked, as though to himself. "They would repaint
+and alter her appearance. But the dining saloon. Was there a long carved
+oak buffet with a big, heavy cornice with three gilt dolphins in the
+center--and were there not dolphins in gilt on the backs of the
+chairs--an armorial device?"
+
+"Yes," I cried. "You are right. I remember them! You've surely been on
+board her!"
+
+"And there is a ladies' saloon and a small boudoir in pink beyond, while
+the smoking-room is entirely of marble for the heat?"
+
+"Exactly--the same yacht, no doubt! But what do you know of her?"
+
+"The captain, who gave his name to you as Mackintosh, is an undersized
+American of a rather low-down type?"
+
+"I took him for a Scotsman."
+
+"Because he put on a Scotch accent," he laughed. "He's a man who can
+speak a dozen languages brokenly, and pass for an Italian, a German, a
+Frenchman, as he wishes."
+
+"And the--the man who gave his name as Philip Hornby?"
+
+Durnford's mouth closed with a snap. He drew a long breath, his eyes
+grew fierce, and he bit his lip.
+
+"Ah! I see he is not exactly your friend," I said meaningly.
+
+"You are right, Gordon--he is not my friend," was his slow, meaning
+response.
+
+"Then why not be outspoken and tell me all you know concerning him?
+Frank Hutcheson is anxious to clear up the mystery because they've
+tampered with the Consular seals and things. Besides, it would be put
+down to his credit if he solved the affair."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, I'm mystified myself. I can't yet discern
+their motive."
+
+"But at any rate you know the men," I argued. "You can at least tell us
+who they really are."
+
+He shook his head, still disinclined, for some hidden reason, to reveal
+the truth to me.
+
+"You saw no woman on board?" he asked suddenly, looking straight into my
+eyes.
+
+"No. Hornby told me that he and Chater were alone."
+
+"And yet an hour after you left a man and a woman came ashore and
+disappeared! Ah! If we only had a description of that woman it would
+reveal much to us."
+
+"She was young and dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious
+fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor
+veil, so that he could not clearly discern her features."
+
+"And her companion?"
+
+"Middle-aged, prematurely gray, with a small dark mustache."
+
+Jack Durnford sighed and stroked his chin.
+
+"Ah! Just as I thought," he exclaimed. "And they were actually here, in
+this port, a week ago! What a bitter irony of fate!"
+
+"I don't understand you," I said. "You are so mysterious, and yet you
+will tell me nothing!"
+
+"The police, fools that they are, have allowed them to escape, and they
+will never be caught now. Ah! you don't know them as I do! They are the
+cleverest pair in all Europe. And they have the audacity to call their
+craft the _Lola_--the _Lola_, of all names!"
+
+"But as you know who and what the fellows are, you ought, I think, in
+common justice to Hutcheson, to tell us something," I complained. "If
+they are adventurers, they ought to be traced."
+
+"What can I do--a prisoner here on board?" he argued bitterly. "How can
+I act?"
+
+"Leave it all to me. I'm free to travel after them, and find out the
+truth if only you will tell me what you know concerning them," I said
+eagerly.
+
+"Gordon, let me be frank and open with you, my dear old fellow. I would
+tell you everything--everything--if I dared. But I cannot--you
+understand!" And his final words seemed to choke him.
+
+I stood before him, open-mouthed in astonishment.
+
+"You really mean--well, that you are in fear of them--eh?" I whispered.
+
+He nodded slowly in the affirmative, adding: "To tell you the truth
+would be to bring upon myself a swift, relentless vengeance that would
+overwhelm and crush me. Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know--you cannot
+dream--what brought those desperate men into this port. I can guess--I
+can guess only too well--but I can only tell you that if you ever do
+discover the terrible truth--which I fear is unlikely--you will solve
+one of the strangest and most remarkable mysteries of modern times."
+
+"What does the mystery concern?" I asked, in breathless eagerness.
+
+"It concerns a woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"
+
+
+The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
+is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
+Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
+heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.
+
+One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
+year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
+people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
+continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
+for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
+month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.
+
+London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
+dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
+it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
+seaside.
+
+I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
+north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
+found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
+Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
+just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
+fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
+merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
+rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
+in linen.
+
+I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
+friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
+voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian--
+
+"Ah, signore!--why, actually, my padrone!"
+
+And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
+neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
+had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
+better himself.
+
+"Why, Olinto!" I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. "You--in London--eh?
+Well, and how are you getting on?"
+
+"Most excellently, signore," he answered in broken English, smiling.
+"But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
+fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!"
+
+"Where are you working?" I inquired.
+
+"At the Restaurant Milano, in Oxford Street--only a small place, but we
+gain discreetly, so I must not complain. I live over in Lambeth, and am
+on my way home."
+
+"I heard you married after you left me. Is that true?"
+
+"Yes, signore. I married Armida, who was in your service when I first
+entered it. You remember her? Ah, well!" he added, sighing. "Poor thing!
+I regret to say she is very ill indeed. She cannot stand your English
+climate. The doctor says she will die if she remains here. Yet what can
+I do? If we go back to Italy we shall only starve." And I saw that he
+was in deep distress, and that mention of his ailing wife had aroused
+within him bitter thoughts.
+
+Olinto Santini walked back at my side in the direction of Trafalgar
+Square, answering the questions I put to him. He had been a good,
+hard-working servant, and I was glad to see him again. When he left me
+he had gone as steward on one of the Anchor Line boats between Naples
+and New York, and that was the last I had heard of him until I found him
+there in London, a waiter at a second-rate restaurant.
+
+When I tried to slip some silver into his hand he refused to take it,
+and with a merry laugh said--
+
+"I wonder if you would be offended, signore, if I told you of something
+for which I had been longing and longing?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Well, the signore smokes our Tuscan cigars. I wonder if by chance you
+have one? We cannot get them in London, you know."
+
+I felt in my pocket, laughing, and discovered that I had a couple of
+those long thin penny cigars which I always smoke in Italy, and which
+are so dear to the Tuscan palate. These I handed him, and he took them
+with delight as the greatest delicacy I could have offered him. Poor
+fellow! As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that
+reminded him of his own beloved country.
+
+When we halted before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some
+further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking
+housemaid whom he had married.
+
+"Ah, signore!" he responded in a voice choked with emotion, dropping
+into Italian. "It is the one great sorrow of my life. I work hard from
+early morning until late at night, but what is the use when I see my
+poor wife gradually fading away before my very eyes? The doctor says
+that she cannot possibly live through the next winter. Ah! how delighted
+the poor girl would be if she could see the padrone once again!"
+
+I felt sorry for him. Armida had been a good servant, and had served me
+well for nearly three years. Old Rosina, my housekeeper, had often
+regretted that she had been compelled to leave to attend to her aged
+mother. The latter, he told me, had died, and afterwards he had married
+her. There is more romance and tragedy in the lives of the poor Italians
+in London than London ever suspects. We are too apt to regard the
+Italian as a bloodthirsty person given to the unlawful use of the knife,
+whereas, as a whole, the Italian colony in London is a hard-working,
+thrifty, and law-abiding one, very different, indeed, to those colonies
+of aliens from Northern Europe, who are so continually bringing filth,
+disease, and immorality into the East End, and are a useless incubus in
+an already over-populated city.
+
+He spoke so wistfully that his wife might see me once more that, having
+nothing very particular to do that evening, and feeling a deep sympathy
+for the poor fellow in his trouble, I resolved to accompany him to his
+house and see whether I could not, in some slight manner, render him a
+little help.
+
+He thanked me profusely when I consented to go with him.
+
+"Ah, signor padrone!" he said gratefully, "she will be so delighted. It
+is so very good of you."
+
+We hailed a hansom and drove across Westminster Bridge to the address he
+gave--a gloomy back street off the York Road, one of those narrow, grimy
+thoroughfares into which the sun never shines. Ah, how often do the poor
+Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our
+dismal, sordid streets! Dirt and squalor do not affect them; it is the
+damp and cold and lack of sunshine that so very soon proves fatal.
+
+A low-looking, evil-faced fellow opened the door to us and growled
+acquaintance with Olinto, who, striking a match, ascended the worn,
+carpetless stairs before me, apologizing for passing before me, and
+saying in Italian--
+
+"We live at the top, signore, because it is cheaper and the air is
+better."
+
+"Quite right," I said. "Quite right. Go on." And I thought I heard my
+cab driving away.
+
+It was a gloomy, forbidding, unlighted place into which I would
+certainly have hesitated to enter had not my companion been my trusted
+servant. I instinctively disliked the look of the fellow who had opened
+the door. He was one of those hulking loafers of the peculiarly Lambeth
+type. Yet the alien poor, I recollected, cannot choose where they shall
+reside.
+
+Contrary to my expectations, the sitting-room we entered on the top
+floor was quite comfortably furnished, clean and respectable, even
+though traces of poverty were apparent. A cheap lamp was burning upon
+the table, but the apartment was unoccupied.
+
+Olinto, in surprise, passed into the adjoining room, returning a moment
+later, exclaiming--
+
+"Armida must have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the
+people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are
+very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a
+chair, signore." And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted
+it with his handkerchief.
+
+I allowed him to go and fetch her, rather surprised that she should be
+well enough to get about after all he had told me concerning her
+illness. Yet consumption does not keep people in bed until its final
+stages.
+
+As I stood there, gazing round the room, I could not well distinguish
+its furthermost corners, for the lamp bore a shade of green paste-board,
+which threw a zone of light upon the table, and left the remainder of
+the room in darkness. When, however, my eyes grew accustomed to the dim
+light, I discerned that the place was dusty and somewhat disordered. The
+sofa was, I saw, a folding iron bedstead with greasy old cushions, while
+the carpet was threadbare and full of holes. When I drew the old rep
+curtains to look out of the window, I found that the shutters were
+closed, which I thought unusual for a room so high up as that was.
+
+Olinto returned in a few moments, saying that his wife had evidently
+gone to do some shopping in the Lower-Marsh, for it is the habit of the
+denizens of that locality to go "marketing" in the evening among the
+costermongers' stalls that line so many of the thoroughfares. Perishable
+commodities, the overplus of the markets and shops, are cheaper at night
+than in the morning.
+
+"I hope you are not pressed for time, signore?" he said apologetically.
+"But, of course, the poor girl does not know the surprise awaiting her.
+She will surely not be long."
+
+"Then I'll wait," I said, and flung myself back into the chair he had
+brought forward for me.
+
+"I have nothing to offer you, signer padrone," he said, with a laugh. "I
+did not expect a visitor, you know."
+
+"No, no, Olinto. I've only just had dinner. But tell me how you have
+fared since you left me."
+
+"Ah!" he laughed bitterly. "I had many ups and downs before I found
+myself here in London. The sea did not suit me--neither did the work.
+They put me in the emigrants' quarters, and consequently I could gain
+nothing. The other stewards were Neapolitans, therefore, because I was a
+Tuscan, they relegated me to the worst post. Ah, signore, you don't know
+what it is to serve those emigrants! I made two trips, then returned and
+married Armida. I called on you, but Tito said you were in London. At
+first I got work at a café in Viareggio, but when the season ended, and
+I was thrown out of employment, I managed to work my way from Genoa to
+London. My first place was scullion in a restaurant in Tottenham Court
+Road, and then I became waiter in the beer-hall at the Monico, and
+managed to save sufficient to send Armida the money to join me here.
+Afterwards I went to the Milano, and I hope to get into one of the big
+hotels very soon--or perhaps the grill-room at the Carlton. I have a
+friend who is there, and they make lots of money--four or five pounds
+every week in tips, they say."
+
+"I'll see what I can do for you," I said. "I know several hotel-managers
+who might have a vacancy."
+
+"Ah, signore!" he cried, filled with gratification. "If you only would!
+A word from you would secure me a good position. I can work, that you
+know--and I do work. I will work--for her sake."
+
+"I have promised you," I said briefly.
+
+"And how can I sufficiently thank you?" he cried, standing before me,
+while in his eyes I thought I detected a strange wild look, such as I
+had never seen there before.
+
+"You served me well, Olinto," I replied, "and when I discover real
+sterling honesty I endeavor to appreciate it. There is, alas! very
+little of it in this world."
+
+"Yes," he said in a hoarse voice, his manner suddenly changing. "You
+have to-night shown me, signore, that you are my friend, and I will, in
+return, show you that I am yours." And suddenly grasping both my hands,
+he pulled me from the chair in which I was sitting, at the same time
+asking in a low intense whisper: "Do you always carry a revolver here in
+England, as you do in Italy?"
+
+"Yes," I answered in surprise at his action and his question. "Why?"
+
+"Because there is danger here," he answered in the same low earnest
+tone. "Get your weapon ready. You may want it."
+
+"I don't understand," I said, feeling my handy Colt in my back pocket to
+make sure it was there.
+
+"Forget what I have said--all--all that I have told you to-night, sir,"
+he said. "I have not explained the whole truth. You are in peril--in
+deadly peril!"
+
+"How?" I exclaimed breathlessly, surprised at his extraordinary change
+of manner and his evident apprehension lest something should befall me.
+
+"Wait, and you shall see," he whispered. "But first tell me, signore,
+that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly
+affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the hands of your
+enemies."
+
+"My enemies! Who are they?"
+
+"They are unknown, and for the present must remain so. But if you doubt
+your peril, watch--" and taking the rusty fire-tongs from the grate he
+carefully placed them on end in front of the deep old armchair in which
+I had sat, and then allowed them to fall against the edge of the seat,
+springing quickly back as he did so.
+
+In an instant a bright blue flash shot through the place, and the irons
+fell aside, fused and twisted out of all recognition.
+
+I stood aghast, utterly unable for the moment to sufficiently realize
+how narrowly I had escaped death.
+
+"Look! See here, behind!" cried the Italian, directing my attention to
+the back legs of the chair, where, on bending with the lamp, I saw, to
+my surprise, that two wires were connected, and ran along the floor and
+out of the window, while concealed beneath the ragged carpet, in front
+of the chair, was a thin plate of steel, whereon my feet had rested.
+
+Those who had so ingeniously enticed me to that gloomy house of death
+had connected up the overhead electric light main with that
+innocent-looking chair, and from some unseen point had been able to
+switch on a current of sufficient voltage to kill fifty men.
+
+I stood stock-still, not daring to move lest I might come into contact
+with some hidden wire, the slightest touch of which must bring instant
+death upon me.
+
+"Your enemies prepared this terrible trap for you," declared the man who
+was once my trusted servant. "When I entered into the affair I was not
+aware that it was to be fatal. They gave me no inkling of their
+dastardly intention. But there is no time to admit of explanations now,
+signore," he added breathlessly, in a low desperate voice. "Say that you
+will not prejudge me," he pleaded earnestly.
+
+"I will not prejudge you until I've heard your explanation," I said. "I
+certainly owe my life to you to-night."
+
+"Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
+use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
+you."
+
+"But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me," I cried in desperation.
+
+"_Dio!_ Go! Go!" he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. "Fly,
+or we shall both die--both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
+dashing after you."
+
+I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
+he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
+though I had escaped him.
+
+A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
+fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
+instant later found myself out in the street.
+
+It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
+life--surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
+wondered, did it mean?
+
+Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
+Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
+policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
+Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
+No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
+Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
+ever heard of the "Milano."
+
+Even Olinto had played me false!
+
+I was filled with chagrin, for I had trusted him as honest, upright, and
+industrious; and was puzzled to know the reason he had deceived me, and
+why he had enticed me to the very brink of the grave.
+
+He had told me that he himself had fallen into the trap laid by my
+enemies, and yet he had steadfastly refused to tell me who they were!
+The whole thing was utterly inexplicable.
+
+I drove over to Lambeth and wandered through the maze of mean streets
+off the York Road, yet for the life of me I could not decide into which
+house I had been taken. There were a dozen which seemed to me that they
+might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with
+my life.
+
+Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow
+gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from
+the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He
+was the envoy of my unknown enemies, who had so ingeniously and so
+relentlessly plotted my destruction.
+
+That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is
+an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the
+pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile. But the unseen
+enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive
+reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets "over the
+water," as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main
+arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.
+
+My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly
+plot to kill me. With what motive?
+
+I wondered as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto
+Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had
+given my word not to prejudge him until he revealed to me the truth. Yet
+I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.
+
+When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always
+much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and
+every action of a friend covers the ruse of a suspected enemy.
+
+That day I did my business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not
+knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life
+were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go
+innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every
+possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of
+London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the
+old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could be out of town had left for
+the country or the sea.
+
+The only trace I found of the Italian was that he was registered at the
+office of the International Society of Hotel Servants, in Shaftesbury
+Avenue, as being employed at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery, but on inquiry
+there I found he had left more than a year before, and none of his
+fellow-waiters knew his whereabouts.
+
+Thus being defeated in every inquiry, and my business at last concluded
+in London, I went up to Dumfries on a duty visit which I paid annually
+to my uncle, Sir George Little. Having known Dumfries since my earliest
+boyhood, and having spent some years of my youth there, I had many
+friends in the vicinity, for Sir George and my aunt were very popular in
+the county and moved in the best set.
+
+Each time I returned from abroad I was always a welcome guest at
+Greenlaw, as their place outside the city of Burns was called, and this
+occasion proved no exception, for the country houses of Dumfries are
+always gay in August in prospect of the shooting.
+
+"Some new people have taken Rannoch Castle. Rather nice they seem,"
+remarked my aunt as we were sitting together at luncheon the day after
+my arrival. "Their name is Leithcourt, and they've asked me to drive you
+over there to tennis this afternoon."
+
+"I'm not much of a player, you know, aunt. In Italy we don't believe in
+athletics. But if it's out of politeness, of course, I'll go."
+
+"Very well," she said. "Then I'll order the victoria for three."
+
+"There are several nice girls there, Gordon," remarked my uncle
+mischievously. "You have a good time, so don't think you are going to be
+bored."
+
+"No fear of that," was my answer. And at three o'clock Sir George, his
+wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands
+high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of
+the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long
+ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was
+sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if
+somewhat impecunious owner.
+
+We could see its great round towers, standing grim and gray on the
+hillside commanding the whole of the valley, long before we approached
+it, and when we drove into the grounds we found a gay party in summer
+toilettes assembled on the ancient bowling-green, now transformed into a
+modern tennis-lawn.
+
+Mrs. Leithcourt and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed
+man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I
+joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were
+entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality was on a scale
+quite in keeping with the fine old place they rented.
+
+Tea was served on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired
+of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright,
+dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and
+flannel tennis skirt.
+
+I was apologizing for my terribly bad play, explaining that I had no
+practice out in Italy, whereupon she said--
+
+"I know Italy slightly. I was in Florence and Naples with mother last
+season."
+
+And then we began to discuss pictures and sculptures and the sights of
+Italy generally. I discerned from her remarks that she had traveled
+widely; indeed, she told me that both her father and mother were never
+happier than when moving from place to place in search of variety and
+distraction. We had entered the huge paneled hall of the Castle, and had
+passed up the quaint old stone staircase to the long banqueting hall
+with its paneled oak ceiling, which in these modern days had been
+transformed into a bright, pleasant drawing-room, from the windows of
+which was presented a marvelous view over the lovely Nithsdale and
+across to the heather-clad hills beyond.
+
+It was pleasant lounging there in the cool old room after the hot
+sunshine outside, and as I gazed around the place I noted how much more
+luxurious and tasteful it now was to what it had been in the days when I
+had visited its owner several years before.
+
+"We are awfully glad to be up here," my pretty companion was saying. "We
+had such a busy season in London." And then she went on to describe the
+Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I
+had read in my English paper beside the Mediterranean.
+
+She attracted me on account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen
+sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter.
+Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with
+Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there
+were others present, in order that our companions should understand.
+Therefore her gossip interested me, and as the golden sunset flooded the
+handsome old room I sat listening to her, inwardly admiring her innate
+grace and handsome countenance.
+
+I had no idea who or what her father was--whether a wealthy
+manufacturer, like so many who take expensive shoots and give big
+entertainments in order to edge their way into Society by its back door,
+or whether he was a gentleman of means and of good family. I rather
+guessed the latter, from his gentlemanly bearing and polished manner.
+His appearance, tall and erect, was that of a retired officer, and his
+clean-cut face was one of marked distinction.
+
+I was telling my pretty companion something of my own life, how, because
+I loved Italy so well, I lived in Tuscany in preference to living in
+England, and how each year I came home for a month or two to visit my
+relations and to keep in touch with things.
+
+Suddenly she said--
+
+"I was once in Leghorn for a few hours. We were yachting in the
+Mediterranean. I love the sea--and yachting is such awfully good fun, if
+you only get decent weather."
+
+The mention of yachting brought back to my mind the visit of the _Lola_
+and its mysterious sequel.
+
+"Your father has a yacht, then?" I remarked, with as little concern as I
+could.
+
+"Yes. The _Iris_. My uncle is cruising on her up the Norwegian Fiords.
+For us it is a change to be here, because we are so often afloat. We
+went across to New York in her last year and had a most delightful
+time--except for one bad squall which made us all a little bit nervous.
+But Moyes is such an excellent captain that I never fear. The crew are
+all North Sea fishermen--father will engage nobody else. I don't blame
+him."
+
+"So you must have made many long voyages, and seen many odd corners of
+the world, Miss Leithcourt?" I remarked, my interest in her increasing,
+for she seemed so extremely intelligent and well-informed.
+
+"Oh, yes. We've been to Mexico, and to Panama, besides Morocco, Egypt,
+and the West Coast of Africa."
+
+"And you've actually landed at Leghorn!" I remarked.
+
+"Yes, but we didn't stay there more than an hour--to send a telegram, I
+think it was. Father said there was nothing to see there. He and I went
+ashore, and I must say I was rather disappointed."
+
+"You are quite right. The town itself is ugly and uninteresting. But the
+outskirts--San Jacopo, Ardenza and Antigniano are all delightful. It was
+unfortunate that you did not see them. Was it long ago when you put in
+there?"
+
+"Not very long. I really don't recollect the exact date," was her reply.
+"We were on our way home from Alexandria."
+
+"Have you ever, in any of the ports you've been, seen a yacht called the
+_Lola_?" I asked eagerly, for it occurred to me that perhaps she might
+be able to give me information.
+
+"The _Lola_!" she gasped, and instantly her face changed. A flush
+overspread her cheeks, succeeded next moment by a death-like pallor.
+"The _Lola_!" she repeated in a strange, hoarse voice, at the same time
+endeavoring strenuously not to exhibit any apprehension. "No. I have
+never heard of any such a vessel. Is she a steam-yacht? Who's her
+owner?"
+
+I regarded her in amazement and suspicion, for I saw that mention of the
+name had aroused within her some serious misgiving. That look in her
+dark eyes as they fixed themselves upon me was one of distinct and
+unspeakable terror.
+
+What could she possibly know concerning the mysterious craft?
+
+"I don't know the owner's name," I said, still affecting not to have
+noticed her alarm and apprehension. "The vessel ran aground at the
+Meloria, a dangerous shoal outside Leghorn, and through the stupidity of
+her captain was very nearly lost."
+
+"Yes?" she gasped, in a half-whisper, bending to me eagerly, unable to
+sufficiently conceal the terrible anxiety consuming her. "And you--did
+you go aboard her?"
+
+"Yes," was the only word I uttered.
+
+A silence fell between us, and as my eyes fixed themselves upon her, I
+saw that from her handsome mobile countenance all the light and life had
+suddenly gone out, and I knew that she was in secret possession of the
+key to that remarkable enigma that so puzzled me.
+
+Of a sudden the door opened, and a voice cried gayly--
+
+"Why, I've been looking everywhere for you, Muriel. Why are you hidden
+here? Aren't you coming?"
+
+We both turned, and as she did so a low cry of blank dismay
+involuntarily escaped her.
+
+Next instant I sprang to my feet. The reason of her cry was apparent,
+for there, in the full light of the golden sunset streaming through the
+long open windows, stood a broad-shouldered, fair-bearded man in tennis
+flannels and a Panama hat--the fugitive I knew as Philip Hornby!
+
+I faced him, speechless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES
+
+
+Neither of us spoke. Equally surprised at the unexpected encounter, we
+stood facing each other dumbfounded.
+
+Hornby started quickly as soon as his eyes fell upon me, and his face
+became blanched to the lips, while Muriel Leithcourt, quick to notice
+the sudden change in him, rose and introduced us in as calm a voice as
+she could command.
+
+"I don't think you are acquainted," she said to me with a smile. "This
+is Mr. Martin Woodroffe--Mr. Gordon Gregg."
+
+I bowed to him in sudden resolve to remain silent in pretense that I
+doubted whether the man before me was actually my host of the _Lola_. I
+intended to act as though I was not sufficiently convinced to openly
+express my doubt. Therefore we bowed, exchanging greetings as strangers,
+while, carefully watching, I saw how greatly the minds of both were
+relieved. They shot meaning glances at each other, and then, as though
+reassured that I was mystified and uncertain, the man who called himself
+Woodroffe explained to my companion------
+
+"I've been over to Newton Stewart with Fred all day, and only got back a
+quarter of an hour ago. Aren't you playing any more to-day?"
+
+"I think not," was her reply. "We've been out there the whole afternoon,
+and I'm rather tired. But they're still on the lawn. You can surely get
+a game with someone."
+
+"If you don't play, I shan't. I returned to keep the promise I made
+this morning," he laughed, standing before the big open fireplace,
+holding his tennis racquet behind his back.
+
+I examined his countenance, and was more than ever convinced that he was
+actually the man who gave me the name of Hornby and the false address in
+Somerset. The pair seemed to be on familiar terms, and I wondered
+whether they were engaged. In any case, the man seemed quite at home
+there.
+
+As he chatted with the daughter of the house, he cast a quick, covert
+glance at me, and then darted a meaning look at her--a look of renewed
+confidence, as though he felt that he had successfully averted any
+suspicions I might have held.
+
+We talked of the prospects of the grouse and the salmon, and from his
+remarks he seemed to be as keen at sport as he had once made out himself
+to be at yachting.
+
+"My friend Leithcourt is awfully fortunate in getting such a splendid
+old place as this. On every hand I hear glowing accounts of the number
+of birds. The place has been well preserved in the past, and there's
+plenty of good cover."
+
+"Yes," I said. "Gilrae, the owner, is a keen sportsman, and before he
+became so hard up he spent a lot of money on the estate, which, I
+believe, has always been considered one of the very best in the
+southwest. There's salmon, they say, down in the Glen yonder--but I've
+never tried for any."
+
+"Certainly there is. I've seen several. I hope to try one of these days.
+The Glen is deep and shady--an ideal place for fish. The only
+disappointment here, as far as I can make out, is the very few head of
+black-game."
+
+"Yes, but every year they are getting rarer and rarer in this part of
+Scotland. A really fine black-cock is quite an event nowadays," I said.
+
+While we were talking, or rather while I was carefully watching the
+rapid working of his mind, Leithcourt himself entered and joined us. He
+had been playing tennis, and had come in to rest and cool.
+
+Host and guest were evidently on the most intimate terms. Leithcourt
+addressed him as "Martin," and began to relate a quarrel which his
+head-gamekeeper had had that day with one of the small farmers on the
+estate regarding the killing of some rabbits. And while they were
+talking Muriel suggested that we should stroll down to the tennis-courts
+again, an invitation which, much as I regretted leaving the two men, I
+was bound to accept.
+
+It seemed as though she wished purposely to take me away from that man's
+presence, fearing that by remaining there longer my suspicions might
+become confirmed. She was acting in conjunction with the man whom I had
+known as Hornby.
+
+There were still a good many people watching the game, for it was
+pleasant in those old-world gardens in the sunset hour. The dried-up
+moat was now transformed into a garden filled with rhododendrons and
+bright azaleas, while the high ancient beech-hedges, the quaint old
+sundial with its motto: "Each time ye shadowe turneth ys one daye nearer
+unto dethe," and the old stone balustrades gray with lichen, all spoke
+mutely of those glorious days when the fierce horsemen of the Lairds of
+Rannoch were feared across the Border, and when many a prisoner of the
+Black Douglas had pined and died in those narrow stone chambers in the
+grim north tower that still stood high above.
+
+Among the party strolling and lounging there prior to departure were
+quite a number of people I knew, people who had shooting-boxes in the
+vicinity and were my uncle's friends. In Scotland there is always a
+hearty hospitality among the sporting folk, and the laws of caste are
+far less rigorous than they are in England.
+
+I was standing chatting with two ladies who were about to take leave of
+their hostess, when Leithcourt returned, but alone. Hornby had not
+accompanied him. Was it because he feared to again meet me?
+
+In order to ascertain something regarding the man who had so
+mysteriously fled from Leghorn, I managed by the exercise of a little
+diplomacy to sit on the lawn with a young married woman named Tennant,
+wife of a cavalry captain, who was one of the house-party. After a
+little time I succeeded in turning the conversation to her fellow
+guests, and more particularly to the man I knew as Hornby.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Woodroffe is most amusing," declared the bright little woman.
+"He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is
+usually the life and soul of our party."
+
+"Yes," I said, "I like what little I have seen of him. He's a very good
+fellow, I should say. I've heard that he's engaged to Muriel," I
+hazarded. "Is that true?"
+
+"Of course. They've been engaged nearly a year, but he's been abroad
+until quite lately. He is rather close about his own affairs, and never
+talks about his travels and adventures, although one day Mr. Leithcourt
+declared that his hairbreadth escapes would make a most exciting book if
+ever written."
+
+"Leithcourt and he are evidently most intimate friends."
+
+"Oh, quite inseparable!" she laughed. "And the other man who is always
+with them is that short, stout, red-faced old fellow standing over there
+with the lady in pale blue, Sir Ughtred Gardner. Mr. Woodroffe has
+nicknamed him 'Sir Putrid.'" And we both laughed. "Of course, don't say
+I said so," she whispered. "They don't call him that to his face, but
+it's so easy to make a mistake in his name when he's not within hearing.
+We women don't care for him, so the nickname just fits."
+
+And she gossiped on, telling me much that I desired to know regarding
+the new tenant of Rannoch and his friends, and more especially of that
+man who had first introduced himself to me in the Consulate at Leghorn.
+
+Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with
+the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the
+Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make
+out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man
+who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning
+him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of
+evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril.
+Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The
+mystery grew deeper day by day, and was inexplicable.
+
+During the week that followed I sought to learn all I could regarding
+the new people at the castle.
+
+"They are taken up everywhere," declared my aunt when I questioned her.
+"Of course, we knew very little of them, except that they had a shoot up
+near Fort William two years ago, and that they have a town house in
+Green Street. They are evidently rather smart folks. Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"Judging from their house-party, yes," I responded. "They are about as
+gay a crowd as one could find north of Carlisle just at present."
+
+"Exactly. There are some well-known people among them, too," said my
+aunt. "I've asked them over to-morrow afternoon, and they've accepted."
+
+"Excellent!" I exclaimed, for I wanted an opportunity for another chat
+with the dark-eyed girl who was engaged to the man whose alias was
+Hornby. I particularly desired to ascertain the reason of her fear when
+I had mentioned the _Lola_, and whether she possessed any knowledge of
+Hylton Chater.
+
+The opportunity came to me in due course, for next afternoon the Rannoch
+party drove over in two large brakes, and with other people from the
+neighborhood and a band from Dumfries, my aunt's grounds presented a gay
+and animated scene. There was the usual tennis and croquet, while some
+of the men enjoyed a little putting on the excellent course my uncle, a
+golf enthusiast, had recently laid down.
+
+As I expected, Woodroffe did not accompany the party. Mrs. Leithcourt, a
+slightly fussy little woman, apologized for his absence, explaining that
+he had been recalled to London suddenly a few days before, but was
+returning to Rannoch again at the end of the week.
+
+"We couldn't afford to lose him," she declared to my aunt. "He is so
+awfully humorous--his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar
+each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic."
+
+I turned away and strolled with Muriel, pleading an excuse to show her
+my uncle's beautiful grounds, not a whit less picturesque than those of
+the castle, and perhaps rather better kept.
+
+"I only heard yesterday of your engagement, Miss Leithcourt," I remarked
+presently when we were alone. "Allow me to offer my best
+congratulations. When you introduced me to Mr. Woodroffe the other day I
+had no idea that he was to be your husband."
+
+She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of
+suspicion. Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a
+blank, hard voice--
+
+"It's very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant
+things."
+
+"And when is the happy event to take place?"
+
+"The date is not exactly fixed--early next year, I believe," and I
+thought she sighed.
+
+"And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?" I suggested,
+my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed
+remark. But she controlled herself perfectly.
+
+"I love the sea," she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight
+before her.
+
+"Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says."
+
+"Yes. He received a wire, and had to leave immediately. It was an awful
+bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey
+yesterday."
+
+"But he'll be back here again, won't he?"
+
+"I really don't know. It seems quite uncertain. I had a letter this
+morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business,
+instead of coming up to us again."
+
+There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could
+not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from
+Scotland because of my presence.
+
+How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the
+yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any
+undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the
+puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking
+ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her
+answers.
+
+As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly
+impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her
+parents. Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and
+terrible secret which she feared might be revealed. There was a distant
+look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in
+some constant and ever-present dread. Of course she told me nothing of
+her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and
+her bearing a curious apathy--a want of the real enthusiasm of
+affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it
+therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a
+matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the
+mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their
+daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and
+intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's
+happiness more often than the public ever dream. Tragedy is, alas!
+written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the
+fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the
+paragraph beneath. Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own
+free choice in the matter of a husband is, alas! nowadays the exception,
+for parents who want to "get on" up the social scale have found that
+pretty daughters are a marketable commodity, and many a man has been
+placed "on his legs," both financially and socially, by his son-in-law.
+Hence the marriage of convenience is fast becoming common, while in the
+same ratio the divorce petitions are unfortunately on the increase.
+
+I read tragedy in the dark luminous eyes of Muriel Leithcourt. I knew
+that her young heart was over-burdened by some secret sorrow or guilty
+knowledge that she would reveal to me if she dared. Her own words told
+me that she was perplexed; that she longed to confide and seek advice
+of someone, yet by reason of some hidden and untoward circumstance her
+lips were sealed.
+
+I tried to question her further regarding Woodroffe, of what profession
+he followed and of his past.
+
+But she evidently suspected me, for I had unfortunately mentioned the
+_Lola_.
+
+She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me
+nothing--absolutely nothing.
+
+Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch.
+
+Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended,
+indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the
+Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred
+people and very hospitable.
+
+We exchanged a good many visits and dinners, and while my uncle several
+times invited Leithcourt and his friends to his shoot with _al fresco_
+luncheon, which the ladies joined, the tenant of Rannoch always invited
+us back in return.
+
+Thus I gained many opportunities of talking with Muriel, and of watching
+her closely. I had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and on
+account of that it seemed that she was in no way averse to my
+companionship. She could handle a rook-rifle as well as any woman, and
+was really a very fair shot. Therefore we often found ourselves alone
+tramping across the wide open moorland, or along those delightful glens
+of the Nithsdale, glorious in the autumn tints of their luxurious
+foliage.
+
+Her father, on the other hand, seemed to view me with considerable
+suspicion, and I could easily discern that I was only asked to Rannoch
+because it was impossible to invite my uncle without including myself.
+
+Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever
+endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him
+alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our
+strange encounter in Leghorn?
+
+His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him
+surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have
+done. He was a man of gloomy mood, and often he would leave his guests
+and take walks alone, musing and brooding. On several occasions I
+followed him in secret, and found to my surprise that although he made
+long detours in various directions, yet he always arrived at the same
+spot at the same hour--five o'clock.
+
+The place where he halted was on the edge of a dark wood on the brow of
+a hill about three miles from Rannoch--a good place to get woodpigeon,
+as they came to roost. It was fully two miles across the hills from the
+high road to Moniaive, and from the break the gray wall where he was in
+the habit of sitting to rest and smoke, there stretched the beautiful
+panorama of Loch Urr and the heatherclad hills beyond.
+
+Leithcourt never went direct to the place, but always so timed his walks
+that he arrived just at five, and remained there smoking cigarettes
+until half-past, as though awaiting the arrival of some person he
+expected. Once or twice his guests suggested shooting pigeons at
+sundown, but he always had some excuse for opposing the proposal, and
+thus the party, unsuspecting the reason, were kept away from that
+particular lonely spot.
+
+In my youth I had sat many a quiet hour there in the darkening gloom and
+shot many a pigeon, therefore I knew the wood well, and was able to
+watch the tenant of Rannoch from points where he least suspected the
+presence of another.
+
+Once, when I was alone with Muriel, I mentioned her father's capacity
+for walking alone, whereupon she said--
+
+"Oh, yes, he was always fond of walking. He used to take me with him
+when we first came here, but he always went so far that I refused to go
+any more."
+
+She never once mentioned Woodroffe. I allowed her plenty of opportunity
+for doing so, chaffing her about her forthcoming marriage in order that
+she might again refer to him. But never did his name pass her lips. I
+understood that he had gone abroad--that was all.
+
+Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night
+when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown
+enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life
+had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day
+succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery
+surrounded me on every hand.
+
+Indeed, by one curious fact alone it was increased a hundredfold.
+
+Late one afternoon, when I had been out shooting all day with the
+Rannoch party, I drove back to the castle in the Perth-cart with three
+other men, and found the ladies assembled in the great hall with tea
+ready. A welcome log-fire was blazing in the huge old grate, for in
+October it is chilly and damp in Scotland and a fire is pleasant at
+evening.
+
+Muriel was seated upon the high padded fender--like those one has at
+clubs--which always formed a cosy spot for the ladies, especially after
+dinner. When I entered, she rose quickly and handed me my cup,
+exclaiming as she looked at me--
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gregg! what a state you are in!"
+
+"Yes, I was after snipe, and slipped into a bog," I laughed. "But it
+was early this morning, and the mud has dried."
+
+"Come with me, and I'll get you a brush," she urged. And I followed her
+through the long corridors and upstairs to a small sitting-room which
+was her own little sanctum, where she worked and read--a cosy little
+place with two queer old windows in the colossal wall, and a floor of
+polished oak, and great black beams above. When the owner had occupied
+the house that room had been disused, but it had, I found, been now
+completely transformed, and was a most tasteful little nest of luxury
+with its bright chintzes, its Turkey rugs and its cheerful fire on the
+old stone hearth.
+
+She laughed when I expressed admiration of her little den, and said--
+
+"I believe it was the armory in the old days. But it makes quite a comfy
+little boudoir. I can lock myself in and be quite quiet when the party
+are too noisy," she added merrily.
+
+But as my eyes wandered around they suddenly fell upon an object which
+caused me to start with profound wonder--a cabinet photograph in a frame
+of crimson leather.
+
+The picture was that of a young girl--a duplicate of the portrait I had
+found torn across and flung aside on board the _Lola_!
+
+The merry eyes laughed out at me as I stood staring at it in sheer
+bewilderment.
+
+"What a pretty girl!" I exclaimed quickly, concealing my surprise. "Who
+is she?"
+
+My companion was silent a moment, her dark eyes meeting mine with a
+strange look of inquiry.
+
+"Yes," she laughed, "everyone admires her. She was a schoolfellow of
+mine--Elma Heath."
+
+"Heath!" I echoed. "Where was she at school with you?"
+
+"At Chichester."
+
+"Long ago?"
+
+"A little over two years."
+
+"She's very beautiful!" I declared, taking up the photograph and
+discovering that it bore the name of the same well-known photographer in
+New Bond Street as that I had found on the carpet of the _Lola_ in the
+Mediterranean.
+
+"Yes. She's really prettier than her photograph. It hardly does her
+justice."
+
+"And where is she now?"
+
+"Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Gregg?" laughed the handsome girl.
+"Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?"
+
+"I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt," I answered
+with mock severity. "I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a
+flirt, could she?"
+
+"No. I will give you your due," she declared. "You never do flirt. That
+is why I like you."
+
+"Thanks for your candor, Miss Leithcourt," I said.
+
+"Only," she added, "you seem smitten with Elma's charms."
+
+"I think she's extremely pretty," I remarked, with the photograph still
+in my hand. "Do you ever see her now?"
+
+"Never," she replied. "Since the day I left school we have never met.
+She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after
+I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I
+have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a
+doctor."
+
+Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, retained knowledge of
+the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I
+might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was
+somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.
+
+What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single
+instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the
+picture which had created such a deep impression upon me should be
+preserved in her own little boudoir as a souvenir of a devoted
+school-friend.
+
+"Then you have heard absolutely nothing as to her present position or
+whereabouts--whether she is married, for instance?"
+
+"Ah!" she cried mischievously. "You betray yourself by your own words.
+You have fallen in love with her, I really believe, Mr. Gregg. If she
+knew, she'd be most gratified--or at least, she ought to be."
+
+At which I smiled, preferring that she should adopt that theory in
+preference to any other.
+
+She spoke frankly, as a pure honest girl would speak. She was not
+jealous, but she nevertheless resented--as women do resent such
+things--that I should fall in love with a friend's photograph.
+
+There was a mystery surrounding that torn picture; of that I was
+absolutely certain. The remembrance of that memorable evening when I had
+dined on board the _Lola_ arose vividly before me. Why had the girl's
+portrait been so ruthlessly destroyed and the frame turned with its face
+to the wall? There was some reason--some distinct and serious motive in
+it. Had Muriel told me the truth, I wondered, or was she merely seeking
+to shield the suspected man who was her lover?
+
+Hour by hour the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more
+inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the
+London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no
+house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of
+Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the
+castle, I found that they were really persons unknown in society. They
+were merely of that class of witty, well-dressed parasites who always
+cling on to the wealthy and make believe that they are smart and of the
+_grande monde_. Rannoch was an expensive place to keep up, with all that
+big retinue of servants and gamekeepers, and with those nightly dinners
+cooked by a French _chef_; yet Leithcourt seemed to possess a long
+pocket and smiled upon those parasites, officers of doubtful commission
+and younger sprigs of the pseudo-aristocracy who surrounded him, while
+his wife, keen-eyed and of superb bearing, was punctilious concerning
+all points of etiquette, and at the same time indefatigable that her
+mixed set of guests should enjoy a really good time.
+
+But I was not the only person who could not make them out. My uncle was
+the first to open my eyes regarding the true character of certain of the
+men staying at Rannoch.
+
+"I think, Gordon, that one or two of those fellows with Leithcourt are
+rank outsiders," he said confidentially to me one night after we had had
+a hard day's shooting, and were playing a hundred up at billiards before
+retiring. "One man, who arrived yesterday, I know too well. He was
+struck off the list at Boodle's three years ago for card-sharping--that
+thin-faced, fair-mustached man named Cadby. I suppose Leithcourt doesn't
+know it, or he wouldn't have him up here among respectable folk." And my
+uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half
+inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed
+beyond the pale of good society.
+
+"Better not say anything about it," I urged. "It's Leithcourt's own
+affair, uncle--not ours."
+
+"Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be
+allowed to ask us to meet such fellows. It's coming it a little too
+thick, Gordon. We men can stand the women of the party, but the
+men--well, I tell you candidly, I shan't accept his invites to shoot
+again."
+
+"No, no, uncle," I protested. "Probably it's owing to ignorance. You'll
+be able, a little later on, to give him valuable tips. He's a good
+fellow, and only wants experience in Scotland to get along all right."
+
+"Yes. But I don't like it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a
+fair game," declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. "I'm
+not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my
+house--and I tell you that plainly."
+
+Next day I shot with the Carmichaels of Crossburn, and about four
+o'clock, after a good day, took leave of the party in the Black Glen,
+and started off alone to walk home, a distance of about six miles. It
+was already growing dusk, and would be quite dark, I knew, before I
+reached my uncle's house. My most direct way was to follow the river for
+about two miles and then strike straight across the large dense wood,
+and afterwards over a wide moor full of treacherous bogs and pitfalls
+for the unwary.
+
+My gun over my shoulder, I had walked on for about three-quarters of an
+hour, and had nearly traversed the wood, at that hour so dark that I had
+considerable difficulty in finding my way, when--of a sudden--I fancied
+I distinguished voices.
+
+I halted. Yes. Men were talking in low tones of confidence, and in that
+calm stillness of evening they appeared nearer to me than they actually
+were.
+
+I listened, trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out
+nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself,
+for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs
+cracking as they forced their way through them.
+
+Of a sudden, while standing there not daring to breathe lest I should
+betray my presence, a strange sound fell upon my eager ears.
+
+Next moment I realized that I was at that place where Leithcourt so
+persistently kept his disappointed tryst, having approached it from
+within the wood.
+
+The sound alarmed me, and yet it was neither an explosion of fire-arms
+nor a startling cry for help.
+
+One word reached me in the darkness--one single word of bitter and
+withering reproach.
+
+Heedless of the risk I ran and the peril to which I exposed myself, I
+dashed forward with a resolve to penetrate the mystery, until I came to
+the gap in the rough stone wall where Leithcourt's habit was to halt
+each day at sundown.
+
+There, in the falling darkness, the sight that met my eyes at the spot
+held me rigid, appalled, stupefied.
+
+In that instant I realized the truth--a truth that was surely the
+strangest ever revealed to any man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES
+
+
+As I dashed forward to the gap in the boundary wall of the wood, I
+nearly stumbled over a form lying across the narrow path.
+
+So dark was it beneath the trees that at first I could not plainly make
+out what it was until I bent and my hands touched the garments of a
+woman. Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the
+cloak was a thick woolen one.
+
+Was she dead, I wondered? That cry--that single word of
+reproach--sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been
+struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words.
+
+I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
+Yet just at that moment my strained ears caught a sound--the sound of
+someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
+demanded who was there.
+
+There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
+ceased.
+
+As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
+about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
+however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
+well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.
+
+It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
+feet was a woman. But whom?
+
+Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
+matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
+receding--escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
+of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
+thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
+stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.
+
+I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
+so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
+wall of the wood.
+
+In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
+was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
+runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
+land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
+blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
+in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.
+
+Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
+the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
+the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
+behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
+two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
+it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
+or other of the two glens--which I could not decide.
+
+I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
+to act.
+
+Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?
+
+That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
+boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
+excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
+and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
+castle where the guests, ready dressed, were assembling prior to
+dinner.
+
+I was welcomed warmly, as I was always by the men of the party, who
+seeing my muddy plight at once offered me a glass of the sportsman's
+drink in Scotland, and while I was adding soda to it Leithcourt himself
+joined his guests, ready dressed in his dinner jacket, having just
+descended from his room.
+
+"Hulloa, Gregg!" he exclaimed heartily, holding out his hand. "Had a
+long day of it, evidently. Good sport with Carmichael--eh?"
+
+"Very fair," I said. "I remained longer with him than I ought to have
+done, and have got belated on my way home, so looked in for a
+refresher."
+
+"Quite right," he laughed merrily. "You're always welcome, you know. I'd
+have been annoyed if I knew you had passed without coming in."
+
+And Muriel, a pretty figure in a low-cut gown of turquoise chiffon,
+standing behind her father, smiled secretly at me. I smiled at her in
+return, but it was a strange smile, I fear, for with the knowledge of
+that additional mystery within me--the mystery of the woman lying
+unconscious or perhaps dead, up in the wood--held me stupefied.
+
+I had suspected Leithcourt because of his constant trysts at that spot,
+but I had at least proved that my suspicions were entirely without
+foundation. He could not have got home and dressed in the time, for I
+had taken the nearest route to the castle while the fugitive would be
+compelled to make a wide detour.
+
+I only remained a few minutes, then went forth into the darkness again,
+utterly undecided how to act. My first impulse was to return to the
+woman's aid, for she might not be dead after all.
+
+And yet when I recollected that hoarse cry that rang out in the
+darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this
+latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You
+will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there
+suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had so
+ingeniously escaped.
+
+If the victim were dead, what aid could I render? A knife had, I
+believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started
+off after the fugitive. The only doubt in my own mind was whether the
+unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my
+disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.
+
+Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave
+it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards
+transpired.
+
+I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
+before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
+Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
+always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
+present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
+and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.
+
+Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
+would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
+Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
+knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
+chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
+secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
+very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
+visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
+ignorance of what had transpired.
+
+But who was the woman? Was she young or old?
+
+A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
+that I might examine her features.
+
+One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
+lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
+that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
+from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
+truth?
+
+I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
+certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
+might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
+suspicion.
+
+I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
+was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.
+
+"It's the gun, I suppose," I remarked. "I've been carrying it all day,
+and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn."
+
+"The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear," my uncle
+remarked. "Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot."
+
+"They did, but he'd got another engagement--over at Kenmure Castle, I
+think."
+
+I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
+acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
+hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
+myself?
+
+I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
+the distant gloom, the black line of wood loomed up against the stormy
+sky. The stars were no longer shining and the rain clouds had gathered.
+I stood with my face turned to the dark indistinct spot that held the
+secret, lost in wonderment.
+
+At last I closed the window and turned in, but no sleep came to my
+eyes, so full was my mind of the startling events of those past few
+months and of that gruesome discovery I had made.
+
+Had the fugitive actually recognized me? Probably my voice when I had
+called out had betrayed me. Hour after hour I lay puzzling, trying to
+arrive at some solution of that intricate problem which now presented
+itself. Muriel could tell me what I wished to know. Of that I was
+certain. Yet she dared not speak. Some inexpressible terror held her
+dumb--she was affianced to the man Martin Woodroffe.
+
+Again I rose, lit the gas, and tried to read a novel. But I could not
+concentrate my thoughts, which were ever wandering to that strange
+mystery of the wood. At six I shaved, descended, and went out with the
+dogs for a short walk; but on returning I heard of nothing unusual, and
+was compelled to remain inactive until near mid-day.
+
+I was crossing the stable-yard where I had gone to order the carriage
+for my aunt, when an English groom, suddenly emerging from the
+harness-room, touched his cap, saying--
+
+"Have you 'eard, sir, of the awful affair up yonder?"
+
+"Of what?" I asked quickly.
+
+"Well, sir, there seems to have been a murder last night up in Rannoch
+Wood," said the man quickly. "Holden, the gardener, has just come back
+from that village and says that Mr. Leithcourt's under-gamekeeper as he
+was going home at five this morning came upon a dead body."
+
+"A dead body!" I exclaimed, feigning great surprise.
+
+"Yes, sir--a youngish man. He'd been stabbed to the heart."
+
+"A man!"
+
+"Yes, sir--so Holden says."
+
+"Call Holden. I'd like to know all he's heard," I said. And presently,
+when the gardener emerged from the grape-house, I sought of him all the
+particulars he had gathered.
+
+"I don't know very much, sir," was the man's reply. "I went into the inn
+for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking
+about it. A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood. The
+gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but
+from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a
+stranger in this district."
+
+"The body was that of a man, then?" I asked, trying to conceal my utter
+bewilderment.
+
+"Yes--about thirty, they say. The police have taken him to the mortuary
+at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot,
+they say."
+
+A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman--that I could swear.
+
+After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.
+
+When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to
+be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I
+thought, with considerable suspicion. My request was an unusual one.
+Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found
+myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death. From a small dingy window
+above the light fell upon an object lying upon a large slab of gray
+stone and covered with a soiled sheet.
+
+The sight was ghastly and gruesome; the body lay there awaiting the
+official inquiry into the cause of death. The silence of the tomb was
+unbroken, save for the heavy tread of the policeman, who having removed
+his helmet in the presence of the dead, lifted the end of the sheet,
+revealing to me a white, hard-set face, with closed eyes and dropped
+jaw.
+
+I started back as my eyes fell upon the dead countenance. I was entirely
+unprepared for such a revelation. The truth staggered me.
+
+The victim was the man who had acted as my friend--the Italian waiter,
+Olinto.
+
+I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to
+realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death
+distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in
+identifying him.
+
+"You recognize him, sir?" remarked the officer. "Who is he? Our people
+are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't
+succeeded in establishing his identity."
+
+I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that
+man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge
+must of necessity reflect upon me.
+
+"I will see your inspector," I answered with as much calmness as I could
+muster. "Where has the poor fellow been wounded?"
+
+"Through the heart," responded the constable, as turning the sheet
+further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the
+victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.
+
+"This is the weapon," he added, taking from a shelf close by a long,
+thin poignard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.
+
+In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old
+Florentine _misericordia_, a long thin, triangular blade, a quarter of
+an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a
+hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and
+poignards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles
+produced a wound that caused internal hemorrhage and which never
+healed--hence the name given to it by the Florentines.
+
+It was still blood-stained, but as I took the deadly thing in my hand I
+saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen
+of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a
+weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate the heart.
+
+And yet the person struck down was a woman, and not a man!
+
+A wound from a _misericordia_ always proves fatal, because the shape of
+the blade cuts the flesh into little flaps which, on withdrawing the
+knife, close up and prevent the blood from issuing forth. At the same
+time, however, no power can make them heal again. A blow from such a
+weapon is as surely fatal as the poisoned poignard of the Borgia or the
+Medici.
+
+I handed the stiletto back to the man without comment. My resolve was to
+say as little as possible, for I had no desire to figure publicly at the
+inquiry, and consequently negative all my own efforts to solve the
+mystery of the Leithcourts and of Martin Woodroffe.
+
+I returned to where the figure was lying so ghastly and motionless, and
+looked again for the last time upon the dead face of the man who had
+served me so well, and yet who had enticed me so nearly to my death. In
+the latter incident there was a deep mystery. He had relented at the
+last moment, just in time to save me from my secret enemies.
+
+Could it be that my enemies were his? Had he fallen a victim by the same
+hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me?
+
+Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in
+order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was
+Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to
+meet someone in secret?
+
+As I glanced down at the cold, inanimate countenance upon which mystery
+was written, I became seized by regret. He had been a faithful and
+honest servant, and even though he had enticed me to that fatal house in
+Lambeth, yet I recollected his words, how he had done so under
+compulsion. I remembered, too, how he had implored me not to prejudge
+him before I became aware of the full facts.
+
+With my own hand I re-covered the face with the sheet, and inwardly
+resolved to avenge the dastardly crime.
+
+I regretted that I was compelled to reveal the dead man's name to the
+police, yet I saw that to make some statement was now inevitable, and
+therefore I accompanied the constable to the inspector's office some
+distance across the town.
+
+Having been introduced to the big, fair-haired man in a rough tweed
+suit, who was apparently directing the inquiries into the affair, he
+took me eagerly into a small back room and began to question me. I was,
+however, wary not to commit myself to anything further than the
+identification of the body.
+
+"The fact is," I said confidentially, "you must omit me from the
+witnesses at the inquest."
+
+"Why?" asked the detective suspiciously.
+
+"Because if it were known that I have identified him, all chance of
+getting at the truth will at once vanish," I answered. "I have come here
+to tell you in strictest confidence who the poor fellow really is."
+
+"Then you know something of the affair?" he said, with a strong Highland
+accent.
+
+"I know nothing," I declared. "Nothing except his name."
+
+"H'm. And you say he's a foreigner--an Italian--eh?"
+
+"He was in my service in Leghorn for several years, and on leaving me he
+came to London and obtained an engagement as waiter in a restaurant. His
+father lived in Leghorn; he was doorkeeper at the Prefecture."
+
+"But why was he here, in Scotland?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"You know something of the affair. I mean that you suspect somebody, or
+you would have no objection to giving evidence at the inquiry."
+
+"I have no suspicions. To me the affair is just as much of an enigma as
+to you," I hastened at once to explain. "My only fear is that if the
+assassin knew that I had identified him he would take care not to betray
+himself."
+
+"You therefore think he will betray himself?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"By the fact that the man was attacked with an Italian stiletto, it
+would seem that his assailant was a fellow-countryman," suggested the
+detective.
+
+"The evidence certainly points to that," I replied.
+
+"You don't happen to be aware of anyone--any foreigner, I mean--who was,
+or might be his enemy?"
+
+I responded in the negative.
+
+"Ah," he went on, "these foreigners are always fighting among themselves
+and using knives. I did ten years' service in Edinburgh and made lots of
+arrests for stabbing affrays. Italians, like Greeks, are a dangerous lot
+when their blood is up." Then he added: "Personally, it seems to me that
+the murdered man was enticed from London to that spot and coolly done
+away with--from some motive of revenge, most probably."
+
+"Most probably," I said. "A vendetta, perhaps. I live in Italy, and
+therefore know the Italians well," I added.
+
+I had given him my card, and told him with whom I was staying.
+
+"Where were you yesterday, sir?" he inquired presently.
+
+"I was shooting--on the other side of the Nithsdale," I answered, and
+then went on to explain my movements, without, however, mentioning my
+visit to Rannoch.
+
+"And although you know the murdered man so intimately, you have no
+suspicion of anyone in this district who was acquainted with him?"
+
+"I know no one who knew him. When he left my service he had never been
+in England."
+
+"You say he was engaged in service in London?"
+
+"Yes, at a restaurant in Oxford Street, I believe. I met him
+accidentally in Pall Mall one evening, and he told me so."
+
+"You don't know the name of the restaurant?"
+
+"He did tell me, but unfortunately I have forgotten."
+
+The detective drew a deep breath of regret.
+
+"Someone who waited for him on the edge of that wood stepped out and
+killed him--that's evident," he said.
+
+"Without a doubt."
+
+"And my belief is that it was an Italian. There were two foreigners who
+slept at a common lodging-house two nights ago and went on tramp towards
+Glasgow. We have telegraphed after them, and hope we shall find them.
+Scotsmen or Englishmen never use a knife of that pattern."
+
+With his latter remark I entirely coincided. In my own mind that was the
+strongest argument in favor of Leithcourt's innocence. That the tenant
+of Rannoch had kept that secret tryst in daily patience I knew from my
+own observations, yet to me it scarcely seemed feasible that he would
+use a weapon so peculiarly Italian and yet so terribly deadly.
+
+And then when I reflected further, recollecting that the body I had
+discovered was that of a woman and not a man, I stood staggered and
+bewildered by the utterly inexplicable enigma.
+
+I promised the burly detective that in exchange for his secrecy
+regarding my statement that I would assist him in every manner possible
+in the solution of the problem.
+
+"The real name of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld," I
+urged. "It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only
+by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his
+name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know that
+I have identified him."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Well," I said with some hesitation, "while I am believed to be in
+ignorance we shall have opportunity for obtaining the truth."
+
+"Then you do really suspect?" he said, again looking at me with those
+cold, blue eyes.
+
+"I know not whom to suspect," I declared. "It is a mystery why the man
+who was once my faithful servant should be enticed to that wood and
+stabbed to the heart."
+
+"There is no one in the vicinity who knew him?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+"We might obtain his address in London through his father in Leghorn,"
+suggested the officer.
+
+"I will write to-day if you so desire," I said readily. "Indeed, I will
+get my friend the British Consul to go round and see the old man and
+telegraph the address if he obtains it."
+
+"Capital!" he declared. "If you will do us this favor we shall be
+greatly indebted to you. It is fortunate that we have established the
+victim's identity--otherwise we might be entirely in the dark. A
+murdered foreigner is always more or less of a mystery."
+
+Therefore, then and there, I took a sheet of paper and wrote to my old
+friend Hutcheson at Leghorn, asking him to make immediate inquiry of
+Olinto's father as to his son's address in London.
+
+I said nothing to the police of that strange adventure of mine over in
+Lambeth, or of how the man now dead had saved my life. That his enemies
+were my own he had most distinctly told me, therefore I felt some
+apprehension that I myself was not safe. Yet in my hip pocket I always
+carried my revolver--just as I did in Italy--and I rather prided myself
+on my ability to shoot straight.
+
+We sat for a long time discussing the strange affair. In order to betray
+no eagerness to get away, I offered the big Highlander a cigar from my
+case, and we smoked together. The inquiry would be held on the morrow,
+he told me, but as far as the public was concerned the body would remain
+as that of some person "unknown."
+
+"And you had better not come to my uncle's house, or send anyone," I
+said. "If you desire to see me, send me a line and I will meet you here
+in Dumfries. It will be safer."
+
+The officer looked at me with those keen eyes of his, and said:
+
+"Really, Mr. Gregg, I can't quite make you out, I confess. You seem to
+be apprehensive of your own safety. Why?"
+
+"Italians are a very curious people," I responded quickly. "Their
+vendetta extends widely sometimes."
+
+"Then you have reason to believe that the enemy of this poor fellow
+Santini may be your enemy also?"
+
+"One never knows whom one offends when living in Italy," I laughed, as
+lightly as I could, endeavoring to allay his suspicion. "He may have
+fallen beneath the assassin's knife by giving quite a small and possibly
+innocent offense to somebody. Italian methods are not English, you
+know."
+
+"By Jove, sir, and I'm jolly glad they're not!" he said. "I shouldn't
+think a police officer's life is a very safe one among all those secret
+murder societies I've read about."
+
+"Ah! what you read about them is often very much exaggerated," I assured
+him. "It is the vendetta which is such a stain upon the character of the
+modern Italian; and depend upon it this affair in Rannoch Wood is the
+outcome of some revenge or other--probably over a love affair."
+
+"But you will assist us, sir?" he urged. "You know the Italian language,
+which will be of great advantage; besides, the victim was your servant."
+
+"Be discreet," I said. "And in return I will do my very utmost to assist
+you in hunting down the assassin."
+
+And thus we made our compact. Half-an-hour after I was driving in the
+dog-cart through the pouring rain up the hill out of gray old Dumfries
+to my uncle's house.
+
+As I descended from the cart and gave it over to a groom, old Davis, the
+butler, came forward, saying in a low voice:
+
+"There's Miss Leithcourt waiting to see you, Mr. Gordon. She's in the
+morning-room, and been there an hour. She asked me not to tell anyone
+else she's here, sir."
+
+"Then my aunt has not seen her?" I exclaimed, scenting mystery in this
+unexpected visit.
+
+"No, sir. She wishes to see you alone, sir."
+
+I walked across the big hall and along the corridor to the room the old
+man had indicated.
+
+And as I opened the door and Muriel Leithcourt in plain black rose to
+meet me, I plainly saw from her white, haggard countenance that
+something had happened--that she had been forced by circumstances to
+come to me in strictest confidence.
+
+Was she, I wondered, about to reveal to me the truth?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS
+
+
+"Mr. Gregg," exclaimed the girl with agitation, as she put forth her
+black-gloved hand, "I--I suppose you know--you've heard all about the
+discovery to-day up at the wood? I need not tell you anything about it"
+
+"Yes, Miss Leithcourt, I only wish you would tell me about it," I said
+gravely, inviting her to a chair and seating myself. "I've heard some
+extraordinary story about a man being found dead, but I've been in
+Dumfries nearly all day. Who is the man?"
+
+"Ah! that we don't know," she replied, pale-faced and anxious. Her
+attitude was as though she wished to confide in me and yet still
+hesitated to do so.
+
+"You've been waiting for me quite a long time, Davis tells me. I regret
+that you should have done this. If you had left word that you wished to
+see me, I would have come over to you at once."
+
+"No. I wanted to see you alone--that's the reason I am here. They must
+not know at home that I've been over here, so I purposely asked the man
+not to announce me to your aunt."
+
+"You want to see me privately," I said in a low, earnest voice. "Why? Is
+there any service I can render you?"
+
+"Yes. A very great one," she responded with quick eagerness,
+"I--well--the fact is, I have summoned courage to come to you and beg
+of you to help me. I am in great distress--and I have not a single
+friend whom I can trust--in whom I can confide."
+
+"I shall esteem it the highest honor if you will trust me," I said in
+deep earnestness. "I can only assure you that I will remain loyal to
+your interests and to yourself."
+
+"Ah! I believe you will, Mr. Gregg!" she declared with enthusiasm, her
+large, dark eyes turned upon me--the eyes of a woman in sheer and bitter
+despair. Her face was perfect, one of the most handsome I had ever gazed
+upon. The more I saw of her the greater was the fascination she held
+over me.
+
+A silence fell between us as she sat with her gloved hands lying idly in
+her lap. Her lips moved nervously, but no sound came from them, so
+agitated was she, so eager to tell me something; and yet at the same
+time reluctant to take me into her confidence.
+
+"Well?" I asked at last in a low voice. "I am quite ready to render you
+any service, if you will only command me."
+
+"Ah! But I fear what I require will strike you as so unusual--you will
+hesitate to act when I explain what service I require of you," she said
+doubtfully.
+
+"I cannot tell you until I hear your wishes," I said, smiling, and yet
+puzzled at her attitude.
+
+"It concerns the terrible discovery made up in Rannoch Wood," she said
+in a hoarse, nervous voice at last. "That unknown man was
+murdered--stabbed to the heart."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," she said, scarcely above a whisper, "I have suspicions."
+
+"Of the murdered man's identity?"
+
+"No. Of the assassin."
+
+I glanced at her sharply and saw the intense look in her dark, wide-open
+eyes.
+
+"You believe you know who dealt the blow?"
+
+"I have a suspicion--that is all. Only I want you to help me, if you
+will."
+
+"Most certainly," I responded. "But if you believe you know the assassin
+you probably know something of the victim?"
+
+"Only that he looked like a foreigner."
+
+"Then you have seen him?" I exclaimed, much surprised.
+
+My remark caused her to hold her breath for an instant. Then she
+answered, rather lamely, it seemed to me:
+
+"I saw him when the keepers brought the body to the castle."
+
+Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the
+dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore,
+that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end?
+
+I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but,
+nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very
+peculiar fact.
+
+"You judge him to be a foreigner?" I remarked as casually as I could.
+
+"From his features and complexion I guessed him to be Italian," she
+responded quickly, at which I pretended to express surprise. "I saw him
+after the keepers had found him."
+
+"Besides," she went on, "the stiletto was evidently an Italian one,
+which would almost make it appear that a foreigner was the assassin."
+
+"Is that your own suspicion?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, then in a low, eager voice she said:
+
+"Because I have already seen that three-edged knife in another person's
+possession."
+
+"That's pretty strong evidence," I declared. "The person in question
+will have to prove that he was not in Rannoch Wood last evening at
+nightfall."
+
+"How do you know it was done at nightfall?" she asked quickly with some
+surprise, half-rising from her chair.
+
+"I merely surmised that it was," I responded, inwardly blaming myself
+for my ill-timed admission.
+
+"Ah!" she said with a slight sigh, "there is more mystery in this affair
+than we have yet discovered, Mr. Gregg. What, I wonder, brought the
+unfortunate young man up into our wood?"
+
+"An appointment, without a doubt. But with whom?"
+
+She shook her head, saying:
+
+"My father often goes to that spot to shoot pigeon in the evening. He
+told us so at luncheon to-day. How fortunate he was not there last
+night, or he might be suspected."
+
+"Yes," I said. "It is a very fortunate circumstance, for it cannot be a
+pleasant experience to be under suspicion of being an assassin. He was
+at home last night, was he?" I added casually.
+
+"Of course. Don't you recollect that when you called he chatted with
+you? I did some typewriting for him in the study, and we were together
+all the afternoon--or at least till nearly five o'clock, when we went
+out into the hall to tea."
+
+"Then what is your theory regarding the affair?" I inquired, rather
+puzzled why she should so decisively prove an alibi for her father.
+
+"It seems certain that the poor fellow went to the wood by appointment,
+and was killed. But have you been up to the spot since the finding of
+the body?"
+
+"No. Have you?"
+
+"Yes. The affair interested me, and as soon as I recognized the old
+Italian knife in the hand of the keeper, I went up there and looked
+about. I am glad I did so, for I found something which seems to have
+escaped the notice of the detectives."
+
+"And what's that?" I asked eagerly.
+
+"Why, about three yards from the pool of blood where the unfortunate
+foreigner was found is another small pool of blood where the grass and
+ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle
+there."
+
+"There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have
+staggered some distance before he fell dead."
+
+"Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall,
+would he not?" she suggested. "No. The police seem very dense, and this
+plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as
+what you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I
+believe that a second person also fell a victim," she added in a low,
+distinct tone.
+
+I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth?
+Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?
+
+"A second person!" I echoed, as though in surprise. "Then do you believe
+that a double murder was committed?"
+
+"I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck
+in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which
+separates the one mark from the other."
+
+"But he might have been slightly wounded--on the hand, or in the
+face--at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck
+fatally," I suggested.
+
+She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her
+confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some
+unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments
+later she said to me:
+
+"It is for this reason, Mr. Gregg, that I have sought you in confidence.
+Nobody must know that I have come here to you, or they would suspect;
+and if suspicion fell upon me it would bring upon me a fate worse than
+death. Remember, therefore, that my future is entirely in your hands."
+
+"I don't quite understand," I said, rising and standing before her in
+the fading twilight, while the rain drove upon the old diamond window
+panes. "But I can only assure you that whatever confidence you repose in
+me, I shall never abuse, Miss Leithcourt."
+
+"I know, I know!" she said quickly. "I trust you in this matter
+implicitly. I have come to you for many reasons, chief of them being
+that if a second victim has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, it
+is, I know, a woman."
+
+"A woman! Whom?"
+
+"At present I cannot tell you. I must first establish the true facts. If
+this woman were really stricken down, then her body lies concealed
+somewhere in the vicinity. We must find it and bring home the crime to
+the guilty one."
+
+"But if we succeed in finding it, could we place our hand upon the
+assassin?" I asked, looking straight at her.
+
+"If we find it, the crime would then tell its own tale--it would convict
+the person in whose hand I have seen that fatal weapon," was her clear,
+bold answer.
+
+"Then you wish me to assist you in this search, Miss Leithcourt?" I
+said, wondering if her suspicions rested upon that mysterious yachtsman,
+Philip Hornby, the man to whom she was engaged.
+
+"Yes, I would beg of you to do your utmost in secret to endeavor to
+discover the body of the second victim. It is a woman--of that I am
+certain. Find her, and we shall then be able to bring the crime home to
+the assassin."
+
+"But my search may bring suspicion upon me," I remarked. "It will be
+difficult to examine the whole wood without arousing the curiosity of
+somebody--the keeper or the police."
+
+"I have already thought of that," she said. "I will pretend to-morrow to
+lose this watch-bracelet in the wood," and she held up her slim wrist to
+show me the little enameled watch set in her bracelet. "Then you and I
+will search for it diligently, and the police will never suspect the
+real reason of our investigation. To-morrow I shall write to you telling
+you about my loss, and you will come over to Rannoch and offer to help
+me."
+
+I was silent for a moment.
+
+"Is Mr. Woodroffe back at the castle? I heard he was to return to-day."
+
+"No. I had a letter from him from Bordeaux a week ago. He is still on
+the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he
+sometimes has business."
+
+"I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr.
+Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company," I
+explained, smiling.
+
+Her cheeks flushed slightly, as though confused at my reference to her
+engagement, and she said mischievously:
+
+"I don't see why he should object in the least. If you are good enough
+to assist me to search for my bracelet, he surely ought to be much
+obliged to you."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to that dark-eyed, handsome
+girl the circumstances in which I had met her lover on the sunny
+Mediterranean shore, yet prudence forbade me to refer to the matter, and
+I at once gladly accepted her invitation to investigate the curious
+disappearance of the body of poor Olinto's fellow-victim.
+
+What secret knowledge could be possessed by that smart, handsome girl
+before me? That her suspicions were in the right direction I felt
+confident, yet if the dead woman had been removed and hidden by the
+assassin it must have been after the discovery made by me. The fellow
+must have actually dared to return to the spot and carry off the victim.
+Yet if he had actually done that, why did he allow the corpse of the
+Italian to remain and await discovery? He might perhaps have been
+disturbed and compelled to make good his escape.
+
+"If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some
+assistance," I pointed out. "He could not have carried the body very far
+unaided."
+
+She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had
+been committed alone and unaided.
+
+"Have you any idea as to the motive?" I asked her, eager to hear her
+reply.
+
+"Well," she answered hesitatingly, "if the woman has fallen a victim,
+the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a
+complete mystery."
+
+"You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny
+all knowledge of the murdered man!" I exclaimed in a tone of slight
+reproach.
+
+"Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,"
+was her answer. "I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect
+is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most
+startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the
+life of another."
+
+"Then a man is the assassin, you think?" I exclaimed quickly.
+
+"I believe so. But even of that I am not at all sure. We must first find
+the woman."
+
+She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly
+_misericordia_ that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had
+discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had
+been committed. But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own
+suspicions might become aroused. My own policy was to remain silent and
+to wait. The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.
+
+Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little
+way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her
+departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left
+by one of the servants' entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart
+and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the
+gloom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I
+stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where
+Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless
+sky.
+
+True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking
+me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to
+Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone
+over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll
+together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or
+hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high
+shooting-boots and a tam-o'-shanter hat, while I also had on an old
+shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could
+prod likely spots.
+
+On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely
+corner, but she replied:
+
+"I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years,
+while this is only my first season here."
+
+"Very well," I answered. "Let us place ourselves in the position of the
+murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the
+vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the
+wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords
+but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the
+valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore
+have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place
+to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle,
+examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
+beneath a thicket and well escape observation."
+
+And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
+way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
+minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
+great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
+very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
+which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
+surmise.
+
+All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
+Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
+received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
+exclaimed:
+
+"Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?"
+
+My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
+scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
+any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
+admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
+that spot.
+
+More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
+discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
+such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
+complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
+be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
+watchful.
+
+When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
+was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
+find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
+was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.
+
+Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
+beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
+stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
+wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.
+
+For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
+of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
+point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
+mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
+no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
+wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
+kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
+covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
+fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
+undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
+fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.
+
+"This is a most likely place," declared my dainty little companion as we
+approached it. "Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
+down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end," she cried
+with enthusiasm.
+
+Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
+descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
+and then by springing from stone to stone--sometimes slipping into the
+water, be it said--we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
+examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
+athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
+water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
+and wringing out her wet skirt, said:
+
+"It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
+of."
+
+And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
+steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
+the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
+openly denounce the assassin.
+
+As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
+connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
+Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Bulwark_
+and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
+left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
+not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
+original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed--that
+girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.
+
+The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
+hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
+was marvelous--and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
+determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
+truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
+convicting the guilty one?
+
+Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
+a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
+save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
+in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
+years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
+tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
+ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
+windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
+ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.
+
+The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
+afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
+our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
+boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
+I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.
+
+"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded
+in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.
+
+We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
+other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
+was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
+being disturbed.
+
+Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
+intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
+huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
+diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
+This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
+the utterance of a single word.
+
+To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
+shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
+side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
+slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
+summit.
+
+Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
+figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
+glen.
+
+"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"
+
+"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem
+fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
+the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."
+
+"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had
+something over his shoulder?"
+
+"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."
+
+"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short--and
+seemed more like a spade."
+
+"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain
+of that?"
+
+"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
+We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."
+
+"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
+broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
+the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a
+whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
+
+I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
+that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
+curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
+the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
+recently disturbed.
+
+"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down
+there! They've just been burying something!"
+
+Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:
+
+"I really believe they have concealed something!"
+
+Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
+down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
+that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
+
+Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
+we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
+freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
+
+Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
+with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
+had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
+really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
+large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
+over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
+high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
+ground had ever been interfered with.
+
+Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
+long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
+But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
+silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
+soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
+stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
+progress was very slow and difficult.
+
+At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
+standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
+suddenly cried:
+
+"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why--whatever is that?"
+
+I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
+that I was held dumb and motionless.
+
+By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
+rather than diminished.
+
+I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
+blankly into my companion's face.
+
+The amazing enigma was surely complete!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CONTAINS A SURPRISE
+
+
+The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
+was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
+proved to be part of a woman's skirt.
+
+With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
+soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
+
+A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
+had dug.
+
+Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
+from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
+woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
+Olinto. Both had been assassinated!
+
+When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
+expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
+she had expected to find.
+
+"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently,
+by her dress and hands."
+
+"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
+own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
+of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
+countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
+were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
+
+Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
+black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
+was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
+dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
+issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
+struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.
+
+"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my
+companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and
+ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
+and concealed the evidence of this second crime."
+
+"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."
+
+Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
+waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
+point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
+disappeared in the darkness of the wood.
+
+I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
+suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
+back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
+familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
+could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.
+
+We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and
+evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.
+But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night
+bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew
+their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had
+nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be
+already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet
+even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that
+of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat
+nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.
+
+We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew
+bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely
+faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills
+looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had
+so secretly concealed the body of their victim.
+
+"I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt," I said. "And then
+I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be
+arrested."
+
+"Yes, do," she urged. "I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for
+they must not see me in this terrible plight."
+
+It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as
+she did so I felt that she was shivering.
+
+"You are very wet," I remarked. "I hope you won't take cold."
+
+"Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and
+very often get drenched," was her reply. Then after a pause she said:
+"We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and
+her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man."
+
+"Yes, I think so," was my reply. "I will tell the police all that we
+have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body."
+
+"If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,"
+she declared. "One of them--the one in brown--was unusually
+broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop."
+
+"You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?"
+I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I expected to find an entirely different person."
+
+"And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with
+whom you are acquainted?"
+
+She nodded in the affirmative.
+
+"Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the
+identity of the assassins?"
+
+"No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter
+in the hands of the police."
+
+"But if the identity of the dead woman is established?" I asked.
+
+"It might furnish me with a clue," she exclaimed quickly. "Yes, try and
+discover who she is."
+
+"Who was the woman you expected to find?"
+
+"A friend--a very dear friend."
+
+"Will you not tell me her name?" I inquired.
+
+"No, it would be unfair to her," she responded decisively, an answer
+which to me was particularly tantalizing.
+
+On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not
+strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger
+still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from
+Scotland, but away to the Continent?
+
+Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?
+
+It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who,
+tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good
+fortune in my investigations.
+
+"I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything,
+won't you?"
+
+I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind
+the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across
+the open fields to my uncle's house.
+
+At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief
+police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair
+Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the
+previous day.
+
+When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related
+my adventure and the result of my investigation.
+
+"What?" he cried, jumping up. "You've unearthed another body--a
+woman's?"
+
+"I have. And what is more, I can identify her," I replied. "Her name is
+Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini."
+
+"Then both husband and wife were killed?"
+
+"Without a doubt--a double tragedy."
+
+"But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?"
+
+I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking--
+
+"We must find them." And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave
+him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all
+the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a
+charge of willful murder.
+
+When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned
+to me and asked--
+
+"What induced you to search the wood? Why did you suspect a second
+crime?"
+
+His question nonplused me for the moment.
+
+"Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him
+to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had
+accompanied him here. It was entirely a vague surmise. I wondered
+whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had
+not also been struck down."
+
+His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction. I knew my
+explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import
+Muriel's name into the affair. I had given her my promise, and I
+intended to keep it.
+
+"Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?"
+
+"Yes. If you wish, I will take you to the spot. I can drive you and your
+assistant up there."
+
+"Certainly. Let us go," he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his
+bell.
+
+"Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this
+gentleman's trap outside," he said to the constable who answered his
+summons. "And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to
+Rannoch Wood."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the man; and the door again closed.
+
+"It's a pity--a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn't stop those
+two men who buried the body."
+
+"They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket
+before I mounted the rock," I explained. "Besides, at the moment I had
+no suspicion of what they'd been doing. I believed them to be stragglers
+from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way."
+
+"Ah, most unfortunate!" he said. "I hope they don't escape us. If
+they're foreigners, they are not likely to get away. But if they're
+English or Scots, then I fear there's but little chance of us coming up
+with them. Yesterday at the inquest the identity of the murdered man was
+strictly preserved, and the inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight."
+
+"Of course my name was not mentioned?" I said.
+
+"Of course not," was the detective's reply. Then he asked: "When do you
+expect to get a telegram from your friend, the Consul at Leghorn? I am
+anxious for that, in order that we may commence inquiries in London."
+
+"The day after to-morrow, I hope. He will certainly reply at once,
+providing the dead man's father can still be found."
+
+And at that moment a tall, thin man, who proved to be Detective
+Campbell, entered, and five minutes later we were all three driving over
+the uneven cobbles of Dumfries and out in the darkness towards Rannoch.
+
+It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley;
+but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill
+up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep,
+rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across the
+moor. When we reached the latter we all descended, and I led the horse,
+for owing to the many treacherous bogs it was unsafe to drive further.
+So, with Mackenzie and Campbell carrying lanterns, we walked on
+carefully, skirting the wood for nearly a mile until we came to the
+rough wall over which I had clambered with Muriel.
+
+I recognized the spot, and having tied up the cob we all three plunged
+into the pitch-darkness of the wood, keeping straight on in the
+direction of the glen, and halting every now and then to listen for the
+rippling of the stream.
+
+At last, after some difficulty, we discovered it, and searching along
+the bank with our three powerful lights, I presently detected the huge
+moss-grown boulder whereon I had stood when the pair of fugitives had
+disappeared.
+
+"Look!" I cried. "There's the spot!" And quickly we clambered down the
+steep bank, lowering ourselves by the branches of the trees until we
+came to the water into which I waded, being followed closely by my two
+companions.
+
+On gaining the opposite side I clambered up to the base of the boulder
+and lowered my lantern to reveal to them the gruesome evidence of the
+second crime, but the next instant I cried--
+
+"Why! It's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" gasped the two men.
+
+"Yes. It was here. Look! this is the hole where they buried it! But they
+evidently returned, and finding it exhumed, they've retaken possession
+of it and carried it away!"
+
+The two detectives gazed down to where I indicated, and then looked at
+each other without exchanging a word.
+
+As we stood there dumbfounded at the disappearance of the body, the
+Highlander's quick glance caught something, and stooping he picked it up
+and examined the little object by the aid of his lantern.
+
+Within his palm I saw lying a tiny little gold cross, about an inch
+long, enameled in red, while in the center was a circular miniature of a
+kneeling saint, an elegant and beautifully executed little trinket which
+might have adorned a lady's bracelet.
+
+"This is a pretty little thing!" remarked the detective. "It may
+possibly lead us to something. But, Mr. Gregg," he added, turning to me,
+"are you quite certain you left the body here?"
+
+"Certain?" I echoed. "Why, look at the hole I made. You don't think I
+have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?"
+
+"Not at all," he said apologetically. "Only the whole affair seems so
+very inconceivable--I mean that the men, having once got rid of the
+evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and re-obtain
+possession of it."
+
+"Unless they watched me exhume it, and feared the consequences if it
+fell into your hands," I suggested.
+
+"Of course they might have watched you from behind the trees, and when
+you had gone they came and carried it away somewhere else," he remarked
+dubiously; "but even if they did, it must be in this wood. They would
+never risk carrying a body very far, and here is surely the best place
+of concealment in the whole country."
+
+"The only thing remaining is to search the wood at daylight," I
+suggested. "If the two men came back here during my absence they may
+still be on the watch in the vicinity."
+
+"Most probably they are. We must take every precaution," he said
+decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination
+of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish
+us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate
+Armida had disappeared--a fact which, knowing all that I did, was doubly
+mysterious.
+
+The pair had, without doubt, watched Muriel and myself, and as soon as
+we had gone they had returned and carried off the ghastly remains of the
+poor woman who had been so foully done to death.
+
+But who were the men--the fellow with the broad shoulders whom Muriel
+recognized, and the slim seafarer in his pilot-coat and peaked cap? The
+enigma each hour became more and more inscrutable.
+
+At dawn Mackenzie, with four of his men, made a thorough examination of
+the wood, but although they continued until dusk they discovered
+nothing, neither was anything heard of the mysterious seafarer and his
+companion in brown tweeds.
+
+I called on Muriel as arranged, and explained how the body had so
+suddenly disappeared, whereupon she stared at me pale-faced, saying--
+
+"The assassins must have watched us! They are aware, then, that we have
+knowledge of their crime?"
+
+"Of course," I said.
+
+"Ah!" she cried hoarsely. "Then we are both in deadly peril--peril of
+our own lives! These people will hesitate at nothing. Both you and I are
+marked down by them, without a doubt. We must both be wary not to fall
+into any trap they may lay for us."
+
+Her very words seemed an admission that she was aware of the identity of
+the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them.
+
+We went out and up the drive together to the kennels, where her father,
+a tall, imposing figure in his shooting-kit, was giving orders to the
+keepers.
+
+"Hulloa, Gregg!" he cried merrily, extending his hand. "You'll make one
+of a party to Glenlea to-morrow, won't you? Paton and Phillips are
+coming. Ten sharp here, and the ladies are coming out to lunch with us."
+
+"Thanks," I said, accepting with pleasure, for by so doing I saw that I
+might be afforded an opportunity of being near Muriel. The fact that the
+assassins were aware of our knowledge seemed to have caused her the
+greatest apprehension lest evil should befall us. Then, as we turned
+away to go back to the house, Leithcourt said to me--
+
+"You know all about the discovery up at the wood the other day! Horrible
+affair--a young foreigner found murdered."
+
+"Yes. I've heard about it," I responded.
+
+"And the police are worse than useless," he declared with disgust. "They
+haven't discovered who the fellow is yet. Why, if it had happened
+anywhere else but in Scotland, they'd have arrested the assassin before
+this."
+
+"He's an entire stranger, I hear," I remarked. And then added: "You
+often go up to the wood of an evening after pigeons. It's fortunate you
+were not there that evening, eh?"
+
+He glanced at me quickly with his brows slightly contracted, as though
+he did not exactly comprehend me. In an instant I saw that my remark had
+caused him quick apprehension.
+
+"Yes," he answered with a sickly smile which he intended should convey
+to me utter unconcern. "They might have suspected me."
+
+"It certainly is a disagreeable affair to happen on one's property." I
+said, still watching him narrowly. And then Muriel at his side managed
+with her feminine ingenuity to divert the conversation into a different
+channel.
+
+Next day I accompanied the party over to Glenlea, about five miles
+distant, and at noon at a spot previously arranged, we found the ladies
+awaiting us with luncheon spread under the trees. As soon as we
+approached Muriel came forward quickly, handing me a telegram, saying
+that it had been sent over by one of my uncle's grooms at the moment
+they were leaving the castle.
+
+I tore it open eagerly, and read its contents. Then, turning to my
+companions, said in as quiet a voice as I could command--
+
+"I must go up to London to-night," whereat the men, one and all,
+expressed hope that I should soon return. Leithcourt's party were a
+friendly set, and at heart I was sorry to leave Scotland. Yet the
+telegram made it imperative, for it was from Frank Hutcheson in Leghorn,
+and read--
+
+_"Made inquiries. Olinto Santini married your servant Armida at Italian
+Consulate-General in London about a year ago. They live 64B, Albany
+Road, Camberwell: he is employed waiter Ferrari's Restaurant,
+Westbourne Grove.--British Consulate, Leghorn"_
+
+The lunch was a merry one, as shooting luncheons usually are, and while
+we ate the keepers packed our morning bag--a considerable one--into the
+Perth-cart in waiting. Then, when we could wander away alone together, I
+explained to Muriel that the reason of my sudden journey to London was
+in order to continue my investigations regarding the mysterious affair.
+
+This puzzled her, for I had not, of course, revealed to her that I had
+identified Olinto. Yet I managed to make such excuses and promises to
+return that I think allayed all her suspicions, and that night, after
+calling upon the detective Mackenzie, I took the sleeping-car express to
+Euston.
+
+The restaurant which Hutcheson had indicated was, I found, situated
+about half-way up Westbourne Grove, nearly opposite Whiteley's, a small
+place where confectionery and sweets were displayed in the window,
+together with long-necked flasks of Italian chianti, chump-chops, small
+joints and tomatoes. It was soon after nine o'clock when I entered the
+long shop with its rows of marble-topped tables and greasy lounges of
+red plush. An unhealthy-looking lad was sweeping out the place with wet
+saw-dust, and a big, dark-bearded, flabby-faced man in shirt-sleeves
+stood behind the small counter polishing some forks.
+
+"I wish to see Signor Ferrari," I said, addressing him.
+
+"There is no Ferrari, he is dead," responded the man in broken English.
+"My name is Odinzoff. I bought the place from madame."
+
+"You are Russian, I presume?"
+
+"Polish, m'sieur--from Varsovie."
+
+I had seen from the first moment we had met that he was no Italian. He
+was too bulky, and his face too broad and flat.
+
+"I have come to inquire after a waiter you have in your service, an
+Italian named Santini. He was my servant for some years, and I naturally
+take an interest in him."
+
+"Santini?" he repeated. "Oh I you mean Olinto? He is not here yet. He
+comes at ten o'clock."
+
+This reply surprised me. I had expected the restaurant-keeper to express
+regret at his disappearance, yet he spoke as though he had been at work
+as usual on the previous day.
+
+"May I have a liqueur brandy?" I asked, seeing that I would be compelled
+to take something. "Perhaps you will have one with me?"
+
+"Ach no! But a kümmel--yes, I will have a kümmel!" And he filled our
+glasses, and tossed off his own at a single gulp, smacking his lips
+after it, for the average Russian dearly loves his national decoction of
+caraway seeds.
+
+"You find Olinto a good servant, I suppose?" I said, for want of
+something else to say.
+
+"Excellent. The Italians are the best waiters in the world. I am
+Russian, but dare not employ a Russian waiter. These English would not
+come to my shop if I did."
+
+I looked around, and it struck me that the trade of the place mainly
+consisted in chops and steaks for chance customers at mid-day, and tea
+and cake for those swarms of women who each afternoon buzz around that
+long line of windows of the "world's provider." I could see that his was
+a cheap trade, as revealed by the printed notice stuck upon one of the
+long fly-blown mirrors: "Ices _4d_ and _6d_."
+
+"How long has Olinto been with you?" I inquired.
+
+"About a year--perhaps a little more. I trust him implicitly, and I
+leave him in charge when I go away for holidays. He does not get along
+very well with the cook--who is Milanese. These Italians from different
+provinces always quarrel," he added, laughing. "If you live in Italy you
+know that, no doubt."
+
+I laughed in chorus, and then glancing at my watch, said: "I'll wait for
+him, if he will be here at ten. I'd much like to see him again."
+
+The Russian was by no means nonplused, but merely remarked--
+
+"He is late sometimes, but not often. He lives on the other side of
+London--over at Camberwell." His confidence that the waiter would return
+struck me as extremely curious; nevertheless I possessed myself in
+patience, strolled up and down the restaurant, and then stood watching
+the traffic in the Grove outside.
+
+The man Odinzoff seemed a quick, hard-working fellow with a keen eye to
+business, for he fell to polishing the top of the marble tables with a
+pail and brush, at the same time directing the work of the
+pallid-looking youth. Suddenly a side door opened, and the cook put his
+head in to speak with his master in French. He was a typical Italian,
+about forty, with dark mustaches turned upwards, and an easy-going,
+careless manner. Seeing me, however, and believing me to be a customer,
+he turned and closed the door quickly. In that instant I noticed the
+high broadness of his shoulders, and his back struck me as strangely
+similar to that of the man in brown whom we had seen disappearing in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+The suspicion held me breathless.
+
+Was this Russian endeavoring to deceive me when he declared that Olinto
+would arrive in a few minutes? It seemed curious, for the man now dead
+must, I reflected, have been away at least four days. Surely his
+absence from work had caused the proprietor considerable inconvenience?
+
+"That was your cook, wasn't it? The Milanese who is quarrelsome?" I
+laughed, when the side door had closed.
+
+"Yes, m'sieur. But Emilio is a very good workman--and very honest, even
+though I had constantly to complain that he uses too much oil in his
+cooking. These English do not like the oil."
+
+I stood in the doorway again watching the busy throng passing outside
+towards Royal Oak. Ten o'clock struck from a neighboring church, and I
+still waited, knowing only too well that I waited in vain for a man
+whose body had already been committed to the grave outside that far-away
+old Scotch town. But I waited in order to ascertain the motive of the
+bearded Russian in leading me to believe that the young fellow would
+really return.
+
+Presently Odinzoff went outside, carrying with him two boards upon which
+the menu of the "Eight-penny Luncheon! This Day!" was written in scrawly
+characters, and proceeded to affix them to the shop-front.
+
+This was my opportunity, and quick as thought I moved towards where the
+unhealthy youth was at work, and whispered:
+
+"I'll give you half-a-sovereign if you'll answer my questions
+truthfully. Now, tell me, was the cook, the man I've just seen, here
+yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Was he here the day before?"
+
+"No, sir. He's been away ill for four days."
+
+"And your master?"
+
+"He's been away too, sir."
+
+I had no time to put any further question, for the Russian re-entered at
+that moment, and the youth busied himself rubbing the front of the
+counter in pretense that I had not spoken to him. Indeed, I had some
+difficulty in slipping the promised coin into his hand at a moment when
+his master was not looking.
+
+Then I paced up and down the restaurant, waiting patiently and wondering
+whether the absence of Emilio had any connection with the tragedy up in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+While I stood there a rather thin, respectably-dressed man entered, and
+seating himself upon one of the plush lounges at the further end,
+removed his bowler hat and ordered from the proprietor a chop and a pot
+of tea. Then, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he settled himself to
+read, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.
+
+And yet as I watched I saw that over the top of his paper he was
+carefully taking in the general appearance of the place, and his eyes
+were keenly following the Russian's movements. The latter shouted--in
+French--the order for the chop through the speaking-tube to the man
+Emilio, and then returning to his customer he spread out a napkin and
+placed a small cruet, with knife, fork, and bread before him. But the
+customer seemed immersed in his paper, and never looked up until after
+the Russian's back was turned. Then so deep was his interest in the
+place, and so keen those dark eyes of his, that the truth suddenly
+dawned upon me. Mackenzie had telegraphed to Scotland Yard, and the
+customer sitting there was a detective who had come to investigate. I
+had advanced to the counter to chat again with the proprietor, when a
+quick step behind me caused me to turn.
+
+Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy
+black jacket.
+
+"_Dio Signor Padrone!_" he cried.
+
+I staggered as though I had received a blow.
+
+Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM
+
+
+No words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I
+faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that gray stone
+slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.
+
+My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his
+paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently
+been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself,
+discovered him alive and living.
+
+"Signor Padrone!" cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely
+bewildering. "How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when
+I told you I worked at the Milano," he went on rapidly in Italian. "But
+it was under compulsion--my actions that night were not my own--but
+those of others."
+
+"Yes, I understand," I said. "But come out into the street. I don't wish
+to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian, no doubt."
+
+"Ah! only a very little," he answered, smiling. "Have no fear of him."
+
+"But there is Emilio, the cook?"
+
+"Then you have met him!" he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of
+apprehension. "He is an undesirable person, signore."
+
+"So I gather," I answered. "But I desire to speak to you outside--not
+here." And then turning with a smile to the Pole, I apologized for
+taking away his servant for a few minutes. "Recollect, I am his old
+master, I added."
+
+"Of course, m'sieur," answered the Pole, bowing politely. "Speak with
+him where and how long you will. He is entirely at your service."
+
+And when we were outside in Westbourne Grove, Olinto walking by my side
+in wonderment, I asked suddenly:
+
+"Tell me. Have you ever been in Scotland--at Dumfries?"
+
+"Never, signore, in my life. Why?"
+
+"Answer me another question," I said quickly. "You married Armida at the
+Italian Consulate. Where is she now--where is she this morning?"
+
+He turned pale, and I saw a complete change in his countenance.
+
+"Ah, signore!" he responded, "I only wish I could tell."
+
+"It is untrue that she is an invalid," I went on, "or that you live in
+Lambeth. Your address is in Albany Road, Camberwell. You can't deny
+these facts."
+
+"I do not deny them, Signor Commendatore. But how did you learn this?"
+
+"The authorities in Italy know everything," I answered. "Like that of
+all your countrymen, your record is written down at the Commune."
+
+"It is a clean one, at any rate, signore," he declared with some slight
+warmth. "I have a permesso to carry a revolver, which is in itself
+sufficient proof that I am a man of spotless character."
+
+"I cast no reflection whatever upon you, Olinto," I answered. "I have
+merely inquired after your wife, and you do not give me a direct reply."
+
+We had walked to the Royal Oak, and stood talking on the curb outside.
+
+"I give you no reply, because I can't," he said in Italian. "Armida--my
+poor Armida--has left home."
+
+"Why did you tell me such a tale of distress regarding her?"
+
+"As I have already explained, signore, I was not then master of my own
+actions. I was ruled by others. But I saved your life at risk of my own.
+Some day, when it is safe, I will reveal to you everything."
+
+"Let us allow the past to remain," I said. "Where is your wife now?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, looking straight into my face.
+
+"Well, Signor Commendatore, to tell the truth, she has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared!" I echoed. "And have you not made any report to the
+police?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"For reasons known only to myself I did not wish the police to pry into
+my private affairs."
+
+"I know. Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife--eh?
+I recollect quite well that affair--a love affair, was it not?"
+
+"Yes, Signor Commendatore. But I was a youth then--a mere boy."
+
+"Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared," I
+urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset
+him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was
+bursting to tell.
+
+"Well, signore," he said at last in a low tone of confidence, "I don't
+like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told
+you when we last met."
+
+"Go on," I said. "Tell me the truth."
+
+After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined
+to doubt him.
+
+"The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously
+disappeared. Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the
+garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out. She
+apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of
+her."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so
+strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon
+his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated
+to relate what I knew.
+
+"She spoke English, I suppose?"
+
+"She could make herself understood very well," he said with a sigh, and
+I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow. That he was really devoted
+to her, I knew. With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is
+all-consuming--it is either perfect love or genuine hatred. The Tuscan
+character is one of two extremes.
+
+I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered
+his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.
+
+"Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go
+away from home? Perhaps you had some words!"
+
+"Words, signore!" he echoed. "Why, we were the happiest pair in all
+London. No unkind word ever passed between us. There seems absolutely no
+reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of
+farewell."
+
+"But why haven't you told the police?"
+
+"For reasons that I have already stated. I prefer to make inquiries for
+myself."
+
+"And in what have your inquiries resulted?"
+
+"Nothing--absolutely nothing," he said gravely.
+
+"You do not suspect any plot? I recollect that night in Lambeth you
+told me that you had enemies?"
+
+"Ah! so I have, signore--and so have you!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Yes,
+my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them."
+
+"And if entrapped, what then?"
+
+"Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a
+fly," he said. "Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people. I
+only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere,
+and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise. She
+delights in startling me," he added with a laugh.
+
+Poor fellow, I thought, she would never again be able to startle him.
+She had actually fallen a victim just as he dreaded.
+
+"Then you think she must have been called away from home by some urgent
+message?" I suggested.
+
+"By the manner in which she left things, it seemed as though she went
+away hurriedly. There were five sovereigns in a drawer that we had saved
+for the rent, and she took them with her."
+
+I paused again, hesitating whether to tell him the terrible truth. I
+recollected that the body had disappeared, therefore what proof had I of
+my allegation that she had been murdered?
+
+"Tell me, Olinto," I said as we moved forward again in the direction of
+Paddington Station, "have you any knowledge of a man named Leithcourt?"
+
+He started suddenly and looked at me.
+
+"I have heard of him," he answered very lamely.
+
+"And of his daughter--Muriel?"
+
+"And also of her. But I am not acquainted with them--nor, to tell the
+truth, do I wish to be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they are enemies of mine--bitter enemies."
+
+His declaration was strange, for it threw some light upon the tragedy in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+"And of your wife also?"
+
+"I do not know that," he responded. "My enemies are my wife's also, I
+suppose."
+
+"You have not told me the secret of that dastardly attempt upon me when
+we last met," I said in a low voice. "Why not tell me the truth? I
+surely ought to know who my enemies really are, so as to be warned
+against any future plot."
+
+"You shall know some day, signore. I dare not tell you now."
+
+"You said that before," I exclaimed with dissatisfaction. "If you are
+faithful to me, you ought at least to tell me the reason they wished to
+kill me in secret."
+
+"Because they fear you," was his answer.
+
+"Why should they fear me?"
+
+But he shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture with his hands
+indicative of utter ignorance.
+
+"I ask you one question. Answer yes or no. Is the man Leithcourt my
+enemy?"
+
+The young Italian paused, and then answered:
+
+"He is not your friend. I am quite well aware of that."
+
+"And his daughter? She is engaged, I hear."
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Where did you first meet Leithcourt?"
+
+"I have known him several years. When we first met he was poor."
+
+"Suddenly became rich--eh?"
+
+"Bought a fine house in the country; lives mostly at the Carlton when he
+and his wife and daughter are in London--although I believe they now
+have a house somewhere in the West End--and he often makes long cruises
+on his steam-yacht."
+
+"And how did he make his money?"
+
+Again Olinto elevated his shoulders, without replying.
+
+If he would only betray to me the reason he had been induced to entice
+me to that house, I might then be able to form some conclusion regarding
+the tenants of Rannoch and their friends.
+
+Who was the man who, having represented the man now before me, had been
+struck dead by an unerring hand? Was it possible that Armida had been
+called by telegram to meet her husband, and recognizing the fraud
+perpetrated upon her threatened to disclose it and, for that reason,
+shared the same fate as the masquerader?
+
+This was the first theory that occurred to me; one which I believed to
+be the correct one. The motive was a mystery, yet the facts seemed to me
+plain enough.
+
+As the young Italian had refused to give any satisfactory explanation, I
+resolved within myself to wait until the unfortunate woman's body was
+recovered before revealing to him the ghastly truth. Without doubt he
+had some reason in withholding from me the true facts, either because he
+feared that I might become unduly alarmed, or else he himself had been
+deeply implicated in the plot. Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to
+believe in the latter.
+
+He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with
+all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew
+concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal
+that I had only that morning returned from Scotland. Then at last we
+parted, and he retraced his steps to the little restaurant in Westbourne
+Grove, while I entered a hansom and drove to the well-known
+photographer's in New Bond Street, whose name had been upon the torn
+photograph of the young girl in the white piqué blouse and her hair
+fastened with a bow of black ribbon, the picture that I had found on
+board the _Lola_ on that memorable night in the Mediterranean, and a
+duplicate of which I had seen in Muriel's cosy little room up at
+Rannoch.
+
+I recollected that she had told me the name of the original was Elma
+Heath, and that she had been a schoolfellow of hers at Chichester.
+Therefore I inquired of the photographer's lady-clerk whether she could
+supply me with a print of the negative.
+
+For a considerable time she searched in her books for the name, and at
+last discovered it. Then she said:
+
+"I regret, sir, that we can't give you a print, for the customer
+purchased the negative at the time."
+
+"Ah, I'm very sorry for that," I said. "To what address did you send
+it?"
+
+"The customer who ordered it was apparently a foreigner," she said, at
+the same time turning round the ledger so that I could read. And I saw
+that the entry was: "Heath--Miss Elma--3 dozen cabinets and negative.
+Address: Baron Xavier Oberg, Vosnesenski Prospect 48, St. Petersburg,
+Russia."
+
+"Did this gentleman come with the young lady when her portrait was
+taken?" I inquired.
+
+"I can't tell, sir," she replied. "I've only been here a year, and you
+see the date--over two years ago."
+
+"The photographer would know, perhaps?"
+
+"He's a new man, sir. He only came a month ago. In fact, the business
+changed hands a year ago, and none of the previous employees have
+remained."
+
+"Ah! that's unfortunate," I said, greatly disappointed; and having
+copied the address to which the negative and prints had been sent, I
+thanked her and left.
+
+Who, I wondered, was this Baron Oberg, and what relation was he to Elma
+Heath?
+
+The picture of the girl in the white blouse somehow exercised a strange
+attraction for me.
+
+Have you never experienced the fascination of a photograph, inexplicable
+and yet forcible--a kind of magnetism from which you cannot release
+yourself? Perhaps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it
+from its frame on board the _Lola_ and destroyed it that first aroused
+my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room
+at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often
+wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the
+yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.
+
+Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived
+in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I
+resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.
+
+At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend
+Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the
+name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German
+books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name
+did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.
+
+"He may be Russian--Polish most probably," added the captain, a tall,
+fair fellow in gold spectacles, whom I had known when he was third
+secretary of Embassy at Rome. His opinion was that it was not a German
+name, for there was a little place called Oberg, he said, on the railway
+between Lodz and Lowicz.
+
+Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary,
+old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian
+days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open
+waste. I found the house where Olinto lived--a small, smoke-blackened,
+semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with
+a wooden veranda before the first floor windows. The house, according to
+the woman who kept a general shop at the corner, was occupied by two
+families. The "Eye-talians," as she termed them, lived above, while the
+Gibbonses rented the ground floor.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. The foreigners are respectable enough. Always pays me
+ready money for everythink, except the milk. That they pays for weekly."
+
+"I understand that the wife has disappeared. What have you heard about
+that?"
+
+"They do say, sir, that they 'ad some words together the other day, and
+that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe
+all you 'ear, you know."
+
+"Did they often quarrel?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable
+persons for foreigners."
+
+I repassed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy
+Camberwell Road I took an omnibus back to the Hotel Cecil in the Strand
+where I had put up, tired and disappointed.
+
+Next day I ran down to Chichester, and after some difficulty found the
+Cheverton College for Ladies, a big old-fashioned house about
+half-a-mile out of the town on the Drayton Road. The seminary was
+evidently a first-class one, for when I entered I noticed how well
+everything was kept.
+
+To the principal, an elderly lady of a somewhat severe aspect, I said:
+
+"I regret, madam, to trouble you, but I am in search of information you
+can supply. It is with regard to a certain Elma Heath whom you had as
+pupil here, and who left, I believe, about two years ago. Her parents
+lived in Durham."
+
+"I remember her perfectly," was the woman's response as she sat behind
+the big desk, having apparently at first expected that I had a daughter
+to put to school.
+
+"Well," I said, "there has been some little friction in the family, and
+I am making inquiries on behalf of another branch of it--an aunt who
+desires to ascertain the girl's whereabouts."
+
+"Ah, I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you that. The Baron, her uncle,
+came here one day and took her away suddenly--abroad, I think."
+
+"Had she no school-friend to whom she would probably write?"
+
+"There was a girl named Leithcourt--Muriel Leithcourt--who was her
+friend, but who has also left."
+
+"And no one else?" I asked. "Girls often write to each other after
+leaving school, until they get married, and then the correspondence
+usually ceases."
+
+The principal was silent and reflective.
+
+"Well," she said at last, "there was another pupil who was also on
+friendly terms with Elma--a girl named Lydia Moreton. She may have
+written to her. If you really desire to know, sir, I dare say I could
+find her address. She left us about nine months after Elma."
+
+"I should esteem it a great favor if you would give me that young lady's
+address," I said, whereupon she unlocked a drawer in her writing-table
+and took therefrom a thick, leather-bound book which she consulted for a
+few minutes, at last exclaiming:
+
+"Yes, here it is--'Lydia Moreton, daughter of Sir Hamilton Moreton,
+K.C.M.G., Whiston Grange, Doncaster.'" And she scribbled it in pencil
+upon an envelope, and handing it to me, said:
+
+"Elma Heath was, I fear, somewhat neglected by her parents. She remained
+here for five years, and had no holidays like the other girls. Her
+uncle, the Baron, came to see her several times, but on each occasion
+after he had left I found her crying in secret. He was mean and unkind
+to her. Now that I recollect, I remember that Lydia had said she had
+received a letter from her, therefore she might be able to give you some
+information."
+
+And with that I took my leave, thanking her, and returned to London.
+
+Could Lydia Moreton furnish any information? If so, I might find this
+girl whose photograph had aroused the irate jealousy of the mysterious
+unknown.
+
+The ten o'clock Edinburgh express from King's Cross next morning took me
+up to Doncaster, and hiring a musty old fly at the station, I drove
+three miles out of the town on the Rotherham Road, finding Whiston
+Grange to be a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the center of a great
+park, with tall old twisted chimneys, and beautifully-kept gardens.
+
+When I descended at the door and rang, the footman was not aware whether
+Miss Lydia was in. He looked at me somewhat suspiciously, I thought,
+until I gave my card and impressed upon him meaningly that I had come
+from London purposely to see his young mistress upon a very important
+matter.
+
+"Tell her," I said, "that I wish to see her regarding her friend, Miss
+Elma Heath."
+
+"Miss Elma 'Eath," repeated the man. "Very well, sir. Will you walk this
+way?"
+
+And then I followed him across the big old oak-paneled hall, filled with
+trophies of the chase and arms of the civil wars, into a small paneled
+room on the left, the deep-set window with its diamond panes giving out
+upon the old bowling-green and the flower-garden beyond.
+
+Presently the door opened, and a tall dark-haired girl in white entered
+with an enquiring expression upon her face as she halted and bowed to
+me.
+
+"Miss Lydia Moreton, I believe?" I commenced, and as she replied in the
+affirmative I went on: "I have first to apologize for coming to you, but
+Miss Sotheby, the principal of the school at Chichester, referred me to
+you for information as to the present whereabouts of Miss Elma Heath,
+who, I believe, was one of your most intimate friends at school." And I
+added a lie, saying: "I am trying, on behalf of an aunt of hers, to
+discover her."
+
+"Well," responded the girl, "I have had only one or two letters. She's
+in her uncle's hands, I believe, and he won't let her write, poor girl.
+She dreaded leaving us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ah! she would never say. She had some deep-rooted terror of her uncle,
+Baron Oberg, who lived in St. Petersburg, and who came over at long
+intervals to see her. But possibly you know the whole story?"
+
+"I know nothing," I cried eagerly. "You will be furthering her
+interests, as well as doing me a great personal favor, if you will tell
+me what you know."
+
+"It is very little," she answered, leaning back against the edge of the
+table and regarding me seriously. "Poor Elma! Her people treated her
+very badly indeed. They sent her no money, and allowed her no holidays,
+and yet she was the sweetest-tempered and most patient girl in the whole
+school."
+
+"Well--and the story regarding her?"
+
+"It was supposed that her people at Durham did not exist," she
+explained. "Elma had evidently lived a greater part of her life abroad,
+for she could speak French and Italian better than the professor
+himself, and therefore always won the prizes. The class revolted, and
+then she did not compete any more. Yet she never told us of where she
+had lived when a child. She came from Durham, she said--that was all."
+
+"You had a letter from her after the Baron came and took her away?"
+
+"Yes, from London. She said that she had been to several plays and
+concerts, but did not care for life in town. There was too much bustle
+and noise and study of clothes."
+
+"And what other letters did you receive from her?"
+
+"Three or four, I think. They were all from places abroad. One was from
+Vienna, one was from Milan, and one from some place with an
+unpronounceable name in Hungary. The last----"
+
+"Yes, the last?" I gasped eagerly, interrupting her.
+
+"Well, the last I received only a fortnight ago. If you will wait a
+moment I will go and get it. It was so strange that I haven't destroyed
+it." And she went out, and I heard by the frou-frou of her skirts that
+she was ascending the stairs.
+
+After five minutes of breathless anxiety she rejoined me, and handing me
+the letter to read, said:
+
+"It is not in her handwriting--I wonder why?"
+
+The paper was of foreign make, with blue lines ruled in squares. Written
+in a hand that was evidently foreign, for the mistakes in the
+orthography were many, was the following curious communication:
+
+"My Dear Lydia:
+
+"Perhaps you may never get this letter--the last I shall ever be able to
+send you. Indeed, I run great risks in sending it. Ah! you do not know
+the awful disaster that has happened to me, all the terrors and the
+tortures I endure. But no one can assist me, and I am now looking
+forward to the time when it will all be over. Do you recollect our old
+peaceful days in the garden at Chichester? I think of them always,
+always, and compare that sweet peace of the past with my own terrible
+sufferings of to-day. Ah, how I wish I might see you once again; how
+that I might feel your hand upon my brow, and hear your words of hope
+and encouragement! But happiness is now debarred from me, and I am only
+sinking to the grave under this slow torture of body and of soul.
+
+"This will pass through many hands before it reaches the post. If,
+however, it ever does get despatched and you receive it, will you do me
+one last favor--a favor to an unfortunate girl who is friendless and
+helpless, and who will no longer trouble the world? It is this: Take
+this letter to London, and call upon Mr. Martin Woodroffe at 98 Cork
+Street, Piccadilly. Show him my letter, and tell him from me that
+through it all I have kept my promise, and that the secret is still
+safe. He will understand--and also know why I cannot write this with my
+own hand. If he is abroad, keep it until he returns.
+
+"It is all I ask of you, Lydia, and I know that if this reaches you, you
+will not refuse me. You have been my only friend and confidante, but I
+now bid you farewell, for the unknown beckons me, and from the grave I
+cannot write. Again farewell, and for ever.
+
+"Your loving and affectionate friend,
+
+"Elma."
+
+"A very strange letter, is it not?" remarked the girl at my side. "I
+can't make it out. You see there is no address, but the postmark is
+Russian. She is evidently in Russia."
+
+"In Finland," I said, examining the stamp and making out the post town
+to be Abo. "But have you been to London and executed this strange
+commission?"
+
+"No. We are going up next week. I intend to call upon this person named
+Woodroffe."
+
+I made no remark. He was, I knew, abroad, but I was glad at having
+obtained two very important clues: first, the address of the mysterious
+yachtsman, Woodroffe, alias Hornby, and, secondly, ascertaining that the
+young girl I sought was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Abo,
+the Finnish port on the Baltic.
+
+"Poor Elma, you see, speaks in her letter of some secret, Mr. Gregg," my
+companion said. "She says she wishes this Mr. Woodroffe, whoever he is,
+to know that she has kept her promise and has not divulged it. This only
+bears out what I have all along suspected."
+
+"What are your suspicions?"
+
+"Well, from her deep, thoughtful manner, and from certain remarks she at
+times made to me, I believe that Elma is in possession of some great and
+terrible secret--a secret which her uncle, Baron Oberg, is desirous of
+learning. I know she holds him in deadly fear--she is in terror that she
+may inadvertently betray to him the truth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE
+
+
+The strange letter of Elma Heath, combined with what Lydia Moreton had
+told me, aroused within me a determination to investigate the mystery.
+From the moment I had landed from the _Lola_ on that hot, breathless
+night at Leghorn, mystery had crowded upon mystery until it was all
+bewildering.
+
+It was now proved that the sweet-faced girl, the original of the torn
+photograph, held a secret, and that, by her own words, she knew that
+death was approaching. The incomprehensible attempt upon my life, the
+strange actions of Hornby and Chater--who, by the way, seemed to have
+entirely disappeared--the assassination of the man who by masquerading
+as the Italian waiter had met his death, and the murder of Olinto's wife
+were all problems which required solution.
+
+Had it not been for the mystery of it all--and mystery ever arouses the
+human curiosity--I should have given up trying to get at the truth. Yet
+as a man with some leisure, and knowing by that letter of Elma Heath's
+that she was in sore distress, I redoubled my efforts to ascertain the
+reason of it all.
+
+The mystery of the _Lola_ was still a mystery along the Mediterranean.
+At every French and Italian port the yacht's false name and general
+build was written in the police-books, while at Lloyd's the name _Lola_
+was marked down as among the mysterious craft at sea.
+
+Chater was missing, while Hornby was abroad. Perhaps they were both
+cruising again, with their yacht repainted and bearing a fresh name. But
+why? What had been their motive?
+
+Stirred by the complete mystery which now seemed to enshroud the
+unfortunate girl, I set before myself the task of elucidating it.
+Hitherto I had remained passive rather than active, but I now realized
+by that curious letter that at least one woman's life was at stake--that
+Elma Heath was in possession of some secret.
+
+On leaving Leghorn I had given up all hope of tracing the mysterious
+yachtsman, and had left the matter in the hands of the Italian police.
+But, without any effort on my own part, I seemed to have been drawn into
+a veritable network of strange incidents, all of which combined to form
+the most complete and remarkable enigma ever presented in life. Surely
+no man was ever confronted by so many mysteries at one time as I was at
+this moment.
+
+Fortunately I had been careful not to show my hand to anyone, and this
+perhaps gave me a distinct advantage. On my journey back to London, as
+the train swung through Peterborough and out across the rich level lands
+towards Hitchin, I recollected Jack Durnford's words when I had
+mentioned the _Lola_. What, I wondered, did he know?
+
+Next month, in November, he was due back in London after his three
+years' service on the Mediterranean station. Then we should meet in a
+few weeks I hoped. Would he tell me anything when he became aware of all
+I knew? He held some secret knowledge. Was it possible that his secret
+was the same as that held by the unfortunate girl in far-off, dreary
+Finland?
+
+I called at the house in Cork Street indicated by Elma, and learned
+from the old commissionaire who acted as lift-man and porter, that Mr.
+Woodroffe's chambers were closed.
+
+"'E's nearly always away, sir--abroad, I think," was all I could get out
+of the old soldier, who, like his class, was no doubt well paid to keep
+his mouth closed.
+
+For two days I lounged about Westbourne Grove watching Ferrari's
+restaurant. In such a busy, bustling thoroughfare, with so many shop
+windows as excuses for loitering, the task was easy. I saw that Olinto
+came regularly at ten o'clock in the morning, worked hard all day, and
+left at nine o'clock at night, taking an omnibus home from Royal Oak.
+His exterior was calm and unconcerned, unlike that of a man whose
+devoted wife had disappeared.
+
+I would have approached him and explained the ghastly truth, had it not
+been for the fact that the poor woman's body was missing.
+
+Those September days were full of anxiety for me. Alone and unaided I
+was trying to solve one of the greatest of problems, plunged as I was in
+a veritable sea of mystery. I wanted to see Muriel Leithcourt, and to
+question her further regarding Elma Heath. Therefore again I left
+Euston, and, traveling through the night, took my seat at the
+breakfast-table at Greenlaw next morning.
+
+Sir George, who was sitting alone--it not being my aunt's habit to
+appear early--welcomed me, and then in his bluff manner sniffed and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Nice goings on up at Rannoch! Have you heard of them?"
+
+"No. What?" I cried breathlessly, staring at him.
+
+"Well, my suspicions that those Leithcourts were utter outsiders turns
+out to be about correct."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, it's a very funny story, and there are a dozen different
+distorted versions of it," he said. "But from what I can gather the true
+facts are these: About seven o'clock the night before last, as
+Leithcourt and his house-party were dressing for dinner, a telegram
+arrived. Mrs. Leithcourt opened it, and at once went off into hysterics,
+while her husband, in a breathless hurry, slipped off his evening
+clothes again and got into an old blue serge suit, tossed a few things
+into a bag, and then went along to Muriel's room to urge her to prepare
+for secret flight."
+
+"Flight!" I gasped. "What, have they gone?"
+
+"Listen, and I'll tell you. The servants have described the whole affair
+down in the village, so there's no doubt about it. Leithcourt showed
+Muriel the telegram and urged her to fly. At first she refused, but for
+her father's sake was induced to prepare to accompany him. Of course,
+the guests were in ignorance of all this. The brougham was ordered to be
+ready in the stable-yard and not to go round, while Mrs. Leithcourt's
+maid tried to bring the lady back to her senses. Leithcourt himself, it
+seemed, rushed hither and thither, seizing the jewel-cases of his wife
+and daughter and whatever valuables he could place his hand upon, while
+the mother and daughter were putting on their things. As he rushed down
+the main staircase to the library, where his check-book and some ready
+cash were locked in the safe, he met a stranger who had just been
+admitted and shown into the room. Leithcourt closed the door and faced
+him. What afterwards transpired, however, is a mystery, for two hours
+later, after he and the two women had escaped, leaving the house-party
+to their own diversions, the stranger was found locked in a large
+cupboard and insensible. The sensation was a tremendous one. Cowan, the
+doctor, was called, and declared that the stranger had been drugged and
+was suffering from some narcotic. The servant who admitted him declared
+that the man had said he had an appointment with his master, and that no
+card was necessary. He, however, gave the name of Chater."
+
+"Chater!" I cried, starting up. "Are you certain of that name?"
+
+"I only know what Cowan told me," was my uncle's reply. "But do you know
+him?"
+
+"Not at all. Only I've heard that name before," I said. "I knew a man
+out in Italy of the same name. But where is the visitor now?"
+
+"In the hospital at Dumfries. They took him there in preference to
+leaving him alone at Rannoch."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Of course. Everyone has left, now the host and hostess have slipped off
+without saying good-bye. Scandalous affair, isn't it? But, my boy,
+you'll remember that I always said I didn't like those people. There's
+something mysterious about them, I feel certain. That telegram gave them
+warning of the visit of the man Chater, depend upon it, and for some
+reason they're afraid of him. It would be interesting to know what
+transpired between the two men in the library. And these are people
+who've been taken up by everybody--mere adventurers, I should call
+them!" And old Sir George sniffed again at thought of such scandal
+happening in the neighborhood. "If Gilrae must let Rannoch, then why in
+the name of Fortune doesn't he let it to respectable folk and not to the
+first fellow who answers his advertisement in _The Field?_ It's simply
+disgraceful!"
+
+"Certainly, it is a most extraordinary story," I declared. "Leithcourt
+evidently wished to escape from his visitor, and that's why he drugged
+him."
+
+"Why he poisoned him, you mean. Cowan says the fellow is poisoned, but
+that he'll probably recover. He is already conscious, I hear."
+
+I resolved to call on the doctor, who happened to be well known to me,
+and obtain further particulars. Therefore at eleven o'clock I drove into
+Dumfries and entered his consulting-room.
+
+He was a spare, short, fair man, a trifle bald, and when I was shown in
+he welcomed me warmly, speaking with his pronounced Galloway accent.
+
+"Well, it is a very mysterious case, Mr. Gregg," he said, after I had
+told him the object of my visit. "The gentleman is still in the
+hospital, and I have to keep him very quiet. He was poisoned without a
+doubt, and has had a very narrow escape of his life. The police got wind
+of the affair, and Mackenzie called to question him. But he refused to
+make any statement whatever, apparently treating the affair very
+lightly. The police, however, are mystified as to the reason of Mr.
+Leithcourt's sudden flight, and are anxious to get at the bottom of the
+curious affair."
+
+"Naturally. And more especially after the tragedy up in Rannoch Wood a
+short time ago," I said.
+
+"That's just it," said the doctor, removing his pince-nez and rubbing
+them. "Mackenzie seems to suspect some connection between Leithcourt's
+sudden disappearance and that mysterious affair. It seems very evident
+that the telegram was a warning to Leithcourt of the man Chater's
+intention of calling, and that the last-named was shown in just at the
+moment when the fugitive was on the point of leaving."
+
+"Chater." I echoed. "Do you know his Christian name?"
+
+"Hylton Chater. He is apparently a gentleman. Curious that he will tell
+us nothing of the reason he called, and of the scene that occurred
+between them."
+
+Knowing all that I did, I was not surprised. Leithcourt had undoubtedly
+taken him unawares, but knights of industry never betray each other.
+
+My next visit was to Mackenzie, for whom I had to wait nearly an hour,
+as he was absent in another quarter of the town.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Gregg!" he cried gladly, as he came in to find me seated in a
+chair patiently reading the newspaper. "You are the very person I wish
+to see. Have you heard of this strange affair at Rannoch?"
+
+"I have," was my answer. "Has the man in the hospital made any statement
+yet?"
+
+"None. He refuses point-blank," answered the detective. "But my own idea
+is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries of
+the wood."
+
+"The first mystery--that of the man--proves to be a double mystery," I
+said.
+
+"How? Explain it."
+
+"Well, the waiter Olinto Santini is alive and well in London."
+
+"What!" he gasped, starting up. "Then he is not the person you
+identified him to be?"
+
+"No. But he was masquerading as Santini--made up to resemble him, I
+mean, even to the mole upon his face."
+
+"But you identified him positively?"
+
+"When a person is dead it is very easy to mistake countenances. Death
+alters the countenance so very much."
+
+"That's true," he said reflectively. "But if the man we've buried is not
+the Italian, then the mystery is considerably increased. Why was the
+real man's wife here?"
+
+"And where has her body been concealed? That's the question."
+
+"Again a mystery. We have made a thorough search for four days, without
+discovering any trace of it. Quite confidentially, I'm wondering if this
+man Chater knows anything. It is curious, to say the least, that the
+Leithcourts should have fled so hurriedly on this man's appearance. But
+have you actually seen Olinto Santini?"
+
+"Yes, and have spoken with him."
+
+"I sent up to London asking that inquiries should be made at the
+restaurant in Bayswater, but up to the present I have received no
+report."
+
+"I have chatted with Olinto. His wife has mysteriously disappeared, but
+he is in ignorance that she is dead."
+
+"You did not tell him anything?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Ah, you did well. There is widespread conspiracy here, depend upon it,
+Mr. Gregg. It will be an interesting case when we get to the bottom of
+it all. I only wish this fellow Chater would tell us the reason he
+called upon Leithcourt."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Merely that he has no wish to prosecute, and that he has no statement
+to make."
+
+"Can't you compel him to say something?" I asked.
+
+"No, I can't. That's the infernal difficulty of it. If he don't choose
+to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel
+confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood."
+
+And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective's belief.
+
+The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.
+
+The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on
+everyone's tongue in Dumfries. In the smoke-room of the railway hotel
+three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and
+the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the
+strange goings-on up at the Castle.
+
+As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top
+before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the
+situation. I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet
+when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the
+_Lola_, I naturally hesitated. He was allied with Hornby, apparently
+against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby's friend.
+
+What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle
+which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through
+the rain? How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible
+and hiding him in that cupboard? Did he believe that he had killed him?
+
+If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of
+myself. No. I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so
+affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain
+in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge. Therefore I stayed for
+a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care
+that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.
+
+Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that
+tantalizing silence. The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man
+in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful
+murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public
+had no knowledge, for the body was not discovered.
+
+Time after time I searched the wood alone, on the pretense of shooting
+pigeon, but discovered nothing. When not having sport on my uncle's
+property, I joined various parties in the neighborhood, not because
+Scotland at that time attracted me, but because I desired to watch
+events.
+
+Chater, as soon as he recovered, left the hospital and went south--to
+London, I ascertained--leaving the police utterly in the dark and filled
+with suspicion of the fugitives from Rannoch.
+
+I longed to know the whereabouts of Muriel, hoping to gain from her some
+information regarding their visitor who had so nearly escaped with his
+life. That she was aware of the object of his visit was plain from the
+statements of the servants, all of whom had been left without either
+money or orders.
+
+One day I called at the castle, the front entrance of which I found
+closed. Gilrae, the owner, had come up from London, met his factor
+there, and discharged all the late tenant's servants, keeping on only
+three of his own who had been in service there for a number of years.
+Ann Cameron, a housemaid, was one of these, and it was she whom I met
+when entering by the servants' hall.
+
+On questioning her, I found her most willing to describe how she was in
+the corridor outside the young mistress's room when Mr. Leithcourt
+dashed along in breathless haste with the telegram in his hand. She
+heard him cry: "Look at this! Read it, Muriel. We must go. Put on your
+things at once, my dear. Never mind about luggage. Every minute lost is
+of consequence. What!" he cried a moment later. "You won't go? You'll
+stay here--stay here and face them? Good Heavens! girl, are you mad?
+Don't you know what this means? It means that the secret is out--the
+secret is out, you hear! We must fly!"
+
+The woman told me that she distinctly heard Miss Muriel sobbing, while
+her father walked up and down the room speaking rapidly in a low tone.
+Then he came out again and returned to his dressing-room, while Miss
+Muriel presumably changed from her evening-gown into a dark
+traveling-dress.
+
+"Did she say anything to you?" I inquired.
+
+"Only that they were called away suddenly, sir. But," the domestic
+added, "the young lady was very pale and agitated, and we all knew that
+something terrible had happened. Mrs. Leithcourt gave orders that
+nothing was to be told to the guests, who dined alone, believing that
+their host and hostess had gone down to the village to see an old man
+who was dying. That was the story we told them, sir."
+
+"And in the meantime the Leithcourts were in the express going to
+Carlisle?"
+
+"Yes, sir. They say in Dumfries that the police telegraphed after them,
+but they had reached Carlisle and evidently changed there, and so got
+away."
+
+By the administration of a judicious tip I was allowed to go up to Miss
+Muriel's room, an elegantly furnished little chamber in the front of the
+fine old place, with a deep old-fashioned window commanding a
+magnificent view across the broad Nithsdale.
+
+The room had been tidied by the maids, but allowed to remain just as she
+had left it. I advanced to the window, in which was set the large
+dressing-table with its big swing-mirror and silver-topped bottles, and
+on gazing out saw, to my surprise, it was the only window which gave a
+view of that corner of Rannoch Wood where the double tragedy had taken
+place. Indeed, any person standing at the spot would have a clear view
+of that one distant window while out of sight of all the rest. A light
+might be placed there at night as signal, for instance; or by day a
+towel might be hung from the window as though to dry and yet could be
+plainly seen at that distance.
+
+Another object in the room also attracted my attention--a pair of long
+field-glasses. Had she used these to keep watch upon that spot?
+
+I took them up and focused them upon the boundary of the wood, finding
+that I could distinguish everything quite plainly.
+
+"That's where they found the man who was murdered," explained the
+servant, who still stood in the doorway.
+
+"I know," I replied. "I was just trying the glasses." Then I put them
+down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red
+candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon
+the electric table-lamp.
+
+"Miss Muriel was very fond of a red light," explained the young woman;
+and as I held it I wondered if that light had ever been placed upon the
+toilet-table and the blind drawn up--whether it had ever been used as a
+warning of danger?
+
+As I expressed a desire to see the young lady's boudoir, the maid
+Cameron took me down to the luxurious little room where, the first
+moment I entered, one fact struck me as peculiar. The picture of Elma
+Heath was no longer there. The photograph had been taken from its frame,
+and in its place was the portrait of a broad-browed, full-bearded man in
+a foreign military uniform--a picture that, being soiled and faded, had
+evidently been placed there to fill the empty frame.
+
+Whose hand had secured that portrait before the Leithcourt's flight?
+Why, indeed, should I, for the second time, discover the unhappy girl's
+picture missing?
+
+"Has the gentleman who called on the evening of Mr. Leithcourt's
+disappearance been back here again since he left the hospital?" I
+inquired as a sudden idea occurred to me.
+
+"Yes, sir. He called here in a fly on the day he came out, and at his
+request I took him over the castle. He went into the library, and spent
+half-an-hour in pacing across it, taking measurements, and examining
+the big cupboard in which he was found insensible. It was a strange
+affair, sir," added the young woman, "wasn't it?"
+
+"Very," I replied.
+
+"The gentleman might have been in there now had I not gone into the
+library and found a lot of illustrated papers, which I always put in the
+cupboard to keep the place tidy, thrown out on to the floor. I went to
+put them back but discovered the door locked. The key I afterwards found
+in the grate, where Mr. Leithcourt had evidently thrown it, and on
+opening the door imagine the shock I had when I found the visitor lying
+doubled up. I, of course, thought he was dead."
+
+"And when he returned here on his recovery, did he question you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He asked about the Leithcourts, and especially about Miss
+Muriel. I believe he's rather sweet on her, by the way he spoke. And
+really no better or kinder lady never breathed, I'm sure. We're all very
+sorry indeed for her."
+
+"But she had nothing to do with the affair."
+
+"Of course not. But she shares in the scandal and disgrace. You should
+have seen the effect of the news upon the guests when they knew that the
+Leithcourts had gone. It was a regular pandemonium. They ordered the
+best champagne out of the cellars and drank it, the men cleared all the
+cigar-boxes, and the women rummaged in the wardrobes until they seemed
+like a pack of hungry wolves. Everybody went away with their trunks full
+of the Leithcourt's things. They took whatever they could lay their
+hands on, and we, the servants, couldn't stop them. I did remonstrate
+with one lady who was cramming into her trunk two of Miss Muriel's best
+evening dresses, but she told me to mind my own business and leave the
+room. One man I saw go away with four of Mr. Leithcourt's guns, and
+there was a regular squabble in the billiard-room over a set of pearl
+and emerald dress-studs that somebody found in his dressing-room. Crane,
+the valet, says they tossed for them."
+
+"Disgraceful!" I ejaculated. "Then as soon as the host and hostess had
+gone, they simply swept through the rooms and cleared them?"
+
+"Yes, sir. They took away all that was most valuable. They'd have had
+the silver, only Mason had thrown it into the plate-chest, all dirty as
+it was, locked it up and hid the key. The plate was Mr. Gilrae's, you
+know, sir, and Mason was responsible."
+
+"He acted wisely," I said, surprised at the domestic's story. "Why, the
+guests acted like a gang of thieves."
+
+"They were, sir. They rushed all over the house like demons let loose,
+and they even stole some of our things. I lost a silver chain."
+
+"And what did the stranger say when you told him of this?"
+
+"He smiled. It did not seem to surprise him in the least, for after all
+his visit was the cause of the sudden breaking up of the party, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"And did you show him over the whole house?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir," responded the servant. "Curiously enough he had with him
+what seemed to be a large plan of the castle, and as we went from room
+to room he compared it with his plan. He was here for hours, and told me
+he wanted to make a thorough examination of the place and didn't want to
+be disturbed. He also said that he might probably take the place for
+next season, if he liked it. I think, however, he only told me this
+because he thought I would be more patient while he took his
+measurements and made his investigations. He was here from twelve till
+nearly six o'clock, and went through every room, even up to the
+turrets."
+
+"He came into this room, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she responded, with just a slight hesitation, I thought.
+"This was the room where he stayed the longest. There was a photograph
+in that frame over there," she added, indicating the frame that had held
+the picture of Elma Heath, "a portrait of a young lady, which he begged
+me to give him."
+
+"And you gave it to him?" I cried quickly.
+
+"Well--yes, sir. He begged so hard for it, saying that it was the
+portrait of a friend of his."
+
+"And he gave you something handsome for it--eh?"
+
+The young woman, whom I knew could not refuse half-a-sovereign, colored
+slightly and smiled.
+
+"And who put that picture in its place?" I asked.
+
+"I did, sir. I found it upstairs."
+
+"He didn't tell you who the young lady was, I suppose?"
+
+"No, sir. He only said that that was the only photograph that existed,
+and that she was dead."
+
+"Dead!" I gasped, staring at her.
+
+"Yes, sir. That was why he was so anxious for the picture."
+
+Elma Heath dead! Could it be true? That sweet-pictured face haunted me
+as no other face had ever impressed itself upon my memory. It somehow
+seemed to impel me to endeavor to penetrate the mystery, and yet Hylton
+Chater had declared that she was dead! I recollected the remarkable
+letter from Abo, and her own declaration that her end was near. That
+letter was, she said, the last she should write to her friend. Did
+Hylton Chater actually possess knowledge of the girl's death? Had he all
+along been acquainted with her whereabouts? What the young woman told
+me upset all my plans. If Elma Heath were really dead, then she was
+beyond discovery, and the truth would be hidden forever.
+
+"After he had put the photograph in his pocket, the gentleman made a
+most minute search in this room," the domestic went on. "He consulted
+his plan, took several measurements, and then tapped on the paneling all
+along this wall, as though he were searching for some hidden cupboard or
+hiding place. I looked at the plan, and saw a mark in red ink upon it.
+He was trying to discover that spot, and was greatly disappointed at not
+being able to do so. He was in here over an hour, and made a most
+careful search all around."
+
+"And what explanation did he give?"
+
+"He only said, 'If I find what I want, Ann, I shall make you a present
+of a ten-pound note.' That naturally made me anxious."
+
+"He made no other remark about the young lady's death?" I inquired
+anxiously.
+
+"No. Only he sighed, and looked steadily for a long time at the
+photograph. I saw his lips moving, but his words were inaudible."
+
+"You haven't any idea of the reason why he called upon Mr. Leithcourt, I
+suppose?"
+
+"From what he said, I've formed my own conclusions," was her answer.
+
+"And what is your opinion?"
+
+"Well, I feel certain that there is, or was, something concealed in this
+house that he's very anxious to obtain. He came to demand it of Mr.
+Leithcourt, but what happened in the library we don't know. He, however,
+believes that Mr. Leithcourt has not taken it away, and that, whatever
+it may be, it is still hidden here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+I SHOW MY HAND
+
+
+On my return to London next day I made inquiry at the Admiralty and
+learned that the battleship _Bulwark_ was lying at Palermo, therefore I
+telegraphed to Jack Durnford, and late the same afternoon his reply came
+at the Cecil:--
+
+"_Due in London twentieth. Dine with me at club that evening_--Jack."
+
+The twentieth! That meant nearly a month of inactivity. In that time I
+could cross to Abo, make inquiries there, and ascertain, perhaps, if
+Elma Heath were actually dead as Chater had declared.
+
+Two facts struck me as remarkable: Baron Oberg was said to be Polish,
+while the dark-bearded proprietor of the restaurant in Westbourne Grove
+was also of the same nationality. Then I recollected that pretty little
+enameled cross that Mackenzie had found in Rannoch Wood, and it suddenly
+occurred to me that it might possibly be the miniature of one of the
+European orders of chivalry. In the club library at midnight I found a
+copy of Cappelletti's _Storia degli Ordini Cavallereschi_, the standard
+work on the subject, and on searching the illustrations I at length
+discovered a picture of it. It was a Russian order--the coveted Order of
+Saint Anne, bestowed by the Czar only upon persons who have rendered
+eminent services to the State and to the sovereign. One fact was now
+certain, namely, that the owner of that tiny cross, the small replica of
+the fine decoration, must be a person of high official standing.
+
+Next day I spent in making inquiries with a view to discovering the
+house said to be occupied by Leithcourt. As it was not either in the
+Directory or the Blue Book, I concluded that he had perhaps rented it
+furnished, and after many inquiries and considerable difficulties I
+found that such was the fact. He had occupied the house of Lady
+Heathcote, a few doors from Grosvenor Square, for the previous season,
+although he had lived there but very little.
+
+Where the fugitives were in hiding I had no idea. I longed to meet
+Muriel again and tell her what I had discovered, yet it was plain that
+the trio were concealing themselves from Hylton Chater, whom I supposed
+to be now back in London.
+
+The autumn days were dull and rainy, and the streets were muddy and
+unpleasant, as they always are at the fall of the year. Compelled to
+remain inactive, I idled in the club with the recollection of that
+pictured face ever before me--the face of the unfortunate girl who
+wished her last message to be conveyed to Philip Hornby. What, I
+wondered, was her secret? What was really her fate?
+
+This latter question troubled me until I could bear it no longer. I felt
+that it was my duty to go to Finland and endeavor to learn something
+regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me
+declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing
+wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew
+how dull he was when alone. Even his Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer
+from homesickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a
+glass of homely bitter ale.
+
+But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of
+time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and
+how sweet are the recollections of our dear gray old England with her
+green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray,
+grimy cities. You have but one "home," and England Is still your home,
+even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may
+have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year
+through.
+
+Duty--the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
+defenseless woman was a victim--called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
+passport properly viséd and my papers all in order, I one night left
+Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
+weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
+capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
+plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
+Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
+those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.
+
+It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
+knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
+perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
+had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
+landing on the half-deserted quay.
+
+In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
+passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
+forgotten to date the visé which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
+It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon
+the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in
+Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly--
+
+"This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before
+you can proceed."
+
+"But it is not my fault," I protested. "It is the fault of the clerk at
+the Consulate-General."
+
+"You should have examined it before leaving. You must send it to London,
+and return to Stockholm by to-night's boat."
+
+"But this is outrageous!" I cried, as he had already taken the papers of
+a passenger behind me and was looking at them with unconcern.
+
+"Enough!" he exclaimed, glaring at me. "You will return to-night, or if
+you choose to stay you will be arrested for landing without a passport."
+
+"I shall not go back!" I declared defiantly. "Your Consul-General viséd
+my passport, and I claim, under international law, to be allowed to
+proceed without hindrance."
+
+"The steamer leaves at six o'clock," he remarked without looking up. "If
+you are in Abo after that it will be at your own risk."
+
+"I am English, recollect," I said.
+
+"To me it does not matter what or who you are. Your passport, undated,
+is worthless."
+
+"I shall complain to the Ambassador at Petersburg."
+
+"Your Ambassador does not interest me in the least. He is not Ambassador
+here in Finland. There is no Czar here."
+
+"Oh! Who is ruler in this country, pray?"
+
+"His Excellency the Governor-General, an official who has love for
+neither England nor the pigs of English. So recollect that."
+
+"Yes," I said meaningly, "I shall recollect it." And I turned and went
+out of the little wooden office, replacing my passport in my
+pocket-book.
+
+I had already been directed to the hotel, and walked there, but as I
+did so I saw that I was already under the surveillance of the police,
+for two men in plain clothes who were lounging outside the
+passport-office strolled on after me, evidently to watch my movements.
+Truly Finland was under the iron-heel of autocracy.
+
+After taking my rooms, I strolled about the flat, uninteresting town,
+wondering how best to commence my search. If I had but a photograph to
+show people it would give me a great advantage, but I had nothing. I had
+never, indeed, set eyes upon the unfortunate girl.
+
+Six o'clock came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound
+for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost,
+therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in
+company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across from
+Stockholm.
+
+At eight o'clock, however, just as we were idling over dessert, two
+gray-coated police officers entered and arrested me on the serious
+charge of landing without a passport.
+
+I accompanied them to the police-office, where I was ushered into the
+presence of the big, bristly Russian who held the town of Abo in terror,
+the Chief of Police. The officials which Russia sends into Finland are
+selected for their harsh discipline and hide-bound bureaucracy, and this
+human machine in uniform was no exception. Had he been the Minister of
+the Interior himself, he could not have been more self-opinionated.
+
+"Well?" he snapped, looking up at me as I was placed before him. "Your
+name is Gordon Gregg, English, from Stockholm. No passport, and decline
+to leave even though warned--eh?"
+
+"I have a passport," I said firmly, producing it.
+
+He looked at it, and pointing with his finger, said: "It has no date,
+and is therefore worthless."
+
+"The fault is not mine, but that of a Russian official. If you wish it
+to be dated, you may send it to your Consulate-General in London."
+
+"I shall not," he cried, glaring at me angrily. "And for your insult to
+the law, I shall commit you to prison for one month. Perhaps you will
+then learn Russian manners."
+
+"Oh! so you will commit an Englishman to prison for a month, without
+trial--eh? That's very interesting! Perhaps if you attempt such a thing
+as that they may have something to say about it in Petersburg."
+
+"You defy me!"
+
+"Not in the least. I have presented my passport and demand common
+courtesy."
+
+"Your passport is worthless, I tell you!" he cried. "There, that's how
+much it is worth to me!" And snatching it up he tore it in half and
+tossed the pieces of blue paper in my face.
+
+My blood was up at this insult, yet I bit my lips and remained quite
+calm.
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly tell me who you are?" I asked in as quiet a
+voice as I could command.
+
+"With pleasure. I am Michael Boranski, Chief of Police of the Province
+of Abo-Biornebourg."
+
+"Ah! Well, Michael Boranski, I shall trouble you to pick up my passport,
+stick it together again, and apologize to me."
+
+"Apologize! Me apologize!" And the fellow laughed aloud, while the
+police officers on either side of me grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"Refuse? Certainly I do!"
+
+"Very well, then," I said, re-opening my pocket-book and taking out an
+open letter. "Perhaps you will kindly glance at that. It is in Russian,
+so you can read it."
+
+He snatched it from me with ill-grace, but not without curiosity. And
+then, as he read the lines, his face changed and he went paler. Raising
+his head, he stood staring at me open-mouthed in amazement.
+
+"I apologize to your Excellency!" he gasped, blanched to the lips. "I
+most humbly apologize. I--I did not know. You told me nothing!"
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly mend my passport, and give it a proper visé."
+
+In an instant he was up from his chair, and having gathered the torn
+paper from the floor, proceeded to paste it together. On the back he
+endorsed that it had been torn by accident, and then gave it the proper
+visé, affixing the stamps.
+
+"I trust, Excellency," he said, bowing low as he handed it to me, "I
+trust that this affair will not trouble you further. I assure you I had
+no intention of insulting you."
+
+"Yes, you had!" I said. "You insulted me merely because I am English.
+But recollect in future that the man who insults an Englishman generally
+pays for it, and I do not intend to let this pass. There is a higher
+power in Finland than even the Governor-General."
+
+"But, Excellency," whined the fellow who only ten minutes ago had been
+such an insulting bully, "I shall lose my position. I have a wife and
+six children--my wife is delicate, and my pay here is not a large one.
+You will forgive, won't you, Excellency? I have apologized--I most
+humbly apologize."
+
+And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with
+trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:
+
+"MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD, PALACE OF PETERHOF.
+
+"The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom
+it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey
+through our dominion. And we hereby command all Governors of Provinces
+and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and
+privileges and immunities as Our guest."
+
+The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian,
+while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred
+and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from
+the gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific--"Nicholas."
+
+The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the
+invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry
+into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British
+public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them.
+It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in
+Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in
+European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return
+to Italy to recuperate. The document had therefore remained in my
+possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following
+summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked,
+and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the
+Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given
+me that most valuable document.
+
+Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a
+whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest
+of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He
+begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling
+himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded
+me with awe.
+
+"I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires,"
+declared the official. "I will serve your Excellency in any way he may
+command."
+
+His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he
+feared me.
+
+"Well," I said after some reluctance, "there is a little matter in which
+you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my
+decision of complaining to Petersburg."
+
+"And what is that, Excellency?" he gasped eagerly.
+
+"I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma
+Heath," I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper.
+"Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a
+niece of a certain Baron Oberg."
+
+"Baron Oberg!" he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.
+
+"Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is
+somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she
+is, and I will say nothing more about my passport," I added.
+
+"Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?" he said
+reflectively, with the paper in his hand.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
+Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made," was his answer. "When
+I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
+your Excellency's hotel."
+
+And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
+officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.
+
+On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
+Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
+an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
+south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and
+meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every
+hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the
+country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg
+to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian
+bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful
+neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most
+unscrupulous officials it could import.
+
+My fellow-traveler from Stockholm, who represented a firm of
+paper-makers in Hamburg, and who paid an annual visit to Abo and
+Helsingfors, acted as my guide around the town, while I awaited the
+information from the humbled Chief of Police. My German friend pointed
+out to me how, since Russia placed her hand upon Finland, progress had
+been arrested, and certainly plain evidences were on every hand. There
+was growing discontent everywhere, for many of the newspapers had
+recently been suppressed and the remainder were under a severe
+censorship; agriculture had already decreased, and many of the
+cotton-spinning and saw mills were silent and deserted. The exploitation
+of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated
+down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners
+were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression
+everywhere. Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the
+more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken,
+artificially isolated and oppressed Russia. The double-headed eagle was
+everywhere, and the people sat silent and brooding beneath its black
+shadow.
+
+"There will be an uprising here before long," declared the German
+confidentially, as we were taking tea one day on the wooden balcony of
+the hotel where the sea and the low-lying islands stretched out before
+us in the pale yellow of the autumn sundown. "The people will revolt, as
+they did in Poland. The Finnish Government can only appeal to the Czar
+through the Governor-General, and one can easily imagine that their
+suggestions never reach the Emperor. It is said here that the harsher
+and more corrupt the official, the greater honor does he receive from
+Petersburg. But trouble is brewing for Russia," he added. "A very
+serious trouble--depend upon it."
+
+I looked upon the gray dismal scene, the empty port, the silent quay,
+the dark line of gloomy pine forest away beyond the town, the broken
+coast and the wide expanse of water glittering in the northern sunset.
+Yes. The very silence seemed to forbode evil and mystery. Truly what I
+saw of Finland impressed me even more than what I had witnessed in the
+far-off eastern provinces of European Russia.
+
+My object, however, was not to inquire into the internal condition of
+Finland, or of her resentment of her powerful conqueror. I was there to
+find that unfortunate girl who had written so strangely to her old
+school friend and whose portrait had, for some hidden reason, been
+destroyed.
+
+On the morning of the third day after my arrival at Abo, while sitting
+on the hotel veranda reading an old copy of the Paris _Journal_, many
+portions of which had been "blacked out" by the censor, the Chief of
+Police, in his dark green uniform, entered and saluted before me.
+
+"Your Excellency, may I be permitted to speak with you in private?"
+
+"Certainly," I responded, rising and conducting him to my bedroom, where
+I closed the door, invited him to a seat, and myself sat upon the edge
+of the bed.
+
+"I have made various inquiries," he said, "and I think I have found the
+lady your Excellency is seeking. My information, however, must be
+furnished to you in strictest confidence," he added, "because there are
+reasons why I should withhold her whereabouts from you."
+
+"What do you mean?" I inquired. "What reasons?"
+
+"Well--the lady is living in Finland in secret."
+
+"Then she is alive!" I exclaimed quickly. "I thought she was dead."
+
+"To the world she is dead," responded Michael Boranski, stroking his red
+beard. "For that reason the information I give you must be treated as
+confidential."
+
+"Why should she be in hiding? She is guilty of no offense--is she?"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply.
+
+"And this Baron Oberg? You tell me nothing of him," I said with
+dissatisfaction.
+
+"How can I when I know nothing, Excellency?" was his response.
+
+I felt certain that the fellow was not speaking the truth, for I had
+noticed his surprise when I had first uttered the mysterious nobleman's
+name.
+
+"As I have already said, Excellency, I am desirous of atoning for my
+insult, and will serve you in every manner I can. For that reason I had
+sought news of the young English lady--the Mademoiselle Heath."
+
+"But you have all foreigners registered in your books," I said. "The
+search was surely not a difficult one. I know your police methods in
+Russia too well," I laughed.
+
+"No, the lady was not registered," he said. "There was a reason."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have told you, Excellency. She is in hiding."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I regret that much as I desire, I dare not appear to have any
+connection with your quest. But I will direct you. Indeed, I will give
+you instructions to a second person to take you to her."
+
+"Is she in Abo?"
+
+"No. Away in the country. If your Excellency will be down at the end of
+the quay to-morrow at noon you will find a carriage in waiting, and the
+driver will have full instructions how to take you to her and how to
+act. Follow his directions implicitly, for he is a man I can trust."
+
+"To-morrow!" I cried anxiously. "Why not to-day? I am ready to go at any
+moment."
+
+The Chief of Police remained thoughtful for a few moments, then said--
+
+"Well, if I could find the man, you might go to-day. Yet it is a long
+way, and you would not return before to-morrow."
+
+"The roads are safe, I suppose? I don't mind driving in the night."
+
+The official glanced at the clock, and rising exclaimed--
+
+"Very well, I will send for the man. If we find him, then the carriage
+will be at the same spot at the eastern end of the quay in two hours."
+
+"At noon. Very well. I shall keep the appointment."
+
+"And after seeing her, you will of course keep your promise of secrecy
+regarding our little misunderstanding?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I have already given my word," was the response; and the man bowed and
+left, much, I think, to the surprise of the hotel-proprietor and his
+staff. It was an unusual thing for such a high official as the Chief of
+Police to visit one of their guests in person. If he desired to
+interview any of them, he commanded them to attend at his office, or
+they were escorted there by his gray-coated agents.
+
+The day was cold, with a biting wind from the icy north, when after a
+hasty luncheon I put on my overcoat and strolled along the deserted quay
+where I lounged at the further end, watching the approach of a great
+pontoon of pine logs that had apparently floated out of one of the
+rivers and was now being navigated to the port by four men who seemed
+every moment in imminent danger of being washed off the raft into the
+sea as the waves broke over and drenched them. They had, however, lashed
+themselves to their raft, I saw, and now slowly piloted the great
+floating platform towards the quay.
+
+I think I must have waited half an hour, when my attention was suddenly
+attracted by the rattle of wheels over the stones, and turning I saw an
+old closed carriage drawn by three horses abreast, with bells upon the
+harness, approaching me rapidly. When it drew up, the driver, a
+burly-looking, fair-headed Finn in a huge sheepskin overcoat, motioned
+me to enter, urging in broken Russian--
+
+"Quickly, Excellency!--quickly!--you must not be seen!"
+
+And then the instant I was seated, and before I could close the door,
+the horses plunged forward and we were tearing at full gallop out of the
+town.
+
+For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road
+through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had
+already been garnered. There were no villages. All around was a
+houseless land, rolling miles of brown and green, broken and checkered
+by bits of forest and clumps of dark melancholy pines. The road ran ever
+and anon right down to where the cold, green waves broke upon the rocky
+shore. In a few weeks that coast would be ice-bound and snow-covered,
+and then the silence of the God-forsaken country would be complete.
+
+After five miles or so, the driver pulled up and descended to readjust
+his harness, whereupon I got out and asked him in the best Russian I
+could command:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+"To Nystad."
+
+"How far is that?"
+
+"Sixty-eight," was his reply.
+
+I took him to imply kilometres, as being a Finn he would not speak of
+versts.
+
+"The Chief of Police has given you directions?" I asked.
+
+"His high Excellency has told me exactly what to do," was the man's
+answer, as he took out his huge wooden pipe and filled it. "You wish to
+see the young lady?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "to first see her, and I do not know whether it will
+be necessary for me to make myself known to her. Where is she?"
+
+"Beyond Nystad," was his vague answer with a wave of his big fat hand in
+the direction of the dark pine forest that stretched before us. "We
+shall be there about an hour after sundown."
+
+Then I re-entered the stuffy old conveyance that rocked and rolled as we
+dashed away over the uneven forest road, and sat wondering to what
+manner of place I was being conducted.
+
+Elma Heath was in hiding. Why? I recollected her curious letter and
+remembered every word of it. She wished Hornby to know that she had
+never revealed her secret. What secret, I wondered?
+
+I lit an abominable cigar, and tried to smoke, but I was too filled with
+anxiety, too bewildered by the maze of mystery in which I now found
+myself. Two hours later we pulled up before a long log-built post-house
+just beyond a small town in a hollow that faced the sea, and I alighted
+to watch the steaming horses being replaced by a trio of fresh ones. The
+place was Dadendal, I was informed, and the proprietor of the place,
+when I entered and tossed off a liqueur-glass of cognac, pointed out to
+me a row of granite buildings fallen much to decay as the ancient
+convent.
+
+Then, resuming our journey, the short day quickly drew to a close, the
+sun sank yellow and watery over the towering pines through which we went
+mile after mile, a dense, interminable forest wherein the wolves lurked
+in winter, often rendering the road dangerous.
+
+The temperature fell, and it froze again. Through the window in front I
+could see the big Finn driver throwing his arms across his shoulders to
+promote circulation, in the same manner as does the London "cabby."
+
+When night drew on we changed horses again at a small, dirty post-house
+in the forest, at the edge of a lake, and then pushed forward again,
+although it was already long past the hour at which he had said we
+should arrive.
+
+Time passed slowly in the darkness, for we had no light, and the horses
+seemed to find their way by instinct. The rolling of the lumbering old
+vehicle after six hours had rendered me sleepy, I think, for I recollect
+closing my eyes and conjuring up that strange scene on board the
+_Lola_.
+
+Indeed, I suppose I must have slept, for I was awakened by a light
+shining into my face and the driver shaking me by the shoulder. When I
+roused myself and, naturally, inquired the reason, he placed his finger
+mysteriously upon my lips, saying:
+
+"Hush, your high nobility, hush! Come with me. But make no noise. If we
+are discovered, it means death for us--death. Come, give me your hand.
+Slowly. Tread softly. See, here is the boat. I will get in first. We
+shall not be heard upon the water. So."
+
+And the fellow led me, half-dazed, down to the bank of a broad, dark
+river which I could just distinguish--he led me to an unknown bourne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
+
+
+The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat
+he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around
+a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the
+starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a
+distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.
+
+"Where are we going?" I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only
+whispered:
+
+"Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young
+Englishwoman."
+
+So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current,
+steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed
+again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps
+indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of
+a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.
+
+After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake
+where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a
+long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one
+corner--an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small
+windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining
+upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had
+undoubtedly been placed there as signal.
+
+With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow
+of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the
+lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a
+moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers
+until it was wholly consumed.
+
+Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting
+five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark
+tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as
+any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege
+guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had
+probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.
+
+I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping,
+and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and
+half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had
+opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.
+
+My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper,
+and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:
+
+"Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger."
+
+I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the
+narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the
+darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival
+and watching our signal.
+
+Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a
+match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her
+features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray
+wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of
+hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while
+around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized
+that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps,
+with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.
+
+The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character,
+and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken
+figure.
+
+"The sister speaks French?" I hazarded in that language, knowing that in
+most convents throughout Europe French is known.
+
+"Oui, m'sieur," was her answer. "And a leetle Engleesh, too--a ve-ry
+leetle," she smiled.
+
+"You know why I am here?" I said, gratified that at least one person in
+that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.
+
+"Yes, I have already been told," was her answer with a strong accent, as
+we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the
+tower, once perhaps a prison. "But are you not afraid to venture here?"
+she asked.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your
+presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive--so I
+warn you."
+
+"I am prepared to risk that," I said, smiling; at the same time my hand
+instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe.
+"I wish to see Miss Elma Heath."
+
+The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and
+found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.
+
+"Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all
+blame?" she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her
+keen gray eyes. "By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I
+should not have done were it not compulsory."
+
+"Compulsory! How?"
+
+"The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend
+him."
+
+So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order
+the closed door of the convent had been opened.
+
+"Of course not," I answered. "Russian officialdom is all-powerful in
+Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?"
+
+"You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?" she asked in a
+hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.
+
+"I am," I said. "Lead me to her."
+
+"And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise
+me that."
+
+"Ah, Sister!" I cried. "You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I
+come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question
+her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be
+permitted to speak with her?"
+
+"You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman. "I thought you
+were her lover--that you merely wished to see her once again."
+
+"No, I am not her lover," I answered. "Indeed, we have never yet met.
+But I am in search of the truth from her own lips."
+
+"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.
+
+"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I
+intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
+from England."
+
+The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
+impetuosity.
+
+"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in
+her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be
+spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the
+mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
+and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
+forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
+Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----" and she shrugged her shoulders
+without finishing her sentence.
+
+"Baron Oberg--Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.
+
+"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is
+four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
+poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot
+upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous
+of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man
+in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us."
+
+"And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?"
+
+"Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His
+niece--poor young lady!--can that be? Surely not!"
+
+"Why not?" I asked.
+
+But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and
+sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart
+was really softer than I had believed it to be.
+
+"Where does this Baron live?" I asked, surprised that he should occupy
+so high a place in Russian officialdom--the representative of the Czar,
+with powers as great as the Emperor himself.
+
+"At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors."
+
+"And Elma Heath is here--in this grim fortress! Why?"
+
+"Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They
+account for so much, you know."
+
+"That is exactly my opinion," I said. "She has been brought here against
+her will."
+
+"Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five
+months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from
+civilization and see no new face."
+
+"Terrible!" I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that
+seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I
+supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and
+Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place.
+"And have you been here long?" I asked.
+
+"Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary
+life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and
+dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well."
+
+The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had
+half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the
+past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had
+been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a
+distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If
+so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I
+questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.
+
+"Ah, m'sieur," she declared, "they call him 'The Strangler of the
+Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until
+four of them died--and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for
+it--he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in
+prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in
+Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the
+officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered
+Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public
+education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the
+mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are
+filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and
+'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is
+submissive and is Russianized!"
+
+I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to
+time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of
+the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was "The Strangler of
+Finland," the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country
+to a state of ruin and revolt!
+
+"Cannot I see her?" I asked, feeling that we had remained too long
+there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped
+from it the better.
+
+"Yes, come," she said. "But silence! Walk softly," and holding up the
+old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone
+corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages,
+all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we
+crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big
+nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right
+angles, I saw that we were in a kind of _cul de sac,_ before the door of
+which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then,
+motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her,
+and leaving me in the pitch darkness.
+
+I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving
+within. No word was uttered, or if so, it was whispered so low that it
+did not reach me. For nearly five minutes I waited in impatience
+outside that closed door, until again the handle turned and my
+conductress beckoned me in silence within.
+
+I stepped into a small, square chamber, the floor of which was carpeted,
+and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light
+over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of
+sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there
+was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was
+another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment;
+then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown,
+a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever
+seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders,
+and as her hands were clasped before her she looked straight at me in
+surprise as she was led towards me.
+
+She walked but feebly, and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress,
+as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her
+beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such
+fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed
+them to be. I stood before her dumbfounded in admiration.
+
+In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with
+astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required
+of her.
+
+"Miss Elma Heath, I presume?" I exclaimed at last. "May I introduce
+myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan
+by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question--a question that
+concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you."
+
+I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.
+
+Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness.
+No sound escaped her.
+
+I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in
+a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.
+
+She was both deaf and dumb!
+
+She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in
+her splendid eyes.
+
+I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.
+
+"What is this place?" I demanded of the woman in the religious habit,
+when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction.
+"Where am I?"
+
+"This is the Castle of Kajana--the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland,"
+was her answer. "The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and
+hearing."
+
+"Deaf and dumb!" I cried, looking at the beautiful original of that
+destroyed photograph on board the _Lola_. "But she has surely not always
+been so!" I exclaimed.
+
+"No. I think not always," replied the sister quietly. "But you said you
+intended to question her, and did I not tell you that to learn the truth
+was impossible?"
+
+"But she can write responses to my questions?" I argued.
+
+"Alas! no," was the old woman's whispered reply. "Her mind is affected.
+She is, unfortunately, a hopeless lunatic."
+
+I looked straight into those sad, wide-open, yet unflinching brown eyes
+utterly confounded.
+
+Those white wrists held in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the
+inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that
+letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands
+were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had
+spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was
+slowly being driven to suicide? She had kept her secret, and she wished
+the man Hornby--the man who was to marry Muriel Leithcourt--to know.
+
+The room in which we stood was evidently an apartment set apart for her
+use, for beyond was the tiny bedchamber; yet the small, high-up window
+was closely barred, and the cold bareness of the prison was sufficient
+indeed to cause anyone confined there to prefer death to captivity.
+
+Again I spoke to her slowly and kindly, but there was no response. That
+she was absolutely dumb was only too apparent. Yet surely she had not
+always been so! I had gone in search of her because the beauty of her
+portrait had magnetized me, and I had now found her to be even more
+lovely than her picture, yet, alas! suffering from an affliction that
+rendered her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth
+staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes
+upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the
+countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so full of blank
+unutterable despair.
+
+She placed her clasped hands to her mouth and made signs by shaking her
+head that she could neither understand nor respond. I therefore took my
+wallet from my pocket and wrote upon a piece of paper in a large hand
+the words: "_I come from Lydia Moreton. My name is Gordon Gregg_."
+
+When her eager gaze fell upon the words she became instantly filled with
+excitement, and nodded quickly. Then holding her steel-clasped wrists
+towards me she looked wistfully at me, as though imploring me to release
+her from the awful bondage in that silent tomb.
+
+Though the woman who had led me there endeavored to prevent it, I
+handed her the pencil, and placed the paper on the table for her to
+write.
+
+The nun tried to snatch it up, but I held her arm gently and forcibly,
+saying in French:
+
+"No. I wish to see if she is really insane. You will at least allow me
+this satisfaction."
+
+And while we were in altercation, Elma, with the pencil in her fingers,
+tried to write, but by reason of her hands being bound so closely was
+unable. At length, however, after several attempts, she succeeded in
+printing in uneven capitals the response:
+
+"I know you. You were on the yacht. I thought they killed you."
+
+The thin-faced old woman saw her response--a reply that was surely
+rational enough--and her brows contracted with displeasure.
+
+"Why are you here?" I wrote, not allowing the sister to get sight of my
+question.
+
+In response, she wrote painfully and laboriously:
+
+"I am condemned for a crime I did not commit. Take me from here, or I
+shall kill myself."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the old woman. "You see, poor girl, she believes herself
+innocent! They all do."
+
+"But why is she here?" I demanded fiercely.
+
+"I do not know, m'sieur. It is not my duty to inquire the history of
+their crimes. When they are ill I nurse them; that is all."
+
+"And who is the commandant of this fortress?"
+
+"Colonel Smirnoff. If he knew that I had admitted you, you would never
+leave this place alive. This is the Schusselburg of Finland--the place
+of imprisonment for those who have conspired against the State."
+
+"The prison of political conspirators, eh?"
+
+"Alas, m'sieur, yes! The place in which some of the poor creatures are
+tortured in order to obtain confessions and information with as much
+cruelty as in the black days of the Inquisition. These walls are thick,
+and their cries are not heard from the oubliettes below the lake."
+
+I had long ago heard of the horrors of Schusselburg. Indeed who has not
+heard of them who has traveled in Russia? The very mention of the modern
+Bastille on Lake Ladoga, where no prisoner has ever been known to come
+forth alive, is sufficient to cause any Russian to turn pale. And I was
+in the Schusselburg of Finland!
+
+I turned over the sheet of paper and wrote the question--
+
+"Did Baron Oberg send you here?"
+
+In response, she printed the words--
+
+"I believe so. I was arrested in Helsingfors. Tell Lydia where I am."
+
+"Do you know Muriel Leithcourt?" I inquired by the same means, whereupon
+she replied that they were at school together.
+
+"Did you see me on board the _Lola_?" I wrote.
+
+"Yes. But I could not warn you, although I had overheard their
+intentions. They took me ashore when you had gone, to Siena. After three
+days I found myself deaf and dumb--I was made so."
+
+Her allegation startled me. She had been purposely afflicted!
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"A doctor, I suppose. They put me under chloroform."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"People who said they were my friends."
+
+I turned to the woman in the religious habit, and cried--
+
+"Do you see what she has written? She has been maimed by some friends
+who intended that the secret she holds should be kept. They feared to
+kill her, so they bribed a doctor to deliberately operate upon her so
+that she could neither speak nor hear. And now they are driving her to
+suicide!"
+
+"M'sieur, I am astounded!" declared the nun. "I have always believed
+that she was not in her right mind, yet assuredly she seems to be as
+sane as I am, only willfully mutilated by some pretended friend who
+determined that no further word should pass her lips."
+
+"A shameful mutilation has been committed upon this poor defenseless
+girl!" I cried in anger. "And I will make it my duty to discover and
+punish the perpetrators of it."
+
+"Ah, m'sieur. Do not act rashly, I pray of you," the woman said
+seriously, placing her hand upon my arm. "Recollect you are in
+Finland--where the Baron Oberg is all-powerful."
+
+"I do not fear the Baron Oberg," I exclaimed. "If necessary, I will
+appeal to the Czar himself. Mademoiselle is kept here for the reason
+that she is in possession of some secret. She must be released--I will
+take the responsibility."
+
+"But you must not try to release her from here. It would mean death to
+you both. The Castle of Kajana tells no secrets of those who die within
+its walls, or of those cast headlong into its waters and forgotten."
+
+Again I turned to Elma, who stood in anxious wonder of the subject of
+our conversation, and had suddenly taken the old nun's hand and kissed
+it affectionately, perhaps in order to show me that she trusted her.
+
+Then upon the paper I wrote--
+
+"Is the Baron Oberg your uncle?"
+
+She shook her head in the negative, showing that the dreaded
+Governor-General of Finland had only acted a part towards her in which
+she had been compelled to concur.
+
+"Who is Philip Hornby?" I inquired, writing rapidly.
+
+"My friend--at least, I believe so."
+
+Friend! And I had all along believed him to be an adventurer and an
+enemy!
+
+"Why did he go to Leghorn?" I asked.
+
+"For a secret purpose. There was a plot to kill you, only I managed to
+thwart them," were the words she printed with much labor.
+
+"Then I owe my life to you," I wrote. "And in return I will do my utmost
+to rescue you from here, if you do not fear to place yourself in my
+hands."
+
+And to this she replied--
+
+"I shall be thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I
+believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day.
+Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But,"
+she wrote, "I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined here
+on a life sentence."
+
+"But you are English, and if you have had no trial I can complain to our
+Ambassador."
+
+"No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England
+when I was a girl."
+
+That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own
+country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that
+allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high
+official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of
+appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.
+
+Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!
+
+A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A
+thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her,
+but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood
+there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me,
+notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was,
+perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered
+at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.
+
+Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that
+Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with
+bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both
+hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should
+be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in
+insanity.
+
+"I have decided," I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had
+conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the
+prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the
+calm attitude of the religious.
+
+"You will not act with rashness?" she implored in quick apprehension.
+"Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own."
+
+"Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!" I answered, looking
+straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath
+a spell. "They have drawn her into their power because she had no means
+of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector."
+
+"How?"
+
+"The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with
+me."
+
+"But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!" cried the old woman in a hoarse
+voice. "If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both
+night and day they would shoot you both."
+
+"I will risk it," I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny
+bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle
+bed.
+
+Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had
+verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to
+accompany me.
+
+The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.
+
+"Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to
+the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here,
+for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will
+not dare to accept such responsibility."
+
+"Come," I said to Elma, although, alas! she could not hear my voice.
+"Let us at least make a dash for freedom."
+
+She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be
+conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and
+making no noise.
+
+I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring
+to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone
+corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been
+first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt
+the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her
+faith in me as her deliverer.
+
+I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake
+how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable
+forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt
+the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I
+not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met
+that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though
+fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low
+corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the
+lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses
+awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or
+raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw
+that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my
+side.
+
+Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that
+unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the
+uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep
+voice cried out of the darkness in Russian--
+
+"Halt! or I fire!"
+
+And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded
+carbine.
+
+A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes
+shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder
+within six feet of us.
+
+The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.
+
+My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the
+hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous
+Governor-General--fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very
+cleverly prepared for me.
+
+I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save
+the guards had ever been known to emerge--the Bastille of "The Strangler
+of Finland!"
+
+I saw I was lost.
+
+The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.
+
+"Speak!" cried the fellow. "Who are you?"
+
+At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's
+hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it,
+but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his
+gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close
+with him was my only chance.
+
+Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn
+driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl
+whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a
+single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow,
+she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to
+wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying
+to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old
+trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and
+nearly fell.
+
+An oath escaped him, yet in that moment Elma succeeded in twisting the
+gun from his sinewy hands, which I now held with a strength begotten of
+a knowledge of my imminent peril. My whole future, as well as hers,
+depended upon my success in that desperate encounter. He was huge and
+powerful, with a strength far exceeding my own, yet I had been reckoned
+a good wrestler at Uppingham, and now my knowledge of that most ancient
+form of combat held me in good stead.
+
+The man shouted for help, his deep, hoarse voice sounding along the
+stone corridors. If heard by his comrades-in-arms, then the alarm would
+at once be given.
+
+We struggled desperately, swaying to and fro, he trying to throw me,
+while I, at every turn, practiced upon him the tricks learned in my
+youth. It seemed an even match, however, for he kept his feet by sheer
+brute force, and his muscles seemed hard and unbending as steel.
+
+Suddenly, however, as we were striving so vigorously and desperately,
+the English girl slipped past us with the carbine in her hand, and with
+a quick movement dragged open the heavy door that gave exit to the
+lake.
+
+At that instant I unfortunately made a false move, and his hand closed
+upon my throat like a band of steel. I fought and struggled to loose
+myself, exerting every muscle, but alas! he gained the advantage. I
+heard a splash, and saw that Elma no longer held the sentry's weapon in
+her hands, having thrown it into the water.
+
+Then at the same moment I heard a voice outside cry in a low tone:
+"Courage, Excellency! Courage! I will come and help you."
+
+It was the faithful Finn, who had been awaiting me in the deep shadow,
+and with a few strokes pulled his boat up to the narrow rickety ledge
+outside the door.
+
+"Take the lady!" I succeeded in gasping in Russian. "Never mind me," and
+I saw to my satisfaction that he guided Elma to step into the boat,
+which at that moment drifted past the little platform.
+
+I struggled valiantly, but against such a man of brute strength I was
+powerless. He held my throat, causing me excruciating pain, and each
+moment I felt my chance of victory grow smaller. My strength was
+failing. While I held his arms at his sides, I could keep him secure
+without much effort, but now with his fingers pressing in my windpipe I
+could not breathe.
+
+I was slowly being strangled.
+
+To be vanquished meant imprisonment there, perhaps even death. Victory
+meant Elma's life, as well as my own. Mine was therefore a fight for
+life. A sudden idea flashed across my mind, and I continued to struggle,
+at the same time gradually forcing my enemy backward towards the door.
+He shouted for help, but was unheard. He cursed and swore and shouted
+until, with a sudden and almost superhuman effort, I tripped him,
+bringing his head into such violent contact with the stone lintel of the
+door that the sound could surely be heard a considerable distance. For a
+moment he was stunned, and in that brief second I released his grip from
+my throat and hurled him backwards beyond the door.
+
+There was the sound of the crashing of wood as the rotten platform gave
+way, a loud splash, and next instant the dark waters closed over the
+big, bearded fellow who would have snatched Elma Heath from me, and have
+held me prisoner in that castle of terrors. He sank like a stone, for
+although I stood watching for him to rise, I could only distinguish the
+woodwork floating away with the current.
+
+In a moment, however, even as I stood there in horror at my deed of
+self-defense, the place suddenly resounded with shouts of alarm, and in
+the tower above me the great old rusty bell began to swing, ringing its
+brazen note across the broad expanse of waters.
+
+The fair-bearded Finn again shot the boat across to where I stood,
+crying--
+
+"Jump, Excellency! For your life, jump! The guards will be upon us!"
+
+Behind me in the passage I saw a light and the glitter of arms. A shot
+rang out, and a bullet whizzed past me, but I stood unharmed. Then I
+jumped, and nearly upset the boat, but taking an oar I began to row for
+life, and as we drew away from those grim, black walls the fire belched
+forth from three rifles.
+
+"Row!" I shrieked, turning to see if my fair companion had been hit.
+
+"Keep cool, Excellency," urged the Finn. "See, right away there in the
+shadow. We might trick them, for the patrol-boat will be at the head of
+the river waiting to cut us off."
+
+Again the guards fired upon us, but in the darkness their aim was
+faulty. Lights appeared in the high windows of the castle, and we could
+see that the greatest commotion had been caused by the escape of the
+prisoner. The men at the door in the tower were shouting to the
+patrol-boats, which were nowhere to be seen, calling them to row us down
+and capture us, but by plying our oars rapidly we shot straight across
+the lake until we got under the deep shadow of the opposite shore, and
+then crept gradually along in the direction we had come.
+
+"If we meet the boats, Excellency, we must run ashore and take to the
+woods," explained the Finn. "It is our only chance."
+
+Scarcely had he spoken when out in the center of the lake we could just
+distinguish a long boat with three rowers going swiftly towards the
+entrance to the river, which we so desired to gain.
+
+"Look!" cried our guide, backing water, and bringing the boat to a
+standstill. "They are in search of us! If we are discovered they will
+fire. It is their orders. No boat is allowed upon this lake."
+
+Elma sat watching our pursuers, but still calm and silent. She seemed to
+intrust herself entirely to me.
+
+The guards were rowing rapidly, the oars sounding in the rowlocks,
+evidently in the belief that we had made for the river. But the
+Finlander had apparently foreseen this, and for that reason we were
+lying safe from observation in the deep shadow of an overhanging tree.
+
+A gray mist was slowly rising from the water, and the Finn, noticing it,
+hoped that it might favor us. In Finland in late autumn the mists are
+often as thick as our proverbial London fogs, only whiter, denser, and
+more frosty.
+
+"If we disembark we shall be compelled to make a detour of fully four
+days in the forest, in order to pass the marshes," he pointed out in a
+low whisper. "But if we can enter the river we can go ashore anywhere
+and get by foot to some place where the lady can lie in hiding."
+
+"What do you advise? We are entirely in your hands. The Chief of Police
+told me he could trust you."
+
+"I think it will be best to risk it," he said in Russian after a brief
+pause. "We will tie up the boat, and I will go along the bank and see
+what the guards are doing. You will remain here, and I shall not be
+seen. The rushes and undergrowth are higher further along. But if there
+is danger while I am absent get out and go straight westward until you
+find the marsh, then keep along its banks due south," and drawing up the
+boat to the bank the shrewd, big-boned fellow disappeared into the dark
+undergrowth.
+
+There were no signs yet of the break of day. Indeed, the stars were now
+hidden, and the great plane of water was every moment growing more
+indistinct as we both sat in silence. My ears were strained to catch the
+dipping of an oar or a voice, but beyond the lapping of the water
+beneath the boat there was no other sound. I took the hand of the
+fair-faced girl at my side and pressed it. In return she pressed mine.
+
+It was the only means by which we could exchange confidences. She whom I
+had sought through all those months sat at my side, yet powerless to
+utter one single word.
+
+Still holding her hands in both my own I gripped them to show her that I
+intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as
+though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history?
+What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which
+had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and
+afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up
+before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very
+seriously, or such drastic means would never be employed to secure her
+silence.
+
+Suddenly I heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and next moment a low
+voice spoke which I recognized as that of our friend, the Finn.
+
+"There is danger, Excellency--a grave danger!" he said in a low half
+whisper. "Three boats are in search of us."
+
+And scarcely had he uttered those words when there was the flash of a
+rifle from the haze, a loud report, and again a bullet whizzed past just
+behind my head. In an instant the truth became apparent, for I saw the
+dark shadow of a boat rapidly rowed, bearing full upon us. The shot had
+been fired as a signal that we had been sighted, and were pursued. Other
+shots rang out, mingled with the wild exultant shouts of the guards as
+they bore down full upon us, and then I knew that, notwithstanding our
+escape, we were now lost. They were too close upon us to admit of
+eluding them. The peril we had dreaded had fallen. The Finn's presence
+on the bank had evidently been detected by a boat drawn up at the shore,
+and he had been followed to where we had lain in what we had so
+foolishly believed to be a safe hiding-place. Nought else was to be done
+but to face the inevitable. Three times the red fire of a rifle belched
+angrily in our faces, and yet, by good fortune, neither of us was
+struck. Yet we knew too well that the intention of our pursuers was to
+kill us.
+
+"Quick, Excellency! Fly! while there is yet time!" gasped the Finn,
+grasping my hand and half dragging me from the boat, while, I, in turn,
+placed Elma upon the bank.
+
+"_Hoida!_ This way! Swiftly!" cried our guide, and the three of us,
+heedless of the consequences, plunged forward into the impenetrable
+darkness, just as our fierce pursuers came alongside where we had only a
+moment ago been seated. They shouted wildly as they sprang to land after
+us, but our guide, who had been born and bred in these forests, knew
+well how to travel in a semi-circle, and how to conceal himself. It was
+a race for freedom--nay, for very life.
+
+So dark that we could see before us hardly a foot, we were compelled to
+place our hands in front of us to avoid collision with the big tree
+trunks, while ever and anon we found ourselves entangled in the mass of
+dead creepers and vegetable parasites that formed the dense undergrowth.
+Around us on every side we heard the shouts and curses of our pursuers,
+while above the rest we heard an authoritative voice, evidently that of
+a sergeant of the guard, cry--
+
+"Shoot the man, but spare the woman! The Colonel wants her back. Don't
+let her escape! We shall be well rewarded. So keep on, comrades! _Mene
+edemmäski!_"
+
+But the trembling girl beside me heard nothing, and perhaps indeed it
+was best that she could not hear. My only fear was that our pursuers, of
+whom there now seemed to be a dozen, had extended, with the intention of
+encircling us. They, no doubt, knew every inch of that giant forest with
+its numerous bogs and marshes, and if they could not discover us would
+no doubt drive us into one or other of the bogs, where escape was
+impossible.
+
+Our gallant guide, on the other hand, seemed to utterly disregard the
+danger and kept on, every now and then stretching out his hand and
+helping along the afflicted girl we had rescued from that living tomb.
+Headlong we went in a straight line, until suddenly we began to feel
+our feet sinking into the soft ground, and then the Finlander turned to
+the left, at right angles, and we found ourselves in a denser
+undergrowth, where in the darkness our hands and faces became badly
+scratched.
+
+Another gun was fired as signal, echoing through the wood, but the sound
+came from the opposite direction to that we were traveling; therefore we
+hoped that we had eluded those whose earnest desire it was to capture us
+for the reward. Suddenly, however, a second gun, an answering signal,
+was fired from straight before us, and that revealed the truth. We were
+actually between the two parties, and they were closing in upon us! They
+had already driven us to the edge of the bog. The Finlander recognized
+our peril as quickly as I did, and halted.
+
+"Let us turn straight back," he urged breathlessly. "We may yet elude
+them."
+
+And then we again turned off at right angles, traveling as quickly as we
+were able back towards the lake shore. It was an exciting chase in the
+darkness, for we knew not whither we were going, nor into what pitfall
+or ravine or treacherous marsh we might fall. Once we saw afar through
+the trees the light of a lantern held by a guard, and already the
+sweet-faced girl beside me seemed tired and terribly fatigued. But we
+hurried on and on, striving to make no noise, and yet the crackling of
+wood beneath our feet seemed to us to sound like the noise of thunder.
+
+At last, breathless, we halted to listen. We were already in sight of
+the gray mist where lay the silent lake that held so many secrets. There
+was not a sound. The guards had gone straight on, believing they had
+driven us into that deadly bog wherein, if we had entered, we must have
+been slowly sucked down and engulfed. They were surrounding it, no
+doubt, feeling certain of their prey.
+
+But we crept along the water's edge, until in the gray light we could
+distinguish two empty boats--that of the guards and our own. We were
+again at the spot where we had disembarked.
+
+"Let us row to the head of the lake," suggested the Finn. "We may then
+land and escape them." And a moment later we were all three in the
+guards' boat, rowing with all our might under the deep shadow of the
+bank northward, in the opposite direction to the town of Nystad.
+
+We kept a sharp look-out for any other boat, but saw none. The signals
+ashore had attracted all the guards to that spot to join in the search,
+and now, having doubled back and again embarked, we were every moment
+increasing the distance between ourselves and our pursuers. I think we
+must have rowed several miles, for ere we landed again, upon a low, flat
+and barren shore, the first gray streak of day was showing in the east.
+
+Elma noticed it, and kept her great brown eyes fixed upon it
+thoughtfully. It was the dawn for her--the dawn of a new life. Our eyes
+met; she smiled at me, and then gazed again eastward, full of silent
+meaning.
+
+Having landed, we drew the boat up and concealed it in the undergrowth
+so that the guards, on searching, should not know the direction we had
+taken, and then we went straight on northward across the low-lying
+lands, to where the forest showed dark against the morning gray. The
+mist had now somewhat cleared, but the air was keen and frosty.
+
+This wood, we found, was of tall high pines, where walking was not
+difficult, a wide wilderness of trees which, hour after hour, we
+traversed in the vain endeavor to find the rough path which our guide
+told us led for a hundred miles from Alavo down to Tammerfors, the
+manufacturing center of the country. But to discover a path in a forest
+forty miles wide is a matter of considerable difficulty, and for hours
+we wandered on and on, but alas! always in vain.
+
+Faint and hungry, yet we still kept courage. Fortunately we found a
+little spring, and all three of us drank eagerly with our hands. But of
+food we had nothing, save a small piece of hard rye bread which the Finn
+had in his pocket, the remains of his evening meal; and this we gave to
+Elma, who, half famished, ate it quickly. We knew quite well that it
+would be an easy matter to die of starvation in that great trackless
+forest, therefore we kept on undaunted, while the yellow autumn sun
+struggled through the dark pines, glinting on the straight gray trunks
+and reflecting a golden light in that dead unbroken silence.
+
+How many miles we trudged I have no idea. It was a consolation to know
+that we now had no pursuers, yet what fate lay before us we knew not. If
+we could only find that forest-road we might come across some
+wood-cutter's hut, where we could obtain rough food of some sort, yet
+our guide, used as he was to those enormous woods of central Finland,
+was utterly out of his bearings, and no mark of civilization attracted
+his quick, experienced eye. The light above gradually faded, and over a
+sharp stone Elma stumbled and ripped her shoe.
+
+I looked at my watch, and found that it was already five o'clock. In an
+hour it would be dark, the beginning of the long northern night. Elma,
+who was weary and footsore, asked by signs to be permitted to lay down
+and rest. Therefore we gathered a bed of dried leaves for her, and she
+lay down, and while we watched she was soon asleep. The Finn, who
+declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and
+placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.
+
+While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined
+features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss
+upon that soft inviting cheek. Yet I had no right to do so--no right to
+take such an advantage.
+
+The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused
+me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and
+notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals,
+we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.
+
+Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write,
+therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner
+of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath
+the spell of her beauty. All the little acts of homage I was able to
+perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep
+luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.
+
+The mist had not cleared, for it was soon after dawn when we again moved
+along, hungry, chill, and yet hopeful. At a spring we obtained some
+water, and then, in silent procession, pressed forward in search of the
+rough track of the woodcutters.
+
+Elma's torn shoe gave her considerable trouble, and noticing her
+limping, I induced her to sit down while I took it off, hoping to be
+able to mend it, but, having unlaced it, I saw that upon her stocking
+was a large patch of congealed blood, where her foot itself had also
+been cut. I managed to beat the nails of the shoe with a stone, so that
+its sole should not be lost, and she readjusted it, allowing me to lace
+it up for her and smiling the while.
+
+Forward we trudged, ever forward, across that enormous forest where the
+myriad treetrunks presented the same dismal scene everywhere, a forest
+untrodden save by wild, half-savage lumbermen. Throughout that dull
+gray day we marched onward, faint with hunger, yet suffering but little
+pain, for the first pangs were now past, and were succeeded by slight
+light-headedness. My only fear was that we should be compelled to spend
+another night without shelter, and what its effect might be upon the
+delicately-reared girl whose hand I held tenderly in mine. Surely my
+position was a strange one. Her terrible affliction seemed to cause her
+to be entirely dependent upon me.
+
+Suddenly, just as the yellow sunlight overhead had begun to fade, the
+flat-faced Finn, whose name he had told me was Felix Estlander, cried
+joyfully--
+
+"_Polushaite!_ Look, Excellency! Ah! The road at last!"
+
+And as we glanced before us we saw that his quick, well-trained eyes had
+detected away in the twilight, at some distance, a path traversing our
+vista among the gray-green tree-trunks. Then, hurrying along, we found
+ourselves upon a track, on which we turned to the right--a track, rough
+and deeply-rutted by the felled trunks that were dragged along it to the
+nearest river.
+
+Elma made a gesture of renewed hope, and all three of us redoubled our
+pace, expecting every moment to come upon some log hut, the owner of
+which would surely give us hospitality for the night. But darkness came
+on quickly, and yet we still pushed forward. Poor Elma was limping, and
+I knew that her injured foot was paining her, even though she could tell
+me nothing.
+
+At last, however, after walking for nearly four hours in the almost
+impenetrable forest gloom, always fearing lest we might miss the path,
+our hearts suddenly beat quickly by seeing before us a light shining in
+a window, and five minutes later Felix was knocking at the door, and
+asking in Finnish the occupant to give hospitality to a lady lost in
+the forest.
+
+We heard a low growl like a muttered imprecation within, and when the
+door opened there stood upon the threshold a tall, bearded, muscular old
+fellow in a dirty red shirt, with a big revolver shining in his hand. A
+quick glance at us satisfied him that we were not thieves, and he
+invited us in while Felix explained that we had landed from the lake,
+and our boat having drifted away we had been compelled to take to the
+woods. The man heard the Finn's picturesque story, and then said
+something to me which Felix translated into Russian.
+
+"Your Excellency is welcome to all the poor fare he has. He gives up his
+bed in the room yonder to the lady, so that she may rest. He is honored
+by your Excellency's presence."
+
+And while he was making this explanation the herculean wood-cutter in
+the red shirt stirred the red embers whereon a big pot was simmering,
+and sending forth an appetizing odor, and in five minutes we were all
+three sitting down to a stew of capercailzie, with a foaming light beer
+as a fitting beverage. We finished the dish with such lightning rapidity
+that our host boiled us a number of eggs, which, I fear, denuded his
+larder.
+
+The place was a poor one of two low rooms, built of rough log-pines,
+with double windows for the winter and a high brick stove. Cleanliness
+was not exactly its characteristic, nevertheless we all passed a very
+comfortable hour, and received a warm welcome from the lonely old fellow
+who passed his life so far beyond European civilization, and whose
+house, he told us, was often snowed up and cut off from all the world
+for three or four months at a time.
+
+After we had finished our meal, I asked the sturdy old fellow for a
+pencil, but the nearest thing he possessed was a stick of thick
+charcoal, and with that it was surely difficult to communicate with our
+fair companion. Therefore she rose, gave me her hand, bowed smilingly,
+and then passed into the inner room and closed the door.
+
+The old wood-cutter gave us some coarse tobacco, and after smoking and
+chatting for an hour we threw ourselves wearily upon the wooden benches
+and slept soundly.
+
+Suddenly, however, at early dawn, we were startled by a loud banging at
+the door, the clattering of hoofs, and authoritative shouts in Russian.
+The old wood-cutter sprang up, and looking through a chink in the heavy
+shutters turned to us with blanched face, whispering breathlessly--
+
+"The police! What can they want of me?"
+
+"Open!" shouted the horsemen outside. "Open in the name of his Majesty!"
+
+Felix and I sprang up facing each other.
+
+"We are entrapped!"
+
+In an instant our guide Felix made a dash for the door of the inner room
+where Elma had retired, but next second he reappeared, gasping in
+Russian--
+
+"Excellency! Why, the door is open! The lady has gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I cried, dismayed, rushing into the little room, where I found
+the truckle couch empty, and the door leading outside wide open. She had
+actually disappeared!
+
+The police again battered at the opposite door, threatening loudly to
+break it in if it were not opened at once, whereupon the old wood-cutter
+drew the bolt and admitted them. Two big, hulking fellows in heavy
+riding-coats and swords strode in, while two others remained mounted
+outside, holding the horses.
+
+"Your names?" demanded one of the fellows, glancing at us as we stood
+together in expectation.
+
+Our host told them his name, and asked why they wished to enter.
+
+"We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana," was the
+reply. "Have you seen any woman here?"
+
+"No," responded the wood-cutter. "We never see any woman out in these
+woods."
+
+The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make
+certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked,
+"Who are you?"
+
+"That is my own affair," I answered.
+
+The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She
+seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some
+warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore
+she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.
+
+"Your identity is my affair," declared the man with the fair, bristly
+beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.
+
+"Who is your chief?" I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.
+
+"Melnikoff, at Helsingfors."
+
+"Then this is not in the district of Abo?"
+
+"No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?"
+
+"Gordon Gregg, British subject," I replied.
+
+"And you are the drosky-driver from Abo," remarked the fellow, turning
+to Felix. "Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at
+Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the
+Czar, I arrest you!"
+
+The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave
+peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron
+Oberg, the Strangler of Finland. Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing
+that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.
+
+"And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?" I inquired as
+coolly as I could.
+
+"For aiding a prisoner to escape."
+
+"Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and,
+secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly
+willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo."
+
+"It is outside my district," growled the fellow, but I saw that his
+hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.
+
+"I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make
+all the explanation necessary. Until we have an interview with him, I
+refuse to give any information concerning myself," I said.
+
+"But you have a passport?"
+
+I drew it from my pocket, saying--
+
+"It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you."
+
+The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.
+
+"Where is the woman?" he demanded. "Tell me."
+
+"I don't know," was my reply.
+
+"Perhaps you will tell me," he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with
+a sinister expression upon his face. "Remember, these fugitives are
+found in your house, and you are liable to arrest."
+
+"I don't know--indeed I don't!" protested the old fellow, trembling
+beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police,
+and held them in dread.
+
+"Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!" he smiled. "Well, perhaps your
+memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also
+arrested."
+
+"But, your Excellency, I--"
+
+"Enough!" blared the bristly officer. "You have given shelter to
+conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?"
+
+"But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!" the poor old man
+protested. "His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot."
+
+"We shall see afterwards," he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of
+police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully,
+an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They
+upset everything and pried everywhere.
+
+"You may find papers or letters," said the officer. "Search thoroughly."
+And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards
+in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.
+
+A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly
+refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted
+on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by
+what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the
+Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom,
+I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared
+that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of
+the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be
+actively making a house-to-house search.
+
+But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her
+own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and
+dastardly plot. That gray dress of hers might, I recollected, betray her
+if she dared to venture near any town, while her affliction would, of
+itself, be plain evidence of identification. All I hoped was that she
+had gone and hidden herself in the forest somewhere in the vicinity to
+wait until the danger of recapture had passed.
+
+For nearly half an hour I argued with the police officer whose intention
+it was to take me under arrest to Helsingfors. Once there, however, I
+knew too well that my liberty would be probably gone for ever. Whatever
+was the Baron's motive in holding the poor girl a prisoner, it would
+also be his motive to silence me. I knew too much for his liking.
+
+"I refuse to go to Helsingfors," I said defiantly. "I am a British
+subject, and demand to be taken back to the port where my passport was
+viséd." This argument I repeated time after time, until at length I
+succeeded in convincing him that I really had a right to be taken to
+Abo, and to seek the aid of the British Vice-Consul if necessary.
+
+For as long as possible I succeeded in delaying our departure, but at
+length, just as the yellow sun began to struggle through the gray
+clouds, we were all three compelled to depart in sorrowful procession.
+
+What, we wondered, had really happened to Elma? It was evident that she
+had not fallen into the hands of the police; nevertheless, the fact that
+the door of the inner room was open caused them to look upon the
+statement of the wood-cutter with distinct suspicion and disbelief.
+
+Our captors seemed quite well aware of all the circumstances of our
+escape from Kajana, and were consequently filled with chagrin that Elma,
+the person they so much desired to recapture, had slipped through their
+fingers. While the police rode, we were compelled to walk before them,
+and after trudging ten miles or so through the forest we came across
+another small posse of police, who were apparently in search of us, for
+they expressed delight when they saw us under arrest.
+
+"Where is the woman?" inquired one officer of the other.
+
+"Still at liberty," replied the man who held us as prisoners. "In hiding
+twenty versts back, I think."
+
+"Ah, we shall find her before long," he said confidently. "Within twelve
+hours we shall have searched the whole forest. She cannot escape us."
+
+Our captors explained who we were, and then we were pushed forward
+again, skirting a great wide lake called the Nasjarvi, along the wooded
+shore of which we walked the whole day long until, at sundown, we came
+to a picturesque little log-built town facing the water, called
+Filppula. Here we obtained a hasty meal, and afterwards took the train
+down to Abo, where we arrived next morning, after a very uncomfortable
+and sleepless journey.
+
+At nine o'clock I stood in the big bare office of Michael Boranski,
+where only a few days before we had had such a heated argument. As soon
+as the Chief of Police entered, he recognized me under arrest, and
+dismissed my guards with a wave of the hand--all save the officer who
+had brought me there. The Finnish driver and the old wood-cutter were in
+another room, therefore I stood alone with the police-officer of
+Helsingfors and the Chief of Police at Abo. The latter listened to the
+officer's story of my arrest without saying a word.
+
+"The prisoner, your Excellency, desired to be brought here to you before
+being taken to Helsingfors. He said you would be aware of the facts."
+
+"And so I am," remarked Boranski, with a smile. "There is no conspiracy.
+You must at once release this gentleman and the other two prisoners."
+
+"But, Excellency, the Governor-General has issued orders for the
+prisoner's arrest and deportation to Helsingfors."
+
+"That may be. But I am Chief of Police in Abo, and I release him."
+
+The officer looked at me in such blank astonishment that I could not
+resist smiling.
+
+"I am well aware of the reason of this Englishman's visit to the north,"
+added Boranski. "More need not be said. Has the lady been arrested?"
+
+"No, your Excellency. Every effort is being made to find her. Colonel
+Smirnoff has already been relieved of his post as Governor of Kajana,
+and many of the guards are under arrest for complicity in the plot to
+allow the woman to escape."
+
+"Ah, yes. I see from the despatches that a reward is offered for her
+recapture."
+
+"The Governor-General is determined that she shall not escape," remarked
+the other.
+
+"She is probably hidden in the forest, somewhere or other."
+
+"Of course. They are making a thorough search over every verst of it. If
+she is there, she will most certainly be found."
+
+"No doubt," remarked Boranski, leaning back in his padded chair and
+looking at me meaningly across the littered table. "And now I wish to
+speak to this Englishman privately, so please leave us. Also inform the
+other two prisoners that they are at liberty."
+
+"But your Excellency does this upon his own responsibility," he said
+anxiously. "Remember that I brought them to you under arrest."
+
+"And I release them entirely at my own discretion," he said. "As Chief
+of Police of this province, I am permitted to use my jurisdiction, and I
+exercise it in this matter. You are liberty to report that at
+Helsingfors, if you so desire, but I should suggest that you say nothing
+unless absolutely obliged--you understand?"
+
+The manner in which Boranski spoke apparently decided my captor, for
+after a moment's hesitation he said, saluting:
+
+"If that is really your wish, then I will obey." And he left.
+
+"Excellency!" exclaimed the Chief of Police, rising quickly and walking
+towards me as soon as the door was closed, and we were alone, "you have
+had a very narrow escape--very. I did my best to assist you. I succeeded
+in bribing the water-guards at Kajana in order that you might secure the
+lady's release. But it seems that just at the very moment when you were
+about to get away one of the guards turned informer and roused the
+governor of the castle, with the result that you all three nearly lost
+your lives. The whole matter has been reported to me officially, and,"
+he added with a grim smile, "my men are now searching everywhere for
+you."
+
+"But why is Baron Oberg so extremely anxious to recapture Miss Heath?" I
+asked earnestly.
+
+"I have no idea," was his reply. "The secret orders from Helsingfors to
+me are to arrest her at all hazards--alive or dead."
+
+"Which means that the Baron would not regret if she was dead," I
+remarked, in response to which he nodded in the affirmative.
+
+I told him of the faithful services of Felix, the Finlander, whereupon
+he said simply:
+
+"I told you that you might trust him implicitly."
+
+"But now that you have shown yourself my friend," I said, "you will
+assist Miss Heath to escape this man, who desires to hold her prisoner
+in that awful place. They are driving her mad."
+
+"I will do my best," he answered, but shaking his head dubiously. "But
+you must recollect that Baron Oberg is Governor-General of Finland,
+with all the powers of the Czar himself."
+
+"And if Elma Heath again falls into his unscrupulous hands, she will
+die," I declared.
+
+"Ah!" he sighed, looking me straight in the face, "I fear that what you
+say is only too true. She evidently holds some secret which he fears she
+will reveal. He wishes to rearrest her in order--well--" he added in a
+low tone, "in order to close her lips. It would not be the first time
+that persons have been silenced in secret at Kajana. Many fatal
+accidents take place in that fortress, you know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"THE STRANGLER"
+
+
+Where was Elma? What was the cause of her inexplicable disappearance
+into the gloomy forest while we had slept?
+
+I returned to the hotel where I had stayed on my arrival, a comfortable
+place called the Phoenix, and lunched there alone. Both Felix, the Finn,
+and my host, the wood-cutter, had received their _douceurs_ and left,
+but to the last-named I had given instructions to return home at once
+and report by telegraph any news of my lost one.
+
+A thousand conflicting thoughts arose within me as I sat in that crowded
+_salle-à-manger_ filled with a gobbling crowd of the commercial men of
+Abo. I had, I recognized, now to deal with the most powerful man in that
+country, and I suffered a distinct disadvantage by being in ignorance of
+the reason he held that sweet English girl a prisoner. The tragedy of
+the dastardly manner in which she had been willfully maimed caused my
+blood to boil within me. I had never believed that in this civilized
+twentieth century such things could be.
+
+Michael Boranski had given his pledge to assist me, yet he had most
+plainly explained to me his fears. The Baron was intent upon again
+getting Elma into his power. Was it at his orders, I wondered, that the
+sweet-faced girl had been deprived of speech and hearing? Had she fallen
+an innocent victim to his infamous scheming?
+
+About me men were eating strange dishes and talking in Finnish, while
+others were smoking and drinking their vodka; but I was in no mood for
+observation. My only thought was of she who was now lost to me.
+
+Why had she disappeared without warning I was at loss to imagine, yet I
+could only surmise that her flight had been compulsory. Some women
+possess a mysterious sense of intuition, a curious and indescribable
+faculty of knowing when evil threatens them, that presents a strange and
+puzzling problem to our scientists. It is unaccountable, and yet many
+women possess it in a very marked degree. Was it, therefore, possible
+that Elma had awakened, and being warned of her peril had fled without
+arousing us? The suggestion was possible, but I feared improbable.
+
+Another very curious feature in the affair was the sudden manner in
+which Michael Boranski had exerted his power and influence in order to
+render me that service. He had actually bribed the guards of Kajana; he
+had instructed the faithful Felix, he had provided our boat, and he had
+ordered the nun to open the water-gate to me. Why?
+
+There was, I felt convinced, some hidden motive in all that sudden and
+marked friendliness. That he really hated the English I had seen plainly
+when we had first met, and I had only compelled him to serve me by
+presenting the order signed by the Emperor, which made me his guest
+within the Russian dominions. Even that document did not account for the
+length he had gone to secure the release of the woman I now loved in
+secret. The more I thought it over, the more anxious did I become. I
+could discern no motive for his friendliness, and, truth to tell, I
+always distrust those who are too friendly. What straight and decided
+line of action should I take? Carefully I went over all the strange
+events that had happened in England, and while anxious to obtain some
+solution of the amazing problem, yet I could not bring myself to leave
+Finland, and allow Elma to fall into the clutches of that high official
+who so persistently sought her end. No. I would go to him and face him.
+I was anxious to see what manner of man was "The Strangler of Finland."
+Therefore, that same evening I left Abo, and traveled by rail up to the
+junction Toijala, whence, after a wait of six hours, I resumed by slow
+journey to Helsingfors. I put up at Kamp's, an elegant hotel on the long
+esplanade overlooking the port, and found the town, with its handsome
+streets and spacious squares, to be a much finer place than I had
+believed. When I inquired of the French director of my hotel for the
+residence of his Excellency, the Governor-General, he regarded me with
+some surprise, saying:
+
+"The Baron lives up at the Palace, m'sieur--that great building opposite
+the Salutong. The driver of your drosky will point it out to you."
+
+"Is his Excellency in Helsingfors at the present moment?" I asked.
+
+"The Baron never leaves the Palace, m'sieur," responded the man. "This
+is a strange country, you know," he added, with a grin. "It is said that
+his Excellency is in hourly fear of assassination."
+
+"Perhaps not without cause," I remarked in a low voice, at which he
+elevated his shoulders and smiled.
+
+At noon I descended from a drosky before a long, gray, massive building,
+over the big doorway of which was a large escutcheon bearing the Russian
+arms emblazoned in gold, and on entering where a sentry stood on either
+side, a colossal concierge in livery of bright blue and gold came
+forward to meet me, asking in Russian:
+
+"Whom do you wish to see?"
+
+"His Excellency, the Governor-General."
+
+"Have you an appointment?"
+
+"No."
+
+"His Excellency sees no one without an appointment," the man told me
+somewhat gruffly.
+
+"I am not here on public business, but upon a private matter," I
+explained. "Perhaps I may see his Excellency's secretary?"
+
+"If you wish, but I repeat that his Excellency sees no one without a
+previous appointment."
+
+I knew this quite well, for the "Strangler of Finland," fearful of
+assassination, was as unapproachable as the Czar himself. Following the
+directions of the concierge, however, I crossed a great bare courtyard,
+and, ascending a wide stone staircase, was confronted by a servant, who,
+on hearing my inquiry took me into a waiting-room, and left with my card
+to Colonel Luganski, whom he informed me was the Baron's private
+secretary.
+
+After ten minutes or so the man returned, saying:
+
+"The Colonel will see you if you will please step this way," and
+following him he conducted me into the richly furnished private
+apartments of the Palace, across a great hall filled with fine
+paintings, and then up a long thickly-carpeted passage to a small,
+elegant room, where a tall bald-headed man in military uniform stood
+awaiting me.
+
+"Your name is M'sieur Gregg," he exclaimed in very good French, "and I
+understand you desire audience of his Excellency, the Governor-General.
+I regret, however, that he never gives audience to strangers."
+
+"The matter upon which I desire to see his Excellency is of a purely
+private and confidential nature," I said, for used as I was to the ways
+of foreign officialdom, I spoke with the same firm courtesy as himself.
+
+"I am very sorry, m'sieur, but I fear it will be necessary in that case
+for you to write to his Excellency, and mark your letter 'personal.' It
+will then go into the Governor-General's own hands."
+
+"What I have to say cannot be committed to writing," was my reply. "I
+must see Baron Oberg upon a matter which affects him personally, and
+which admits of no delay."
+
+He glanced at me quickly, and then in a low voice inquired:
+
+"Is it in regard to a--well, a conspiracy?"
+
+His question instantly suggested to me a ruse, and I replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Then you can place the facts before me without the slightest
+hesitation," he said, going to the door and slipping the bolt into its
+socket. "Anything spoken into my ear is as though it were spoken into
+that of his Excellency himself."
+
+"I much regret, M'sieur the Colonel, that I must see the Baron in
+person."
+
+"Has the plot assassination as its object--or revolt?" he asked
+pointedly.
+
+"That I will explain to the Baron only."
+
+"But I tell you he will not see you. We have so many persons here with
+secret information concerning Finnish conspiracies against our Russian
+rule. Why, if his Excellency saw everyone who desired to see him, he
+would be compelled to give audience the whole twenty-four hours round."
+
+At a glance I saw that this elegant Colonel, who seemed to take the
+greatest pride over his exquisitely kept person and his spotless
+uniform, did not intend to allow me the satisfaction of an audience of
+that most hated official of the Czar. The latter was in fear of the
+dagger, the pistol, or the bomb, and consequently hedged himself in by
+persons of the Colonel's type--courteous, diplomatic, but utterly
+unbending. After some further argument, I said at last in a firm tone:
+
+"I wish to impress upon you the extreme importance of the information I
+have to impart, and can only repeat that it is a matter concerning his
+Excellency privately. Will you therefore do me the favor to take my name
+to him?"
+
+"His Excellency refuses to be troubled with the names of strangers," was
+his cold reply, as he turned over my card in his hand.
+
+"But if I write upon it the nature of my business, and enclose it in an
+envelope, will you then take it to him?" I suggested.
+
+He hesitated for a short time, twisting his mustache, and then replied
+with great reluctance:
+
+"Well, if you are so determined, you may write your business upon your
+card."
+
+I therefore took out one, and on the back wrote in French the words
+which I knew must have the effect of obtaining an audience for me:
+
+    "_To give information regarding Miss Elma Heath_."
+
+This I enclosed in the envelope he handed to me, when, ringing a bell,
+he handed it to the footman who appeared, with orders to take it to his
+Excellency and await a reply. The response came in a few minutes.
+
+"His Excellency will give audience to the English m'sieur."
+
+Then I rose and followed the footman through several wide corridors
+filled with palms and flowers, which formed a kind of winter-garden,
+until we crossed a red-carpeted ante-room, where two statuesque sentries
+stood on guard, and the man conducting me rapped at the great polished
+mahogany doors of the room beyond.
+
+A voice responded, the door was opened, and I found myself in a high,
+beautifully-painted room, with long windows hung with pastel-blue silk
+with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall
+a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle
+embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the
+center of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin,
+wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lapel of
+which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne. His
+hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position
+that when I entered I could not at first see his face against the
+strong, gray light behind.
+
+But when the footman had bowed and retired and we were alone, he turned
+slightly, and I then saw that his bony face, with high cheek-bones,
+slight gray side-whiskers, hard mouth and black eyes set closely
+together, was one that bore the mark of evil upon it--the keen, sinister
+countenance of one who could act without any compunction and without
+regret. Truly one would not be surprised at any cruel, dastardly action
+of a man with such a face--the face of an oppressor.
+
+"Well?" he snapped in French in a high-pitched voice. "You want to see
+me concerning that mad English girl? What picturesque lies do you intend
+to tell me concerning her?"
+
+"I have no intention of telling any untruths concerning her," was my
+quick response, as I faced him unflinchingly. "She has told me
+sufficient to--"
+
+"She has told you something! Ah! I guessed as much. I expected this!"
+And I saw that his thin, crafty face went pale, while his eyes glanced
+evilly upon me. He believed that she had revealed to me her secret. He
+placed his hand upon the back of a chair wherein was concealed an
+electric button, and next instant a little stout man in shabby black
+appeared as though by magic through a secret door hidden in the dark
+paneling of the audience chamber--the man who was his personal guard
+against the plots for his assassination.
+
+His Excellency spoke, and the words he uttered staggered me. I stood
+aghast.
+
+"Seize that man!" he cried, pointing to me. "He is armed! He has just
+threatened to kill me! He is the man against whom we were recently
+warned--the Englishman!"
+
+"Ah!" I cried, standing before the thin-faced official of the Czar, the
+unscrupulous man who had crushed Finland beneath the iron heel of
+Russia, and who, by his lying allegation, now held me in his power. "I
+see your object, Baron Oberg! You intend to arrest me as a conspirator!"
+
+"Search the fellow. He has a revolver there in his hip-pocket," declared
+the Governor-General, and in an instant the short, ferret-eyed little
+man had run his hands down me and felt my weapon.
+
+I drew it forth and handed it to him, saying:
+
+"You are quite welcome to it if you fear that I am here with any
+sinister motive."
+
+"He obtained admission by a clever ruse," the Baron explained to the
+police agent. "And then he threatened me."
+
+"It's untrue," I protested hotly. "I have merely called to see you
+regarding the young English lady, Elma Heath--the unfortunate lady whom
+you consigned to the fortress of Kajana."
+
+"The mad woman, you mean!" he laughed.
+
+"She is not mad," I cried, "but as sane as you yourself. It is you who
+intended that the horrors of the castle should drive her insane, and
+thus your secret should be kept!"
+
+"What do you suggest?" he demanded, stepping a few paces towards me.
+
+"I mean, Xavier Oberg, that you would kill Elma Heath if you dared to
+do so," I answered plainly, as I faced him unflinchingly.
+
+"You see?" he laughed, turning to the stout man at my side. "The fellow
+is insane. He does not know what he is talking about. Ah, my dear
+Malkoff, I've had a narrow escape! He came here intending to shoot me."
+
+"I did not," I protested. "I am here to demand satisfaction on behalf of
+Miss Heath."
+
+"Oh!--well, if the lady cares to come here herself, I will give her the
+satisfaction she desires," was his crafty reply.
+
+"The lady has escaped you, and it is therefore hardly likely she will
+willingly return to Helsingfors," I said.
+
+"It was you who succeeded, by throwing the guard into the water, in
+abducting her from the castle," he remarked. "But," he added sneeringly,
+with a sinister smile, "I presume your gallantry was prompted by
+affection--eh?"
+
+"That is my own affair."
+
+"A deaf and dumb woman is surely not a very cheerful companion!"
+
+"And who caused her that affliction?" I cried hotly. "When she was at
+Chichester she possessed speech and hearing as other girls. Indeed, she
+was not afflicted when on board the _Lola_ in Leghorn harbor only a few
+months ago. Perhaps you recollect the narrow escape the yacht had on the
+Meloria sands?"
+
+His eyes met mine, and I saw by his drawn face and narrow brows that my
+words were causing him the utmost consternation. My object was to make
+him believe that I knew more than I really did--to hold him in fear, in
+fact.
+
+"Perhaps the man whom some know as Hornby, or Woodroffe, could tell an
+interesting story," I went on. "He will, no doubt, when he meets Elma
+Heath, and finds the terrible affliction of which she has been the
+victim."
+
+His thin, bony countenance was bloodless, his mouth twitched and his
+gray brows contracted quickly.
+
+"I haven't the least idea what you mean, my dear sir," he stammered.
+"All that you say is entirely enigmatical to me. What have I to do with
+this mad Englishwoman's affairs?"
+
+"Send out this man," I said, pointing to the detective Malkoff, who had
+appeared from behind the paneling of the audience-chamber. "Send him
+out, and I will tell you."
+
+But the representative of the Czar, always as much in dread of
+assassination as his imperial master, refused. I saw that what I had
+said had upset him, and that he was not at all clear as to how much or
+how little of the true facts I knew.
+
+The connection between the little miniature cross of the Order of St.
+Anne and that red and yellow ribbon in his button-hole struck me
+forcibly at that moment, and I said:
+
+"I have no desire to make any statements before a second person. I came
+here to see you privately, and in private will I speak. I have certain
+information that will, I feel confident, be of the utmost interest to
+you--concerning another woman, Armida Santini."
+
+His lips were pressed together, and I noticed how he started when I
+uttered the name of that woman whom I had found dead in Rannoch Wood,
+and whose body had so mysteriously disappeared.
+
+"And what on earth can the woman concern me?" he asked, with a brave
+attempt to remain cool, still speaking in French.
+
+"Only that you knew her," was my brief reply. Then, with my eyes still
+fixed upon his, I asked: "Will you not now request this gentleman to
+retire?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, and then with a wave of his hand dismissed the
+man he had summoned to his aid. A moment later the "Strangler's"
+personal protector had disappeared through that secret door in the
+paneling by which he had entered.
+
+"Well?" asked the Baron, turning quickly to me again, his dark, evil
+eyes trying to fathom my intentions.
+
+"Well?" I asked. "And what, pray, can you profit by denouncing me as an
+assassin? Remember, Baron, that your secret is mine," I said in a clear
+voice full of meaning.
+
+"And your intention is blackmail--eh?" he snapped, walking to the window
+and back again. "How much do you want?"
+
+"My intention is nothing of the kind. My object is to avenge the
+outrageous injury to Elma Heath."
+
+"Of course. That is only natural, m'sieur, if you have fallen in love
+with her," he said. "But are not your intentions somewhat ill-advised
+considering her position as a criminal lunatic?"
+
+"She is neither," I protested quickly.
+
+"Very well. You know better than myself," he laughed. "The offense for
+which she was condemned to confinement in a fortress was the attempted
+assassination of Madame Vakuroff, wife of the General commanding the
+Uleaborg Military Division."
+
+"Assassination!" I cried. "Have you actually sent her to prison as a
+murderess?"
+
+"I have not. The Criminal Court of Abo did so," he said dryly. "The
+offense has since been proved to have been the outcome of a political
+conspiracy, and the Minister of the Interior in Petersburg last week
+signed an order for the prisoner's transportation to the island of
+Saghalien."
+
+"Ah!" I remarked with set teeth. "Because you fear lest she shall write
+down your secret."
+
+"You are insulting! You evidently do not know what you are saying," he
+exclaimed resentfully.
+
+"I know what I am saying quite well. You have requested her removal to
+Saghalien in order that the truth shall be never known. But Baron
+Oberg," I added with mock politeness, "you may do as you will, you may
+send Elma Heath to her grave, you may hold me prisoner if you dare, but
+there are still witnesses of your crime that will rise against you."
+
+In an instant he went ghastly pale, and I knew that my blind shot had
+struck its mark. The man before me was guilty of some crime, but what it
+was only Elma herself could tell. That he had had her arrested for an
+attempted political assassination only showed how ingeniously and
+craftily the heartless ruler of that ruined country had laid his plans.
+He feared Elma, and therefore had conspired to have her sent out to that
+dismal penal island in the far-off Pacific.
+
+"You do not fear arrest, m'sieur?" he asked, as though with some
+surprise.
+
+"Not in the least--at least, not arrest by you. You may be the
+representative of the Emperor in Finland, but even here there is justice
+for the innocent."
+
+A sinister smile played around the thin, gray lips of the man whose very
+name was hated through the great empire of the Czar, and was synonymous
+of oppression, injustice, and heartless tyranny.
+
+"All I can repeat," he said, "is that if you bring the young
+Englishwoman here I shall be quite prepared to hear her appeal." And he
+laughed harshly.
+
+"You ask that because you know it is impossible," I said, whereat he
+again laughed in my face--a laugh which made me wonder whether Elma had
+not already fallen into his hands. The uncertainty of her fate held me
+in terrible suspense.
+
+"I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that I have not the
+slightest interest whatsoever in the person in question," he said
+coldly. "You seem to have formed some romantic attachment towards this
+young woman who attempted to poison Madame Vakuroff, and to have
+succeeded in rescuing her from Kajana. You afterwards disregard the fact
+that you are liable to a long term of imprisonment yourself, and
+actually have the audacity to seek audience of me and make all sorts of
+hints and suggestions that I have held the woman a prisoner for my own
+ends!"
+
+"Not only do I repeat that, Baron Oberg," I said quickly. "But I also
+allege that it was at your instigation that in Siena an operation was
+performed upon the unfortunate girl which deprived her of speech and
+hearing."
+
+"At my instigation?"
+
+"Yes, at yours!"
+
+He laughed again, but uneasily, a forced laugh, and leaned against the
+edge of the big writing-table near the window.
+
+"Well, what next?" he inquired, pretending to be interested in my
+allegations. "What do you want of me?"
+
+"I desire you to give the Mademoiselle Heath her complete freedom," I
+said.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All--for the present."
+
+"But her future is not in my hands. The Minister in Petersburg has
+decreed her removal to Saghalien as a person dangerous to the State."
+
+"Which means that she will be ill-treated--knouted to death, perhaps."
+
+"We do not use the knout in the Russian prisons nowadays," he said
+briefly. "His Majesty has decreed its abolition."
+
+"But you adopt torture in Kajana and Schusselburg instead."
+
+"My time is too limited to discuss our penal system, m'sieur," he
+exclaimed impatiently, while I could well see that he was anxious to
+escape before I made any further charges against him. I had already
+shown him that Elma had spoken, and he feared that she had told the
+truth. While this would embitter him against her and cause him to seek
+to silence her at all hazards, it was of course in my own interests that
+he should fear any revelations that I might make.
+
+"You have posed in England as the uncle of Elma Heath, and yet you here
+hold her prisoner. For what reason?" I demanded.
+
+"She is held prisoner by the State--for conspiracy against Russian
+rule--not by herself personally."
+
+"Who enticed her here? Why you, yourself. Who conspired to throw the
+guilt of this attempted murder of the general's wife upon her? You--you,
+the man whom they call 'The Strangler of Finland'! But I will avenge the
+cruel and abominable affliction you have placed upon her. Her
+secret--your secret, Baron Oberg--shall be published to the world. You
+are her enemy--and therefore mine!"
+
+"Very well," he growled between his teeth, advancing towards me
+threateningly, his fists clenched in his rage. "Recollect, m'sieur, that
+you have insulted me. Recollect that I am Governor-General of Finland."
+
+"If you were Czar himself, I should not hesitate to denounce you as the
+tyrant and mutilator of a poor defenseless woman."
+
+"And to whom, pray, will you tell this romantic story of yours?" he
+laughed hoarsely. "To your prison walls below the lake at Kajana? Yes,
+M'sieur Gregg, you will go there, and once within the fortress you shall
+never again see the light of day. You threaten me--the Governor-General
+of Finland!" he laughed in a strange, high-pitched key as he threw
+himself into a chair and scribbled something rapidly upon paper,
+appending his signature in his small crabbed handwriting.
+
+"I do not threaten," I said in open defiance, "I shall act."
+
+"And so shall I," he said with an evil grin upon his bony face as he
+blotted what he had written and took it up, adding: "In the darkness
+and silence of your living tomb, you can tell whatever strange stories
+you like concerning me. They are used to idiots where you are going," he
+added grimly.
+
+"Oh! And where am I going?"
+
+"Back to Kanaja. This order consigns you to confinement there as a
+dangerous political conspirator, as one who has threatened me--it
+consigns you to the cells below the lake--for life!"
+
+I laughed aloud, and my hand sought my wallet wherein was that
+all-powerful document--the order of the Emperor which gave me, as an
+imperial guest, immunity from arrest. I would produce it as my
+trump-card.
+
+Next second, however, I held my breath, and I think I must have turned
+pale. My pocket was empty! My wallet had been stolen! Entirely and
+helplessly I had fallen into the hands of the tyrant of the Czar.
+
+His own personal interest would be to consign me to a living tomb in
+that grim fortress of Kajana, the horrors of which were unspeakable. I
+had seen enough during my inspection of the Russian prisons as a
+journalist to know that there, in strangled Finland, I should not be
+treated with the same consideration or humanity as in Petersburg or
+Warsaw. The Governor-General consigned me to Kajana as a "political,"
+which was synonymous with a sentence of death in those damp, dark
+_oubliettes_ beneath the water-dungeons every whit as awful as those of
+the Paris Bastile.
+
+We faced each other, and I looked straight into his gray, bony face, and
+answered in a tone of defiance:
+
+"You are Governor-General, it is true, but you will, I think, reflect
+before you consign me, an Englishman, to prison without trial. I know
+full well that the English are hated by Russia, yet I assure you that in
+London we entertain no love for your nation or its methods."
+
+"Yes," he laughed, "you are quite right. Russia has no use for an effete
+ally such as England is."
+
+"Effete or powerful, my country is still able to present an ultimatum
+when diplomacy requires it," I said. "Therefore I have no fear. Send me
+to prison, and I tell you that the responsibility rests upon yourself."
+And folding my arms I kept my eyes intently upon his, so that he should
+not see that I wavered.
+
+"As for the responsibility, I certainly do not fear that, m'sieur," he
+said.
+
+"But the exposure that will result--are you prepared to face that?" I
+asked. "Perhaps you are not aware that others beside myself--one other,
+indeed, who is a diplomatist--is aware of my journey here? If I do not
+return, your Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Petersburg will be pressed
+for a reason."
+
+"Which they will not give."
+
+"Then if they do not, the truth will be out," I said laughing harshly,
+for I saw how determined he had become to hold me prisoner. "Come, call
+up your myrmidon and send me to Kajana. It will be the first step
+towards your own downfall."
+
+"We shall see," he growled.
+
+"Ah! you surely do not think that I, after ten years' service in the
+British diplomatic service, would dare to come to Finland upon this
+quest--would dare to face the rotten and corrupt officialdom which
+Russia has placed within this country--without first taking some
+adequate precaution? No, Baron. Therefore I defy you, and I leave
+Helsingfors to-night."
+
+"You will not. You are under arrest."
+
+I laughed heartily and snapped my fingers, saying:
+
+"Before you give me over to your police, first telegraph to your
+Minister of Finance, Monsieur de Witte, and inquire of him who and what
+I am."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"You have merely to send my name and description to the Minister and ask
+for a reply," I said. "He will give you instructions--or, if you so
+desire, ask his Majesty yourself."
+
+"And why, pray, does his Majesty concern himself about you?" he asked,
+at once puzzled.
+
+"You will learn later, after I am confined in Kajana and your secret is
+known in Petersburg."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," I said, "I mean that I have taken all the necessary steps to
+be forearmed against you. The day I am incarcerated by your order, the
+whole truth will be known. I shall not be the sufferer--but you will."
+
+My words, purposely enigmatical, misled him. He saw the drift of my
+argument, and being of course unaware of how much I knew, he was still
+in fear of me. My only uncertainty was of the actual fate of poor Elma.
+My wallet had been stolen--with a purpose, without a doubt--for the
+thief had deprived me of that most important of all documents, the open
+sesame to every closed door, the ukase of the Czar.
+
+"You defy me!" he said hoarsely, turning back to the window with the
+written order for my imprisonment as a political still in his hand. "But
+we shall see."
+
+"You rule Finland," I said in a hard tone, "but you have no power over
+Gordon Gregg."
+
+"I have power, and intend to exert it."
+
+"For your own ruin," I remarked with a self-confident smile. "You may
+give your torturers orders to kill me--orders that a fatal accident
+shall occur within the fortress--but I tell you frankly that my death
+will neither erase nor conceal your own offenses. There are others, away
+in England, who are aware of them, and who will, in order to avenge my
+death, speak the truth. Remember that although Elma Heath has been
+deprived of both hearing and of speech, she can still write down the
+true facts in black and white. The Czar may be your patron, and you his
+favorite, but his Majesty has no tolerance of officials who are guilty
+of what you are guilty of. You talk of arresting me!" I added with a
+smile. "Why, you ought rather to go on your knees and beg my silence."
+
+He went white with rage at my cutting sarcasm. He literally boiled over,
+for he saw that I was quite cool and had no fear of him or of the
+terrible punishment to which he intended to consign me. Besides which,
+he was filled with wonder regarding the exact amount of information
+which Elma had imparted to me.
+
+"There are certain persons," I went on, "to whom it would be of intense
+interest to know the true reason why the steam-yacht _Lola_ put into
+Leghorn; why I was entertained on board her; why the safe in the
+British Consulate was rifled, and why the unfortunate girl, kept a
+prisoner on board, was taken on shore just before the hurried sailing of
+the vessel. And there are other mysteries which the English police are
+trying to solve, namely, the reason Armida Santini and a man disguised
+as her husband died in Scotland at the hand of an assassin. But surely I
+need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the
+truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward."
+
+"For whom?" he asked, opening his eyes.
+
+"For you. Come, Baron," I said, "can we not yet speak frankly?"
+
+But he was silent for a moment, a fact which was in itself proof that my
+pointed argument had caused him to reconsider his intention of sending
+me under escort back to that castle of terror.
+
+If my journey there was in order to meet my love, I would not have
+cared. It was the ignorance of her whereabouts or of her fate that held
+me in such deep, all-consuming anxiety. Each hour that passed increased
+my fond and tender affection for her. And yet what irony of
+circumstance! She had been cruelly snatched from me at the very moment
+that freedom had been ours.
+
+I think it was well that I assumed that air of defiance with the man who
+had ground Finland beneath his heel. He was unused to it. No one dared
+to go against his will, or to utter taunt or threat to him. He was
+paramount, with all the powers of an emperor--the power, indeed, of life
+and death. Therefore he was not in the habit of being either thwarted or
+criticised, and I could see that my words had aroused within him a
+boiling tumult of resentment and of rage. I told him nothing of the loss
+of my wallet or of the precious document that it had contained. My
+defiance was merely upon principle.
+
+"Arrest me if you like. Denounce me by means of any lie that arises to
+your lips, but remember that the truth is known beyond the confines of
+the Russian Empire, and for that reason traces will be sought of me and
+full explanation demanded. I have taken precaution, Xavier Oberg," I
+added, "therefore do your worst. I repeat again that I defy you!"
+
+He paced the big room, his thin claw-like hands still clenched, his
+yellow teeth grinding, his dark, deep-set eyes fixed straight before
+him. If he had dared, he would have struck me down at his feet. But he
+did not dare. I saw too plainly that even though my wallet was gone I
+still held the trump-card--that he feared me.
+
+The mention I had made of the Minister of Finance, however, seemed to
+cause him considerable hesitation. That high official had the ear of the
+Emperor, and if I were a friend there might be inquiries. As I stood
+before him leaning against a small buhl table, I watched all the complex
+workings of his mind, and tried to read the mysterious motive which had
+caused him to consign poor Elma to Kajana.
+
+He was a proud bully, possessing neither pity nor remorse, an average
+specimen of the high Russian official, a hide-bound bureaucrat, a slave
+to etiquette and possessing a veneer of polish. But beneath it all I saw
+that he was a coward in deadly fear of assassination--a coward who
+dreaded lest some secret should be revealed. That concealed door in the
+paneling with the armed guard lurking behind was sufficiently plain
+evidence that he was not the fearless Governor-General that was
+popularly supposed. He, "The Strangler of Finland," had crushed the
+gallant nation into submission, ruining their commerce, sapping the
+country by impressing its youth into the Russian army, forbidding the
+use of the Finnish language, and taxing the people until the factories
+had been compelled to close down while the peasantry starved. And now,
+on the verge of revolt, there had arisen a band of patriots who resented
+ruin, and who had already warned his Majesty by letter that if Baron
+Oberg were not removed from his post he would die.
+
+These and other thoughts ran through my mind in the silence that
+followed our heated argument, for I saw well that he was in actual fear
+of me. I had led him to believe that I knew everything, and that his
+future was in my hands, while he, on his part, was anxious to hold me
+prisoner, and yet dared not do so.
+
+My wallet had probably been stolen by some lurking police-spy, for
+Russian agents abound everywhere in Finland, reporting conspiracies that
+do not exist and denouncing the innocent as "politicals."
+
+The Baron had halted, and was looking through one of the great windows
+down upon the courtyard below where the sentries were pacing. The palace
+was for him a gilded prison, for he dared not go out for a drive in one
+or other of the parks or for a blow on the water across to Hogholmen or
+Dagero, being compelled to remain there for months without showing
+himself publicly. People in Abo had told me that when he did go out into
+the streets of Helsingfors it was at night, and he usually disguised
+himself in the uniform of a private soldier of the guard, thus escaping
+recognition by those who, driven to desperation by injustice, sought his
+life.
+
+A long silence had fallen between us, and it now occurred to me to take
+advantage of his hesitation. Therefore I said in a firm voice, in
+French--
+
+"I think, Baron, our interview is at an end, is it not? Therefore I wish
+you good-day."
+
+He turned upon me suddenly with an evil flash in his dark eyes, and a
+snarling imprecation in Russian upon his lips. His hand still held the
+order committing me to the fortress.
+
+"But before I leave you will destroy that document. It may fall into
+other hands, you know," and I walked towards him with quick
+determination.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind!" he snapped.
+
+Without further word I snatched the paper from his thin white fingers
+and tore it up before his face. His countenance went livid. I do not
+think I have ever seen a man's face assume such an expression of
+fiendish vindictiveness. It was as though at that instant hell had been
+let loose within his heart.
+
+But I turned upon my heel and went out, passing the sentries in the
+ante-room, along the flower-filled corridors and across the courtyard to
+the main entrance where the gorgeous concierge saluted me as I stepped
+forth into the square.
+
+I had escaped by means of my own diplomacy and firmness. The Czar's
+representative--the man who ruled that country--feared me, and for that
+reason did not hold me prisoner. Yet when I recalled that evil look of
+revenge on my departure, I could not help certain feelings of grave
+apprehension arising within me.
+
+Returning to my hotel, I smoked a cigar in my room and pondered. Where
+was Elma? was the chief question which arose within my mind. By
+remaining in Helsingfors I could achieve nothing further, now that I had
+made the acquaintance of the oppressor, whereas if I returned to Abo I
+might perchance be able to obtain some clue to my love's whereabouts. I
+call her my love because I both pitied and loved the poor afflicted girl
+who was so helpless and defenseless.
+
+Therefore I took the midnight train back to Abo, arriving at the hotel
+next morning. After an hour's rest I set out anxiously in search of
+Felix, the drosky-driver. I found him in his log-built house in the
+Ludno quarter, and when he asked me in I saw, from his face, that he had
+news to impart.
+
+"Well?" I inquired. "And what of the lady? Has she been found?"
+
+"Ah! your Excellency. It is a pity you were not here yesterday," he said
+with a sigh.
+
+"Why? Tell me quickly. What has happened?"
+
+"I have been assisting the police as spy, Excellency, as I often do, and
+I have seen her."
+
+"Seen her! Where?" I cried in quick anxiety.
+
+"Here, in Abo. She arrived yesterday morning from Tammerfors accompanied
+by an Englishman. She had changed her dress, and was all in black. They
+lunched together at the Restaurant du Nord opposite the landing stage,
+and an hour later left by steamer for Petersburg."
+
+"An Englishman!" I cried. "Did you not inform the Chief of Police,
+Boranski?"
+
+"Yes, your Excellency. But he said that their passports being in order
+it was better to allow the lady to proceed. To delay her might mean her
+rearrest in Finland," he added.
+
+"Then their passports were viséd here on embarking?" I exclaimed. "What
+was the name upon that of the Englishman?"
+
+"I have it here written down, Excellency. I cannot pronounce your
+difficult English names." And he produced a scrap of dirty paper whereon
+was written in a Russian hand the name--
+
+"Martin Woodroffe."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+
+I went to the railway station, and from the time-table gathered that if
+I left Abo by rail at noon I could be in Petersburg an hour before noon
+on the morrow, or about four hours before the arrival of the steamer by
+which the silent girl and her companion were passengers. This I decided
+upon doing, but before leaving I paid a visit to my friend, Boranski,
+who, to my surprise and delight, handed me my wallet with the Czar's
+letter intact, saying that it had been found upon a German thief who had
+been arrested at the harbor on the previous night. The fellow had, no
+doubt, stolen it from my pocket believing I carried my paper money in
+the flap.
+
+"The affair of the English lady is a most extraordinary one," remarked
+the Chief of Police, toying with his pen as he sat at his big table.
+"She seems to have met this Englishman up at Tammerfors, or at some
+place further north, yet it is curious that her passport should be in
+order even though she fled so precipitately from Kajana. There is a
+mystery connected with her disappearance from the wood-cutter's hut that
+I confess I cannot fathom."
+
+"Neither can I," I said. "I know the man who is with her, and cannot
+help fearing that he is her bitterest enemy--that he is acting in
+concert with the Baron."
+
+"Then why is he taking her to the capital--beyond the jurisdiction of
+the Governor-General?"
+
+"I am going straight to Petersburg to ascertain," I said. "I have only
+come to thank you for your kindness in this matter. Truth to tell, I
+have been somewhat surprised that you should have interested yourself on
+my behalf," I added, looking straight at the uniformed official.
+
+"It was not on yours, but on hers," he answered, somewhat enigmatically.
+"I know something of the affair, but it was my duty as a man to help the
+poor girl to escape from that terrible place. She has, I know, been
+unjustly condemned for the attempted assassination of the wife of a
+General--condemned with a purpose, of course. Such a thing is not
+unusual in Finland."
+
+"Abominable!" I cried. "Oberg is a veritable fiend."
+
+But the man only shrugged his shoulders, saying--
+
+"The orders of his Excellency the Governor-General have to be obeyed,
+whatever they are. We often regret, but we dare not refuse to carry them
+out."
+
+"Russian rule is a disgrace to our modern civilization," I declared
+hotly. "I have every sympathy with those who are fighting for freedom."
+
+"Ah, you are not alone in that," he sighed, speaking in a low whisper,
+and glancing around. "His Majesty would order reforms and ameliorate the
+condition of his people, if only it were possible. But he, like his
+officials, are powerless. Here we speak of the great uprising with bated
+breath, but we, alas! know that it must come one day--very soon--and
+Finland will be the first to endeavor to break her bonds--and the Baron
+Oberg the first to fall."
+
+For nearly an hour I sat with him, surprised to find how, although his
+exterior was so harsh and uncouth, yet his heart really bled for the
+poor starving people he was so constantly forced to oppress.
+
+"I have ruined this town of Abo," he declared, quite frankly. "To my
+own knowledge five hundred innocent persons have gone to prison, and
+another two hundred have been exiled to Siberia. Yet what I have done is
+only at direct orders from Helsingfors--orders that are stern, pitiless
+and unjust. Men have been torn from their families and sent to the
+mines, women have been arrested for no offense and shipped off to
+Saghalien, and mere children have been cast into prison on charges of
+political conspiracy with their elders--in order to Russify the
+province! Only," he added anxiously, "I trust you will never repeat what
+I tell you. You have asked me why I assisted the English Mademoiselle to
+escape from Kajana, and I have explained the reason."
+
+We ate a hearty meal in company at the _Sampalinna_, a restaurant built
+like a Swiss châlet, and at noon I entered the train on the first stage
+of my slow, tedious journey through the great silent forests and along
+the shores of the lakes of Southern Finland, by way of Tavestehus and
+Viborg, to Petersburg.
+
+I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of
+wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended
+the steep gradients. I had not even a newspaper with which to while away
+the time, only my own apprehensive thoughts of whither my helpless love
+was being conducted.
+
+
+Surely to no man was there ever presented such a complicated problem as
+that which I was now trying so vigorously to solve. I loved Elma Heath.
+The more I reflected, the deeper did her sweet countenance and tender
+grace impress themselves upon my heart. I loved her, therefore I was
+striving to overtake her.
+
+The steamer, I learned, would call at Hango and Helsingfors. Would they,
+I wonder, disembark at either of those places? Was the man whom I had
+known as Hornby, the owner of the _Lola_, taking her to place her again
+in the fiendish hands of Xavier Oberg? The very thought of it caused me
+to hold my breath.
+
+Daylight came at last, cold and gray, over those dreary interminable
+marshes where game, especially snipe, seemed abundant, and at a small
+station at the head of a lake called Davidstadt I took my morning glass
+of tea; then we resumed our journey down to Viborg, where a short,
+thick-set Russian of the commercial class, but something of a dandy,
+entered my compartment, and we left express for Petersburg.
+
+We had passed by a small station called Galitsina, near which were many
+villas occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, and were
+traveling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveler,
+having asked permission to smoke, commenced to chat affably. He seemed a
+pleasant fellow, and told me that he was a wool merchant, and that he
+had been having a pleasant vacation trout fishing in the Vuoski above
+the falls of the Imatra, where the pools between the rapids abound with
+fish.
+
+He had told me that on account of the shore being so full of weeds and
+the clearness of the water, fishing from the banks was almost an
+impossibility, and how they had to accustom themselves to troll from a
+boat so small as to only accommodate the rower and the fisherman.
+
+Then he remarked suddenly--
+
+"You are English, I presume--possibly from Helsingfors?"
+
+"No," I answered. "From Abo. I crossed from Stockholm, and am going to
+Petersburg."
+
+"And I also. I live in Petersburg," he added. "We may perhaps meet one
+day. Do you know the capital?"
+
+I explained that I had visited it once before, and had done the usual
+round of sight-seeing. His manner was brisk and to the point, as became
+a man of business, but when we stopped at Bele-Ostrof, on the opposite
+side of the small winding river that separates Finland from Russia
+proper, the Customs officer who came to examine our baggage exchanged a
+curious meaning look with him.
+
+My fellow-traveler believed that I had not observed, yet, keenly on the
+alert as I now was, I was shrewd to detect the least sign or look, and I
+at once resolved to tell the fellow nothing further of my own affairs.
+He was, no doubt, a spy of "The Strangler's," who had followed me all
+the way from Abo, and had only entered my carriage for the final stage
+of the journey.
+
+This revelation caused me some uneasiness, for even though I was able to
+evade the man on arrival in Petersburg, he could no doubt quickly obtain
+news of my whereabouts from the police to whom my passport must be sent.
+I pretended to doze, and lay back with my eyes half-closed watching him.
+When he found me disinclined to talk further, he took up the paper he
+had bought and became engrossed in it, while I, on my part, endeavored
+to form some plan by which to mislead and escape his vigilance.
+
+The fellow meant mischief--that I knew. If Elma was flying in secret and
+he watched me, he would know that she was in Petersburg. At all hazards,
+for my love's sake as well as for mine, I saw that I must escape him.
+The ingeniousness and cleverness of Oberg's spies was proverbial
+throughout Finland, therefore he might not be alone, or in any case, on
+arrival in Petersburg would obtain assistance in keeping observation
+upon me. I knew that the Baron desired my death, and that therefore I
+could not be too wary of pitfalls. That fatal chair so cunningly
+prepared for me in Lambeth was still vividly within my memory.
+
+As we passed Lanskaya, and ran through the outer suburbs of Petersburg,
+my fellow-traveler became inquisitive as to where I was going, but I was
+somewhat unresponsive, and busied myself with my bag until we entered
+the great echoing terminus whence I could see the Neva gleaming in the
+pale sunlight and the city beyond. The fellow made no attempt to follow
+me--he was too clever a secret agent for that. He merely wished me
+"_sdravstvuite_" raised his hat politely and disappeared.
+
+A porter carried my bag out of the station, and I drove across the
+bridge to the large hotel where I had stopped before, the Europe, on the
+corner of the Nevski Prospect and the Michael Street. There I engaged a
+front room looking down into the broad Nevski, had a wash, and then
+watched at the window for the appearance of the spy. I had already a
+good four hours before the steamer from Abo was due, and I intended to
+satisfy myself whether or not I was being followed.
+
+Within twenty minutes the fellow lounged along on the opposite side of
+the road, just as I had expected. He had changed his clothes, and
+presented such a different appearance that at first sight I failed to
+recognize him. He knew that I had driven there, and intended to follow
+me if I came forth. My position was one of extreme difficulty, for if I
+went down to the quay he would most certainly follow me.
+
+Having watched his movements for ten minutes or so I descended to the
+big _salle-à-manger_ and there ate my luncheon, chatting to the French
+waiter the while. I sat purposely in an alcove, so as to be away from
+the other people lunching there, and in order that I might be able to
+talk with the waiter without being overheard.
+
+Just as I had finished my meal, and he was handing me my bill, I bent
+towards him and asked--
+
+"Do you want to earn twenty roubles?"
+
+"Well, m'sieur," he answered, looking at me with some surprise. "They
+would be acceptable. I am a married man."
+
+"Well, I want to escape from this place without being observed. There is
+a disagreeable little matter regarding a lady, and I fear a fracas with
+a man who is awaiting me outside in the Nevski." Then, seeing that he
+hesitated, I assured him that I had committed no crime, and that I
+should return for my baggage that evening.
+
+"You could pass through the kitchen and out by the servants' entrance,"
+he said, after a moment's reflection. "If m'sieur so desires, I will
+conduct him out. The exit is in a back street which leads on to the
+Catherine Canal."
+
+"Excellent!" I said. "Let us go. Of course you will say nothing?"
+
+"Not a word, m'sieur," and he gathered up the notes plus twenty roubles
+with which I paid my bill, and taking my hat I followed him to the end
+of the _salle-à-manger_ behind a high wooden screen, across the huge
+kitchen, and then through a long stone corridor at the end of which sat
+a gruff old doorkeeper. My guide spoke a word to him, and then the door
+opened and I found myself in a narrow back slum with the canal beyond.
+
+My first visit was to a clothier's, where I purchased and put on a new
+light overcoat and then to a hatter's for a hat of different shape to
+that I was wearing. I carried the hat back to a quiet alley which I had
+noticed, and quickly exchanged the one I was wearing for it, leaving my
+old hat in a corner. Then I entered a _café_ in order to while away the
+hours until the vessel from Finland was due.
+
+At four o'clock I was out upon the quay, straining my eyes seaward for
+any sign of smoke, but could see nothing. The sun was sinking, and the
+broad expanse of water westward danced like liquid gold. The light died
+out slowly, the cold gray of evening crept on. A chill wind sprang up
+and swept the quay, causing me to shiver. I asked of a dock laborer
+whether the steamer was usually late, whereupon he told me that it was
+often five or six hours behind time, depending upon the delay at
+Helsingfors.
+
+Twilight deepened into night, and the rain fell heavily, yet I still
+paced the wet flags in patience, my eyes ever seaward for the light of
+the vessel which I hoped bore my love. My presence there aroused some
+speculation among the loungers, I think; nevertheless, I waited in
+deepest anxiety whether, after all, Elma and Hornby had not disembarked
+at Helsingfors.
+
+Soon after ten o'clock a light shone afar off, and the movement of the
+police and porters on the quay told me that it was the vessel. Then
+after a further anxious quarter of an hour it came, amid great shouting
+and mutual imprecations, slowly alongside the quay, and the passengers
+at last began to disembark in the pelting rain.
+
+One after another they walked up the gangway, filing into the
+passport-office and on into the Custom House, people of all sorts and
+all grades--Swedes, Germans, Finns, and Russians--until suddenly I
+caught sight of two figures--one a man in a big tweed traveling-coat and
+a golf-cap, and the other the slight figure of a woman in a long dark
+cloak and a woolen tam-o'-shanter. The electric rays fell upon them as
+they came up the wet gangway together, and there once again I saw the
+sweet face of the silent woman whom I had grown to love with such
+fervent desperation. The man behind her was the same who had
+entertained me on board the _Lola_--the man who was said to be the
+lover of the fugitive Muriel Leithcourt.
+
+Without betraying my presence I watched them pass through the
+passport-office and Custom House, and then, overhearing the address
+which Martin Woodroffe gave the _isvoshtchik_, I stood aside, wet to the
+skin, and saw them drive away.
+
+At eleven o'clock on the following day I found myself installed in the
+Hotel de Paris, a comfortable hostelry in the Little Morskaya, having
+succeeded in evading the vigilance of the spy who had so cleverly
+followed me from Abo, and in getting my suit-case round from the Hotel
+Europe.
+
+I was beneath the same roof as Elma, although she was in ignorance of my
+presence. Anxious to communicate with her without Woodroffe's knowledge,
+I was now awaiting my opportunity. He had, it appeared, taken for her a
+pleasant front room with sitting-room adjoining on the first floor,
+while he himself occupied a room on the third floor. The apartments he
+had engaged for her were the most expensive in the hotel, and as far as
+I could gather from the French waiter whom I judiciously tipped, he
+appeared to treat her with every consideration and kindness.
+
+"Ah, poor young lady!" the man exclaimed as he stood in my room
+answering my questions, "What an affliction! She writes down all her
+orders--for she can utter no word."
+
+"Has the Englishman received any visitors?" I asked.
+
+"One man--a Russian--an official of police, I think."
+
+"If he receives anyone else, let me know," I said. "And I want you to
+give Mademoiselle a letter from me in secret."
+
+"Bien, m'sieur."
+
+I turned to the little writing-table and scribbled a few hasty lines to
+my love, announcing my presence, and asking her to grant me an interview
+in secret as soon as Woodroffe was absent. I also warned her of the
+search for her instigated by the Baron, and urged her to send me a line
+in reply.
+
+The note was delivered into her hand, but although I waited in suspense
+nearly all day she sent no reply. While Woodroffe was in the hotel I
+dared not show myself lest he should recognize me, therefore I was
+compelled to sham indisposition and to eat my meals alone in my room.
+
+Both the means by which she had met Martin Woodroffe and the motive were
+equally an enigma. By that letter she had written to her schoolfellow it
+was apparent that she had some secret of his, for had she not wished to
+send him a message of reassurance that she had divulged nothing? This
+would seem that they were close friends; yet, on the other hand,
+something seemed to tell me that he was acting falsely, and was really
+an ally of the Baron's.
+
+Why had he brought her to Petersburg? If he had desired to rescue her he
+would have taken her in the opposite direction--to Stockholm, where she
+would be free--whereas he took her, an escaped prisoner, into the very
+midst of peril. It was true that her passport was in order, yet I
+remembered that an order had been issued for her transportation to
+Saghalien, and now once arrested she must be lost to me for ever. This
+thought filled me with fierce anxiety. She was in Petersburg, that city
+where police spies swarm, and where every fresh arrival is noted and his
+antecedents inquired into. No attempt had been made to disguise who she
+was, therefore before long the police would undoubtedly come and arrest
+her as the escaped criminal from Kajana.
+
+For several hours I sat at my window watching the life and movement
+down in the street below, my mind full of wonder and dark forebodings.
+Was Martin Woodroffe playing her false?
+
+Just after half-past six o'clock the waiter entered, and handing me a
+note on a salver, said--
+
+"Mademoiselle has, I believe, only this moment been able to write in
+secret."
+
+I tore it open and read as follows:--
+
+DEAR FRIEND.--_I am so surprised. I thought you were still in Abo.
+Woodroffe has an appointment at eight o'clock on the other side of the
+city, therefore come to me at 8.15. I must see you, and at once. I am in
+peril_.--ELMA HEATH.
+
+My love was in peril! It was just as I had feared. I thanked Providence
+that I had been sent to help her and extricate her from that awful fate
+to which "The Strangler of Finland" had consigned her.
+
+At the hour she named, after the waiter had come to me and announced the
+Englishman's departure, I descended to her sitting-room and entered
+without rapping, for if I had rapped she could not, alas! have heard.
+
+The apartment was spacious and comfortable, thickly carpeted, with heavy
+furniture and gilding. Before the long window were drawn curtains of
+dark green plush, and on one side was the high stove of white porcelain
+with shining brass bands, while from her low lounge-chair a slim wan
+figure sprang up quickly and came forward to greet me, holding out both
+her hands and smiling happily.
+
+I took her hands in mine and held them tightly in silence for some
+moments, as I looked earnestly into those wonderfully brilliant eyes of
+hers. She turned away laughing, a slight flush rising to her cheeks in
+her confusion. Then she led me to a chair, and motioned me to be
+seated.
+
+Ours was a silent meeting, but her gestures and the expression of her
+eyes were surely more eloquent than mere words. I knew well what
+pleasure that re-encounter caused her--equal pleasure with that it gave
+to me.
+
+Until that moment I had never really loved. I had admired and flirted
+with women. What man has not? Indeed, I had admired Muriel Leithcourt.
+But never until now had I experienced in my heart the real flame of true
+burning affection. The sweetness of her expression, the tender caress of
+those soft, tapering hands, the deep mysterious look in those
+magnificent eyes, and the incomparable grace of all her movements,
+combined to render her the most perfect woman I had ever met--perfect in
+all, alas! save speech and hearing, of which, with such dastard
+wantonness, she had been deprived.
+
+She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her
+hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret. Then
+turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote
+something with a gold pencil and handed to me. It read--
+
+"Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed
+you from England. He is my enemy. You must take me from here and hide
+me. They intend to send me into exile. Have you ever been in Petersburg
+before? Do you know anyone here?"
+
+Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote--
+
+"I will do my best, dear friend. I have been once in Petersburg. But is
+it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?"
+
+"Impossible at present," she wrote. "We should both be arrested at the
+frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I
+believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that
+he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he
+learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and
+discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter's
+hut. Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were
+asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window. At first I was
+alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend. He told me that the
+police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I
+fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here. At
+that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get
+me out of the Baron's clutches and wring from me my secret. If I
+confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the
+mines."
+
+"Does your secret concern him?" I asked in writing.
+
+"Yes," she wrote in response. "It would be equally in his interests as
+well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity
+effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore
+with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril."
+
+"Trust in me," I scribbled quickly. "I will act upon any suggestion you
+make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you
+until this danger is past?"
+
+"There is one friend--a true friend. Will you take a note to her?" she
+wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.
+
+Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the
+contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat
+watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching
+her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and
+unblemished in her youthful womanhood.
+
+I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: "Madame Olga
+Stassulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff." I knew
+that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the
+Little Neva.
+
+"Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I
+will prepare to be ready when you return," she wrote. "If Olga is not at
+home, ask to see the Red Priest--in Russian, '_Krasny-pastor_.' Return
+quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost."
+
+I assured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later
+I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the canal and across
+the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.
+
+The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let
+out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large brass plate
+bearing the name, "Olga Stassulevitch: modes." I pressed the electric
+button, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the
+door.
+
+"Madame is not at home," was his brief reply to my inquiry.
+
+"Then I will see the Red Priest," I said in a lower tone. "I come from
+Elma Heath." Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into
+the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the gas was
+not lighted. But striking a match he led me up the broad staircase and
+into a small, cosy, well-furnished room on the second floor, evidently
+the sitting-room of some studious person, judging from the books and
+critical reviews lying about.
+
+For a few minutes I waited there, until the door reopened, and there
+entered a man of medium height, with a shock of long snow-white hair
+and almost patriarchal beard, whose dark eyes that age had dimmed
+flashed out at me with a look of curious inquiry, and whose movements
+were those of a person not quite at his ease.
+
+"I have called on behalf of Mademoiselle Elma Heath, to give this letter
+to Madame Stassulevitch, or if she is absent to place it in the hands of
+the Red Priest," I explained in my best Russian.
+
+"Very well, sir," the old man responded in quite good English. "I am the
+person you seek," and taking the letter he opened it and read it
+through.
+
+I saw by the expression on his furrowed face that its contents caused
+him the utmost consternation. His countenance, already pale, blanched to
+the lips, while in his eyes there shot a fire of quick apprehension. The
+thin, almost transparent hand holding the letter trembled visibly.
+
+"You know Mademoiselle--eh?" he asked in a hoarse, strained voice as he
+turned to me. "You will help her to escape?"
+
+"I will risk my own life in order to save hers," I declared.
+
+"And your devotion to her is prompted by what?" he inquired
+suspiciously.
+
+I was silent for a moment. Then I confessed the truth.
+
+"My affection."
+
+"Ah!" he sighed deeply. "Poor young lady! She, who has enemies on every
+hand, sadly needs a friend. But can we trust you--have you no fear?"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of being implicated in the coming revolution in Russia? Remember I am
+the Red Priest. Have you never heard of me? My name is Otto Kampf."
+
+Otto Kampf!
+
+I stood before him open-mouthed. Who in Russia had not heard of that
+mysterious unknown person who had directed a hundred conspiracies
+against the Imperial Autocrat, and yet the identity of whom the police
+had always failed to discover. It was believed that Kampf had once been
+professor of chemistry at Moscow University, and that he had invented
+that most terrible and destructive explosive used by the revolutionists.
+The ingredients of the powerful compound and the mode of firing it was
+the secret of the Nihilists alone--and Otto Kampf, the mysterious
+leader, whose personality was unknown even to the conspirators
+themselves, directed those constant attempts which held the Emperor and
+his Government in such hourly terror.
+
+Rewards without number had been offered by the Ministry of the Interior
+for the betrayal and arrest of the unseen man whose power in Russia,
+permeating every class, was greater than that of the Emperor himself--at
+whose word one day the people would rise in a body and destroy their
+oppressors.
+
+The Emperor, the Ministers, the police, and the bureaucrats knew this,
+yet they were powerless--they knew that the mysterious professor who had
+disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been
+seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would
+stagger and crush the Empire from end to end--yet of his whereabouts
+they were in utter ignorance.
+
+"You are surprised," the old man laughed, noticing my amazement. "Well,
+you are not one of us, yet I need not impress upon you the absolute
+necessity, for Mademoiselle's sake, to preserve the secret of my
+existence. It is because you are not a member of 'The Will of the
+People,' that you have never heard of 'The Red Priest'--red because I
+wrote my ultimatum to the Czar in the blood of one of his victims
+knouted in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and priest because I preach
+the gospel of freedom and justice."
+
+"I shall say nothing," I said, gazing at the strangely striking figure
+before me--the unknown man who directed the great upheaval that was to
+revolutionize Russia. "My only desire is to save Mademoiselle Heath."
+
+"And you are prepared to do so at risk of your own liberty--your own
+life? Ah! you said you love her. Would not this be a test of your
+affection?"
+
+"I am prepared for any test, as long as she escapes the trap which her
+enemies have set for her. I succeeded in saving her from Kajana, and I
+intend to save her now."
+
+"Was it you who actually entered Kajana and snatched her from that
+tomb!" he exclaimed, and he took my hand enthusiastically, adding--"I
+have no further need to doubt you." And turning to the table he wrote an
+address upon a slip of paper, saying, "Take Mademoiselle there. She will
+find a safe place of concealment. But go quickly, for every moment
+places you both in more deadly peril. Hide yourself there also."
+
+I thanked him and left at once, but as I stepped out of the house and
+re-entered the drosky I saw close by, lurking in the shadow, the spy of
+"The Strangler of Finland," who had traveled with me from Abo.
+
+Our eyes met, and he recognized me, notwithstanding my light overcoat
+and new hat.
+
+Then, with heart-sinking, the ghastly truth flashed upon me. All had
+been in vain. Elma was lost to me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
+
+
+Instantly the danger was apparent, and instead of driving back to the
+hotel, I called out to the man to take me to the Moscow railway station,
+in order to put the spy off the scent. I knew he would follow me, but as
+he was on foot, with no drosky in sight, I should be able to reach the
+station before he could, and there elude him.
+
+Over the stones we rattled, leaving the lurking agent standing in the
+deep shadow, but on turning back I saw him dash across the road to a
+by-street, where, in all probability, he had a conveyance in waiting.
+
+Then, after we had crossed the Neva, I countermanded my order to the
+man, saying--
+
+"Don't go right up to the station. Turn into the Liteinoi Prospect to
+the left, and put me down there. Drive quickly, and I'll pay double
+fare."
+
+He whipped his horses, and we turned into that maze of dark, ill-lit,
+narrow streets that lies between the Vosnesenski and the Nevski, turning
+and winding until we emerged at last into the main thoroughfare again,
+and then at last we turned into the street I had indicated--a wide road
+of handsome buildings where I knew I was certain to be able to instantly
+get another drosky. I flung the man his money, alighted, and two minutes
+later was driving on towards the Alexander Bridge, traveling in a circle
+back to the hotel. Time after time I glanced behind, but saw nothing of
+the Baron's spy, who had evidently gone to the station with all speed,
+expecting that I was leaving the capital.
+
+I found Elma in her room, ready dressed to go out, wearing a long
+traveling-cloak, and in her hand was a small dressing-case. She was pale
+and full of anxiety until I showed her the slip of paper which Otto
+Kampf had given me with the address written upon it, and then together
+we hurried forth.
+
+The house to which we drove was, we discovered, a large one facing the
+Fontanka Canal, one of the best quarters of the town, and on descending
+I asked the liveried _dvornick_ for Madame Zurloff, the name which the
+"Red Priest" had written.
+
+"You mean the Princess Zurloff," remarked the man through his red beard.
+"Whom shall I say desires to see her?"
+
+"Take that," I said, handing to him the piece of paper which, beside the
+address, bore a curious cipher-mark like three triangles joined.
+
+He closed the door, leaving us in the wide carpeted hall, the statuary
+in which showed us that it was a richly-furnished place, and when a few
+minutes later he returned, he conducted us upstairs to a fine gilded
+salon, where an elderly gray-haired lady in black stood gravely to
+receive us.
+
+"Allow me to present Mademoiselle Elma Heath, Princess," I said,
+speaking in French and bowing, and afterwards telling her my own name.
+
+Our hostess welcomed my love in a graceful speech, but I said--
+
+"Mademoiselle unfortunately suffers a terrible affliction. She is deaf
+and dumb."
+
+"Ah, how very, very sad!" she exclaimed sympathetically. "Poor girl!
+poor girl!" and she placed her hand tenderly upon Elma's shoulder and
+looked into her eyes. Then, turning to me, she said: "So the Red Priest
+has sent you both to me! You are in danger of arrest, I suppose--you
+wish me to conceal you here?"
+
+"I would only ask sanctuary for Mademoiselle," was my reply. "For
+myself, I have no fear. I am English, and therefore not a member of the
+Party."
+
+"The Mademoiselle fears arrest?"
+
+"There is an order signed for her banishment to Saghalein," I said. "She
+was imprisoned at Kajana, the fortress away in Finland, but I succeeded
+in liberating her."
+
+"She has actually been in Kajana!" gasped the Princess. "Ah! we have all
+heard sufficient of the horrors of that place. And you liberated her!
+Why, she is the only person who has ever escaped from that living tomb
+to which Oberg sends his victims."
+
+"I believe so, Princess."
+
+"And may I take it, m'sieur, that the reason you risked your life for
+her is because you love her? Pardon me for suggesting this."
+
+"You have guessed correctly," I answered. Then, knowing that Elma could
+not hear, I added: "I love her, but we are not lovers. I have not told
+her of my affection. Hers is a long and strange story, and she will
+perhaps tell you something of it in writing."
+
+"Well," exclaimed the gray-haired lady smiling, leading my love across
+the luxurious room, the atmosphere of which was filled with the scent of
+flowers, and taking off her cloak with her own hands, "you are safe
+here, my poor child. If spies have not followed you, then you shall
+remain my guest as long as you desire."
+
+"I am sure it is very good of you, Princess," I said gratefully. "Miss
+Heath is the victim of a vile and dastardly conspiracy. When I tell you
+that she has been afflicted as she is by her enemies--that an operation
+was performed upon her in Italy while she was unconscious--you will
+readily see in what deadly peril she is."
+
+"What!" she cried. "Have her enemies actually done this? Horrible!"
+
+"She will perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her--a
+mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian
+subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself
+is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy."
+
+"Ah! the Strangler!" she exclaimed with a quick flash in her dark eyes.
+"But his end is near. The Movement is active in Helsingfors. At any
+moment now we may strike our blow for freedom."
+
+She was an enthusiastic revolutionist, I could see, unsuspected,
+however, by the police on account of her high position in Petersburg
+society. It was she who, as I afterwards discovered, had furnished the
+large sums of money to Kampf for the continuation of the revolutionary
+propaganda, and indeed secretly devoted the greater part of her revenues
+from her vast estates in Samara and Kazan to the Nihilist cause. Her
+husband, himself an enthusiast of freedom, although of the high
+nobility, had been killed by a fall from his horse six years before, and
+since that time she had retired from society and lived there quietly,
+making the revolutionary movement her sole occupation. The authorities
+believed that her retirement was due to the painful loss she had
+sustained, and had no suspicion that it was her money that enabled the
+mysterious "Red Priest" to slowly but surely complete the plot for the
+general uprising.
+
+She compelled me to remove my coat, and tea was served by a Tartar
+footman, whose family she explained had been serfs of the Zurloffs for
+three centuries, and then Elma exchanged confidences with her by means
+of paper and pencil.
+
+"Who is this man Martin Woodroffe, of whom she speaks?" asked the
+Princess presently, turning to me.
+
+"I have met him twice--only twice," I replied, "and under strange
+circumstances." Then, continuing, I told her something concerning the
+incidents of the yacht _Lola_.
+
+"He may be in love with her, and desires to force her into marriage,"
+she suggested, expressing amazement at the curious narrative I had
+related.
+
+"I think not, for several reasons. One is because I know she holds some
+secret concerning him, and another because he is engaged to an English
+girl named Muriel Leithcourt."
+
+"Leithcourt? Leithcourt?" repeated the Princess, knitting her brows with
+a puzzled air. "Do you happen to know her father's name?"
+
+"Philip Leithcourt."
+
+"And has he actually been living in Scotland?"
+
+"Yes," I answered in quick anxiety. "He rented a shoot called Rannoch,
+near Dumfries. A mysterious incident occurred on his estate--a double
+murder, or murder and suicide; which is not quite clear--but shortly
+afterwards there appeared one evening at the house a man named Chater,
+Hylton Chater, and the whole family at once fled and disappeared."
+
+Princess Zurloff sat with her lips pressed close together, looking
+straight at the silent girl before her. Elma had removed her hat and
+cloak, and now sat in a deep easy chair of yellow silk, with the
+lamplight shining on her chestnut hair, settled and calm as though
+already thoroughly at home. I smiled to myself as I thought of the
+chagrin of Woodroffe when he returned to find his victim missing.
+
+"Your Highness evidently knows the Leithcourts," I hazarded, after a
+brief silence.
+
+"I have heard of them," was her unsatisfactory reply. "I go to England
+sometimes. When the Prince was alive, we were often at Claridge's for
+the season. The Prince was for five years military _attaché_ at the
+Embassy under de Staal, you know. What I know of the Leithcourts is not
+to their credit. But you tell me that there was a mysterious incident
+before their flight. Explain it to me."
+
+At that moment the long white doors of the handsome salon were thrown
+open by the faithful Tartar servitor, and there entered a man whose hair
+fell over the collar of his heavy overcoat, but whom, in an instant, I
+recognized as Otto Kampf.
+
+Both Elma and I sprang to our feet, while advancing to the Princess he
+bent and gallantly kissed the hand she held forth to him. Then he shook
+hands with Elma, and acknowledging my own greetings, took off his coat
+and threw it upon a chair with the air of an accustomed visitor.
+
+"I come, Princess, in order to explain to you," he said. "Mademoiselle
+fears rearrest, and the only house in Petersburg that the police never
+suspect is this. Therefore I send her to you, knowing that with your
+generosity you will help her in her distress."
+
+"It is all arranged," was her Highness's response. "She will remain
+here, poor girl, until it is safe for her to get out of Russia." Then,
+after some further conversation, and after my well-beloved had made
+signs of heartfelt gratitude to the man known from end to end of the
+Russian empire as "The Red Priest," the Princess turned to me, saying:
+
+"I would much like to know what occurred before the Leithcourts left
+Scotland."
+
+"The Leithcourts!" exclaimed Kampf in utter surprise. "Do you know the
+Leithcourts--and the English officer Durnford?"
+
+I looked into his eyes in abject amazement. What connection could Jack
+Durnford, of the Marines, have with the adventurer Philip Leithcourt?
+I, however, recollected Jack's word, when I had described the visit of
+the _Lola_ to Leghorn, and further I recollected that very shortly he
+would be back in London from his term of Mediterranean service.
+
+"Well," I said after a pause, "I happen to know Captain Durnford very
+well, but I had no idea that he was friendly with Leithcourt."
+
+The Red Priest smiled, stroking his white beard.
+
+"Explain to her Highness what she desires to know, and I will tell you."
+
+My eyes met Elma's, and I saw how intensely eager and interested she
+was, watching the movement of my lips and trying to make out what words
+I uttered.
+
+"Well," I said, "a mysterious tragedy occurred on the edge of a wood
+near the house rented by Leithcourt--a tragedy which has puzzled the
+police to this day. An Italian named Santini and his wife were found
+murdered."
+
+"Santini!" gasped Kampf, starting up. "But surely he is not dead?"
+
+"No. That's the curious part of the affair. The man who was killed was a
+man disguised to represent the Italian, while the woman was actually the
+waiter's wife herself. I happen to know the man Santini well, for both
+he and his wife were for some years in my employ."
+
+The Princess and the director of the Russian revolutionary movement
+exchanged quick glances. It was as though her Highness implored Kampf to
+reveal to me the truth, while he, on his part, was averse to doing so.
+
+"And upon whom does suspicion rest?" asked her Highness.
+
+"As far as I can make out, the police have no clue whatever, except one.
+At the spot was found a tiny miniature cross of one of the Russian
+orders of chivalry--the Cross of Saint Anne."
+
+"There is no suspicion upon Leithcourt?" she asked with some undue
+anxiety I thought.
+
+"No."
+
+"Did he entertain any guests at the shooting-box?"
+
+"A good many."
+
+"No foreigners among them?"
+
+"I never met any. They seemed all people from London--a smart set for
+the most part."
+
+"Then why did the Leithcourts disappear so suddenly?"
+
+"Because of the appearance of the man Chater," I replied. "It is evident
+that they feared him, for they took every precaution against being
+followed. In fact, they fled leaving a big party of friends in the
+house. The man Woodroffe, now at the Hotel de Paris, is a friend of
+Leithcourt as well as of Chater."
+
+"He was not a guest of Leithcourt when this man representing Santini was
+assassinated?" asked Kampf, again stroking his beard.
+
+"No. As soon as Woodroffe recognized me as a visitor he left--for
+Hamburg."
+
+"He was afraid to face you because of the ransacking of the British
+Consul's safe at Leghorn," remarked the Princess, who, at the same
+moment, took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then,
+turning to me, she said: "What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg,
+throws a new light upon certain incidents that had hitherto puzzled us.
+The mystery of it all is a great and inscrutable one--the mystery of
+this poor unfortunate girl, greatest of all. But both of us will
+endeavor to help you to elucidate it; we will help poor Elma to crush
+her enemies--these cowardly villains who had maimed her."
+
+"Ah, Princess!" I cried. "If you will only help and protect her, you
+will be doing an act of mercy to a defenseless woman. I love her--I
+admit it. I have done my utmost: I have striven to solve the dark
+mystery, but up to the present I have been unsuccessful, and have only
+remained, even till to-day, the victim of circumstance."
+
+"Let her stay with me," the kindly woman answered, smiling tenderly upon
+my love. "She will be safe here, and in the meantime we will endeavor to
+discover the real and actual truth."
+
+And in response I took the Princess's hand and pressed it fervently.
+Although that striking, white-headed man and the rather stiff, formal
+woman in black were the leaders of the great and all-powerful movement
+in Russia known through the civilized world as "The Terror," yet they
+were nevertheless our friends. They had pledged themselves to help us
+thwart our enemies.
+
+I scribbled a few hasty words upon paper and handed it to Elma. And for
+answer she smiled contentedly, looking into my eyes with an expression
+of trust, devotion and love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+JUST OFF THE STRAND
+
+
+A week had gone by. The Nord Express had brought me posthaste across
+Europe from Petersburg to Calais, and I was again in London. I had left
+Elma in the care of the Princess Zurloff, whom I knew would conceal her
+from the horde of police-agents now in search of her.
+
+The mystery had so increased until now it had become absolutely
+bewildering. The more I had tried to probe it, the more inexplicable had
+I found it. My brain was awhirl as I sat in the _wagon-lit_ rushing
+across those wide, never-ending plains that lie between the Russian
+capital and Berlin and the green valleys between the Rhine-lands and the
+sea. The maze of mystery rendered me utterly incapable of grasping one
+solid tangible fact, so closely interwoven was each incident of the
+strange life-drama in which, through mere chance, I was now playing a
+leading part. I was aware of one fact only, that I loved Elma with all
+my soul, even though I knew not whom she really was--or her strange life
+story. Her sweet face, with those soft, brown eyes, so tender and
+intense, stood out ever before me, sleeping or waking. Each moment as
+the express rushed south increased the distance between us, yet was I
+not on my way back to England with a clear and distinct purpose? I
+snatched at any clue, however small, with desperate eagerness, as a
+drowning man clutches at a straw.
+
+The spy from Abo had seen me on the railway platform on my departure
+from Petersburg. He had overheard me buy a ticket for London, and
+previous to stepping into the train I had smiled at him in glad triumph.
+My journey was too long a one for him to follow, and I knew that I had
+at last outwitted him. He had expected to see Elma with me, no doubt,
+and his disappointment was plainly marked. But of Woodroffe I had
+neither seen nor heard anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a cold but dry November night in London, and I sat dining with
+Jack Durnford at a small table in the big, well-lit room of the Junior
+United Service Club. Easy-going and merry as of old, my friend was
+bubbling over with good spirits, delighted to be back again in town
+after three years sailing up and down the Mediterranean, from Gib. to
+Smyrna, maneuvering always, yet with never a chance of a fight. His
+well-shaven face bore the mark of the southern suns, and the backs of
+his hands were tanned by the heat and the sea. He was, indeed, as smart
+an officer as any at the Junior, for the Marines are proverbial for
+their neatness, and his men on board the _Bulwark_ had received many a
+pleasing compliment from the Admiral.
+
+"Glad to be back!" he exclaimed, as he helped himself to a "peg." "I
+should rather think so, old chap. You know how awfully wearying the life
+becomes out there. Lots going on down at Palermo, Malta, Monte Carlo, or
+over at Algiers, and yet we can never get a chance of it. We're always
+in sight of the gay places, and never land. I don't blame the youngsters
+for getting off from Leghorn for two days over here in town when they
+can. Three years is a bigger slice out of a fellow's life than anyone
+would suppose. But, by the way, I saw Hutcheson the other day. We put
+into Spezia, and he came out to see the Admiral--got despatches for
+him, I think. He seems as gay as ever. He lunched at mess, and said how
+sorry he was you'd deserted Leghorn."
+
+"I haven't exactly deserted it," I said. "But I really don't love it
+like he does."
+
+"No. A year or two of the Mediterranean blue is quite sufficient to last
+any fellow his lifetime. I shouldn't live in Leghorn if I had my choice.
+I'd prefer somewhere up in the mountains, beyond Pisa, or outside
+Florence, where you can have a good time in winter."
+
+Then a silence fell between us, and I sat eating on until the end of the
+meal, wondering how to broach the question I so desired to put to him.
+
+"I shall try if I can get on recruiting service at home for a bit," he
+said presently. "There's an appointment up in Glasgow vacant, and I
+shall try for it. It'll be better, at any rate, than China or the
+Pacific."
+
+I was just about to turn the conversation to the visit of the mysterious
+_Lola_ to Leghorn, when two men he knew entered the dining-room, and,
+recognizing him, came across to give him a welcome home. One of the
+newcomers was Major Bartlett, whom I at once recollected as having been
+a guest of Leithcourt's up at Rannoch, and the other a younger man whom
+Durnford introduced to me as Captain Hanbury.
+
+"Oh, Major!" I cried, rising and grasping his hand. "I haven't seen you
+since Scotland, and the extraordinary ending to your house-party."
+
+"No," he laughed. "It was an amazing affair, wasn't it? After the
+Leithcourts left it was like pandemonium let loose; the guests collared
+everything they could lay their hands upon! It's a wonder to me the
+disgraceful affair didn't get into the papers."
+
+"But where's Leithcourt now?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Haven't the ghost of an idea," replied the Major, standing astride with
+his hands in his pockets. "Young Paget of ours told me the other day
+that he saw Muriel driving in the Terminus Road at Eastbourne, but she
+didn't notice him. They were a queerish lot, those Leithcourts," he
+added.
+
+"Hulloa! What are you saying about the Leithcourts, Charley?" exclaimed
+Durnford, turning quickly from Hanbury. "I know some people of that
+name--Philip Leithcourt, who has a daughter named Muriel."
+
+"Well, they sound much the same. But if you know them, my dear old chap,
+I really don't envy you your friends," declared the Major with a laugh.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, Gregg will tell you," he said. "He knows, perhaps, more than I
+do. But," he added, "they may not, of course, be the same people."
+
+"I first met them yachting over at Algiers," Jack said. "And then again
+at Malta, where they seemed to have quite a lot of friends. They had a
+steam-yacht, the _Iris_, and were often up and down the Mediterranean."
+
+"Must be the same people," declared the Major. "Leithcourt spoke once or
+twice of his yacht, but we all put it down as a non-existent vessel,
+because he was always drawing the long bow about his adventures."
+
+"And how did you first come to know him?" I asked of the Major eagerly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Somebody brought him to mess, and we struck up an
+acquaintance across the table. He seemed a good chap, and when he asked
+me to shoot I accepted. On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing
+struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was
+asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town. He called
+himself Martin Woodroffe up there--although I'd known him at the old
+Corinthian Club as Dick Archer. He was believed then to be one of a
+clever gang of international thieves."
+
+"When I first met him he gave me the name of Hornby," I said. "It was in
+Leghorn, where he was on board a yacht called the _Lola_, of which he
+represented himself as owner."
+
+"He left Rannoch very suddenly," remarked Bartlett. "We understood that
+he was engaged to marry Muriel. If so, I'm sorry for her, poor girl."
+
+"What!" cried Durnford, starting up. "That man to marry Muriel
+Leithcourt?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Why?"
+
+But his countenance had turned pale, and he gave no answer to my
+question.
+
+"If these same Leithcourts are really friends of yours, Durnford, old
+fellow, I'm sorry I've said anything against them," the Major exclaimed
+in an apologetic tone. "Only the end of my visit was so abrupt and so
+extraordinary, and the company such a mixed one, that--well, to tell you
+the truth, the people are a mysterious lot altogether."
+
+"Perhaps our Leithcourts are not the same as those Jack knows," I
+remarked, in order to escape from a rather difficult situation;
+whereupon Durnford, as though eager to conceal his surprise, said with a
+forced laugh, "Oh! probably not," and reseated himself at table. Then
+the Major quickly changed the topic of conversation, and afterwards he
+and his friend passed along to their table and sat down to eat.
+
+I could not help noticing that Jack Durnford was upset at what he had
+learnt, yet I hesitated just then to put any question to him. I resolved
+to approach the subject later, so as to allow him time to question me
+if he wished to do so.
+
+After smoking an hour we went across to the Empire, where we spent the
+evening in the grand circle, meeting many men we knew and having a
+rather pleasant time among old acquaintances. If a man who had lived the
+club life of London returns from abroad, he can always run across
+someone he knows in the circle of the Empire about ten o'clock at night.
+Jack was, however, not his old self that he had been before dinner. His
+brow was now heavy and thoughtful, and he appeared deeply immersed in
+some intricate problem, for his eyes were fixed vacantly when
+opportunity was afforded him to think, and he appeared to desire to
+avoid his friends rather than to greet them.
+
+After the theater I induced him to come round to the Cecil, and in the
+wicker chair in the big portico before the entrance we sat to smoke our
+final cigars. It is a favorite spot of mine when in London, for at
+afternoon, when the string band plays and the Americans and other
+cosmopolitans drink tea, there is a continual coming and going, a little
+panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely
+interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the
+shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to
+speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of
+London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than
+perhaps at any other spot. All grades pass before you, from the pushful
+American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud
+Indian Rajah with his turbaned suite; from the variety actress to the
+daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing
+Europe.
+
+"You've been a bit down in the mouth to-night, Jack," I said presently,
+after we had been watching the cabs coming up, depositing the
+home-coming revelers from the Savoy or the Carlton.
+
+"Yes," he sighed. "And surely I have enough to cause me--after what I've
+heard from Bartlett."
+
+"What! Did the facts he told us convey any bad news to you?" I inquired
+with pretended ignorance.
+
+"Yes," he said hoarsely, after a brief pause. Then he added: "Bartlett
+said you could tell me what happened up in Scotland, where Leithcourt
+had shooting. Tell me everything," he added with the air of a man in
+whom all hope is dead.
+
+"Well," I began, "the Leithcourts took Rannoch Castle, close to my
+uncle's place, near Dumfries. I got to know them, of course, and often
+shot with his party. One day, however, I was amazed to notice in one of
+the rooms the photograph of a lady, the exact counterpart of that
+picture which, I recollect, I told you when in Leghorn I had found torn
+up on board the _Lola_. You recollect what I narrated about my strange
+adventure, don't you?"
+
+"I remember every word," was his answer. "Go on. What did you do?"
+
+"Nothing. I held my tongue. But when I discovered that the fellow who
+called himself Woodroffe--the man who had represented himself as the
+owner of the _Lola_, and who, no doubt, had had a hand in breaking open
+Hutcheson's safe in the Consulate--was engaged to Muriel, I became full
+of suspicion."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Woodroffe, after meeting me, disappeared--went to Hamburg, they said,
+on business. Then other things occurred. A man and woman were found
+murdered up in the wood about a mile and a half from the castle. The man
+was made up to represent my man Olinto--I believe you've seen him in
+Leghorn?"
+
+"What! They've killed Olinto?" he gasped, starting from his chair.
+
+"No. The fellow was made up very much like him. But his wife Armida was
+killed."
+
+"They killed the woman, and believed they had also killed her husband,
+eh?" he said bitterly through his teeth, and I saw that his strong hands
+grasped the arms of his chair firmly. "And Martin Woodroffe is engaged
+to Muriel Leithcourt. Are you certain of this?"
+
+"Yes; quite certain."
+
+"And is there no suspicion as to who is the assassin of the woman
+Santini and this mysterious man who posed as her husband?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+For some time Jack Durnford smoked in silence, and I could just
+distinguish his white, hard face in the faint light, for it was now
+late, and the big electric lamps had been turned out and we were in
+semi-darkness.
+
+"That fellow shall never marry Muriel," he declared in a fierce, hoarse
+voice. "What you have just told me reveals the truth. Did you meet
+Chater?"
+
+"He appeared suddenly at Rannoch, and the Leithcourts fled precipitately
+and have not since been heard of."
+
+"Ah, no wonder!" he remarked with a dry laugh. "No wonder! But look
+here, Gordon, I'm not going to stand by and let that scoundrel Woodroffe
+marry Muriel."
+
+"You love her, perhaps?" I hazarded.
+
+"Yes, I do love her," he admitted. "And, by heaven!" he cried, "I will
+tell the truth and crush the whole of their ingenious plot. Have you met
+Elma Heath?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said in quick anxiety.
+
+"Then listen," he said in a low, earnest voice. "Listen, and I'll tell
+you something.
+
+"There is a greater mystery surrounding that yacht, the _Lola_, than you
+have ever imagined, my dear old chap," declared Jack Durnford, looking
+me straight in the face. "When you told me about it on the quarter-deck
+that day outside Leghorn, I was half a mind to tell you what I knew.
+Only one fact prevented me--my disinclination to reveal my own secrets.
+I loved Muriel Leithcourt, yet, afloat as I was, I could never see
+her--I could not obtain from her own lips the explanation I desired. Yet
+I would not prejudge her--no, and I won't now!" he added with a fierce
+resolution.
+
+"I love her," he went on, "and she reciprocates my love. Ours is a
+secret engagement made in Malta two years ago, and yet you tell me that
+she has pledged herself to that fellow Woodroffe--the man known here in
+London as Dick Archer. I can't believe it--I really can't, old fellow.
+She could never write to me as she has done, urging patience and secrecy
+until my return."
+
+"Unless, of course, she desired to gain time," I suggested.
+
+But my friend was silent; his brows were deep knit.
+
+"Woodroffe is at the present moment in Petersburg," I said. "I've just
+come back from there."
+
+"In St. Petersburg!" he gasped, surprised. "Then he is with that
+villainous official, Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland."
+
+"No; Oberg is living shut up in his palace at Helsingfors, fearing to go
+out lest he shall be assassinated," was my answer.
+
+"And Elma? What has become of her?"
+
+"She is in hiding in Petersburg, awaiting such time as I can get her
+safely out of Russia," and then, continuing, I explained how she had
+been maimed and rendered deaf and dumb.
+
+"What!" he cried fiercely. "Have they actually done that to the poor
+girl? Then they feared that she should reveal the nature of their plot,
+for she had seen and heard."
+
+"Seen and heard what?"
+
+"Be patient; we will elucidate this mystery, and the motive of this
+terrible infliction upon her. Muriel wrote to me saying that poor Elma,
+her friend, had disappeared, and she feared that some evil had also
+happened to her. So Oberg had sent her to his fortress--his own private
+Bastille--the place to which, on pretended charges of conspiracy against
+Russia, he sends those who thwart him to a living tomb."
+
+"I have seen him, and I have defied him," I said.
+
+"You have! Man alive! be careful. He's not a fellow who sticks at
+trifles," said Jack warningly.
+
+"I don't fear," I replied. "Elma's enemies are also mine."
+
+"Then I take it, old fellow, that notwithstanding her affliction, you
+are actually in love with her?"
+
+"I intend to rescue, and to marry her," I answered quite frankly.
+
+"But first we must tear aside this veil of mystery and ascertain all the
+facts concerning her," he said. "At present I only know one or two very
+vague details. The baron is certainly not her uncle, as he represents
+himself to be, but it seems certain that she is the daughter of
+Anglo-Russian parents, and was born in Russia and brought to England
+when a child."
+
+"But from whom do you expect I can obtain the true facts concerning her,
+and the reason of the baron's desire to keep her silent?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, twisting his mustache thoughtfully. "That's just the
+question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive
+of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow
+Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot,
+whatever it may be, I feel convinced. She may be the victim of that
+blackleg Woodroffe, who, as Bartlett has told you, is one of the most
+expert swindlers in London, and who has already done two terms of penal
+servitude."
+
+"But what was the motive in breaking open the Consul's safe, if not to
+obtain the Foreign Office or Admiralty ciphers? Perhaps they wanted to
+steal them and sell them to a foreign government?"
+
+"No; that was not their object. I've thought over it many, many times
+since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a
+fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows
+his ciphers to remain behind. When he leaves his post he always deposits
+those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his
+Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port. They'd surely
+ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet. The affair was a
+risky one, and Dick Archer is known as a man of many precautions."
+
+"But he is on extremely friendly terms with Elma. It was he who
+succeeded in finding her in Finland, and taking her beyond Oberg's
+sphere of influence to Petersburg."
+
+"Then it is certainly only an affected friendship, with some sinister
+motive underlying it."
+
+"She wrote a letter from her island prison to an old schoolfellow named
+Lydia Moreton, asking her to see Woodroffe at his rooms in Cork Street,
+and tell him that through all she was suffering she had kept her promise
+to him, and that the secret was still safe."
+
+"Exactly. And now the fellow fears that as you are so actively searching
+out the truth, she may yield to your demands and explain. He therefore
+intends to silence her."
+
+"What! to kill her, you mean?" I gasped, in quick apprehension.
+
+"Well, he might do so, in order to save himself, you see," Jack replied,
+adding: "He certainly would have no compunction if he thought that it
+would not be brought home to him. Only he, no doubt, fears you, because
+you have found her, and are in love with her."
+
+I admitted the force of his argument, but recollected that my dear one
+was safe in concealment, and that the Princess was our friend, even
+though I, as an Englishman, had no sympathy with the doctrine of the
+bomb and the knife.
+
+I tried to get from him all that he knew concerning Elma, but he seemed,
+for some curious reason, disinclined to tell. All I could gather was
+that Leithcourt was in league with Chater and Woodroffe, and that Muriel
+had acted as an entirely innocent agent. What the conspiracy was, or
+what was its motive, I could not discern. I was as far off the solution
+of the problem as ever.
+
+"We must first find Muriel," he declared, when I pressed him to tell me
+everything he knew. "There are facts you have told me which negative my
+own theories, and only from her can we obtain the real truth."
+
+"But surely you know where she is? She writes to you," I said.
+
+"The last letter, which I received at Gib. ten days ago, was from the
+Hotel Bristol, at Botzen, in the Tyrol, yet Bartlett says she has been
+seen down at Eastbourne."
+
+"But you have an address where you always write to her, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, a secret one. I have written and made an appointment, but she has
+not kept it. She has been prevented, of course. She may be with her
+parents, and unable to come to London."
+
+"You did not know that they had fled, and were in hiding?"
+
+"Of course not. What I've heard to-night is news to me--amazing news."
+
+"And does it not convey to you the truth?"
+
+"It does--a ghastly truth concerning Elma Heath," he answered in a low
+voice, as though speaking to himself.
+
+"Tell me. What? I'm dying, Jack, to know everything concerning her. Who
+is that fellow Oberg?"
+
+"Her enemy. She, by mere accident, learned his secret and Woodroffe's,
+and they now both live in deadly fear of her."
+
+"And for that reason she was taken to Siena, where some villainous
+Italian doctor was bribed to render her deaf and dumb."
+
+He nodded in the affirmative.
+
+"But Chater?"
+
+"I know very little concerning him. He may have conspired with them, or
+he may be innocent. It seems as though he were antagonistic to their
+schemes, if Leithcourt and his family really fled from him."
+
+"And yet he was on board the _Lola_. Indeed, he may have helped to
+commit the burglary at the Consulate," I said.
+
+"Quite likely," he answered. "But our first object must be to rediscover
+Muriel. Paget says she is in Eastbourne. If she is there, we shall
+easily find her. They publish visitors' lists in the papers, don't they,
+like they do at Hastings?" Then he added: "Visitors' lists are most
+annoying when you find your name printed in them when you are supposed
+officially to be somewhere else. I was had once like that by the
+Bournemouth papers, when I was supposed to be on duty over at
+Queenstown. I narrowly escaped a terrible wigging."
+
+"Shall we go to Eastbourne?" I suggested eagerly. "I'll go there with
+you in the morning."
+
+"Or would it not be best to send an urgent wire to the address where I
+always write? She would then reply here, no doubt. If she's in
+Eastbourne, there may be reasons why she cannot come up to town. If her
+people are in hiding, of course she won't come. But she'll make an
+appointment with me, no doubt."
+
+"Very well. Send a wire," I said. "And make it urgent. It will then be
+forwarded. But as regards Olinto? Would you like to see him? He might
+tell you more than he has told me."
+
+"No; by no means. He must not know that I have returned to London,"
+declared my friend quickly. "You had better not see him--you
+understand."
+
+"Then his interests are--well, not exactly our own?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But why don't you tell me more about Elma?" I urged, for I was eager to
+learn all he knew. "Come, do tell me!" I implored.
+
+"I've told you practically everything, my dear old fellow," was his
+response. "The revelation of the true facts of the affair can be made
+only by Muriel. I tell you, we must find her."
+
+"Yes, we must--at all hazards," I said. "Let's go across to the
+telegraph office opposite Charing Cross. It's open always." And we rose
+and walked out along the Strand, now nearly deserted, and despatched an
+urgent message to Muriel at an address in Hurlingham Road, Fulham.
+
+Afterwards we stood outside on the curb, still talking, I loth to part
+from him, when there passed by in the shadow two men in dark overcoats,
+who crossed the road behind us to the front of Charing Cross station,
+and then continued on towards Trafalgar Square.
+
+As the light of the street lamp fell upon them, I thought I recognized
+the face of one as that of a person I had seen before, yet I was not at
+all certain, and my failure to remember whom the passer-by resembled
+prevented me from saying anything further to Jack than:
+
+"A fellow I know has just gone by, I think."
+
+"We seem to be meeting hosts of friends to-night," he laughed. "After
+all, old chap, it does one good to come back to our dear, dirty old town
+again. We abuse it when we are here, and talk of the life in Paris, and
+Vienna, and Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so
+dear to us, for it is 'home.' But there!" he laughed, "I'm actually
+growing romantic. Ah! if we could only find Muriel! But we must
+to-morrow. Ta-ta! I shall go around to the club and sleep, for I haven't
+fixed on any diggings yet. Come in at ten to-morrow, and we will decide
+upon some plan. One thing is plainly certain; Elma must at once be got
+out of Russia. She's in deadly peril of her life there."
+
+"Yes," I said. "And you will help me?"
+
+"With all my heart, old fellow," answered my friend, warmly grasping my
+hand, and then we parted, he strolling along towards the National
+Gallery on his way back to the "Junior," while I returned to the _Cecil_
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MARKED MEN
+
+
+"Captain Durnford?" I inquired of the hall-porter of the club next
+morning.
+
+"Not here, sir."
+
+"But he slept here last night," I remarked. "I have an appointment with
+him."
+
+The man consulted the big book before him, and answered:
+
+"Captain Durnford went out at 9:27 last night, sir, but has not
+returned."
+
+Strange, I thought, but although I waited in the club nearly an hour, he
+did not put in an appearance. I called again at noon, and he had not
+come in, and again at two o'clock, but he had not even then made his
+appearance. Then I began to be anxious. I returned to the hotel,
+resolved to wait for a few hours longer. He might have altered his mind
+and gone to Eastbourne in search of Muriel; yet, had he done so, he
+would surely have telegraphed to me.
+
+About four o'clock, as I was passing through the big hall of the hotel,
+I heard a voice behind me utter a greeting in Italian, and turning in
+surprise, found Olinto, dressed in his best suit of black, standing hat
+in hand.
+
+In an instant I recollected what Jack had told me, and regarded him with
+some suspicion.
+
+"Signor Commendatore," he said in a low voice, as though fearing to be
+overheard, "may I be permitted to speak in private with you?"
+
+"Certainly," I said, and I took him in the lift up to my room.
+
+"I have come to warn you, signore," he said, when I had given him a
+seat. "Your enemies mean harm to you."
+
+"And who are they, pray?" I asked, biting my lips. "The same, I suppose,
+who prepared that ingenious trap in Lambeth?"
+
+"I am not here to reveal to you who they are, signore, only to warn you
+to have a care of yourself," was the Italian's reply.
+
+"Look here, Olinto!" I exclaimed determinedly, "I've had enough of this
+confounded mystery. Tell me the truth regarding the assassination of
+your poor wife up in Scotland."
+
+"Ah, signore!" he answered sadly in a changed voice, "I do not know. It
+was a plot. Someone represented me--but he was killed also. They
+believed they had struck me down," he added, with a bitter laugh. "Poor
+Armida's body was found concealed behind a rock on the opposite side of
+the wood. I saw it--ah!" he cried shuddering.
+
+"Then you are ignorant of the identity of your wife's assassin?"
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"Tell me one thing," I said. "Did Armida possess any trinket in the form
+of a little enameled cross--like a miniature cross of cavaliere?"
+
+"Yes; I gave it to her. I found it on the floor at the Mansion House,
+where I was engaged as odd waiter for a banquet. I know I ought to have
+given it up to the Lord Mayor's servants, but it was such a pretty
+little thing that I was tempted to keep it. It probably had fallen from
+the coat of one of the diplomatists dining there."
+
+I was silent. The faint suspicion that Oberg had been at that spot was
+now entirely removed. The only clue I had was satisfactorily accounted
+for.
+
+"Why do you ask, Signor Commendatore?" he added.
+
+"Because the cross was found at the spot, and was believed to have been
+dropped by the assassin," I said.
+
+The police had, it seemed, succeeded in discovering the unfortunate
+woman after all, and had found that she was his wife.
+
+"You know a man named Leithcourt?" I asked a few moments later. "Now,
+tell the truth. In this affair, Olinto, our interests are mutual, are
+they not?"
+
+He nodded, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"And you know also a man named Archer--who is sometimes known as Hornby,
+or Woodroffe--as well as a friend of his called Chater."
+
+"Si, signore," he said. "I have met them all--to my regret."
+
+"And have you ever met a Russian--a certain Baron Oberg--and his niece,
+Elma Heath?"
+
+"His niece? She isn't his niece."
+
+"Then who is she?" I demanded.
+
+"How do I know? I have seen her once or twice. But she's dead, isn't
+she? She knew the secret of those men, and they intended to kill her. I
+tried to prevent them taking her away on the yacht, and I would have
+gone to the police--only I dare not."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, because my own hands were not quite clean," he answered after a
+pause, his eyes fixed upon mine the while. "I knew they intended to
+silence her, but I was powerless to save her, poor young lady. They took
+her on board Leithcourt's yacht, the _Iris_, and they sailed for the
+Mediterranean, I believe."
+
+"Then the name and appearance of the yacht was altered on the voyage,
+and it became the _Lola_," I said.
+
+"No doubt," he smiled. "The _Iris_ was a steamer of many names, and had,
+I believe, been painted nearly all the colors of the rainbow at various
+times. It was a mysterious vessel, but she exists no more. They scuttled
+her somewhere up in the Baltic, I've heard."
+
+"And who is this Oberg?" I inquired, urging him to reveal to me all he
+knew concerning him.
+
+"He stands in great fear of the poor young lady, I believe, for it was
+at his instigation that Leithcourt and his friends took her on that
+fatal yachting cruise."
+
+"And what was your connection with them?"
+
+"Well, I was Leithcourt's servant," was his reply. "I was steward on the
+_Iris_ for a year, until I suppose they thought that I began to see too
+much, and then I was placed in a position ashore."
+
+"And what did you see?"
+
+"More than I care to tell, signore. If they were arrested I should be
+arrested, too, you see."
+
+"But I mean to solve this mystery, Olinto," I said fiercely, for I was
+in no trifling mood. "I'll fathom it if it costs me my life."
+
+"If the signore solves it himself, then I cannot be charged with
+revealing the truth," was the man's diplomatic reply. "But I fear that
+they are far too wary."
+
+"Armida has lost her life. Surely that is sufficient incentive for you
+to bring them all to justice?"
+
+"Of course. But if the law falls upon them, it will also fall upon me."
+
+I explained the terrible affliction to which my love had been subjected
+by those heartless brutes, whereupon he cried enthusiastically:
+
+"Then she is not dead! She can tell us everything!"
+
+"But cannot you tell us?"
+
+"No; not all. The secret she knows has never been revealed. They feared
+she might be incautious, and for that reason Oberg made the villainous
+suggestion of the yachting trip. She was to be drowned--accidentally, of
+course."
+
+"She is in St. Petersburg now. I left her a week ago."
+
+"In Russia! Ah, signore, for her sake, don't allow the young lady to
+remain there. The Baron is all-powerful. He does what he wishes in
+Russia, and the more merciless he is to the people he governs, the
+greater rewards he receives from the Czar. I have never been in Russia,
+but surely it must be a strange country, signore!"
+
+"Well," I said, sitting upon the edge of the bed and looking at him.
+"Are you prepared to denounce them if I bring the Signorina Heath here,
+to England?"
+
+"But what is the use, if we have no clear proof?" was his evasive reply.
+I could see plainly that he feared being himself implicated in some
+extraordinary plot, the exact nature of which he so steadfastly refused
+to reveal to me.
+
+We talked on for fully half an hour, and from his conversation I
+gathered that he was well acquainted with Elma.
+
+"Ah, signore, she was such a pleasant and kind-hearted young lady. I
+always felt very sorry for her. She was in deadly fear of them."
+
+"Because they were thieves?" I hazarded.
+
+"Ah, worse!"
+
+"But why did they induce you to entice me to that house in Lambeth? Why
+did they so evidently desire that I should be killed?"
+
+"By accident," he interrupted, correcting me. "Always by accident," and
+he smiled grimly.
+
+"Surely you know their secret motive?" I remarked.
+
+"At the time I did not," he declared. "I acted on their instructions,
+being compelled to, for they hold my future in their hands. Therefore I
+could not disobey. You knew too much, therefore you were marked down for
+death--just as you are now."
+
+"And who is it who is now seeking my life?" I inquired gravely. "I only
+returned from Russia yesterday."
+
+"Your movements are well known," answered the young Italian. "You cannot
+be too careful. Woodroffe has been in Russia with you, has he not?"
+
+I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:
+
+"I thought so, but was not quite sure."
+
+"And Chater?" I inquired; "where is he?"
+
+"In London."
+
+"And the Leithcourts?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of ignorance, adding: "The
+Signorina Muriel returned to London from Eastbourne this morning."
+
+"Where can I find her?" I inquired eagerly. "It is of the utmost
+importance that I should see her."
+
+"She is with a relation, a cousin, I think, at Bassett Road, Notting
+Hill. The house is called 'Holmwood.'"
+
+"You have seen her?"
+
+"No. I heard she had returned."
+
+"And her father is still in hiding from Chater?"
+
+"He is still in hiding, but Chater is his best friend."
+
+"That is curious," I remarked, recollecting the hurried departure from
+Rannoch. "They've made it up, I suppose?"
+
+"They never quarreled, to my knowledge."
+
+"Then why did Leithcourt leave Scotland so hurriedly on Chater's
+arrival? You know all about the affair, of course?"
+
+He nodded, saying with a grim smile, "Yes; I know. The party up there
+must have been a very interesting one. If the police could have made a
+raid on the place they would have found among the guests certain persons
+long 'wanted.' But the arrival of Chater and the flight of Leithcourt
+had an ulterior object. Chater had never been Leithcourt's enemy."
+
+"But I can't understand that," I said. "Why should Leithcourt have
+attacked Chater, rendered him unconscious, and shut him up in the
+cupboard in the library?"
+
+"Was it Leithcourt who did that?" he asked dubiously. "I think not. It
+was another of the guests who was Chater's bitterest enemy. But Philip
+Leithcourt took advantage of the fracas in order to make believe that he
+had fled because of Chater's arrival. Ah!" he added, "you haven't any
+idea of their ruses. They are amazing!"
+
+"So it seems," I said, nevertheless only half convinced that the Italian
+was telling me the truth. If it was really, as he had said, that the
+arrival of Chater and the flight was merely a "blind," then the mystery
+was again deepened.
+
+"Then who was the man who attacked Chater?" I asked.
+
+"Only Chater himself knows. It was one of the guests, that is quite
+evident."
+
+"And you say that the flight had been prearranged?" I remarked.
+
+"Yes, with a distinct motive," he said; then, after a pause, he added,
+with a strange, earnest look in his dark eyes, "Pardon me, Signor
+Commendatore, if I presume to suggest something, will you not?"
+
+"Certainly. What do you suggest?"
+
+"That you should remain here, in this hotel, and not venture out."
+
+"For fear of something unfortunate happening to me!" I laughed. "I'm
+really not afraid, Olinto," I added. "You know I carry this," and I drew
+out my revolver from my hip-pocket.
+
+"I know, signore," he said anxiously. "But you might not be afforded
+opportunity for using it. When they lay a trap they bait it well."
+
+"I know. They're a set of the most ingenious scoundrels in London, it is
+very evident. Yet I don't fear them in the least," I declared. "I must
+rescue the Signorina Heath."
+
+"But, signore, have a care for yourself," cried the Italian, laying his
+hand upon my arm. "You are a marked man. Ah! do I not know," he
+exclaimed breathlessly. "If you go out you may run right into--well, the
+fatal accident."
+
+"Never fear, Olinto," I said reassuringly. "I shall keep my eyes well
+open. Here, in London, one's life is safer than anywhere else in the
+world, perhaps--certainly safer than in some places I could name in your
+own country, eh?" at which he grinned.
+
+The next moment he grew serious again, and said:
+
+"I only warn the signore that if he goes out it is at his own peril."
+
+"Then let it be so," I laughed, feeling self-confident that no one could
+lead me into any trap. I was neither a foreigner nor a country cousin. I
+knew London too well. He was silent and shook his head; then, after
+telling me that he was still at the same restaurant in Westbourne Grove,
+he took his departure, warning me once more not to go forth.
+
+Half an hour later, disregarding his words, I strode out into the
+Strand, and again walked round to the "Junior." The short wintry day had
+ended, the gas-lamps were lit, and the darkness of night was gradually
+creeping on.
+
+Jack had not been to the club, and I began now to grow thoroughly
+uneasy. He had parted from me at the corner of the Strand with only a
+five minutes' walk before him, and yet he had apparently disappeared. My
+first impulse was to drive to Notting Hill to inquire of Muriel if she
+had news of him, but somehow the Italian's warning words made me wonder
+if he had met with foul play.
+
+I suddenly recollected those two men who had passed by as we had talked,
+and how that the features of one had seemed strangely familiar.
+Therefore I took a cab to the police-station down at Whitehall, and made
+inquiry of the inspector on duty in the big bare office with its flaring
+gas-jets in wire globes. He heard me to the end, then turning back the
+book of "occurrences" before him, glanced through the ruled entries.
+
+"I should think this is the gentleman, sir," he said. And he read to me
+the entry as follows:
+
+"P.C. 462A reports that at 2.07 a.m., while on duty outside the National
+Gallery, he heard a revolver shot, followed by a man's cry. He ran to
+the corner of Suffolk Street, where he found a gentleman lying upon the
+pavement suffering from a serious shot-wound in the chest and quite
+unconscious. He obtained the assistance of P.C.'s 218A and 343A, and the
+gentleman, who was not identified, was taken to the Charing Cross
+Hospital, where the house-surgeon expressed a doubt whether he could
+live. Neither P.C.'s recollect having noticed any suspicious-looking
+person in the vicinity.
+                         "JOHN PERCIVAL, _Inspector_."
+
+I waited for no more, but rushed round to the hospital in the cab, and
+was, five minutes later, taken along the ward, where I identified poor
+Jack lying in bed, white-faced and unconscious.
+
+"The doctor was here a quarter of an hour ago," whispered the sister.
+"And he fears he is sinking."
+
+"He has uttered no words?" I asked anxiously. "Made no statement?"
+
+"None. He has never regained consciousness, and I fear, sir, he never
+will. It is a case of deliberate murder, the police told me early this
+morning."
+
+I clenched my fists and swore a fierce revenge for that dastardly act.
+And as I stood beside the narrow bed, I realized that what Olinto had
+said regarding my own peril was the actual truth. I was a marked man.
+Was I never to penetrate that inscrutable and ever-increasing mystery?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"
+
+
+Throughout the long night I called many times at the hospital, but the
+reply was always the same. Jack had not regained consciousness, and the
+doctor regarded his case as hopeless.
+
+In the morning I drove in hot haste to Bassett Road, Notting Hill, and
+at the address Olinto had given me found Muriel. When she entered the
+room with folding doors into which I had been shown, I saw that she was
+pale and apprehensive, for we had not met since her flight, and she was,
+no doubt, at a loss for an explanation. But I did not press her for one.
+I merely told her that the Italian Santini had given me her address and
+that I came as bearer of unfortunate news.
+
+"What is it?" she gasped quickly.
+
+"It concerns Captain Durnford," I replied. "He has been injured in the
+street, and is in Charing Cross Hospital."
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "I see. You do not explain the truth. By your face I
+can tell there is something more. He's dead! Tell me the worst."
+
+"No, Miss Leithcourt," I said gravely, "not dead, but the doctors fear
+that he may not recover. His wound is dangerous. He has been shot by
+some unknown person."
+
+"Shot!" she echoed, bursting into tears. "Then they have followed him,
+after all! They have deceived me, and now, as they intend to take him
+from me, I will myself protect him. You, Mr. Gregg, have been in peril
+of your life, that I know, but Jack's enemies are yours, and they shall
+not go unpunished. May I see him?"
+
+"I fear not, but we will ask at the hospital." And after the exchange of
+some further explanations, we took a hansom back to Charing Cross.
+
+At first the sister refused to allow Muriel to see the patient, but she
+implored so earnestly that at last she consented, and the distressed
+girl in the black coat and hat crept on tiptoe to the bedside.
+
+"He was conscious for a quarter of an hour or so," whispered the nurse
+who sat there, "He asked after some lady named Muriel."
+
+The girl at my side burst into low sobbing.
+
+"Tell him," she said, "that Muriel is here--that she has seen him, and
+is waiting for him to recover."
+
+We were not allowed to linger there, and on leaving the hospital I took
+her back again to Notting Hill, promising to keep her well informed of
+Jack's condition. He had returned to consciousness, therefore there was
+now a faint hope for his recovery.
+
+Day succeeded day, and although I was not allowed to visit my friend, I
+was told that he was very slowly progressing. I idled at the Hotel Cecil
+longing daily for news of Elma. Only once did a letter come from her, a
+brief, well-written note from which it appeared that she was quite well
+and happy, although she longed to be able to go out. The Princess was
+very kind indeed to her, and, she added, was making secret arrangements
+for her escape across the Russian frontier into Germany.
+
+I knew what that meant. Use was to be made of certain Russian officials
+who were secretly allied with the Revolutionists in order to secure her
+safe conduct beyond the power of that order of exile of the tyrant de
+Plehve. I wrote to her under cover to the Princess, but there had been
+no time yet for a reply.
+
+I saw Muriel many times, but never once did she refer to Rannoch or
+their sudden departure. Her only thought was of the man she loved.
+
+"I always believed that you were engaged to Mr. Woodroffe," I said one
+day, when I called to tell her of Jack's latest bulletin.
+
+"It is true that he asked me to marry him," she responded. "But there
+were reasons why I did not accept."
+
+"Reasons connected with his past, eh?"
+
+She smiled, and then said:
+
+"Ah, Mr. Gregg, it is all a strange and very tragic story. I must see
+Jack. When do you think they will allow me to go to him?"
+
+I explained that the doctor feared to cause the patient any undue
+excitement, but that in two or three days there was hope of her being
+allowed to visit him. Several times the police made inquiry of me, but I
+could tell them nothing. I could not for the life of me recollect where
+I had before seen the face of that man who had passed in the darkness.
+
+One afternoon, ten days after the attempt upon Jack, I was allowed to
+sit by his bedside and question him.
+
+"Ah, Gordon, old fellow!" he said faintly, "I've had a narrow escape--by
+Jove! After I left you I walked quickly on towards the club, when, all
+of a sudden, two scoundrels sprang out of Suffolk Street, and one of
+them fired a revolver full at me. Then I knew no more."
+
+"But who were the men? Did you recognize them?"
+
+"No, not at all. That's the worst of it."
+
+"But Muriel knows who they were!" I said.
+
+"Ah, yes! Bring her here, won't you?" the poor fellow implored, "I'm
+dying to see her once again."
+
+Then I told him how she had looked upon him while unconscious, and how I
+had taken the daily bulletin to her. For an hour I talked with him,
+urging him to get well soon, so that we could unite in probing the
+mystery, and bringing to justice those responsible for the dastardly
+act.
+
+"Muriel knows, and if she loves you she will no doubt assist us," I
+said.
+
+"Oh, she does love me, Gordon, I know that," said the prostrate man,
+smiling contentedly, and when I left I promised to bring her there on
+the morrow.
+
+This I did, but having conducted her to the bed at the end of the ward I
+discreetly withdrew. What she said to him I am not, of course, aware.
+All I know is that an hour later when I returned I found them the
+happiest pair possible to conceive, and I clearly saw that Jack's trust
+in her was not ill-placed.
+
+But of Elma? No further word had come from her, and I began to grow
+uneasy. The days went on. I wrote twice, but no reply was forthcoming.
+At last I could bear the suspense no longer, and began to contemplate
+returning to Russia.
+
+Jack, when at last discharged from the hospital, came across to the
+Cecil and lived with me in preference to the "Junior." He was very weak
+at first, and I looked after him, while every day Muriel came and ate
+with us, brightening our lives by her smart and merry chatter. She knew
+that I loved Elma and was also aware of the exciting events in Russia,
+Jack having told her of them during their long drives in hansoms when he
+went out with her to take the air.
+
+One day I received a brief note from the Princess in Petersburg, urging
+me to remain patient and saying Elma was quite safe and well. There
+were reasons, however, why she was unable to write, she added. What were
+they, I wondered? Yet I could only wait until I received word to travel
+back to Russia and fetch her home. The Princess had promised to arrange
+everything.
+
+December came, and we still remained on at the hotel. Once Olinto had
+written me repeating his warning, but I did not heed it. I somehow
+distrusted the fellow.
+
+Jack, now thoroughly recovered, called almost daily at Bassett Road, and
+would often bring Muriel to the Cecil to tea or to luncheon. Often I
+inquired the whereabouts of her father and of Hylton Chater, but she
+declared herself in entire ignorance, and believed they were abroad.
+
+One afternoon, shortly before Christmas, as we were idling in the
+American bar of the hotel, my friend told me that Muriel had invited us
+to tea at her cousin's that afternoon, and accordingly we went there in
+company.
+
+The drawing-room into which we were ushered was familiar to me as the
+apartment wherein I had told Muriel of the attempt upon her lover's
+life.
+
+As we sat together Muriel, a smart figure in a pale blue gown, poured
+tea for us and chatted more merrily, I thought, than ever before. She
+seemed quick and nervous and yet full of happiness, as she should indeed
+have been, for Jack Durnford was one of the best fellows in the world,
+and his restoration to health little short of miraculous.
+
+"Gordon," he said to me with a sudden seriousness when tea had ended and
+we had placed down our cups. "I want to tell you something--something
+I've been longing always to tell you, and now I have got dear Muriel's
+consent. I want to tell you about her father and his friends."
+
+"And about Elma, too?" I said in quick eagerness. "Yes, tell me
+everything."
+
+"No, not everything, for I don't know it myself. But what I know I will
+explain as briefly as I can, and leave you to form your own conclusions.
+It is," he went on, "a strange--most amazing story. When I myself became
+first cognizant of the mystery I was on board the flagship the _Renown_,
+under Admiral Sir John Fisher. We were lying in Malta when there arrived
+the English yacht _Iris_, owned by Mr. Philip Leithcourt, and among
+those on board cruising for pleasure were Mr. Martin Woodroffe, Mr.
+Hylton Chater, and the owner's wife and daughter Muriel.
+
+"Muriel and I met first at a tennis-party, and afterwards frequently at
+various houses in Malta, for anyone who goes there and entertains is
+soon entertained in return. A mutual attachment sprang up between Muriel
+and myself," he said, placing his hand tenderly upon hers and smiling,
+"and we often met in secret and took long walks, until quite suddenly
+Leithcourt said that it was necessary to sail for Smyrna to pick up some
+friends who had been traveling in Palestine. The night they sailed a
+great consternation was caused on the island by the news that the safe
+in the Admiral Superintendent's office had been opened by expert
+safe-breakers, and certain most important secret documents stolen."
+
+"Well?" I asked, much interested.
+
+"Again, two months later, when the villa of the Prince of Montevachi, at
+Palmero, was broken into and the whole of the famous jewels of the
+Princess stolen, it was a very strange fact that the _Iris_ was at the
+moment in that port. But it was not until the third occasion, when the
+yacht was at Villefranche, and our squadron being at Toulon I got four
+days' leave to go along the Riviera, that my suspicions were aroused,
+for at the very hour when I was dining at the London House at Nice with
+Muriel and a schoolfellow of hers, Elma Heath--who was spending the
+winter there with a lady who was Baron Oberg's cousin--that a great
+robbery was committed in one of the big hotels up at Cimiez, the wife of
+an American millionaire losing jewels valued at thirty thousand pounds.
+Then the robberies, coincident with the visit of the yacht, aroused my
+strong suspicion. I remarked the nature of those documents stolen from
+Malta, and recognized that they could only be of service to a foreign
+government. Then came the Leghorn incident of which you told me. The
+yacht's name had been changed to the _Lola_, and she had been repainted.
+I made searching inquiry, and found that on the evening she was
+purposely run aground in order to strike up a friendship at the
+Consulate, a Russian gunboat was lying in the vicinity. The Consul's
+safe was rifled, and the scheme certainly was to transfer anything
+obtained from it to the Russian gunboat."
+
+"But what was in the safe?" I asked.
+
+"Fortunately nothing. But you see they knew that our squadron was due in
+Leghorn, and that some extremely important despatches were on the way to
+the Admiral--secret orders based upon the decision of the British
+Cabinet as to the vexed question of Russian ships passing the
+Dardanelles--they expected that they would be lodged in the safe until
+the arrival of the squadron, as they always are. They were, however,
+bitterly disappointed because the despatches had not arrived."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Well, the only Russian who appeared to have any connection with them
+was Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland, whose habit it was to
+spend part of the winter in the Mediterranean. From Elma Heath's
+conversation at dinner that evening at Nice I gathered that she and her
+uncle had been guests on the _Iris_ on several occasions, although I
+must say that Muriel was extremely reticent regarding all that concerned
+the yacht."
+
+"Of course," she said quickly. "Now that I have told you the truth,
+Jack, don't you think it was only natural?"
+
+"Most certainly, dear," he answered, still holding her hand. "Yours was
+not a secret that you could very well tell to me until you could
+thoroughly trust me, especially as your father had been implicated in
+the theft of those documents from Malta. The truth is," he said, turning
+to me, "Philip Leithcourt has all along been the catspaw of Baron Oberg.
+A few years ago he was a well-known money-lender in the city, and in
+that capacity met the Baron, who, being in disgrace, required a loan. He
+was also in the habit of having certain shady transactions with that
+daring gang of continental thieves of whom Dick Archer and Hylton Chater
+were leaders. For this reason he purchased a yacht for their use, so
+that they might not only use it for the purpose of storing the stolen
+goods, but for the purpose of sailing from place to place under the
+guise of wealthy Englishmen traveling for pleasure. Upon that vessel,
+indeed, was stored thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of jewels
+and objects of value, the proceeds of many great robberies in England,
+France and Belgium. Sometimes they traveled for the purpose of disposing
+of the jewels in various inland towns where the gems, having been recut,
+were not recognized, while at other times, Chater and Archer, assisted
+by Mackintosh, the captain, and Olinto Santini, the steward, sailed for
+a port, landed, committed a robbery, and then sailed away again, quite
+unsuspected, as rich Englishmen."
+
+"And the crew?" I asked, after a pause.
+
+"They were, of course, well paid, and were kept in ignorance of what
+the supposed owner and his friends did ashore."
+
+"But Oberg's connection with it?" I asked, surprised at those
+revelations.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Muriel. "The ingenuity of that crafty villain is
+fiendish. Before he got into the Czar's favor he owed my father a large
+sum, and then sought how to evade repayment. By means of his spies he
+discovered the real purpose of the cruises of the _Iris_--for I was
+often taken on board with a maid in order to allay any suspicion that
+might arise if only men were cruising. Then he not only compelled my
+father to cancel the debt, but he impressed the vessel and those who
+owned and navigated it into the secret service of Russia. A dozen times
+did we make attempts to obtain secret papers from Italian, French and
+English dockyards, but only once in the case of Malta and once at Toulon
+did we succeed. Ah! Mr. Gregg," she added, "you do not know all the
+anxiety I suffered, how at every hour we were in danger of betrayal or
+capture, and of the hundred narrow escapes we have had of Custom House
+officers rummaging the yacht for contraband. You will no doubt recollect
+the sensation caused by the theft of the jewels of the Princess
+Wilhelmine of Schaumbourg-Lippe from the lady's-maid in the rapide
+between Cannes and Les Arcs, the robbery from the Marseilles branch of
+the Crédit Lyonnais, and the great haul of plate from the château of
+Bardon, the Paris millionaire, close to Arcachon."
+
+"Yes," I said, for they were all robberies of which I had read in the
+newspapers a couple of years before.
+
+"Well," she said, "they were all committed by Archer or Woodroffe and
+his gang--with accomplices ashore, of course--and never once did it seem
+that any suspicion fell upon us. While the police were frantically
+searching hither and thither, we used to weigh anchor and calmly steam
+away with our booty on board. We had with us an old Dutch lapidary, and
+one of the cabins was fitted as a workshop, where he altered the
+appearance of the stones, and prepared them ready for sale, while the
+gold was melted in a crucible and put ashore to be sent to agents in
+Hamburg."
+
+"But that night in Leghorn?" I said. "What happened to poor Elma?"
+
+"I do not know," was Muriel's reply. "We were both on board together,
+and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that
+evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against
+your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the
+proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on
+board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some
+conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in
+great fear the whole time lest they might injure you. Yet it seemed,
+after all, as though their idea was the same as always, to worm
+themselves into your confidence. The instant, however, you went ashore,
+Chater, Woodroffe--whom you called Hornby--and Mackintosh, the
+captain--who, by the way, was an old ticket-of-leave man--went ashore,
+and, of course, broke into the Consulate. Then, as soon as they
+returned, Elma came to my cabin, awoke me, and said that the Baron was
+taking her ashore, and that they were to travel overland back to London.
+She was ready dressed to go, therefore I kissed her, and promising to
+meet her soon, we parted. That was the last I saw of her. What happened
+to her afterwards only she alone can tell us."
+
+"But she is not the Baron's niece?" I said.
+
+"No. There is some mystery," declared Muriel. "She holds some secret
+which he fears she may divulge. But of what nature, I am in ignorance."
+
+"Then you say that your father has never taken any active part in the
+robberies?" I remarked.
+
+"No. He commenced by lending money, and amassed a considerable fortune.
+Then avarice seized him, as it does so many men, and coming into contact
+with Archer and his friends, he saw that the idea of the yacht was a
+safe and profitable one. Therefore he purchased the vessel, and ran it
+at the disposition of the thieves, and subsequently under compulsion in
+the secret service of Russia, as I have already described to you. The
+profits were colossal. In one year my father's share was eighty thousand
+pounds."
+
+"And where is your father now?" I asked.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed sadly, her face pale and haggard.
+
+"I have heard that the vessel was scuttled somewhere in the Baltic."
+
+"That is true. Oberg's purpose having been served, he demanded half the
+property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval
+authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail
+my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was
+frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma,
+defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors,
+telegraphed to the admiral of the Russian fleet in the Baltic. The crew
+from the _Iris_ were at once landed at Riga, and only Mackintosh and my
+father put to sea again. Ah! my father was desperate, for he knew the
+merciless character of that man whose victim he had been for so long.
+They watched a Russian cruiser bearing down upon them, when, just as it
+drew near, they got off in a boat and blew up the yacht, which sank in
+three minutes with its ill-obtained wealth on board."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+She was silent, and I saw tears standing in her eyes.
+
+"There was a tragedy," Jack explained in a low, hoarse voice. "He and
+the captain did not, unfortunately, get sufficiently far from the yacht
+when they blew her up, and they went down with her."
+
+And I looked in silence at Muriel, who stood with her head bent and her
+white face covered with her hands.
+
+Almost at the same moment there was a low tap at the door, and the
+servant-maid announced:
+
+"Mr. Santini, miss."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Jack quickly, as Olinto entered the room. "Then you had
+my note! We have asked you here to reveal to us this dastardly plot
+which seemed to have been formed against Mr. Gregg and myself. As you
+know, I've had a narrow escape."
+
+"I know, signore. And the Signor Commendatore is also threatened."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"By those who killed my poor wife, and who intended also to silence me,"
+was his answer.
+
+"The same who compelled you take me to that house where the fatal chair
+was prepared, eh?"
+
+"It was Archer, who, fearing that you came to London in search of them,
+devised that devilish contrivance," he said in his broken English. Then
+continuing, he went on fiercely: "Now that I have discovered why my poor
+Armida was killed, I will tell the truth, and not spare them. Since you
+left Scotland, signore, I have been up in Dumfries, and have discovered
+several facts which prove that for some reason known only to himself,
+Leithcourt, while at Rannoch, wrote to both Armida and myself
+separately, making an appointment to see us at the same time at that
+spot on the edge of the wood, as he had some secret commission to
+entrust to us. The letter addressed to me apparently fell into someone
+else's hands--probably one of the secret agents of Baron Oberg, who were
+always watching Leithcourt's doings, and he, anxious to learn what was
+intended, made himself up to look like me, and kept the appointment in
+my place. Armida, having received the letter unknown to me, went up to
+Scotland, and was also there at the appointed time. What actually
+transpired can only be surmised, yet it seems that Leithcourt was in the
+habit of going up to that spot and loitering there in the evening in
+order to meet Chater in secret, as the latter was in hiding in a small
+hotel in Dumfries. Therefore those who formed the plot must have
+endeavored to throw suspicion upon Leithcourt. It is plain, however, as
+both myself and Armida knew the gang, it was to their interest to get
+rid of us, because the suspicions of the police had at last become
+aroused. Poor Armida was therefore deliberately enticed there to her
+death, while the inquisitive man whom the assassin took to be myself was
+also struck down."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Not by Chater, for he was in London on that night."
+
+"Then by Woodroffe?" Durnford said.
+
+"Without a doubt. It was all most cleverly thought out. It was to his
+advantage alone to close our lips, because in that same fatal chair in
+Lambeth old Jacob Moser, the Jew bullion-broker of Hatton Garden, met
+his death--a most dastardly crime, with which none of his friends were
+associated, and of which we alone held knowledge. He therefore wrote to
+us as though from Leithcourt, calling us up to Rannoch, in order to
+strike the blows in the darkness," he added in his peculiar Italian
+manner. "Besides, he feared we would tell the signore the truth."
+
+"You have not told the police?"
+
+"I dare not, signore. Surely the less the police know about this matter
+the better, otherwise the Signorina Leithcourt must suffer for her
+father's avarice and evil-doing."
+
+"Yes," cried Jack anxiously. "That's right, Olinto. The police must know
+nothing. The reprisals we must make ourselves. But who was it who shot
+me in Suffolk Street?"
+
+"The same man, Martin Woodroffe."
+
+"Then the assassin is back from Russia?"
+
+"He followed closely behind the Signor Commendatore. Markoff, a clever
+secret agent of Baron Oberg's, came with him."
+
+Then for the first time I recollected that the man I had recognized in
+the Strand was a fellow I had seen lounging in the ante-room of the
+palace of the Governor-General of Finland. The pair, fearing that I
+should reveal what I knew, were undoubtedly in London to take my life in
+secret. Now that Leithcourt was dead, Woodroffe had united forces with
+Oberg, and intended to silence me because they feared that Elma, besides
+escaping them, had also revealed her secret.
+
+"I trust that the Signorina Leithcourt has explained the story of the
+yacht and its crew," Olinto remarked. "And has also shown you how I was
+implicated. You will therefore discern the reason why I have hitherto
+feared to give you any explanation."
+
+"Yes," I said, "Miss Leithcourt has told me a great deal, but not
+everything. I cannot yet gather for what reason she and her father fled
+from Rannoch."
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Muriel quickly. "My father suspected
+Woodroffe of being the assassin in Rannoch Wood, for he knew that he had
+broken away from the original compact, and had now allied himself with
+Oberg. Yet it was also my father's object to appear in fear of them,
+because he was only awaiting an opportunity to lay plans for poor Elma's
+rescue from Finland. Therefore one evening Woodroffe called, and my
+father encountered him in the avenue, and admitted him with his own
+latchkey by one of the side doors of the castle, afterwards taking him
+up to the study. He knew that he had come to try and make terms for
+Oberg, therefore he saw that he must fly at once to Newcastle, where the
+_Iris_ was lying, get on board, and sail away.
+
+"With some excuse he left him in the study, and then warned my mother
+and myself to prepare to leave. But while we were packing, it appeared
+that Chater, who had followed, was shown into the study by the butler,
+or rather he entered there himself, being well acquainted with the
+house. Thus the two men, now bitter enemies, met. A fierce quarrel must
+have ensued, and Chater was poisoned and concealed, Woodroffe, of
+course, believing he had killed him. My father entered the study again,
+and seeing only Woodroffe there, did not know what had occurred. Some
+words probably arose, when my father again turned and left. Then we fled
+to Carlisle and on to Newcastle, and next morning were on board the
+yacht out in the North Sea, afterwards landing at Rotterdam. Those," she
+added, "are briefly the facts, as my poor father related them to me."
+
+"And what of poor Elma--and of her secret? When, I wonder, shall I see
+her?" I cried in despair.
+
+"You will see her now, signore," answered Olinto. "A servant of the
+Princess Zurloff brought her to London this afternoon, and I have just
+conveyed her from the station. She is in the next room, in ignorance,
+however, that you are here."
+
+And without another word I fled forward joyfully, and threw open the
+folding-doors which separated me from my silent love.
+
+Silent, yes! But she could, nevertheless, tell her story--surely the
+strangest that any woman has ever lived to tell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY
+
+
+Before me stood my love, a slim, tragic, rather wan figure in a heavy
+dark traveling-coat and felt toque, her sweet lips parted and a look of
+bewildered amazement upon her countenance as I burst in so suddenly upon
+her.
+
+In silence I grasped her tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in
+silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark
+eyes--those eyes that spoke although she was mute--met mine, and in them
+was a look that I had never seen there before--a look which as plainly
+as any words told me that my wild fevered passion was reciprocated.
+
+She gazed beyond into the room where the others had assembled, and then
+looked at me inquiringly, whereupon I led her forward to where they
+were, and Muriel fell upon her and kissed her with tears streaming from
+her eyes.
+
+"I prepared this surprise for you, Mr. Gregg," Muriel said, laughing
+through her tears of joy. "Olinto learnt that she was on her way to
+London, and I sent him to meet her. The Princess has managed
+magnificently, has she not?"
+
+"Yes. Thank God she is free!" I exclaimed. "But we must induce her to
+tell us everything."
+
+Muriel was already helping my love out of her heavy Russian coat, a
+costly garment lined with sable, and when, after greeting Jack and
+Olinto, she was comfortably seated, I took some notepaper from the
+little writing-table by the window and scribbled in pencil the words:
+
+"I need not write how delighted I am that you are safe--that the
+Almighty has heard my prayers for you. Jack and Muriel have told me all
+about Leithcourt and his scoundrelly associates. I know, too, dear--for
+I may call you that, may I not?--how terribly you must have suffered in
+silence through it all. Leithcourt is dead. He sank the yacht with all
+the stolen property on board, but by accident was himself engulfed."
+
+Bending and watching intently as I wrote, she drew back in horror and
+surprise at the words. Then I added: "We are all four determined that
+the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
+you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love--I am bold enough
+to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
+caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
+your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
+unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
+tell us everything--all that you know--without fear, for now that we are
+united no harm can assail us."
+
+She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
+first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
+her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
+extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
+to us the absolute truth.
+
+Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
+chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
+though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
+her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.
+
+Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write,
+she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.
+
+All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her,
+but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started,
+however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence
+for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the
+pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become
+seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw
+we were in real, dead earnest.
+
+I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
+across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
+speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly,
+peerless above all others.
+
+With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
+in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
+written to me.
+
+In breathless eagerness I read as follows:
+
+"Is it true, dear love--for I call you so in return--that you were
+impelled towards me by the mysterious hand that directs all things? You
+came in search of me, and you risked your life for mine at Kajana,
+therefore you have a right to know the truth. You, as my champion, and
+the Princess as my friend, have contrived to effect my freedom. Were it
+not for you, I should ere this have been on my way to Saghalien, to the
+tomb to which Oberg had so ingeniously contrived to consign me. Ah! you
+do not know--you never can know--all that I have suffered ever since I
+was a girl."
+
+Here the statement broke off, and recommenced as follows:
+
+"In order that you should understand the truth, I had better begin at
+the beginning. My father was an English merchant in Petersburg, and my
+mother, Vera Bessanoff, who, before her marriage with my father, was
+celebrated at Court for her beauty, and was one of the maids-of-honor to
+the Czarina. She was the only daughter of Count Paul Bessanoff,
+ex-Governor of Kharkoff, and before marrying my father she had, with her
+mother, been a well-known figure in society. Immediately after her
+marriage her father died, leaving her in possession of an ample fortune,
+which, with my father's own wealth, placed them among the richest and
+most influential in Petersburg.
+
+"Among my father's most intimate friends was Baron Xavier Oberg--who, at
+that time, held a very subordinate position in the Ministry of the
+Interior--and from my earliest recollections I can remember him coming
+frequently to our house and being invited to the brilliant
+entertainments which my mother gave. When I was thirteen, however, my
+father died of a chill contracted while boar-hunting on his estate in
+Kiev, and within a few months a further disaster happened to us. One
+night, while I was sitting alone reading aloud to my mother, two
+strangers were announced, and on being shown in they arrested my dear
+mother on a charge of complicity in a revolutionary plot against the
+Czar which had been discovered at Peterhof. I stood defiant and
+indignant, for my mother was certainly no Nihilist, yet they said that
+the bomb had been introduced into the palace by the Countess Anna
+Shiproff, one of the ladies-in-waiting, who was an intimate friend of my
+mother's and often used to visit her. They alleged that the conspiracy
+had been hatched in our house, color being lent to that theory by the
+fact that a year before a well-known Russian with whom my father had had
+many business dealings had been proved to be the author of the plot by
+which the Czar's train was blown up near Lividia. They tore my mother
+away from me and placed her in that gray prison-van, the sight of which
+in the streets of Petersburg strikes terror into the heart of every
+Russian, for a person once in that rumbling vehicle is, as you know,
+lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed
+in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted, for I
+recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the
+gray dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth came back to me. My
+mother was gone from me for ever!
+
+"In sheer desperation I went to the Ministry of the Interior and sought
+an interview with the Baron, who, when I told him of the disaster,
+appeared greatly concerned, and went at once to the Police Department to
+make inquiry. Next day, however, he came to me with the news that the
+charge against my mother had been proved by a statement of the woman
+Shiproff herself, and that she had already started on her long journey
+to Siberia--she had been exiled to one of those dreaded Arctic
+settlements beyond Yakutsk, a place where it is almost eternal winter,
+and where the conditions of life are such that half the convicts are
+insane. The Baron, however, declared that, as my father's friend, it was
+his duty to act as guardian to me, and that as my father had been
+English I ought to be put to an English school. Therefore, with his
+self-assumed title of uncle, he took me to Chichester. For years I
+remained there, until one day he came suddenly and fetched me away,
+taking me over to Helsingfors--for the Czar had now appointed him
+Governor-General to Finland. There, for the first time, he introduced me
+to his son Michael, a pimply-faced lieutenant of cavalry, and said in a
+most decisive manner that I must marry him. I naturally refused to marry
+a man of whom I knew so little, whereupon, finding me obdurate, he
+quickly altered his tactics and became kindness itself, saying that as I
+was young he would allow me a year in which to make up my mind.
+
+"A week later, while living in the palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a
+conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to
+me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself
+who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had
+made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the
+reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father,
+came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in
+order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in
+the hands of that unscrupulous pair, and I recognized, too, sufficient
+of the Baron's methods as 'The Strangler of Finland,' to show me what
+kind of character he was beneath that calm, eminently respectable
+black-coated exterior. After deliberately sending my poor mother to
+Siberia, he had assumed the role of my guardian in order that he might,
+when I came of age, obtain control of my inheritance, the idea no doubt
+being that I should marry Michael, and then, after the necessary legal
+formalities, I should, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, share the
+same fate as my mother had done."
+
+"The infernal scoundrel!" I ejaculated, when I read her words, while
+from Jack, who had been looking over my shoulder, escaped a fierce and
+forcible vow of vengeance.
+
+"The Baron took me with him to Petersburg when he went on official
+business, and we remained there nearly a month," the narrative went on.
+"While there I received a secret message from 'The Red Priest,' the
+unseen and unknown power of Nihilism, who has for so many years baffled
+the police. I went to see him, and he revealed to me how Oberg had
+contrived to have my mother banished upon a false charge. He warned me
+against the man who had pretended to be my father's friend, and also
+told me that he had known my father intimately, and that if I got into
+any further difficulty I was to communicate with him and he would assist
+me. Oberg took me back to Helsingfors a few months later, and in summer
+we went to England. He was a marvelously clever diplomatist. His tactics
+he could change at will. When I was at school he was rough and brutal in
+his manner towards me, as he was to all; but now he seemed to be
+endeavoring to inspire my confidence by treating me with kindly regard
+and pleasant affability.
+
+"In London, at Claridge's, we met my old schoolfellow Muriel and her
+father--a friend of Oberg's--and in response to their invitation went
+for a cruise on their yacht, the _Iris_, from Southampton. Our party was
+a very pleasant one, and included Woodroffe and Chater, while our cruise
+across the Bay of Biscay and along the Portuguese coast proved most
+delightful. One night, while we were lying outside Lisbon, Woodroffe and
+Chater, together with Olinto, went ashore, and when they returned in the
+early hours of the morning they awoke me by crossing the deck above my
+head. Then I heard someone outside my cabin-door working as though with
+a screwdriver, unscrewing a screw from the woodwork. This aroused my
+interest, and next day I made a minute examination of the paneling,
+where, in one part, I found two small brass screws that had evidently
+been recently removed. Therefore I succeeded in getting hold of a
+screwdriver from the carpenter's shop, and next night, when everyone was
+asleep, I crept out and unscrewed the panel, when to my surprise I saw
+that the secret cavity behind was filled with beautiful jewelry, diamond
+collars, tiaras, necklets, fine pearls, emeralds and turquoises, all
+_thrown_ in indiscriminately.
+
+"I replaced the panel and kept careful watch. At Marseilles, where we
+called, more jewelry and a heavy bagful of plate was brought aboard and
+secreted behind another panel. Then I knew that the men were thieves.
+
+"But surely," continued the strange story my mute love had written, "I
+need not describe all that occurred upon that eventful voyage, except to
+tell you of one very curious incident which occurred. I had spoken
+confidentially with Muriel regarding my suspicions of the men who were
+our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on
+board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced
+that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some
+unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that
+since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and
+that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however,
+never suspected the truth until I pointed it out to her. Well, one hot
+summer's night we were lying off Naples, and as it was a grand festa
+ashore and there was to be a gala performance at the theater, Leithcourt
+took a box and the whole party were rowed ashore. The crew were also
+given shore-leave for the evening, but as the great heat had upset me I
+declined to accompany the theater-party, and remained on board with one
+sailor named Wilson to constitute the watch. We had anchored about half
+a mile from land, and earlier in the evening the Baron had gone ashore
+to send telegrams to Russia, and had not returned.
+
+"About ten o'clock I went below to try and sleep, but I had a slight
+attack of fever, and was unable. Therefore I redressed and sat with the
+light still out, gazing across the starlit bay. Presently from my
+port-hole I saw a shore-boat approaching, and recognized in it the Baron
+with a well-dressed stranger. They both came on board, and the boatman,
+having been paid, pulled back to the shore. Then the Baron and his
+friend--a dark, middle-aged, full-bearded man, evidently a person of
+refinement--went below to the saloon, and after a few moments called to
+the man Wilson who was on the watch, and gave him a glass of whisky and
+water, which he took up on deck to drink at his leisure.
+
+"The unusual character of my fellow-guests on board that craft was such
+that my suspicion was constantly on the alert, therefore curiosity
+tempted me to creep along and peep in at the crack of the door standing
+ajar. A closer view revealed the fact that the stranger was a high
+Russian official to whom I had once been introduced at the Government
+Palace at Helsingfors, the Privy-Councillor and Senator Paul Polovstoff.
+They were smoking together, and were discussing in Russian the means by
+which he, Polovstoff, had arranged to obtain plans of some new British
+fortifications at Gibraltar. From what he said, it seemed that some
+Russian woman, married to an Englishman, a captain in the garrison, had
+been impressed into the secret service against her will, but that she
+had, in order to save herself, promised to obtain the photographs and
+plans that were required. I heard the Englishman's name, and I resolved
+to take some steps to inform him in secret of the intentions of the
+Russian agent.
+
+"Presently the two men took fresh cigars, ascended on deck, and cast
+themselves in the long cane chairs amidships. Still all curiosity to
+hear further details on the ingenious piece of espionage against my own
+nation, I took off my shoes and crept up to a spot where I could crouch
+concealed and overhear their conversation, for the Italian night was
+calm and still. They talked mainly about affairs in Finland, and with
+some of Oberg's expressions of opinion Polovstoff ventured to differ.
+This aroused the Baron's anger, and I knew from the cold sarcasm of his
+remarks, and the peculiarly hard tone of his voice, that he was more
+incensed than he outwardly showed himself to be. He rose and stood with
+his back to the bulwarks facing his friend, who still sat leaning back
+in his deck-chair insisting upon his own views. He was quite calm, and
+not in the least perturbed by the evil glint in the Baron's eye. Perhaps
+he did not know him so well as I did. He did not know what that look
+meant. Suddenly, while the Privy-Councillor lay back in his chair
+pulling thoughtfully at his cigar, there was a bright, blood-red flash,
+a dull report, and a man's short agonized cry. Startled, I leaned around
+the corner of the deck-house, when, to my abject horror, I saw under the
+electric rays the Czar's Privy-Councillor lying sideways in his chair
+with part of his face blown away. Then the hideous truth in an instant
+became apparent. The cigar which Oberg had pressed upon him down in the
+saloon had exploded, and the small missile concealed inside the
+diabolical contrivance had passed upwards into his brain. For a moment I
+stood utterly stupefied, yet as I looked I saw the Baron, in a paroxysm
+of rage, shake his fist in the dead man's face, and cry with a fearful
+imprecation: 'You hound! You have plotted to replace me in the Czar's
+favor. You intended to become Governor-General of Finland! You knew
+certain facts which you intended to put before his Majesty, knowing
+that the revelations would result in my disgrace and downfall. But, you
+infernal cur, you did not know that those who attempt to thwart Xavier
+Oberg either die by accident or go for life to Kajana or the mines!' And
+he spurned the body with his foot and laughed to himself as he gloated
+over his dastardly crime.
+
+"I watched his rage, unable to utter a single word. I saw him, after he
+had searched the dead man's pockets, raise the inert body with its awful
+featureless face and drag it to the bulwarks. Then I rushed forward and
+faced him.
+
+"In an instant he sprang at me, and I screamed. But no aid came. The man
+Wilson was sleeping soundly in the bows, for the whisky he had given him
+had been doctored," went on the narrative. "Upon his face was a fierce,
+murderous look such as I had never seen before. 'You!' he screamed, his
+dark eyes starting from their sockets as he realized that I had been a
+witness of his cowardly crime. 'You have spied upon me, girl!' he
+hissed, 'and you shall die also!' I sank upon my knees imploring him to
+spare me, but he only laughed at my entreaty. 'See!' he cried, 'as you
+saw how he enjoyed his cigar, you may as well see this!' And with an
+effort he raised the dead body in his arms, poised it for a moment on
+the vessel's side, and then, with a hoarse laugh of triumph, heaved it
+into the sea. There was a splash, and then we were alone. 'And you!' he
+cried in a fierce voice--'you who have spied upon me--you will follow!
+The water there will close your chattering mouth!' I shrieked, begged,
+and implored, but his trembling hands were upon my throat. First he
+dragged me to my feet, then he threw me upon my knees, and at last, with
+that grim brutality which characterizes him, he directed me to go and
+get a mop and bucket from the forecastle and remove the dark red stains
+from the chair and deck. This he actually forced me to do, gloating over
+my horror as I removed for him the traces of his cowardly crime. Then,
+with his hand upon my shoulder, he said, 'Girl! Recollect that you keep
+to-night's work secret. If not, you shall die a death more painful than
+that dog has died--one in which you shall experience all the tortures of
+the damned. Recollect, not a single word--or death! Now, go to your
+cabin, and never pry into my affairs again.'
+
+"I went back to my cabin as I was bid, and sat speechless in abject
+horror. The fiendish actions of the man who was my guardian frightened
+me. And yet I was utterly helpless. What could I do? Who in holy Russia
+would hear me? Oberg was a power in the Empire; the Czar himself trusted
+him. If I spoke, who would believe me; who would heed the words of a
+defenseless girl whom he would at once declare to be hysterical? Thus I
+waited alone in the darkness, watching the lights of the port gleaming
+across the placid waters until nearly one o'clock, when the gay party
+returned, and the Baron greeted them merrily as though nothing had
+happened. But my heart was frozen within me by the recollection of the
+awful crime that had been committed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why! Now I remember!" cried Muriel, amazed. "I remember that night
+quite well, how white you were when you came to my cabin and asked to be
+allowed to sleep in my spare berth. You would tell me nothing, and only
+said you were ill. None of us had any idea that such a terrible tragedy
+had been enacted. But of course the Baron had arranged it all, for it
+was at his instigation, I recollect, that the crew had been given
+shore-leave. Mackintosh suggested that only half the crew should go,
+but he declared that if Wilson alone were left it would be sufficient."
+
+"I, too, recollect the affair quite well," Jack declared, tugging at his
+mustache, utterly amazed at my love's strange story. It was a plain
+statement of hard, astounding facts, and she now stood clinging to me,
+looking eagerly into my eyes, reading every thought that passed through
+my mind. "A great sensation was caused when the body was discovered. The
+squadron was lying off Naples about a week after the _Iris_ had left,
+and while we were there the body was washed up near Sorrento. At first
+but little notice was taken of it, but by the marks on the dead man's
+linen it was discovered that he was Polovstoff, one of the highest
+Russian officials who had, it was said, been warned on several occasions
+by the Nihilists. It was, therefore, concluded that his death had been
+due to Nihilist vengeance."
+
+Elma pointed to the paper, and made a sign that I was to read on. This I
+did, and the statement ran as follows:
+
+"The real reason why the Baron spared my life was because, if I died, my
+fortune would pass to a distant cousin living at Durham. Yet his manner
+towards me was now most polite and pleasant--a change that I felt boded
+no good. He intended to obtain my money by marrying me to his son
+Michael, whose evil reputation as a gambler was well known in
+Petersburg. We traveled back to Finland in the autumn, and in the winter
+he took me to stay with his sister in Nice. Yet almost daily he referred
+to that tragedy at Naples, and threatened me with death if ever I
+uttered a single word, or even admitted that I had ever seen the man who
+was his rival and his victim."
+
+"Last June," commenced another paragraph, "we were in Helsingfors, when
+one day the Baron called me suddenly and told me to prepare for a
+journey. We were to cross to Stockholm and thence to Hull, where the
+_Iris_ was awaiting us, for Mr. Leithcourt and Muriel had invited us for
+a summer cruise to the Greek Islands. We boarded the yacht much against
+my will, yet I was powerless, and dare not allege the facts that I had
+already established concerning our fellow-guests. Muriel and I, it
+seems, were taken merely in order to blind the shore-guards and Customs
+officials as to the real nature of the vessel, which when safely out of
+the Channel, was repainted and renamed the _Lola_, until her exterior
+presented quite a different appearance from the _Iris_.
+
+"The port of Leghorn was our first place of call, and for some reason we
+ran purposely upon a sandbank and were towed off by Italian
+torpedo-boats. Next evening you came on board and dined, Muriel and
+myself having strict orders not to show ourselves. We, however, watched
+you, and I saw you pick up my photograph which I had that day torn up.
+Then immediately after you had left, Woodroffe, Chater and Mackintosh
+went ashore and were away a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
+Just before they returned the Baron rapped at the door of my cabin
+saying that he must go ashore, and telling me to dress and accompany
+him. He would never allow me the luxury of a maid, fearing, I suppose,
+that she might learn too much. In obedience I rose and dressed, and when
+I went forth he told me to get my traveling-cloak and dressing-bag,
+adding that he was compelled to go north, as to continue the cruise
+would occupy too much time. He was due back at his official duties, he
+said. As soon as I had finished packing, the three men returned to the
+vessel, all of them looking dark-faced and disappointed. Woodroffe
+whispered some words to the Baron, after which I went to Muriel's cabin
+and wished her good-bye, and we went ashore, taking the train first to
+Colle Salvetti, thence to Pisa, and afterwards to the beautiful old city
+of Siena, which I had so longed to see. One of my teeth gave me pain,
+and the Baron, after a couple of days at the Hotel de Sienne, took me to
+a queer-looking little old Italian--a dentist who, he said, enjoyed an
+excellent reputation. I was quick to notice that the two men had met
+before, and as I sat in the chair and gas was given to me I saw them
+exchange meaning glances. In a few moments I became insensible, but when
+I awoke an hour later I was astounded to feel a curious soreness in my
+ears. My tongue, too, seemed paralyzed, and in a few moments the awful
+truth dawned upon me. I had been rendered deaf and dumb!
+
+"The Baron pretended to be greatly concerned about me," it went on, "but
+I quickly realized that I had been the victim of a foul and dastardly
+plot, and that he had conceived it, fearing lest I might speak the truth
+concerning the Privy-Councillor Polovstoff, for of exposure he lived in
+constant fear. To encompass my end would be against his own interests,
+as he would lose my fortune, so he had silenced me lest I should reveal
+the terrible truth concerning both him and his associates. He was not
+rich, and I have reason to believe that from time to time he gave
+information as to persons who possessed valuable jewels, and thus shared
+in the plunder obtained by those on the yacht.
+
+"From Italy we traveled on to Berlin, thence to Petersburg, and back to
+dreary Helsingfors, journeying as quickly as we could, yet never
+allowing me opportunity of being with strangers. Both my ears and tongue
+were very painful, but I said nothing. He was surely a fiend in a black
+coat, and my only thought now was how to escape him. From the moment
+when that so-called dentist had ruined my hearing and deprived me of
+power of speech, he kept me aloof from everyone. The fear that I should
+reveal everything had apparently grown to haunt him, and he had
+conceived that terrible mode of silencing my lips. But the true depth of
+his villainy was not yet apparent until I was back in Finland.
+
+"On the night of our arrival he called in his son, who had traveled with
+us from Petersburg, and in writing again demanded that I should marry
+him. I wrote my reply--a firm refusal. He struck the table angrily with
+his fist and wrote saying that I should either marry his son or die.
+Then next day, while walking alone out beyond the town of Helsingfors,
+as I often used to do, I was arrested upon the false charge of an
+attempt upon the life of Madame Vakuroff and transported, without trial,
+to the terrible fortress of Kajana, some of the horrors of which you
+have yourself experienced. The charge against me was necessary before I
+could be incarcerated there, but once within, it was the scheme of the
+Governor-General to obtain my consent to the marriage by threats and by
+the constant terrors of the place. He even went so far as to obtain a
+ministerial order for my banishment to Saghalien and brought it to me to
+Kajana, declaring that if in one month I did not consent he should allow
+me to be sent to exile. While I was in Kajana he knew that his secret
+was safe, therefore by every means in his power he urged me to consent
+to the odious union.
+
+"All the rest is known to you--how Providence directed you to me as my
+deliverer, and how Woodroffe followed you in secret, and pretending to
+be my friend took me with him to Petersburg. He had learnt of my fortune
+from the Baron, and intended to marry me himself. But now that all is
+over it appears to me like some terrible dream. I never believed that so
+much iniquity existed in the world, or that men could fight a
+defenseless woman with such double-dealing and cruel ingenuity. Ah! the
+tortures I endured in Kajana are beyond human conception. Yet surely
+Oberg and Woodroffe will obtain their well-merited deserts--if not in
+this world, then in the world to come. Are we not taught by Holy Writ to
+forgive our enemies? Therefore, let us forgive."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There my silent love's strange story ended. A bald, straightforward
+narrative that held us all for some moments absolutely speechless--one
+of the strangest and most startling stories ever revealed.
+
+She watched every expression of my countenance, and then, when I had
+finished reading and placed my arm tenderly about her slim waist, she
+raised her beautiful face to mine to receive the passionate kiss I
+imprinted upon those soft, full lips.
+
+"This, of course, makes everything plain," exclaimed Jack. "Polovstoff
+was a very liberal-minded and upright official who was greatly in the
+favor of the Czar, and a serious rival to Oberg, whose drastic and
+merciless methods in Finland were not exactly approved by the Emperor.
+The Baron was well aware of this, and by ingeniously enticing him on
+board the _Iris_ he succeeded by handing that small bomb concealed in a
+cigar--a Nihilist contrivance that had probably been seized by his
+police in Finland--in freeing himself from the rival who was destined to
+occupy his post."
+
+"Yes," I said with a sigh. "The mystery is cleared up, it is true, yet
+my poor Elma is still the victim." And I kissed my love passionately
+again and again upon the lips.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Nearly two years have now gone by.
+
+There have been changes in holy Russia--many great and amazing changes
+consequent upon war and its disasters. Russia is no longer the great
+power that she once was supposed to be. Many events that have startled
+the world have occurred since that day when I first enfolded my silent
+love within my arms. One of them is known to you all.
+
+You read in the newspapers, without a doubt, how the Baron Xavier Oberg,
+the persecutor of Finland, the enemy of education, the relentless foe of
+the defenseless, the man who ordered women to be knouted to death in
+Kajana, the heartless official whom the Finns called "The Strangler,"
+was blown to pieces by a bomb thrown beneath his carriage as he drove to
+the railway station at Helsingfors on his way to have audience with the
+Emperor.
+
+The secret truth was that the "Red Priest" decreed that Oberg should
+die, and the plot was swiftly put into execution, and although five
+hundred arrests were made the police are unaware to this day of the
+identity of the person who directed it, or of who threw the fatal
+missile. From pillar to post the revolutionists have been hunted by the
+bloodhounds of police, yet the "Red Priest" still lives on quietly in
+Petersburg, and the Princess Zurloff, still unsuspected, devotes the
+greater part of her enormous income to the cause of freedom.
+
+Of Jack and Muriel I need only say they were married about three months
+after Elma's return from Russia, and at the present time they are
+living on the outskirts of Glasgow, where Jack has secured the shore
+appointment which he so long coveted.
+
+By some means--exactly how is not quite certain--the police discovered
+that Dick Archer, alias Woodroffe, alias Hornby, was concerned in the
+clever robbery of a dressing-bag, containing the Dowager Lady
+Lancashire's jewels, from her footman on Euston platform, and after a
+long search they found him hiding at an hotel in Liverpool. When,
+however, they went to arrest him, he laughed in the faces of the
+detectives, placed something swiftly in his mouth and swallowed it
+before they could prevent him--then ten minutes later he fell dead. He
+knew what terrible revelations must be made if we gave evidence against
+him, and he therefore preferred death by his own hand to that following
+a judicial sentence.
+
+Chater, although one of the most expert jewel thieves in Europe, had
+never been actually guilty of any graver offense, and when we heard that
+he was in San Francisco, where he had opened a small bar and was trying
+to live honestly, we resolved to allow him to remain there. Indeed, Jack
+wrote to him about nine months ago warning him never to set foot on
+English soil again on pain of arrest.
+
+Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road,
+Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well.
+
+And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell
+you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic--that is all I
+can say.
+
+My proposal of marriage was made to Elma a very few days after she wrote
+down her startling and romantic story, and a year ago at a little
+village church in Hertfordshire we became man and wife, there being
+present at our wedding Madame Heath, my bride's mother, to whom, by my
+exertions in official quarters in Petersburg, the Czar's clemency was
+extended, and she was released from that far-off Arctic prison to which
+she had been sent with such cruel injustice.
+
+Two of the greatest London specialists have continually treated my dear
+wife, and under them she has already recovered her speech--so far,
+indeed, that she can now whisper in a low, soft voice. But they tell me
+they are hopeful that ere long her voice will become stronger, and
+speech practically restored. Already, too, she can begin to hear.
+
+After all the storms and perils of the past, our lives are now indeed
+full of a calm, sweet peace. In our own comfortable little house, with
+its trellised porch covered with roses and honeysuckle, that faces the
+blue Channel at St. Margaret's Bay, beyond Dover, we lead a life of
+mutual trust and boundless love. We are supremely content--the happiest
+pair in all the world, we think.
+
+Often as we sit together at evening, gazing out upon the great ships
+passing darkly away into the mysterious afterglow, our hands clasp
+mutually in a silence more eloquent than words, and as we gaze into each
+other's eyes there occurs to us the Divine injunction: "WHOM GOD HATH
+JOINED, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Czar's Spy, by William Le Queux
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10102 ***
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of THE CZAR'S SPY, by WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10102 ***</div>
+
+<table border="2" cellpadding="15" cellspacing="5" align="center" width="380">
+<tr>
+
+	<td>
+	<h3 class="tbl">THE</h3>
+	<h1>CZAR'S SPY</h1>
+	<h2 class="tbl"><i>The Mystery of a Silent Love</i></h2>
+	</td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>
+	<center><i>By</i></center>
+	<h5 class="tbl">CHEVALIER</h5>
+	<h2 class="tbl">WILLIAM LE QUEUX</h2>
+	<center><i>Author of &quot;The Closed Book,&quot; Etc.</i></center>
+	</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">I.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">II.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">III.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">THE HOUSE &quot;OVER THE WATER&quot;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">IV.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">V.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">VI.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">VII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CONTAINS A SURPRISE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">VIII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">IX.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">X.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">I SHOW MY HAND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XI.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">&quot;THE STRANGLER&quot;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XIII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XIV.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XV.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">JUST OFF THE STRAND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XVI.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">MARKED MEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XVII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">THE TRUTH ABOUT THE &quot;LOLA&quot;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XVIII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td><a href="#CONCLUSION">CONCLUSION</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE</h3><br>
+
+
+<p>&quot;There was a mysterious affair last night, signore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;Anything that interests us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, signore,&quot; replied the tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking
+with a strong accent. &quot;An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria
+about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought
+the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which
+managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the
+Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make
+away with the vessel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To lose her, you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The faithful Francesco, whose English had mostly been acquired from
+sea-faring men, and was not the choicest vocabulary, nodded, and, true
+Tuscan that he was, placed his finger upon his closed lips, indicative
+of silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sounds curious,&quot; I remarked. &quot;Since the Consul went away on leave
+things seem to have been humming&mdash;two stabbing affrays, eight drunken
+seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being
+cast away&mdash;a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people
+complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They
+should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and they'd soon alter their
+opinion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they would, signore,&quot; responded the thin-faced old fellow with a
+grin, as he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Francesco Carducci was a
+well-known character in Leghorn; interpreter to the Consulate, and
+keeper of a sailor's home, an honest, good-hearted, easy-going fellow,
+who for twenty years had occupied the same position under half a dozen
+different Consuls. At that moment, however, there came from the outer
+office a long-drawn moan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa, what's that?&quot; I enquired, startled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only a mad stoker off the <i>Oleander</i>, signore. The captain has brought
+him for you to see. They want to send him back to his friends at
+Newcastle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! a case of madness!&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;Better get Doctor Ridolfi to see
+him. I'm not an expert on mental diseases.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My old friend Frank Hutcheson, His Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at
+the port of Leghorn, was away on leave in England, his duties being
+relegated to young Bertram Cavendish, the pro-Consul. The latter,
+however, had gone down with a bad touch of malaria which he had picked
+up in the deadly Maremma, and I, as the only other Englishman in
+Leghorn, had been asked by the Consul-General in Florence to act as
+pro-Consul until Hutcheson's return.</p>
+
+<p>It was in mid-July, and the weather was blazing in the glaring
+sun-blanched Mediterranean town. If you know Leghorn, you probably know
+the Consulate with its black and yellow escutcheon outside, a large,
+handsome suite of huge, airy offices facing the cathedral, and
+overlooking the principal piazza, which is as big as Trafalgar Square,
+and much more picturesque. The legend painted upon the door, &quot;Office
+hours, 10 to 3,&quot; and the green persiennes closed against the scorching
+sun give one the idea of an easy appointment, but such is certainly not
+the case, for a Consul's life at a port of discharge must necessarily
+be a very active one, and his duties never-ending.</p>
+
+<p>Carducci had left me to the correspondence for half an hour or so, and I
+confess I was in no mood to write replies in that stifling heat,
+therefore I sat at the Consul's big table, smoking a cigarette and
+stretched lazily in my friend's chair, resolving to escape to the cool
+of England as soon as he returned in the following week. Italy is all
+very well for nine months in the year, but Leghorn is no place for the
+Englishman in mid-July. My thoughts were wandering toward the English
+lakes, and a bit of grouse-shooting with my uncle up in Scotland, when
+the faithful Francesco re-entered, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've sent the captain and his madman away till this afternoon, signore.
+But there is an English signore waiting to see you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know him. He will give no name, but wants to see the Signor
+Console.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, show him in,&quot; I said lazily, and a few moments later a tall,
+smartly-dressed, middle-aged Englishman, in a navy serge yachting suit,
+entered, and bowing, enquired whether I was the British Consul.</p>
+
+<p>When he had seated himself I explained my position, whereupon he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I couldn't make much out of your clerk. He speaks so brokenly, and I
+don't know a word of Italian. But perhaps I ought to first introduce
+myself. My name is Philip Hornby,&quot; and he handed me a card bearing the
+name with the addresses &quot;Woodcroft Park, Somerset ------ Brook's.&quot; Then he
+added: &quot;I am cruising on board my yacht, the <i>Lola</i>, and last night we
+unfortunately went aground on the Meloria. I have a new captain whom I
+engaged a few months ago, and he seems an arrant fool. Very fortunately
+for us a fishing-boat saw our plight and gave the alarm at port. The
+Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats and a tug, and after about three
+hours they managed to get us off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are now in harbor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. But the reason I've called is to ask you to do me a favor and
+write me a letter of thanks in Italian to the Admiral, and one to the
+Captain of the Port&mdash;polite letters that I can copy and send to them.
+You know the kind of thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; I replied, the more interested in him on account of the
+curious suspicion that the port authorities seemed to entertain. He was
+evidently a gentleman, and after I had been with him ten minutes I
+scouted the idea that he had endeavored to cast away the <i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I took down a couple of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two
+letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when
+addressing Italian officialdom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fortunately, I left my wife in England, or she would have been terribly
+frightened,&quot; he remarked presently. &quot;There was a nasty wind blowing all
+night, and the fool of a captain seemed to add to our peril by every
+order he gave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are alone, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a friend with me,&quot; was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how many of the crew are there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sixteen, all told.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;English, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not all. I find French and Italians are more sober than English, and
+better behaved in port.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I examined him critically as he sat facing me, and the mere fact of his
+desire to send thanks to the authorities convinced me that he was a
+well-bred gentleman. He was about forty-five, with a merry round,
+good-natured face, red with the southern sun, blue eyes, and a short
+fair beard. His countenance was essentially that of a man devoted to
+open-air sport, for it was slightly furrowed and weather-beaten as a
+true yachtsman's should be. His speech was refined and cultivated, and
+as we chatted he gave me the impression that as an enthusiastic lover of
+the sea, he had cruised the Mediterranean many times from Gibraltar up
+to Smyrna. He had, however, never before put into Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>After we had arranged that his captain should come to me in the
+afternoon and make a formal report of the accident, we went out together
+across the white sunny piazza to Nasi's, the well-known pastry-cook's,
+where it is the habit of the Livornese to take their ante-luncheon
+vermouth.</p>
+
+<p>The more I saw of Hornby, the more I liked him. He was chatty and witty,
+and treated his accident as a huge joke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall be here quite a week, I suppose,&quot; he said as we were taking
+our vermouth. &quot;We're on our way down to the Greek Islands, as my friend
+Chater wants to see them. The engineer says there's something strained
+that we must get mended. But, by the way,&quot; he added, &quot;why don't you dine
+with us on board to-night? Do. We can give you a few English things that
+may be a change to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This invitation I gladly accepted for two reasons. One was because the
+suspicions of the Captain of the Port had aroused my curiosity, and the
+other was because I had, honestly speaking, taken a great fancy to
+Hornby.</p>
+
+<p>The captain of the <i>Lola</i>, a short, thickset Scotsman from Dundee, with
+a barely healed cicatrice across his left cheek, called at the Consulate
+at two o'clock and made his report, which appeared to me to be a very
+lame one. He struck me as being unworthy his certificate, for he was
+evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The
+owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly
+he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact,
+run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was
+running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he
+was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a very
+perilous position.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very fortunate it wasn't more serious, sir,&quot; he added, after telling me
+his story, which I wrote at his dictation for the ultimate benefit of
+the Board of Trade.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't you send up signals of distress?&quot; I Inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir&mdash;never thought of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you knew that you might be lost?&quot; I remarked with recurring
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>The canny Scot, whose name was Mackintosh, hesitated a few moments, then
+answered&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, you see the fishing-boat had sighted us, and we saw her
+turning back to port to fetch help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His excuse was a neat one. Probably it was his neglect to make signals
+of distress that had aroused the suspicions of the Captain of the Port.
+From first to last the story of the master of the <i>Lola</i> was, I
+considered, a very unsatisfactory one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been in Mr. Hornby's service?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Six months, sir,&quot; was the man's reply. &quot;Before he engaged me, I was
+with the Wilsons, of Hull, running up the Baltic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As master?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've held my master's certificate these fifteen years, sir. I was with
+the Bibbys before the Wilsons, and before that with the General Steam.
+I did eight years in the Mediterranean with them, when I was chief
+mate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you've never been into Leghorn before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dismissed the captain with a distinct impression that he had not told
+me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal
+appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I
+wished he would bring them to me on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible that an attempt had actually been made to cast away the
+yacht, and that it had been frustrated by the master of the felucca, who
+had sighted the vessel aground? There certainly seemed some mystery
+surrounding the circumstances, and my interest in the yacht and its
+owner deepened each hour. How, I wondered, had the captain received that
+very ugly wound across the cheek? I was half-inclined to inquire of him,
+but on reflection decided that it was best to betray no undue curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory,
+bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands
+of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant
+horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within
+the inner harbor, I found the <i>Lola</i>, one of the most magnificent
+private vessels I had ever seen. Her dimensions surprised me. She was
+painted dead white, with shining brass everywhere. At the stern hung
+limply the British flag, while at the masthead the ensign of the Royal
+Yacht Squadron. The yellow funnel emitted no smoke, and as she lay
+calmly in the sunset a crowd of dock-loungers and crimps leaned upon the
+parapet discussing her merits and wondering who could be the rich
+Englishman who could afford to travel in a small liner of his own&mdash;for
+her size surprised even those Italian dock-hands, used as they were to
+seeing every kind of craft enter the busy port.</p>
+
+<p>On stepping on deck Hornby, who like myself wore a clean suit of white
+linen as the most sensible dinner-garb in a hot climate, came forward to
+greet me, and took me along to the stern where, lying in a long wicker
+deck-chair beneath the awning, was a tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven man
+of about forty, also dressed in cool white linen. His keen face gave one
+the impression that he was a barrister.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My friend, Hylton Chater&mdash;Mr. Gordon Gregg,&quot; he said, introducing us,
+and then when, as we shook hands, the clean-shaven man exclaimed,
+smiling pleasantly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gregg. You are not a stranger by
+any means to Hornby or myself. Indeed, we've got a couple of your books
+on board. But I had no idea you lived out here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Ardenza,&quot; I said. &quot;Three miles along the sea-shore. To-morrow I hope
+you'll both come and dine with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Delighted, I'm sure,&quot; declared Hornby. &quot;To eat ashore is quite a treat
+when one has been boxed up on board for some time. So we'll accept,
+won't we, Hylton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; replied the other; and then we began chatting about the
+peril of the previous night, Hornby telling me how he had copied the two
+letters of thanks in Italian and sent them to their respective
+addresses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Phil blasphemed like a Levant skipper when he copied those Italian
+words!&quot; laughed Chater. &quot;He had made three copies of each letter before
+he could get all the lingo in accordance with your copy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been the whole afternoon at them&mdash;confound them!&quot; declared the
+owner of the <i>Lola</i> with a laugh. &quot;But, of course, I didn't want to make
+a lot of errors in spelling. These Italians are so very punctilious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you certainly did the right thing to thank the Admiral,&quot; I said.
+&quot;It's very unusual for him to send out torpedo-boats to help a vessel in
+distress. That is generally left to the harbor tug.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I feel that it was most kind of him. That's why I took all the
+trouble to write. I don't understand a word of Italian, neither does
+Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have Italians on board?&quot; I remarked. &quot;The two sailors who rowed
+me out are Genoese, from their accent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hornby and Chater exchanged glances&mdash;glances of distinct uneasiness, I
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then the owner of the <i>Lola</i> said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they are useful for making arrangements and buying things in
+Italian ports. We have a Spaniard, a Greek, and a Syrian, all of whom
+act as interpreters in different places.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And make a handsome thing in the way of secret commissions, I suppose?&quot;
+I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. But to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant,&quot;
+declared the man with the fair beard. &quot;In Greece and the Levant they are
+more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want
+squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and discovering mares'
+nests.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you have any trouble here?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They didn't visit us,&quot; he said with a smile, and at the same time he
+rubbed his thumb and finger together, the action of feeling paper money.</p>
+
+<p>This increased my surprise, for I happened to know that the Leghorn
+Customs officers were not at all given to the acceptance of bribes. They
+were too well watched by their superiors. If the yacht had really
+escaped a search, then it was a most unusual thing. Besides, what motive
+could Hornby have in eluding the Customs visit? They would, of course,
+seal up his wines and liquors, but even if they did, they would leave
+him out sufficient for the consumption of himself and his friends.</p>
+
+<p>No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to
+avoid the visit of the <i>dogana</i>. If he really had paid, he must have
+paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly
+appointed craft?</p>
+
+<p>Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted
+saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone
+with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some
+artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles
+peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale
+blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely
+wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.</p>
+
+<p>Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him,
+chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked
+dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine of a
+brand which only a millionaire could keep in his cellar, while our host,
+apparently a most abstemious man, took only a glass of iced Cinciano
+water.</p>
+
+<p>The two smart stewards served in a manner which showed them to be well
+trained to their duties, and as the evening light filtering through the
+pale blue silk curtains over the open port-holes slowly faded, we
+gossiped on as men will gossip over an unusually good dinner.</p>
+
+<p>From his remarks I discerned that, contrary to my first impression,
+Hylton Chater was an experienced yachtsman. He owned a craft called the
+<i>Alicia</i>, and was a member of the Cork Yacht Club. He lived in London,
+he told me, but gave me no information as to his profession. It might be
+the law, as I had surmised.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've seen our ass of a captain, Mr. Gregg?&quot; he remarked presently.
+&quot;What do you think of him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said rather hesitatingly, &quot;to tell the truth, I don't think
+very much of his seamanship&mdash;nor will the Board of Trade when his report
+reaches them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed Hornby, &quot;I was a fool to engage him. From the very first
+I mistrusted him, only my wife somehow took a fancy to the fellow, and,
+as you know, if you want peace you must always please the women. In this
+case, however, her choice almost cost me the vessel, and perhaps our
+lives into the bargain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You knew nothing of him previously?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he engaged the crew?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are they all fresh hands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All except the cook and the two stewards.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. I did not like Mackintosh. Indeed, I entertained a
+distinct suspicion of both master and crew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The captain seems to have had a nasty cut across the cheek,&quot; I
+remarked, whereupon my two companions again exchanged quick,
+apprehensive glances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He fell down the other day,&quot; explained Chater, with a rather sickly
+smile, I thought. &quot;His face caught the edge of an iron stair in the
+engine-room, and caused a nasty gash.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled within myself, for I knew too well that the ugly wound in the
+captain's face had never been inflicted by falling on the edge of a
+stair. But I remained silent, being content that they should endeavor
+to mislead me.</p>
+
+<p>After dessert had been served we rose, and in the summer twilight, when
+all the ports were opened, Hornby took me over the vessel. Everywhere
+was abundant luxury&mdash;a veritable floating palace. To each of the cabins
+of the owner and his guests a bathroom was attached with sea-water or
+fresh water as desired, while the ladies' saloon, the boudoir, the
+library, and the smoking-room were furnished richly with exquisite
+taste. As he was conducting me from his own cabin to the boudoir we
+passed a door that had been blown open by the wind, and which he
+hastened to close, not, however, before I had time to glance within. To
+my surprise I discovered that it was an armory crammed with rifles,
+revolvers and ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>It had not been intended that I should see that interior, and the reason
+why the Customs officers had been bribed was now apparent.</p>
+
+<p>I passed on without remark, making believe that I had not discerned
+anything unusual, and we entered the boudoir, Chater having gone back to
+the saloon to obtain cigars.</p>
+
+<p>The dainty little chamber was upholstered in carnation-pink silk with
+furniture of inlaid rosewood, and bore everywhere the trace of having
+been arranged by a woman's hand, although no lady passenger was on
+board.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we had entered, and I was admiring the dainty nest of luxury,
+Chater shouted to his host asking for the keys of the cigar cupboard,
+and Hornby, excusing himself, turned back along the gangway to hand them
+to his friend, thus leaving me alone for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>I stood glancing around, and as I did so my eyes fell upon a quantity of
+photographs, framed and unframed, that were scattered about&mdash;evidently
+portraits of Hornby's friends. Upon a small side table, however, stood a
+heavy oxidized silver frame, but empty, while lying on the floor beneath
+a couch was the photograph it had contained, which had apparently been
+taken hastily out, torn first in half and then in half again, and cast
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity prompted me to stoop, pick up the four pieces and place them
+together, when I found them to form the cabinet portrait of a
+sweet-looking and extremely pretty English girl of eighteen or nineteen,
+with a bright, smiling expression, and wearing a fresh morning blouse of
+white piqu&eacute;. Her hair was dressed low and fastened with a bow of black
+ribbon, while the brooch at her throat was in the form of a heart edged
+with pearls. Whether it was her sweet expression, or whether the curious
+look in her eyes had attracted my attention and riveted the face upon my
+memory, I know not. Perhaps it was the mystery of why it should have
+been so hastily torn from its frame and destroyed that held my
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though it had been torn up surreptitiously by someone who
+had been sitting on that couch, and who had had no opportunity of
+casting the fragments away through the port-hole into the water.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the back of the torn photograph, and saw that it had been
+taken by a well-known and fashionable firm in New Bond Street.</p>
+
+<p>About the expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot
+describe&mdash;a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both
+attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were
+indelibly impressed upon my memory.</p>
+
+<p>Next second, however, hearing Hornby's returning footsteps, I flung the
+fragments hastily beneath the couch where I had discovered them.</p>
+
+<p>Why, I wondered, had the picture been destroyed&mdash;and by whom?</p>
+
+<p>The face of the empty frame had been purposely turned towards the
+panelling, therefore when he entered he did not notice that the picture
+had been destroyed; but after a brief pause, explaining that that cosy
+little place was his wife's particular nook, he conducted me on through
+the ladies' saloon and afterwards on deck, where we flung ourselves into
+the long chairs, took our coffee and certosina, that liqueur essentially
+Tuscan, and smoked on as the moon rose and the lights of the harbor
+began to twinkle in the steely night.</p>
+
+<p>As I sat talking, my thoughts ran back to that torn photograph. To me it
+seemed as though some previous visitor that day had sat upon the couch,
+destroyed the picture, and cast it where I had found it. But for what
+reason? Who was the merry-faced girl whose picture had aroused such
+jealousy or revenge?</p>
+
+<p>I purposely led the conversation to Hornby's family, and learned from
+him that he had no children.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll get the repairs to your engines done at Orlando's, I suppose?&quot; I
+remarked, naming the great shipbuilding firm of Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I've already given the order. They are contracted to be finished
+by next Thursday, and then we shall be off to Zante and Chio.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For what reason, I wondered, recollecting that formidable armory on
+board. Already I had seen quite sufficient to convince me that the
+<i>Lola</i>, although outwardly a pleasure yacht, was built of steel, armored
+in its most vulnerable parts, and capable of resisting a very sharp
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>The hours passed, and beneath the brilliant moon we smoked long into the
+night, for after the blazing sunshine of that Tuscan town the cool
+sea-wind at night is very refreshing. From where we sat we commanded a
+view of the whole of the sea-front of Leghorn and Ardenza, with its
+bright open-air caf&eacute;-concerts and restaurants in full swing&mdash;all the
+life and gayety of that popular watering-place.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, when Hornby had risen to call a steward and left me alone
+with Hylton Chater, the latter whispered to me in confidence&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you find my friend Hornby a little bit strange in his manner, Mr.
+Gregg, you must take no notice. To tell the truth, he is a man who has
+become suddenly wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and I fear
+it has had an effect upon his brain. He does very queer things at
+times.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at my companion in surprise. He was either telling the truth,
+or else he was endeavoring to allay my suspicions by an extremely clever
+ruse. Now I had already decided that Philip Hornby was no eccentric, but
+a particularly level-headed and practical man. Therefore I instantly
+arrived at the conclusion that the clean-shaven fellow who looked so
+much like a London barrister had some distinct and ulterior purpose in
+arousing within my mind suspicion of his host's sanity.</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight when, having bade the strange pair adieu, I was put
+ashore by the two sailors who had rowed me out and drove home along the
+sea-front, puzzled and perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, on my arrival at the Consulate, old Francesco, who had
+entered only a moment before, met me with blanched face, gasping&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There have been thieves here in the night, signore! The Signor
+Console's safe has been opened!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The safe!&quot; I cried, dashing into Hutcheson's private room, and finding
+to my dismay the big safe, wherein the seals, ciphers and other
+confidential documents were kept, standing open, and the contents in
+disorder, as though a hasty search had been made among them.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible that the thieves had been after the Admiralty and
+Foreign Office ciphers, copies of which the Chancelleries of certain
+European Powers were ever endeavoring to obtain? I smiled within myself
+when I realized how bitterly disappointed the burglars must have been,
+for a British Consul when he goes on leave to England always takes his
+ciphers with him, and deposits them at the Foreign Office for
+safekeeping. Hutcheson had, of course, taken his, according to the
+regulations.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough, however, the door of the Consulate and the safe had
+been opened with the keys which my friend had left in my charge. Indeed,
+the small bunch still remained in the safe door.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant the recollection flashed across my mind that I had felt
+the keys in my pocket while at dinner on board the <i>Lola</i>. Had I lost
+them on my homeward drive, or had my pocket been picked?</p>
+
+<p>Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations
+upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his
+master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers
+in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend to the caller.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments he returned, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The English yacht left suddenly last night, signore, and the Captain of
+the Port has sent to inquire whether you know to what port she is
+bound.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Left!&quot; I gasped in amazement &quot;Why, I thought her engines were
+disabled!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later I was sitting in the private office of the
+shrewd, gray-haired functionary who had sent this messenger to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know, Signor Commendatore,&quot; he said, &quot;some mystery surrounds
+that vessel. She is not the <i>Lola</i>, for yesterday we telegraphed to
+Lloyd's, in London, and this morning I received a reply that no such
+yacht appears on their register, and that the name is unknown. The
+police have also telegraphed to your English police inquiring about the
+owner, Signor Hornby, with a like result. There is no such place as
+Woodcroft Park, in Somerset, and no member of Brook's Club of the name
+of Hornby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat staring at the official, too amazed to utter a word. Certainly
+they had not allowed the grass to grow beneath their feet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unfortunately the telegraphic replies from England are only to hand
+this morning,&quot; he went on, &quot;because just before two o'clock this morning
+the harbor police, whom I specially ordered to watch the vessel, saw a
+boat come to the wharf containing a man and woman. The pair were put
+ashore, and walked away into the town, the woman seeming to walk with
+considerable difficulty. The boat returned, and an hour after, to the
+complete surprise of the two detectives, steam was suddenly got up and
+the yacht turned and went straight out to sea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leaving the man and the woman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leaving them, of course. They are probably still in the town. The
+police are now searching for traces of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But could not you have detained the vessel?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, had I but known I could have forbidden her departure. But as
+her owner had presented himself at the Consulate, and was recognized as
+a respectable person, I felt that I could not interfere without some
+tangible information&mdash;and that, alas! has come too late. The vessel is
+a swift one, and has already seven hours start of us. I've asked the
+Admiral to send out a couple of torpedo-boats after her, but,
+unfortunately, this is impossible, as the flotilla is sailing in an hour
+to attend the naval review at Spezia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him how the Consul's safe had been opened during the night, and
+he sat listening with wide-open eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You dined with them last night,&quot; he said at last. &quot;They may have
+surreptitiously stolen your keys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They may,&quot; was my answer. &quot;Probably they did. But with what motive?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Captain of the Port elevated his shoulders, exhibited his palms, and
+declared&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The whole affair from beginning to end is a complete and profound
+mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>That day was an active one in Questura, or police office, of Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>Detectives called, examined the safe, and sagely declared it to be
+burglar-proof, had not the thieves possessed the key. The Foreign Office
+knew that, for they supply all the safes to the Consulates abroad, in
+order that the precious ciphers shall be kept from the prying eyes of
+foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it
+was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much
+relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing
+Street.</p>
+
+<p>His conjecture was the same as my own, namely, that the reason of
+Hornby's call upon me was to ascertain the situation of the Consulate
+and the whereabouts of the safe, which, by the way, stood in a corner of
+the Consul's private room. Captain Mackintosh, too, had taken his
+bearings, and probably while I sat at dinner on board the <i>Lola</i> my keys
+had been stolen and passed on to the scarred Scotsman, who had promptly
+gone ashore and ransacked the place while I had remained with his master
+smoking and unsuspicious.</p>
+
+<p>But what was the motive? Why had they ransacked all those confidential
+papers?</p>
+
+<p>My own idea was that they were not in search of the ciphers at all, but
+either wanted some blank form or other, or else they desired to make use
+of the Consular seal. The latter, however, still remained on the floor
+near the safe, as though it had rolled out and been left unheeded. As
+far as Francesco and I could ascertain, nothing whatever had been taken.
+Therefore, we re-arranged the papers, re-locked the safe and resolved
+not to telegraph to Hutcheson and unduly disturb him, as in a few days
+he would return from England, and there would be time enough then to
+explain the remarkable story.</p>
+
+<p>One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
+station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
+lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which
+left at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They
+were foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as
+though they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed,
+however, that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in
+question. To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the
+Maremma, passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to
+any of the great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious
+pair who had come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had
+merely taken tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle
+Salvetti, the junction with that long main line which connects Genoa
+with Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the <i>Lola</i> and
+first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
+alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
+first man who came aboard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were English!&quot; remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
+sea, grinning knowingly. &quot;And the English, when they drink their cognac,
+know not what they do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?&quot; I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reward!&quot; echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. &quot;Not a soldo!
+The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed that
+they were trying to make away with the vessel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The description of the <i>Lola</i>, its owner, his guest, and the captain
+were circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a
+request that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really
+one of mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across
+to some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
+vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
+that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any of
+the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
+first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
+tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
+evaded their watchers and got clean away.</p>
+
+<p>Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
+the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
+circumstances had prevented this and the <i>Lola</i> had consequently
+escaped.</p>
+
+<p>For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
+and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris on
+to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
+extraordinary story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident,&quot; he responded, holding up
+the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which contained
+his jealously-guarded ciphers. &quot;By Jove!&quot; he laughed, &quot;how disappointed
+they must have been!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It may be so,&quot; I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
+&quot;But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
+that you possess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can my papers concern them?&quot; exclaimed the jovial, round-faced
+Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper trading up and
+down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the most cultured and
+popular men in the British Consular Service. &quot;I don't keep bank notes in
+that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't roll in gold as our
+public at home appears to think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
+them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
+Englishmen abroad, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
+registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
+papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon, depend
+upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it so as
+to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and sail
+merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave you a
+jolly good dinner and got nothing in return.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They might very easily have carried me off too,&quot; I declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had
+the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she sailed,
+and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder who they were?
+Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were alone, and yet there
+was evidently a lady and a gentleman on board. I guessed there was a
+woman there, from the way the boudoir and ladies' saloon were arranged,
+and certainly no man's hand decorated a dinner table as that was
+decorated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. That's decidedly funny,&quot; remarked the Consul thoughtfully. &quot;They
+went to Colle Salvetti, you say? They changed there, of course.
+Expresses call there, one going north and the other south, within a
+quarter of an hour after the train arrives from Leghorn. They showed a
+lot of ingenuity, otherwise they'd have gone direct to Pisa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ingenuity! I should think so! The whole affair was most cleverly
+planned. Hornby would have deceived even you, my dear old chap. He had
+the air of the perfect gentleman, and a glance over the yacht convinced
+me that he was a wealthy man traveling for pleasure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You said something about an armory.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, there were Maxims stowed away in one of the cabins. They aroused
+my suspicions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They would not have aroused mine,&quot; replied my friend. &quot;Yachts carry
+arms for protection in many cases, especially if they are going to
+cruise along uncivilized coasts where they must land for water or
+provisions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him of the torn photograph, which caused him some deep
+reflection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder why the picture had been torn up. Had there been a row on
+board&mdash;a quarrel or something?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It had been destroyed surreptitiously, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pity you didn't pocket the fragments. We could perhaps have discovered
+from the photographer the identity of the original.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I sighed regretfully. &quot;I never thought of that. I recollect the
+name of the firm, however.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall have to report to London the whole occurrence, as British
+subjects are under suspicion,&quot; Hutcheson said. &quot;We'll see whether
+Scotland Yard knows anything about Hornby or Chater. Most probably they
+do. Not long ago a description of men on board a yacht was circulated
+from London as being a pair of well-known burglars who were cruising
+about in a vessel crammed with booty which they dared not get rid of.
+They are, however, not the same as our friends on the <i>Lola</i>, for both
+men wanted were arrested in New Orleans about eight months ago, without
+their yacht, for they confessed that they had deliberately sunk it on
+one of the islands in the South Pacific.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then these fellows might be another pair of London burglars!&quot; I
+exclaimed eagerly, as the startling theory occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They might be. But, of course, we can't form any opinion until we hear
+what Scotland Yard has to say. I'll write a full report in the morning
+if you will give me minute descriptions of the men, as well as of the
+captain, Mackintosh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I handed over my charge of the Consulate to Frank, and then
+assisted him to go through the papers in the safe which had been
+examined by the thieves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The ruffians seem to have thoroughly overhauled everything,&quot; remarked
+the Consul in dismay when he saw the disordered state of his papers.
+&quot;They seem to have read every one deliberately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which shows that had they been in search for the cipher-books they
+would only have looked for them alone,&quot; I remarked decisively. &quot;What on
+earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports
+and things?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goodness only knows,&quot; replied my friend. Then, calling Cavendish, a
+tall, fair young man, who had now recovered from his touch of fever and
+had returned to the Consulate, he commenced to check the number of those
+adhesive stamps, rather larger than ordinary postage-stamps, used in
+the Consular service for the registration of fees received by the
+Foreign Office. The values were from sixpence to one pound, and they
+were kept in a portfolio.</p>
+
+<p>After a long calculation the Consul suddenly raised his face to me and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then six ten shilling ones have been taken!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why? There must be some motive!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are of no use to anyone except to Consuls,&quot; he explained. &quot;Perhaps
+they were wanted to affix to some false certificate. See,&quot; he added,
+opening the portfolio, &quot;there were six stamps here, and all are gone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they would have to be obliterated by the Consular stamp,&quot; remarked
+Cavendish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! of course,&quot; exclaimed Hutcheson, taking out the brass seal from the
+safe and examining it minutely. &quot;By Jove!&quot; he cried a second later,
+&quot;it's been used! They've stamped some document with it. Look! They've
+used the wrong ink-pad! Can't you see that there's violet upon it, while
+we always use the black pad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took it in my hand, and there, sure enough, I saw traces of violet ink
+upon it&mdash;the ink of the pad for the date-stamp upon the Consul's table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then some document has been stamped and sealed!&quot; I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. And my signature forged to it, no doubt. They've fabricated some
+certificate or other which, bearing the stamp, seal and signature of the
+Consulate, will be accepted as a legal document. I wonder what it is?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I said. &quot;I wonder!&quot; And the three of us looked at each other in
+sheer bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The reason the papers are all upset is because they were evidently in
+search of some blank form or other, which they hoped to find,&quot; remarked
+my friend. &quot;As you say, the whole affair was most carefully and
+ingeniously planned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the great sunlit piazza together and entered the Questura,
+that sun-blanched old palace with its long cool loggia where the sentry
+paces day and night. The Chief of Police, whom we saw, had no further
+information. The mysterious yacht had not put in at any Italian port.
+From him, however, we learned the name of the detective who had seen the
+two strangers leave Leghorn by the early morning train, and an hour
+afterwards the police-officer, a black-eyed man short of stature, but of
+an intelligent type, sat in the Consulate replying to our questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As far as I could make out, signore,&quot; he said, &quot;the man was an
+Englishman, wearing a soft black felt hat and a suit of dark blue serge.
+He had hair just turning gray, a small dark mustache and rather high
+cheek-bones. In his hand he carried a small bag of tan leather of that
+square English shape. He seemed in no hurry, for he was calmly smoking a
+cigarette as he went across to the ticket office.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And his companion?&quot; asked the Consul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She was in black. Rather tall and slim. Her hair was fair, I noticed,
+but she wore a black veil which concealed her features.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was she young or old?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young&mdash;from her figure,&quot; replied the police agent. &quot;As she passed me
+her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in
+them&mdash;the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next day the town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the
+Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the
+Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the
+night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had
+come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had
+maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic
+battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats,
+despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>In the bright morning sunlight the sight was both picturesque and
+imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the
+great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all
+the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters
+was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the
+overwhelming force which upheld Britain's right in that oft-disputed
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of thousand British sailors were ashore on leave, their white
+caps conspicuous in the streets everywhere as they walked orderly in
+threes and fours to inspect the town. In the square outside the
+Consulate a squad from the flagship were setting up a temporary
+band-stand, where the ship's band was to play when evening fell, while
+Hutcheson, perspiring in his uniform, drove with the Admiral to make the
+calls of courtesy upon the authorities which international etiquette
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Myself, I had taken a boat out to the <i>Bulwark</i>, the great battleship
+flying the Admiral's flag, and was sitting on deck with my old friend
+Captain Jack Durnford, of the Royal Marines. Each year when the fleet
+put into Leghorn we were inseparable, for in long years past, at
+Portsmouth, we had been close friends, and now he was able to pay me
+annual visits at my Italian home.</p>
+
+<p>He was on duty that morning, therefore could not get ashore till after
+luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll dine with you, of course, to-night, old chap,&quot; he said. &quot;And you
+must tell me all the news. We're in here for six days, and I was half a
+mind to run home. Two of our chaps got leave from the Admiral and left
+at three this morning for London&mdash;four days in the train and two in
+town! Gone to see their sweethearts, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The British naval officer in the Mediterranean delights to dash across
+Europe for a day at home if he can get leave and funds will allow. It is
+generally reckoned that such a trip costs about two pounds an hour while
+in London. And yet when a man is away from his <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> or wife for
+three whole years, his anxiety to get back, even for a brief day, is
+easily understood. The youngsters, however, go for mere
+caprice&mdash;whenever they can obtain leave. This is not often, for the
+Admiral has very fixed views upon the matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your time's soon up, isn't it?&quot; I remarked, as I lolled back in the
+easy deck-chair, and gazed away at the white port and its background of
+purple Apennines.</p>
+
+<p>The dark, good-looking fellow in his smart summer uniform leaned over
+the bulwark, and said, with a slight sigh, I thought&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. This is my last trip to Leghorn, I think. I go back in November,
+and I really shan't be sorry. Three years is a long time to be away from
+home. You go next week, you say? Lucky devil to be your own master! I
+only wish I were. Year after year on this deck grows confoundedly
+wearisome, I can tell you, my dear fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Durnford was a man who had written much on naval affairs, and was
+accepted as an expert on several branches of the service. The Admiralty
+do not encourage officers to write, but in Durnford's case it was
+recognized that of naval topics he possessed a knowledge that was of
+use, and, therefore, he was allowed to write books and to contribute
+critical articles to the service magazines. He had studied the relative
+strengths of foreign navies, and by keeping his eyes always open he had,
+on many occasions, been able to give valuable information to our naval
+<i>attach&eacute;s</i> at the Embassies. More than once, however, his trenchant
+criticism of the action of the naval lords had brought upon his head
+rebukes from head-quarters; nevertheless, so universally was his talent
+as a naval expert recognized, that to write had never been forbidden him
+as it had been to certain others.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How's Hutcheson?&quot; he asked a moment later, turning and facing me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fit as a fiddle. Just back from his month's leave at home. His wife is
+still up in Scotland, however. She can't stand Leghorn in summer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No wonder. It's a perfect furnace when the weather begins to stoke up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I go as soon as you've sailed. I only stayed because I promised to act
+for Frank,&quot; I said. &quot;And, by Jove! a funny thing occurred while I was in
+charge&mdash;a real first-class mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A mystery&mdash;tell me,&quot; he exclaimed, suddenly interested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, a yacht&mdash;a pirate yacht, I believe it was&mdash;called here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A pirate! What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, she was English. Listen, and I'll tell you the whole affair.
+It'll be something fresh to tell at mess, for I know how you chaps get
+played out of conversation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By Jove, yes! Things slump when we get no mail. But go on&mdash;I'm
+listening,&quot; he added, as an orderly came up, saluted, and handed him a
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;let's cross to the other side. I don't want the sentry
+to overhear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As you like&mdash;but why such mystery?&quot; he asked as we walked together to
+the other side of the spick-and-span quarter-deck of the gigantic
+battleship.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll understand when I tell you the story.&quot; And then, standing
+together beneath the awning, I related to my friend the whole of the
+curious circumstances, just as I have recorded them in the foregoing
+pages.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Confoundedly funny!&quot; he remarked with his dark eyes fixed upon mine. &quot;A
+mystery, by Jove, it is! What name did the yacht bear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>Lola</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; he gasped, suddenly turning pale. &quot;The <i>Lola</i>? Are you quite
+sure it was the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;<i>L-O-L-A</i>?&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Absolutely certain,&quot; I replied. &quot;But why do you ask? Do you happen to
+know anything about the craft?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me!&quot; he stammered, and I could see that he had involuntarily betrayed
+the truth, yet for some reason he wished to conceal his knowledge from
+me. &quot;Me! How should I know anything about such a craft? They were
+thieves on board evidently&mdash;perhaps pirates, as you say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the name <i>Lola</i> is familiar to you, Jack! I'm sure it is, by your
+manner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment, and I could see what a strenuous effort he was
+making to avoid betraying knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's&mdash;well&mdash;&quot; he said hesitatingly, with a rather sickly smile. &quot;It's a
+girl's name&mdash;a girl I once knew. The name brings back to me certain
+memories.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pleasant ones&mdash;I hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Bitter ones&mdash;very bitter ones,&quot; he said in a hard tone, striding
+across the deck and back again, and I saw in his eyes a strange look,
+half of anger, half of deep regret.</p>
+
+<p>Was he telling the truth, I wondered? Some tragic romance or other
+concerning a woman had, I knew, overshadowed his life in the years
+before we had become acquainted. But the real facts he had never
+revealed to me. He had never before referred to the bitterness of the
+past, although I knew full well that his heart was in secret filled by
+some overwhelming sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly he was as merry as the other fellows who officered that huge
+floating fortress; on board he was a typical smart marine, and on shore
+he danced and played tennis and flirted just as vigorously as did the
+others. But a heavy heart beat beneath his uniform.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to where I stood I saw that his face had changed: it
+had become drawn and haggard. He bore the appearance of a man who had
+been struck a blow that had staggered him, crushing out all life and
+hope.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the matter, Jack?&quot; I asked. &quot;Come! Tell me&mdash;what ails you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing, my dear old chap,&quot; he answered hoarsely. &quot;Really nothing&mdash;only
+a touch of the blues just for a moment,&quot; he added, trying hard to smile.
+&quot;It'll pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I've just told you about that yacht has upset you. You can't deny
+it&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He started. His mouth was, I saw, hard set. He knew something concerning
+that mysterious craft, but would not tell me.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of a bugle came from the further end of the ship, and
+immediately men were scampering along the deck beneath as some order or
+other was being obeyed with that precision that characterizes the &quot;handy
+man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you silent?&quot; I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon my friend the
+officer. &quot;I have told you what I know, and I want to discover the
+motive of the visit of those men, and the reason they opened Hutcheson's
+safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I tell you?&quot; he asked in a strained, unnatural voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe you know something concerning them. Come, tell me the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I admit that I have certain grave suspicions,&quot; he said at last,
+standing astride with his hands behind his back, his sword trailing on
+the white deck. &quot;You say that the yacht was called the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;painted
+gray with a black funnel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, dead white, with a yellow funnel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Of course,&quot; he remarked, as though to himself. &quot;They would repaint
+and alter her appearance. But the dining saloon. Was there a long carved
+oak buffet with a big, heavy cornice with three gilt dolphins in the
+center&mdash;and were there not dolphins in gilt on the backs of the
+chairs&mdash;an armorial device?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I cried. &quot;You are right. I remember them! You've surely been on
+board her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there is a ladies' saloon and a small boudoir in pink beyond, while
+the smoking-room is entirely of marble for the heat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly&mdash;the same yacht, no doubt! But what do you know of her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The captain, who gave his name to you as Mackintosh, is an undersized
+American of a rather low-down type?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I took him for a Scotsman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because he put on a Scotch accent,&quot; he laughed. &quot;He's a man who can
+speak a dozen languages brokenly, and pass for an Italian, a German, a
+Frenchman, as he wishes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the&mdash;the man who gave his name as Philip Hornby?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Durnford's mouth closed with a snap. He drew a long breath, his eyes
+grew fierce, and he bit his lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! I see he is not exactly your friend,&quot; I said meaningly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are right, Gordon&mdash;he is not my friend,&quot; was his slow, meaning
+response.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why not be outspoken and tell me all you know concerning him?
+Frank Hutcheson is anxious to clear up the mystery because they've
+tampered with the Consular seals and things. Besides, it would be put
+down to his credit if he solved the affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, to tell you the truth, I'm mystified myself. I can't yet discern
+their motive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But at any rate you know the men,&quot; I argued. &quot;You can at least tell us
+who they really are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, still disinclined, for some hidden reason, to reveal
+the truth to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You saw no woman on board?&quot; he asked suddenly, looking straight into my
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Hornby told me that he and Chater were alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet an hour after you left a man and a woman came ashore and
+disappeared! Ah! If we only had a description of that woman it would
+reveal much to us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She was young and dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious
+fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor
+veil, so that he could not clearly discern her features.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And her companion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Middle-aged, prematurely gray, with a small dark mustache.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jack Durnford sighed and stroked his chin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Just as I thought,&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;And they were actually here, in
+this port, a week ago! What a bitter irony of fate!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand you,&quot; I said. &quot;You are so mysterious, and yet you
+will tell me nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The police, fools that they are, have allowed them to escape, and they
+will never be caught now. Ah! you don't know them as I do! They are the
+cleverest pair in all Europe. And they have the audacity to call their
+craft the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;the <i>Lola</i>, of all names!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But as you know who and what the fellows are, you ought, I think, in
+common justice to Hutcheson, to tell us something,&quot; I complained. &quot;If
+they are adventurers, they ought to be traced.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I do&mdash;a prisoner here on board?&quot; he argued bitterly. &quot;How can
+I act?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave it all to me. I'm free to travel after them, and find out the
+truth if only you will tell me what you know concerning them,&quot; I said
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gordon, let me be frank and open with you, my dear old fellow. I would
+tell you everything&mdash;everything&mdash;if I dared. But I cannot&mdash;you
+understand!&quot; And his final words seemed to choke him.</p>
+
+<p>I stood before him, open-mouthed in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You really mean&mdash;well, that you are in fear of them&mdash;eh?&quot; I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded slowly in the affirmative, adding: &quot;To tell you the truth
+would be to bring upon myself a swift, relentless vengeance that would
+overwhelm and crush me. Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know&mdash;you cannot
+dream&mdash;what brought those desperate men into this port. I can guess&mdash;I
+can guess only too well&mdash;but I can only tell you that if you ever do
+discover the terrible truth&mdash;which I fear is unlikely&mdash;you will solve
+one of the strangest and most remarkable mysteries of modern times.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does the mystery concern?&quot; I asked, in breathless eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It concerns a woman.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HOUSE &quot;OVER THE WATER&quot;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
+is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
+Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
+heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.</p>
+
+<p>One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
+year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
+people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
+continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
+for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
+month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.</p>
+
+<p>London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
+dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
+it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
+seaside.</p>
+
+<p>I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
+north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
+found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
+Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
+just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
+fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
+merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
+rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
+in linen.</p>
+
+<p>I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
+friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
+voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&mdash;why, actually, my padrone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
+neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
+had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
+better himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Olinto!&quot; I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. &quot;You&mdash;in London&mdash;eh?
+Well, and how are you getting on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most excellently, signore,&quot; he answered in broken English, smiling.
+&quot;But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
+fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are you working?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the Restaurant Milano, in Oxford Street&mdash;only a small place, but we
+gain discreetly, so I must not complain. I live over in Lambeth, and am
+on my way home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I heard you married after you left me. Is that true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, signore. I married Armida, who was in your service when I first
+entered it. You remember her? Ah, well!&quot; he added, sighing. &quot;Poor thing!
+I regret to say she is very ill indeed. She cannot stand your English
+climate. The doctor says she will die if she remains here. Yet what can
+I do? If we go back to Italy we shall only starve.&quot; And I saw that he
+was in deep distress, and that mention of his ailing wife had aroused
+within him bitter thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto Santini walked back at my side in the direction of Trafalgar
+Square, answering the questions I put to him. He had been a good,
+hard-working servant, and I was glad to see him again. When he left me
+he had gone as steward on one of the Anchor Line boats between Naples
+and New York, and that was the last I had heard of him until I found him
+there in London, a waiter at a second-rate restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>When I tried to slip some silver into his hand he refused to take it,
+and with a merry laugh said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder if you would be offended, signore, if I told you of something
+for which I had been longing and longing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the signore smokes our Tuscan cigars. I wonder if by chance you
+have one? We cannot get them in London, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I felt in my pocket, laughing, and discovered that I had a couple of
+those long thin penny cigars which I always smoke in Italy, and which
+are so dear to the Tuscan palate. These I handed him, and he took them
+with delight as the greatest delicacy I could have offered him. Poor
+fellow! As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that
+reminded him of his own beloved country.</p>
+
+<p>When we halted before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some
+further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking
+housemaid whom he had married.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he responded in a voice choked with emotion, dropping
+into Italian. &quot;It is the one great sorrow of my life. I work hard from
+early morning until late at night, but what is the use when I see my
+poor wife gradually fading away before my very eyes? The doctor says
+that she cannot possibly live through the next winter. Ah! how delighted
+the poor girl would be if she could see the padrone once again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I felt sorry for him. Armida had been a good servant, and had served me
+well for nearly three years. Old Rosina, my housekeeper, had often
+regretted that she had been compelled to leave to attend to her aged
+mother. The latter, he told me, had died, and afterwards he had married
+her. There is more romance and tragedy in the lives of the poor Italians
+in London than London ever suspects. We are too apt to regard the
+Italian as a bloodthirsty person given to the unlawful use of the knife,
+whereas, as a whole, the Italian colony in London is a hard-working,
+thrifty, and law-abiding one, very different, indeed, to those colonies
+of aliens from Northern Europe, who are so continually bringing filth,
+disease, and immorality into the East End, and are a useless incubus in
+an already over-populated city.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke so wistfully that his wife might see me once more that, having
+nothing very particular to do that evening, and feeling a deep sympathy
+for the poor fellow in his trouble, I resolved to accompany him to his
+house and see whether I could not, in some slight manner, render him a
+little help.</p>
+
+<p>He thanked me profusely when I consented to go with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signor padrone!&quot; he said gratefully, &quot;she will be so delighted. It
+is so very good of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We hailed a hansom and drove across Westminster Bridge to the address he
+gave&mdash;a gloomy back street off the York Road, one of those narrow, grimy
+thoroughfares into which the sun never shines. Ah, how often do the poor
+Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our
+dismal, sordid streets! Dirt and squalor do not affect them; it is the
+damp and cold and lack of sunshine that so very soon proves fatal.</p>
+
+<p>A low-looking, evil-faced fellow opened the door to us and growled
+acquaintance with Olinto, who, striking a match, ascended the worn,
+carpetless stairs before me, apologizing for passing before me, and
+saying in Italian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We live at the top, signore, because it is cheaper and the air is
+better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite right,&quot; I said. &quot;Quite right. Go on.&quot; And I thought I heard my
+cab driving away.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gloomy, forbidding, unlighted place into which I would
+certainly have hesitated to enter had not my companion been my trusted
+servant. I instinctively disliked the look of the fellow who had opened
+the door. He was one of those hulking loafers of the peculiarly Lambeth
+type. Yet the alien poor, I recollected, cannot choose where they shall
+reside.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to my expectations, the sitting-room we entered on the top
+floor was quite comfortably furnished, clean and respectable, even
+though traces of poverty were apparent. A cheap lamp was burning upon
+the table, but the apartment was unoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto, in surprise, passed into the adjoining room, returning a moment
+later, exclaiming&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armida must have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the
+people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are
+very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a
+chair, signore.&quot; And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted
+it with his handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>I allowed him to go and fetch her, rather surprised that she should be
+well enough to get about after all he had told me concerning her
+illness. Yet consumption does not keep people in bed until its final
+stages.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood there, gazing round the room, I could not well distinguish
+its furthermost corners, for the lamp bore a shade of green paste-board,
+which threw a zone of light upon the table, and left the remainder of
+the room in darkness. When, however, my eyes grew accustomed to the dim
+light, I discerned that the place was dusty and somewhat disordered. The
+sofa was, I saw, a folding iron bedstead with greasy old cushions, while
+the carpet was threadbare and full of holes. When I drew the old rep
+curtains to look out of the window, I found that the shutters were
+closed, which I thought unusual for a room so high up as that was.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto returned in a few moments, saying that his wife had evidently
+gone to do some shopping in the Lower-Marsh, for it is the habit of the
+denizens of that locality to go &quot;marketing&quot; in the evening among the
+costermongers' stalls that line so many of the thoroughfares. Perishable
+commodities, the overplus of the markets and shops, are cheaper at night
+than in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope you are not pressed for time, signore?&quot; he said apologetically.
+&quot;But, of course, the poor girl does not know the surprise awaiting her.
+She will surely not be long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I'll wait,&quot; I said, and flung myself back into the chair he had
+brought forward for me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have nothing to offer you, signer padrone,&quot; he said, with a laugh. &quot;I
+did not expect a visitor, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, Olinto. I've only just had dinner. But tell me how you have
+fared since you left me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he laughed bitterly. &quot;I had many ups and downs before I found
+myself here in London. The sea did not suit me&mdash;neither did the work.
+They put me in the emigrants' quarters, and consequently I could gain
+nothing. The other stewards were Neapolitans, therefore, because I was a
+Tuscan, they relegated me to the worst post. Ah, signore, you don't know
+what it is to serve those emigrants! I made two trips, then returned and
+married Armida. I called on you, but Tito said you were in London. At
+first I got work at a caf&eacute; in Viareggio, but when the season ended, and
+I was thrown out of employment, I managed to work my way from Genoa to
+London. My first place was scullion in a restaurant in Tottenham Court
+Road, and then I became waiter in the beer-hall at the Monico, and
+managed to save sufficient to send Armida the money to join me here.
+Afterwards I went to the Milano, and I hope to get into one of the big
+hotels very soon&mdash;or perhaps the grill-room at the Carlton. I have a
+friend who is there, and they make lots of money&mdash;four or five pounds
+every week in tips, they say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll see what I can do for you,&quot; I said. &quot;I know several hotel-managers
+who might have a vacancy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he cried, filled with gratification. &quot;If you only would!
+A word from you would secure me a good position. I can work, that you
+know&mdash;and I do work. I will work&mdash;for her sake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have promised you,&quot; I said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how can I sufficiently thank you?&quot; he cried, standing before me,
+while in his eyes I thought I detected a strange wild look, such as I
+had never seen there before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You served me well, Olinto,&quot; I replied, &quot;and when I discover real
+sterling honesty I endeavor to appreciate it. There is, alas! very
+little of it in this world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said in a hoarse voice, his manner suddenly changing. &quot;You
+have to-night shown me, signore, that you are my friend, and I will, in
+return, show you that I am yours.&quot; And suddenly grasping both my hands,
+he pulled me from the chair in which I was sitting, at the same time
+asking in a low intense whisper: &quot;Do you always carry a revolver here in
+England, as you do in Italy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered in surprise at his action and his question. &quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because there is danger here,&quot; he answered in the same low earnest
+tone. &quot;Get your weapon ready. You may want it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand,&quot; I said, feeling my handy Colt in my back pocket to
+make sure it was there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forget what I have said&mdash;all&mdash;all that I have told you to-night, sir,&quot;
+he said. &quot;I have not explained the whole truth. You are in peril&mdash;in
+deadly peril!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How?&quot; I exclaimed breathlessly, surprised at his extraordinary change
+of manner and his evident apprehension lest something should befall me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait, and you shall see,&quot; he whispered. &quot;But first tell me, signore,
+that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly
+affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the hands of your
+enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My enemies! Who are they?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are unknown, and for the present must remain so. But if you doubt
+your peril, watch&mdash;&quot; and taking the rusty fire-tongs from the grate he
+carefully placed them on end in front of the deep old armchair in which
+I had sat, and then allowed them to fall against the edge of the seat,
+springing quickly back as he did so.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant a bright blue flash shot through the place, and the irons
+fell aside, fused and twisted out of all recognition.</p>
+
+<p>I stood aghast, utterly unable for the moment to sufficiently realize
+how narrowly I had escaped death.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look! See here, behind!&quot; cried the Italian, directing my attention to
+the back legs of the chair, where, on bending with the lamp, I saw, to
+my surprise, that two wires were connected, and ran along the floor and
+out of the window, while concealed beneath the ragged carpet, in front
+of the chair, was a thin plate of steel, whereon my feet had rested.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had so ingeniously enticed me to that gloomy house of death
+had connected up the overhead electric light main with that
+innocent-looking chair, and from some unseen point had been able to
+switch on a current of sufficient voltage to kill fifty men.</p>
+
+<p>I stood stock-still, not daring to move lest I might come into contact
+with some hidden wire, the slightest touch of which must bring instant
+death upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your enemies prepared this terrible trap for you,&quot; declared the man who
+was once my trusted servant. &quot;When I entered into the affair I was not
+aware that it was to be fatal. They gave me no inkling of their
+dastardly intention. But there is no time to admit of explanations now,
+signore,&quot; he added breathlessly, in a low desperate voice. &quot;Say that you
+will not prejudge me,&quot; he pleaded earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not prejudge you until I've heard your explanation,&quot; I said. &quot;I
+certainly owe my life to you to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
+use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me,&quot; I cried in desperation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Dio!</i> Go! Go!&quot; he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. &quot;Fly,
+or we shall both die&mdash;both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
+dashing after you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
+he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
+though I had escaped him.</p>
+
+<p>A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
+fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
+instant later found myself out in the street.</p>
+
+<p>It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
+life&mdash;surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
+wondered, did it mean?</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
+Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
+policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
+Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
+No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
+Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
+ever heard of the &quot;Milano.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Even Olinto had played me false!</p>
+
+<p>I was filled with chagrin, for I had trusted him as honest, upright, and
+industrious; and was puzzled to know the reason he had deceived me, and
+why he had enticed me to the very brink of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>He had told me that he himself had fallen into the trap laid by my
+enemies, and yet he had steadfastly refused to tell me who they were!
+The whole thing was utterly inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>I drove over to Lambeth and wandered through the maze of mean streets
+off the York Road, yet for the life of me I could not decide into which
+house I had been taken. There were a dozen which seemed to me that they
+might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with
+my life.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow
+gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from
+the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He
+was the envoy of my unknown enemies, who had so ingeniously and so
+relentlessly plotted my destruction.</p>
+
+<p>That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is
+an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the
+pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile. But the unseen
+enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive
+reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets &quot;over the
+water,&quot; as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main
+arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.</p>
+
+<p>My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly
+plot to kill me. With what motive?</p>
+
+<p>I wondered as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto
+Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had
+given my word not to prejudge him until he revealed to me the truth. Yet
+I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.</p>
+
+<p>When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always
+much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and
+every action of a friend covers the ruse of a suspected enemy.</p>
+
+<p>That day I did my business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not
+knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life
+were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go
+innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every
+possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of
+London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the
+old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could be out of town had left for
+the country or the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The only trace I found of the Italian was that he was registered at the
+office of the International Society of Hotel Servants, in Shaftesbury
+Avenue, as being employed at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery, but on inquiry
+there I found he had left more than a year before, and none of his
+fellow-waiters knew his whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Thus being defeated in every inquiry, and my business at last concluded
+in London, I went up to Dumfries on a duty visit which I paid annually
+to my uncle, Sir George Little. Having known Dumfries since my earliest
+boyhood, and having spent some years of my youth there, I had many
+friends in the vicinity, for Sir George and my aunt were very popular in
+the county and moved in the best set.</p>
+
+<p>Each time I returned from abroad I was always a welcome guest at
+Greenlaw, as their place outside the city of Burns was called, and this
+occasion proved no exception, for the country houses of Dumfries are
+always gay in August in prospect of the shooting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some new people have taken Rannoch Castle. Rather nice they seem,&quot;
+remarked my aunt as we were sitting together at luncheon the day after
+my arrival. &quot;Their name is Leithcourt, and they've asked me to drive you
+over there to tennis this afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not much of a player, you know, aunt. In Italy we don't believe in
+athletics. But if it's out of politeness, of course, I'll go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; she said. &quot;Then I'll order the victoria for three.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are several nice girls there, Gordon,&quot; remarked my uncle
+mischievously. &quot;You have a good time, so don't think you are going to be
+bored.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No fear of that,&quot; was my answer. And at three o'clock Sir George, his
+wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands
+high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of
+the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long
+ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was
+sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if
+somewhat impecunious owner.</p>
+
+<p>We could see its great round towers, standing grim and gray on the
+hillside commanding the whole of the valley, long before we approached
+it, and when we drove into the grounds we found a gay party in summer
+toilettes assembled on the ancient bowling-green, now transformed into a
+modern tennis-lawn.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Leithcourt and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed
+man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I
+joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were
+entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality was on a scale
+quite in keeping with the fine old place they rented.</p>
+
+<p>Tea was served on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired
+of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright,
+dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and
+flannel tennis skirt.</p>
+
+<p>I was apologizing for my terribly bad play, explaining that I had no
+practice out in Italy, whereupon she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know Italy slightly. I was in Florence and Naples with mother last
+season.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then we began to discuss pictures and sculptures and the sights of
+Italy generally. I discerned from her remarks that she had traveled
+widely; indeed, she told me that both her father and mother were never
+happier than when moving from place to place in search of variety and
+distraction. We had entered the huge paneled hall of the Castle, and had
+passed up the quaint old stone staircase to the long banqueting hall
+with its paneled oak ceiling, which in these modern days had been
+transformed into a bright, pleasant drawing-room, from the windows of
+which was presented a marvelous view over the lovely Nithsdale and
+across to the heather-clad hills beyond.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant lounging there in the cool old room after the hot
+sunshine outside, and as I gazed around the place I noted how much more
+luxurious and tasteful it now was to what it had been in the days when I
+had visited its owner several years before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are awfully glad to be up here,&quot; my pretty companion was saying. &quot;We
+had such a busy season in London.&quot; And then she went on to describe the
+Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I
+had read in my English paper beside the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>She attracted me on account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen
+sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter.
+Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with
+Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there
+were others present, in order that our companions should understand.
+Therefore her gossip interested me, and as the golden sunset flooded the
+handsome old room I sat listening to her, inwardly admiring her innate
+grace and handsome countenance.</p>
+
+<p>I had no idea who or what her father was&mdash;whether a wealthy
+manufacturer, like so many who take expensive shoots and give big
+entertainments in order to edge their way into Society by its back door,
+or whether he was a gentleman of means and of good family. I rather
+guessed the latter, from his gentlemanly bearing and polished manner.
+His appearance, tall and erect, was that of a retired officer, and his
+clean-cut face was one of marked distinction.</p>
+
+<p>I was telling my pretty companion something of my own life, how, because
+I loved Italy so well, I lived in Tuscany in preference to living in
+England, and how each year I came home for a month or two to visit my
+relations and to keep in touch with things.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was once in Leghorn for a few hours. We were yachting in the
+Mediterranean. I love the sea&mdash;and yachting is such awfully good fun, if
+you only get decent weather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The mention of yachting brought back to my mind the visit of the <i>Lola</i>
+and its mysterious sequel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father has a yacht, then?&quot; I remarked, with as little concern as I
+could.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. The <i>Iris</i>. My uncle is cruising on her up the Norwegian Fiords.
+For us it is a change to be here, because we are so often afloat. We
+went across to New York in her last year and had a most delightful
+time&mdash;except for one bad squall which made us all a little bit nervous.
+But Moyes is such an excellent captain that I never fear. The crew are
+all North Sea fishermen&mdash;father will engage nobody else. I don't blame
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you must have made many long voyages, and seen many odd corners of
+the world, Miss Leithcourt?&quot; I remarked, my interest in her increasing,
+for she seemed so extremely intelligent and well-informed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes. We've been to Mexico, and to Panama, besides Morocco, Egypt,
+and the West Coast of Africa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you've actually landed at Leghorn!&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but we didn't stay there more than an hour&mdash;to send a telegram, I
+think it was. Father said there was nothing to see there. He and I went
+ashore, and I must say I was rather disappointed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are quite right. The town itself is ugly and uninteresting. But the
+outskirts&mdash;San Jacopo, Ardenza and Antigniano are all delightful. It was
+unfortunate that you did not see them. Was it long ago when you put in
+there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not very long. I really don't recollect the exact date,&quot; was her reply.
+&quot;We were on our way home from Alexandria.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever, in any of the ports you've been, seen a yacht called the
+<i>Lola</i>?&quot; I asked eagerly, for it occurred to me that perhaps she might
+be able to give me information.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>Lola</i>!&quot; she gasped, and instantly her face changed. A flush
+overspread her cheeks, succeeded next moment by a death-like pallor.
+&quot;The <i>Lola</i>!&quot; she repeated in a strange, hoarse voice, at the same time
+endeavoring strenuously not to exhibit any apprehension. &quot;No. I have
+never heard of any such a vessel. Is she a steam-yacht? Who's her
+owner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I regarded her in amazement and suspicion, for I saw that mention of the
+name had aroused within her some serious misgiving. That look in her
+dark eyes as they fixed themselves upon me was one of distinct and
+unspeakable terror.</p>
+
+<p>What could she possibly know concerning the mysterious craft?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know the owner's name,&quot; I said, still affecting not to have
+noticed her alarm and apprehension. &quot;The vessel ran aground at the
+Meloria, a dangerous shoal outside Leghorn, and through the stupidity of
+her captain was very nearly lost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot; she gasped, in a half-whisper, bending to me eagerly, unable to
+sufficiently conceal the terrible anxiety consuming her. &quot;And you&mdash;did
+you go aboard her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; was the only word I uttered.</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell between us, and as my eyes fixed themselves upon her, I
+saw that from her handsome mobile countenance all the light and life had
+suddenly gone out, and I knew that she was in secret possession of the
+key to that remarkable enigma that so puzzled me.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden the door opened, and a voice cried gayly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I've been looking everywhere for you, Muriel. Why are you hidden
+here? Aren't you coming?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We both turned, and as she did so a low cry of blank dismay
+involuntarily escaped her.</p>
+
+<p>Next instant I sprang to my feet. The reason of her cry was apparent,
+for there, in the full light of the golden sunset streaming through the
+long open windows, stood a broad-shouldered, fair-bearded man in tennis
+flannels and a Panama hat&mdash;the fugitive I knew as Philip Hornby!</p>
+
+<p>I faced him, speechless.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Neither of us spoke. Equally surprised at the unexpected encounter, we
+stood facing each other dumbfounded.</p>
+
+<p>Hornby started quickly as soon as his eyes fell upon me, and his face
+became blanched to the lips, while Muriel Leithcourt, quick to notice
+the sudden change in him, rose and introduced us in as calm a voice as
+she could command.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think you are acquainted,&quot; she said to me with a smile. &quot;This
+is Mr. Martin Woodroffe&mdash;Mr. Gordon Gregg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bowed to him in sudden resolve to remain silent in pretense that I
+doubted whether the man before me was actually my host of the <i>Lola</i>. I
+intended to act as though I was not sufficiently convinced to openly
+express my doubt. Therefore we bowed, exchanging greetings as strangers,
+while, carefully watching, I saw how greatly the minds of both were
+relieved. They shot meaning glances at each other, and then, as though
+reassured that I was mystified and uncertain, the man who called himself
+Woodroffe explained to my companion------</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been over to Newton Stewart with Fred all day, and only got back a
+quarter of an hour ago. Aren't you playing any more to-day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think not,&quot; was her reply. &quot;We've been out there the whole afternoon,
+and I'm rather tired. But they're still on the lawn. You can surely get
+a game with someone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you don't play, I shan't. I returned to keep the promise I made
+this morning,&quot; he laughed, standing before the big open fireplace,
+holding his tennis racquet behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>I examined his countenance, and was more than ever convinced that he was
+actually the man who gave me the name of Hornby and the false address in
+Somerset. The pair seemed to be on familiar terms, and I wondered
+whether they were engaged. In any case, the man seemed quite at home
+there.</p>
+
+<p>As he chatted with the daughter of the house, he cast a quick, covert
+glance at me, and then darted a meaning look at her&mdash;a look of renewed
+confidence, as though he felt that he had successfully averted any
+suspicions I might have held.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of the prospects of the grouse and the salmon, and from his
+remarks he seemed to be as keen at sport as he had once made out himself
+to be at yachting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My friend Leithcourt is awfully fortunate in getting such a splendid
+old place as this. On every hand I hear glowing accounts of the number
+of birds. The place has been well preserved in the past, and there's
+plenty of good cover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;Gilrae, the owner, is a keen sportsman, and before he
+became so hard up he spent a lot of money on the estate, which, I
+believe, has always been considered one of the very best in the
+southwest. There's salmon, they say, down in the Glen yonder&mdash;but I've
+never tried for any.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly there is. I've seen several. I hope to try one of these days.
+The Glen is deep and shady&mdash;an ideal place for fish. The only
+disappointment here, as far as I can make out, is the very few head of
+black-game.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but every year they are getting rarer and rarer in this part of
+Scotland. A really fine black-cock is quite an event nowadays,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>While we were talking, or rather while I was carefully watching the
+rapid working of his mind, Leithcourt himself entered and joined us. He
+had been playing tennis, and had come in to rest and cool.</p>
+
+<p>Host and guest were evidently on the most intimate terms. Leithcourt
+addressed him as &quot;Martin,&quot; and began to relate a quarrel which his
+head-gamekeeper had had that day with one of the small farmers on the
+estate regarding the killing of some rabbits. And while they were
+talking Muriel suggested that we should stroll down to the tennis-courts
+again, an invitation which, much as I regretted leaving the two men, I
+was bound to accept.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though she wished purposely to take me away from that man's
+presence, fearing that by remaining there longer my suspicions might
+become confirmed. She was acting in conjunction with the man whom I had
+known as Hornby.</p>
+
+<p>There were still a good many people watching the game, for it was
+pleasant in those old-world gardens in the sunset hour. The dried-up
+moat was now transformed into a garden filled with rhododendrons and
+bright azaleas, while the high ancient beech-hedges, the quaint old
+sundial with its motto: &quot;Each time ye shadowe turneth ys one daye nearer
+unto dethe,&quot; and the old stone balustrades gray with lichen, all spoke
+mutely of those glorious days when the fierce horsemen of the Lairds of
+Rannoch were feared across the Border, and when many a prisoner of the
+Black Douglas had pined and died in those narrow stone chambers in the
+grim north tower that still stood high above.</p>
+
+<p>Among the party strolling and lounging there prior to departure were
+quite a number of people I knew, people who had shooting-boxes in the
+vicinity and were my uncle's friends. In Scotland there is always a
+hearty hospitality among the sporting folk, and the laws of caste are
+far less rigorous than they are in England.</p>
+
+<p>I was standing chatting with two ladies who were about to take leave of
+their hostess, when Leithcourt returned, but alone. Hornby had not
+accompanied him. Was it because he feared to again meet me?</p>
+
+<p>In order to ascertain something regarding the man who had so
+mysteriously fled from Leghorn, I managed by the exercise of a little
+diplomacy to sit on the lawn with a young married woman named Tennant,
+wife of a cavalry captain, who was one of the house-party. After a
+little time I succeeded in turning the conversation to her fellow
+guests, and more particularly to the man I knew as Hornby.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Mr. Woodroffe is most amusing,&quot; declared the bright little woman.
+&quot;He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is
+usually the life and soul of our party.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, &quot;I like what little I have seen of him. He's a very good
+fellow, I should say. I've heard that he's engaged to Muriel,&quot; I
+hazarded. &quot;Is that true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. They've been engaged nearly a year, but he's been abroad
+until quite lately. He is rather close about his own affairs, and never
+talks about his travels and adventures, although one day Mr. Leithcourt
+declared that his hairbreadth escapes would make a most exciting book if
+ever written.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leithcourt and he are evidently most intimate friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, quite inseparable!&quot; she laughed. &quot;And the other man who is always
+with them is that short, stout, red-faced old fellow standing over there
+with the lady in pale blue, Sir Ughtred Gardner. Mr. Woodroffe has
+nicknamed him 'Sir Putrid.'&quot; And we both laughed. &quot;Of course, don't say
+I said so,&quot; she whispered. &quot;They don't call him that to his face, but
+it's so easy to make a mistake in his name when he's not within hearing.
+We women don't care for him, so the nickname just fits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she gossiped on, telling me much that I desired to know regarding
+the new tenant of Rannoch and his friends, and more especially of that
+man who had first introduced himself to me in the Consulate at Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with
+the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the
+Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make
+out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man
+who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning
+him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of
+evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril.
+Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The
+mystery grew deeper day by day, and was inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>During the week that followed I sought to learn all I could regarding
+the new people at the castle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are taken up everywhere,&quot; declared my aunt when I questioned her.
+&quot;Of course, we knew very little of them, except that they had a shoot up
+near Fort William two years ago, and that they have a town house in
+Green Street. They are evidently rather smart folks. Don't you think
+so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Judging from their house-party, yes,&quot; I responded. &quot;They are about as
+gay a crowd as one could find north of Carlisle just at present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly. There are some well-known people among them, too,&quot; said my
+aunt. &quot;I've asked them over to-morrow afternoon, and they've accepted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent!&quot; I exclaimed, for I wanted an opportunity for another chat
+with the dark-eyed girl who was engaged to the man whose alias was
+Hornby. I particularly desired to ascertain the reason of her fear when
+I had mentioned the <i>Lola</i>, and whether she possessed any knowledge of
+Hylton Chater.</p>
+
+<p>The opportunity came to me in due course, for next afternoon the Rannoch
+party drove over in two large brakes, and with other people from the
+neighborhood and a band from Dumfries, my aunt's grounds presented a gay
+and animated scene. There was the usual tennis and croquet, while some
+of the men enjoyed a little putting on the excellent course my uncle, a
+golf enthusiast, had recently laid down.</p>
+
+<p>As I expected, Woodroffe did not accompany the party. Mrs. Leithcourt, a
+slightly fussy little woman, apologized for his absence, explaining that
+he had been recalled to London suddenly a few days before, but was
+returning to Rannoch again at the end of the week.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We couldn't afford to lose him,&quot; she declared to my aunt. &quot;He is so
+awfully humorous&mdash;his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar
+each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned away and strolled with Muriel, pleading an excuse to show her
+my uncle's beautiful grounds, not a whit less picturesque than those of
+the castle, and perhaps rather better kept.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I only heard yesterday of your engagement, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I remarked
+presently when we were alone. &quot;Allow me to offer my best
+congratulations. When you introduced me to Mr. Woodroffe the other day I
+had no idea that he was to be your husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of
+suspicion. Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a
+blank, hard voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant
+things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And when is the happy event to take place?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The date is not exactly fixed&mdash;early next year, I believe,&quot; and I
+thought she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?&quot; I suggested,
+my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed
+remark. But she controlled herself perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I love the sea,&quot; she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. He received a wire, and had to leave immediately. It was an awful
+bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey
+yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he'll be back here again, won't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I really don't know. It seems quite uncertain. I had a letter this
+morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business,
+instead of coming up to us again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could
+not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from
+Scotland because of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the
+yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any
+undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the
+puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking
+ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her
+answers.</p>
+
+<p>As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly
+impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her
+parents. Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and
+terrible secret which she feared might be revealed. There was a distant
+look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in
+some constant and ever-present dread. Of course she told me nothing of
+her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and
+her bearing a curious apathy&mdash;a want of the real enthusiasm of
+affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it
+therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a
+matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the
+mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their
+daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and
+intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's
+happiness more often than the public ever dream. Tragedy is, alas!
+written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the
+fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the
+paragraph beneath. Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own
+free choice in the matter of a husband is, alas! nowadays the exception,
+for parents who want to &quot;get on&quot; up the social scale have found that
+pretty daughters are a marketable commodity, and many a man has been
+placed &quot;on his legs,&quot; both financially and socially, by his son-in-law.
+Hence the marriage of convenience is fast becoming common, while in the
+same ratio the divorce petitions are unfortunately on the increase.</p>
+
+<p>I read tragedy in the dark luminous eyes of Muriel Leithcourt. I knew
+that her young heart was over-burdened by some secret sorrow or guilty
+knowledge that she would reveal to me if she dared. Her own words told
+me that she was perplexed; that she longed to confide and seek advice
+of someone, yet by reason of some hidden and untoward circumstance her
+lips were sealed.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to question her further regarding Woodroffe, of what profession
+he followed and of his past.</p>
+
+<p>But she evidently suspected me, for I had unfortunately mentioned the
+<i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me
+nothing&mdash;absolutely nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended,
+indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the
+Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred
+people and very hospitable.</p>
+
+<p>We exchanged a good many visits and dinners, and while my uncle several
+times invited Leithcourt and his friends to his shoot with <i>al fresco</i>
+luncheon, which the ladies joined, the tenant of Rannoch always invited
+us back in return.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I gained many opportunities of talking with Muriel, and of watching
+her closely. I had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and on
+account of that it seemed that she was in no way averse to my
+companionship. She could handle a rook-rifle as well as any woman, and
+was really a very fair shot. Therefore we often found ourselves alone
+tramping across the wide open moorland, or along those delightful glens
+of the Nithsdale, glorious in the autumn tints of their luxurious
+foliage.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, on the other hand, seemed to view me with considerable
+suspicion, and I could easily discern that I was only asked to Rannoch
+because it was impossible to invite my uncle without including myself.</p>
+
+<p>Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever
+endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him
+alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our
+strange encounter in Leghorn?</p>
+
+<p>His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him
+surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have
+done. He was a man of gloomy mood, and often he would leave his guests
+and take walks alone, musing and brooding. On several occasions I
+followed him in secret, and found to my surprise that although he made
+long detours in various directions, yet he always arrived at the same
+spot at the same hour&mdash;five o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The place where he halted was on the edge of a dark wood on the brow of
+a hill about three miles from Rannoch&mdash;a good place to get woodpigeon,
+as they came to roost. It was fully two miles across the hills from the
+high road to Moniaive, and from the break the gray wall where he was in
+the habit of sitting to rest and smoke, there stretched the beautiful
+panorama of Loch Urr and the heatherclad hills beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Leithcourt never went direct to the place, but always so timed his walks
+that he arrived just at five, and remained there smoking cigarettes
+until half-past, as though awaiting the arrival of some person he
+expected. Once or twice his guests suggested shooting pigeons at
+sundown, but he always had some excuse for opposing the proposal, and
+thus the party, unsuspecting the reason, were kept away from that
+particular lonely spot.</p>
+
+<p>In my youth I had sat many a quiet hour there in the darkening gloom and
+shot many a pigeon, therefore I knew the wood well, and was able to
+watch the tenant of Rannoch from points where he least suspected the
+presence of another.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when I was alone with Muriel, I mentioned her father's capacity
+for walking alone, whereupon she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, he was always fond of walking. He used to take me with him
+when we first came here, but he always went so far that I refused to go
+any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She never once mentioned Woodroffe. I allowed her plenty of opportunity
+for doing so, chaffing her about her forthcoming marriage in order that
+she might again refer to him. But never did his name pass her lips. I
+understood that he had gone abroad&mdash;that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night
+when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown
+enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life
+had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day
+succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery
+surrounded me on every hand.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, by one curious fact alone it was increased a hundredfold.</p>
+
+<p>Late one afternoon, when I had been out shooting all day with the
+Rannoch party, I drove back to the castle in the Perth-cart with three
+other men, and found the ladies assembled in the great hall with tea
+ready. A welcome log-fire was blazing in the huge old grate, for in
+October it is chilly and damp in Scotland and a fire is pleasant at
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel was seated upon the high padded fender&mdash;like those one has at
+clubs&mdash;which always formed a cosy spot for the ladies, especially after
+dinner. When I entered, she rose quickly and handed me my cup,
+exclaiming as she looked at me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mr. Gregg! what a state you are in!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I was after snipe, and slipped into a bog,&quot; I laughed. &quot;But it
+was early this morning, and the mud has dried.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come with me, and I'll get you a brush,&quot; she urged. And I followed her
+through the long corridors and upstairs to a small sitting-room which
+was her own little sanctum, where she worked and read&mdash;a cosy little
+place with two queer old windows in the colossal wall, and a floor of
+polished oak, and great black beams above. When the owner had occupied
+the house that room had been disused, but it had, I found, been now
+completely transformed, and was a most tasteful little nest of luxury
+with its bright chintzes, its Turkey rugs and its cheerful fire on the
+old stone hearth.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed when I expressed admiration of her little den, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe it was the armory in the old days. But it makes quite a comfy
+little boudoir. I can lock myself in and be quite quiet when the party
+are too noisy,&quot; she added merrily.</p>
+
+<p>But as my eyes wandered around they suddenly fell upon an object which
+caused me to start with profound wonder&mdash;a cabinet photograph in a frame
+of crimson leather.</p>
+
+<p>The picture was that of a young girl&mdash;a duplicate of the portrait I had
+found torn across and flung aside on board the <i>Lola</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The merry eyes laughed out at me as I stood staring at it in sheer
+bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a pretty girl!&quot; I exclaimed quickly, concealing my surprise. &quot;Who
+is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My companion was silent a moment, her dark eyes meeting mine with a
+strange look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she laughed, &quot;everyone admires her. She was a schoolfellow of
+mine&mdash;Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heath!&quot; I echoed. &quot;Where was she at school with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Chichester.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Long ago?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A little over two years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's very beautiful!&quot; I declared, taking up the photograph and
+discovering that it bore the name of the same well-known photographer in
+New Bond Street as that I had found on the carpet of the <i>Lola</i> in the
+Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. She's really prettier than her photograph. It hardly does her
+justice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where is she now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Gregg?&quot; laughed the handsome girl.
+&quot;Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I answered
+with mock severity. &quot;I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a
+flirt, could she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I will give you your due,&quot; she declared. &quot;You never do flirt. That
+is why I like you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks for your candor, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only,&quot; she added, &quot;you seem smitten with Elma's charms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think she's extremely pretty,&quot; I remarked, with the photograph still
+in my hand. &quot;Do you ever see her now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never,&quot; she replied. &quot;Since the day I left school we have never met.
+She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after
+I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I
+have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a
+doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, retained knowledge of
+the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I
+might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was
+somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.</p>
+
+<p>What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single
+instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the
+picture which had created such a deep impression upon me should be
+preserved in her own little boudoir as a souvenir of a devoted
+school-friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have heard absolutely nothing as to her present position or
+whereabouts&mdash;whether she is married, for instance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she cried mischievously. &quot;You betray yourself by your own words.
+You have fallen in love with her, I really believe, Mr. Gregg. If she
+knew, she'd be most gratified&mdash;or at least, she ought to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At which I smiled, preferring that she should adopt that theory in
+preference to any other.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke frankly, as a pure honest girl would speak. She was not
+jealous, but she nevertheless resented&mdash;as women do resent such
+things&mdash;that I should fall in love with a friend's photograph.</p>
+
+<p>There was a mystery surrounding that torn picture; of that I was
+absolutely certain. The remembrance of that memorable evening when I had
+dined on board the <i>Lola</i> arose vividly before me. Why had the girl's
+portrait been so ruthlessly destroyed and the frame turned with its face
+to the wall? There was some reason&mdash;some distinct and serious motive in
+it. Had Muriel told me the truth, I wondered, or was she merely seeking
+to shield the suspected man who was her lover?</p>
+
+<p>Hour by hour the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more
+inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the
+London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no
+house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of
+Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the
+castle, I found that they were really persons unknown in society. They
+were merely of that class of witty, well-dressed parasites who always
+cling on to the wealthy and make believe that they are smart and of the
+<i>grande monde</i>. Rannoch was an expensive place to keep up, with all that
+big retinue of servants and gamekeepers, and with those nightly dinners
+cooked by a French <i>chef</i>; yet Leithcourt seemed to possess a long
+pocket and smiled upon those parasites, officers of doubtful commission
+and younger sprigs of the pseudo-aristocracy who surrounded him, while
+his wife, keen-eyed and of superb bearing, was punctilious concerning
+all points of etiquette, and at the same time indefatigable that her
+mixed set of guests should enjoy a really good time.</p>
+
+<p>But I was not the only person who could not make them out. My uncle was
+the first to open my eyes regarding the true character of certain of the
+men staying at Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think, Gordon, that one or two of those fellows with Leithcourt are
+rank outsiders,&quot; he said confidentially to me one night after we had had
+a hard day's shooting, and were playing a hundred up at billiards before
+retiring. &quot;One man, who arrived yesterday, I know too well. He was
+struck off the list at Boodle's three years ago for card-sharping&mdash;that
+thin-faced, fair-mustached man named Cadby. I suppose Leithcourt doesn't
+know it, or he wouldn't have him up here among respectable folk.&quot; And my
+uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half
+inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed
+beyond the pale of good society.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better not say anything about it,&quot; I urged. &quot;It's Leithcourt's own
+affair, uncle&mdash;not ours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be
+allowed to ask us to meet such fellows. It's coming it a little too
+thick, Gordon. We men can stand the women of the party, but the
+men&mdash;well, I tell you candidly, I shan't accept his invites to shoot
+again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, uncle,&quot; I protested. &quot;Probably it's owing to ignorance. You'll
+be able, a little later on, to give him valuable tips. He's a good
+fellow, and only wants experience in Scotland to get along all right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. But I don't like it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a
+fair game,&quot; declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. &quot;I'm
+not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my
+house&mdash;and I tell you that plainly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next day I shot with the Carmichaels of Crossburn, and about four
+o'clock, after a good day, took leave of the party in the Black Glen,
+and started off alone to walk home, a distance of about six miles. It
+was already growing dusk, and would be quite dark, I knew, before I
+reached my uncle's house. My most direct way was to follow the river for
+about two miles and then strike straight across the large dense wood,
+and afterwards over a wide moor full of treacherous bogs and pitfalls
+for the unwary.</p>
+
+<p>My gun over my shoulder, I had walked on for about three-quarters of an
+hour, and had nearly traversed the wood, at that hour so dark that I had
+considerable difficulty in finding my way, when&mdash;of a sudden&mdash;I fancied
+I distinguished voices.</p>
+
+<p>I halted. Yes. Men were talking in low tones of confidence, and in that
+calm stillness of evening they appeared nearer to me than they actually
+were.</p>
+
+<p>I listened, trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out
+nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself,
+for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs
+cracking as they forced their way through them.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, while standing there not daring to breathe lest I should
+betray my presence, a strange sound fell upon my eager ears.</p>
+
+<p>Next moment I realized that I was at that place where Leithcourt so
+persistently kept his disappointed tryst, having approached it from
+within the wood.</p>
+
+<p>The sound alarmed me, and yet it was neither an explosion of fire-arms
+nor a startling cry for help.</p>
+
+<p>One word reached me in the darkness&mdash;one single word of bitter and
+withering reproach.</p>
+
+<p>Heedless of the risk I ran and the peril to which I exposed myself, I
+dashed forward with a resolve to penetrate the mystery, until I came to
+the gap in the rough stone wall where Leithcourt's habit was to halt
+each day at sundown.</p>
+
+<p>There, in the falling darkness, the sight that met my eyes at the spot
+held me rigid, appalled, stupefied.</p>
+
+<p>In that instant I realized the truth&mdash;a truth that was surely the
+strangest ever revealed to any man.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>As I dashed forward to the gap in the boundary wall of the wood, I
+nearly stumbled over a form lying across the narrow path.</p>
+
+<p>So dark was it beneath the trees that at first I could not plainly make
+out what it was until I bent and my hands touched the garments of a
+woman. Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the
+cloak was a thick woolen one.</p>
+
+<p>Was she dead, I wondered? That cry&mdash;that single word of
+reproach&mdash;sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been
+struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words.</p>
+
+<p>I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
+Yet just at that moment my strained ears caught a sound&mdash;the sound of
+someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
+demanded who was there.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
+ceased.</p>
+
+<p>As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
+about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
+however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
+well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
+feet was a woman. But whom?</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
+matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
+receding&mdash;escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
+of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
+thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
+stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.</p>
+
+<p>I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
+so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
+wall of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
+was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
+runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
+land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
+blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
+in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.</p>
+
+<p>Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
+the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
+the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
+behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
+two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
+it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
+or other of the two glens&mdash;which I could not decide.</p>
+
+<p>I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
+to act.</p>
+
+<p>Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?</p>
+
+<p>That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
+boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
+excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
+and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
+castle where the guests, ready dressed, were assembling prior to
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>I was welcomed warmly, as I was always by the men of the party, who
+seeing my muddy plight at once offered me a glass of the sportsman's
+drink in Scotland, and while I was adding soda to it Leithcourt himself
+joined his guests, ready dressed in his dinner jacket, having just
+descended from his room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa, Gregg!&quot; he exclaimed heartily, holding out his hand. &quot;Had a
+long day of it, evidently. Good sport with Carmichael&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very fair,&quot; I said. &quot;I remained longer with him than I ought to have
+done, and have got belated on my way home, so looked in for a
+refresher.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite right,&quot; he laughed merrily. &quot;You're always welcome, you know. I'd
+have been annoyed if I knew you had passed without coming in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And Muriel, a pretty figure in a low-cut gown of turquoise chiffon,
+standing behind her father, smiled secretly at me. I smiled at her in
+return, but it was a strange smile, I fear, for with the knowledge of
+that additional mystery within me&mdash;the mystery of the woman lying
+unconscious or perhaps dead, up in the wood&mdash;held me stupefied.</p>
+
+<p>I had suspected Leithcourt because of his constant trysts at that spot,
+but I had at least proved that my suspicions were entirely without
+foundation. He could not have got home and dressed in the time, for I
+had taken the nearest route to the castle while the fugitive would be
+compelled to make a wide detour.</p>
+
+<p>I only remained a few minutes, then went forth into the darkness again,
+utterly undecided how to act. My first impulse was to return to the
+woman's aid, for she might not be dead after all.</p>
+
+<p>And yet when I recollected that hoarse cry that rang out in the
+darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this
+latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You
+will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there
+suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had so
+ingeniously escaped.</p>
+
+<p>If the victim were dead, what aid could I render? A knife had, I
+believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started
+off after the fugitive. The only doubt in my own mind was whether the
+unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my
+disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave
+it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards
+transpired.</p>
+
+<p>I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
+before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
+Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
+always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
+present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
+and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
+would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
+Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
+knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
+chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
+secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
+very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
+visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
+ignorance of what had transpired.</p>
+
+<p>But who was the woman? Was she young or old?</p>
+
+<p>A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
+that I might examine her features.</p>
+
+<p>One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
+lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
+that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
+from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
+truth?</p>
+
+<p>I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
+certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
+might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
+was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's the gun, I suppose,&quot; I remarked. &quot;I've been carrying it all day,
+and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear,&quot; my uncle
+remarked. &quot;Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They did, but he'd got another engagement&mdash;over at Kenmure Castle, I
+think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
+acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
+hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
+myself?</p>
+
+<p>I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
+the distant gloom, the black line of wood loomed up against the stormy
+sky. The stars were no longer shining and the rain clouds had gathered.
+I stood with my face turned to the dark indistinct spot that held the
+secret, lost in wonderment.</p>
+
+<p>At last I closed the window and turned in, but no sleep came to my
+eyes, so full was my mind of the startling events of those past few
+months and of that gruesome discovery I had made.</p>
+
+<p>Had the fugitive actually recognized me? Probably my voice when I had
+called out had betrayed me. Hour after hour I lay puzzling, trying to
+arrive at some solution of that intricate problem which now presented
+itself. Muriel could tell me what I wished to know. Of that I was
+certain. Yet she dared not speak. Some inexpressible terror held her
+dumb&mdash;she was affianced to the man Martin Woodroffe.</p>
+
+<p>Again I rose, lit the gas, and tried to read a novel. But I could not
+concentrate my thoughts, which were ever wandering to that strange
+mystery of the wood. At six I shaved, descended, and went out with the
+dogs for a short walk; but on returning I heard of nothing unusual, and
+was compelled to remain inactive until near mid-day.</p>
+
+<p>I was crossing the stable-yard where I had gone to order the carriage
+for my aunt, when an English groom, suddenly emerging from the
+harness-room, touched his cap, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you 'eard, sir, of the awful affair up yonder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of what?&quot; I asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, there seems to have been a murder last night up in Rannoch
+Wood,&quot; said the man quickly. &quot;Holden, the gardener, has just come back
+from that village and says that Mr. Leithcourt's under-gamekeeper as he
+was going home at five this morning came upon a dead body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dead body!&quot; I exclaimed, feigning great surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir&mdash;a youngish man. He'd been stabbed to the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir&mdash;so Holden says.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Call Holden. I'd like to know all he's heard,&quot; I said. And presently,
+when the gardener emerged from the grape-house, I sought of him all the
+particulars he had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know very much, sir,&quot; was the man's reply. &quot;I went into the inn
+for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking
+about it. A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood. The
+gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but
+from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a
+stranger in this district.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The body was that of a man, then?&quot; I asked, trying to conceal my utter
+bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes&mdash;about thirty, they say. The police have taken him to the mortuary
+at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot,
+they say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman&mdash;that I could swear.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.</p>
+
+<p>When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to
+be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I
+thought, with considerable suspicion. My request was an unusual one.
+Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found
+myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death. From a small dingy window
+above the light fell upon an object lying upon a large slab of gray
+stone and covered with a soiled sheet.</p>
+
+<p>The sight was ghastly and gruesome; the body lay there awaiting the
+official inquiry into the cause of death. The silence of the tomb was
+unbroken, save for the heavy tread of the policeman, who having removed
+his helmet in the presence of the dead, lifted the end of the sheet,
+revealing to me a white, hard-set face, with closed eyes and dropped
+jaw.</p>
+
+<p>I started back as my eyes fell upon the dead countenance. I was entirely
+unprepared for such a revelation. The truth staggered me.</p>
+
+<p>The victim was the man who had acted as my friend&mdash;the Italian waiter,
+Olinto.</p>
+
+<p>I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to
+realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death
+distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in
+identifying him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You recognize him, sir?&quot; remarked the officer. &quot;Who is he? Our people
+are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't
+succeeded in establishing his identity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that
+man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge
+must of necessity reflect upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will see your inspector,&quot; I answered with as much calmness as I could
+muster. &quot;Where has the poor fellow been wounded?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Through the heart,&quot; responded the constable, as turning the sheet
+further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the
+victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the weapon,&quot; he added, taking from a shelf close by a long,
+thin poignard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old
+Florentine <i>misericordia</i>, a long thin, triangular blade, a quarter of
+an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a
+hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and
+poignards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles
+produced a wound that caused internal hemorrhage and which never
+healed&mdash;hence the name given to it by the Florentines.</p>
+
+<p>It was still blood-stained, but as I took the deadly thing in my hand I
+saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen
+of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a
+weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate the heart.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the person struck down was a woman, and not a man!</p>
+
+<p>A wound from a <i>misericordia</i> always proves fatal, because the shape of
+the blade cuts the flesh into little flaps which, on withdrawing the
+knife, close up and prevent the blood from issuing forth. At the same
+time, however, no power can make them heal again. A blow from such a
+weapon is as surely fatal as the poisoned poignard of the Borgia or the
+Medici.</p>
+
+<p>I handed the stiletto back to the man without comment. My resolve was to
+say as little as possible, for I had no desire to figure publicly at the
+inquiry, and consequently negative all my own efforts to solve the
+mystery of the Leithcourts and of Martin Woodroffe.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to where the figure was lying so ghastly and motionless, and
+looked again for the last time upon the dead face of the man who had
+served me so well, and yet who had enticed me so nearly to my death. In
+the latter incident there was a deep mystery. He had relented at the
+last moment, just in time to save me from my secret enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be that my enemies were his? Had he fallen a victim by the same
+hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me?</p>
+
+<p>Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in
+order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was
+Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to
+meet someone in secret?</p>
+
+<p>As I glanced down at the cold, inanimate countenance upon which mystery
+was written, I became seized by regret. He had been a faithful and
+honest servant, and even though he had enticed me to that fatal house in
+Lambeth, yet I recollected his words, how he had done so under
+compulsion. I remembered, too, how he had implored me not to prejudge
+him before I became aware of the full facts.</p>
+
+<p>With my own hand I re-covered the face with the sheet, and inwardly
+resolved to avenge the dastardly crime.</p>
+
+<p>I regretted that I was compelled to reveal the dead man's name to the
+police, yet I saw that to make some statement was now inevitable, and
+therefore I accompanied the constable to the inspector's office some
+distance across the town.</p>
+
+<p>Having been introduced to the big, fair-haired man in a rough tweed
+suit, who was apparently directing the inquiries into the affair, he
+took me eagerly into a small back room and began to question me. I was,
+however, wary not to commit myself to anything further than the
+identification of the body.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fact is,&quot; I said confidentially, &quot;you must omit me from the
+witnesses at the inquest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot; asked the detective suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because if it were known that I have identified him, all chance of
+getting at the truth will at once vanish,&quot; I answered. &quot;I have come here
+to tell you in strictest confidence who the poor fellow really is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you know something of the affair?&quot; he said, with a strong Highland
+accent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know nothing,&quot; I declared. &quot;Nothing except his name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;H'm. And you say he's a foreigner&mdash;an Italian&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was in my service in Leghorn for several years, and on leaving me he
+came to London and obtained an engagement as waiter in a restaurant. His
+father lived in Leghorn; he was doorkeeper at the Prefecture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why was he here, in Scotland?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I tell?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know something of the affair. I mean that you suspect somebody, or
+you would have no objection to giving evidence at the inquiry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no suspicions. To me the affair is just as much of an enigma as
+to you,&quot; I hastened at once to explain. &quot;My only fear is that if the
+assassin knew that I had identified him he would take care not to betray
+himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You therefore think he will betray himself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the fact that the man was attacked with an Italian stiletto, it
+would seem that his assailant was a fellow-countryman,&quot; suggested the
+detective.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The evidence certainly points to that,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't happen to be aware of anyone&mdash;any foreigner, I mean&mdash;who was,
+or might be his enemy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I responded in the negative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah,&quot; he went on, &quot;these foreigners are always fighting among themselves
+and using knives. I did ten years' service in Edinburgh and made lots of
+arrests for stabbing affrays. Italians, like Greeks, are a dangerous lot
+when their blood is up.&quot; Then he added: &quot;Personally, it seems to me that
+the murdered man was enticed from London to that spot and coolly done
+away with&mdash;from some motive of revenge, most probably.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most probably,&quot; I said. &quot;A vendetta, perhaps. I live in Italy, and
+therefore know the Italians well,&quot; I added.</p>
+
+<p>I had given him my card, and told him with whom I was staying.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where were you yesterday, sir?&quot; he inquired presently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was shooting&mdash;on the other side of the Nithsdale,&quot; I answered, and
+then went on to explain my movements, without, however, mentioning my
+visit to Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And although you know the murdered man so intimately, you have no
+suspicion of anyone in this district who was acquainted with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know no one who knew him. When he left my service he had never been
+in England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say he was engaged in service in London?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, at a restaurant in Oxford Street, I believe. I met him
+accidentally in Pall Mall one evening, and he told me so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know the name of the restaurant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He did tell me, but unfortunately I have forgotten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The detective drew a deep breath of regret.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Someone who waited for him on the edge of that wood stepped out and
+killed him&mdash;that's evident,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without a doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And my belief is that it was an Italian. There were two foreigners who
+slept at a common lodging-house two nights ago and went on tramp towards
+Glasgow. We have telegraphed after them, and hope we shall find them.
+Scotsmen or Englishmen never use a knife of that pattern.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With his latter remark I entirely coincided. In my own mind that was the
+strongest argument in favor of Leithcourt's innocence. That the tenant
+of Rannoch had kept that secret tryst in daily patience I knew from my
+own observations, yet to me it scarcely seemed feasible that he would
+use a weapon so peculiarly Italian and yet so terribly deadly.</p>
+
+<p>And then when I reflected further, recollecting that the body I had
+discovered was that of a woman and not a man, I stood staggered and
+bewildered by the utterly inexplicable enigma.</p>
+
+<p>I promised the burly detective that in exchange for his secrecy
+regarding my statement that I would assist him in every manner possible
+in the solution of the problem.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The real name of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld,&quot; I
+urged. &quot;It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only
+by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his
+name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know that
+I have identified him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said with some hesitation, &quot;while I am believed to be in
+ignorance we shall have opportunity for obtaining the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you do really suspect?&quot; he said, again looking at me with those
+cold, blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know not whom to suspect,&quot; I declared. &quot;It is a mystery why the man
+who was once my faithful servant should be enticed to that wood and
+stabbed to the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no one in the vicinity who knew him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not to my knowledge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We might obtain his address in London through his father in Leghorn,&quot;
+suggested the officer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will write to-day if you so desire,&quot; I said readily. &quot;Indeed, I will
+get my friend the British Consul to go round and see the old man and
+telegraph the address if he obtains it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Capital!&quot; he declared. &quot;If you will do us this favor we shall be
+greatly indebted to you. It is fortunate that we have established the
+victim's identity&mdash;otherwise we might be entirely in the dark. A
+murdered foreigner is always more or less of a mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, then and there, I took a sheet of paper and wrote to my old
+friend Hutcheson at Leghorn, asking him to make immediate inquiry of
+Olinto's father as to his son's address in London.</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing to the police of that strange adventure of mine over in
+Lambeth, or of how the man now dead had saved my life. That his enemies
+were my own he had most distinctly told me, therefore I felt some
+apprehension that I myself was not safe. Yet in my hip pocket I always
+carried my revolver&mdash;just as I did in Italy&mdash;and I rather prided myself
+on my ability to shoot straight.</p>
+
+<p>We sat for a long time discussing the strange affair. In order to betray
+no eagerness to get away, I offered the big Highlander a cigar from my
+case, and we smoked together. The inquiry would be held on the morrow,
+he told me, but as far as the public was concerned the body would remain
+as that of some person &quot;unknown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you had better not come to my uncle's house, or send anyone,&quot; I
+said. &quot;If you desire to see me, send me a line and I will meet you here
+in Dumfries. It will be safer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The officer looked at me with those keen eyes of his, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really, Mr. Gregg, I can't quite make you out, I confess. You seem to
+be apprehensive of your own safety. Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Italians are a very curious people,&quot; I responded quickly. &quot;Their
+vendetta extends widely sometimes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have reason to believe that the enemy of this poor fellow
+Santini may be your enemy also?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One never knows whom one offends when living in Italy,&quot; I laughed, as
+lightly as I could, endeavoring to allay his suspicion. &quot;He may have
+fallen beneath the assassin's knife by giving quite a small and possibly
+innocent offense to somebody. Italian methods are not English, you
+know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By Jove, sir, and I'm jolly glad they're not!&quot; he said. &quot;I shouldn't
+think a police officer's life is a very safe one among all those secret
+murder societies I've read about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! what you read about them is often very much exaggerated,&quot; I assured
+him. &quot;It is the vendetta which is such a stain upon the character of the
+modern Italian; and depend upon it this affair in Rannoch Wood is the
+outcome of some revenge or other&mdash;probably over a love affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you will assist us, sir?&quot; he urged. &quot;You know the Italian language,
+which will be of great advantage; besides, the victim was your servant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be discreet,&quot; I said. &quot;And in return I will do my very utmost to assist
+you in hunting down the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And thus we made our compact. Half-an-hour after I was driving in the
+dog-cart through the pouring rain up the hill out of gray old Dumfries
+to my uncle's house.</p>
+
+<p>As I descended from the cart and gave it over to a groom, old Davis, the
+butler, came forward, saying in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's Miss Leithcourt waiting to see you, Mr. Gordon. She's in the
+morning-room, and been there an hour. She asked me not to tell anyone
+else she's here, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then my aunt has not seen her?&quot; I exclaimed, scenting mystery in this
+unexpected visit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir. She wishes to see you alone, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I walked across the big hall and along the corridor to the room the old
+man had indicated.</p>
+
+<p>And as I opened the door and Muriel Leithcourt in plain black rose to
+meet me, I plainly saw from her white, haggard countenance that
+something had happened&mdash;that she had been forced by circumstances to
+come to me in strictest confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Was she, I wondered, about to reveal to me the truth?</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gregg,&quot; exclaimed the girl with agitation, as she put forth her
+black-gloved hand, &quot;I&mdash;I suppose you know&mdash;you've heard all about the
+discovery to-day up at the wood? I need not tell you anything about it&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Miss Leithcourt, I only wish you would tell me about it,&quot; I said
+gravely, inviting her to a chair and seating myself. &quot;I've heard some
+extraordinary story about a man being found dead, but I've been in
+Dumfries nearly all day. Who is the man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! that we don't know,&quot; she replied, pale-faced and anxious. Her
+attitude was as though she wished to confide in me and yet still
+hesitated to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've been waiting for me quite a long time, Davis tells me. I regret
+that you should have done this. If you had left word that you wished to
+see me, I would have come over to you at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I wanted to see you alone&mdash;that's the reason I am here. They must
+not know at home that I've been over here, so I purposely asked the man
+not to announce me to your aunt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You want to see me privately,&quot; I said in a low, earnest voice. &quot;Why? Is
+there any service I can render you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. A very great one,&quot; she responded with quick eagerness,
+&quot;I&mdash;well&mdash;the fact is, I have summoned courage to come to you and beg
+of you to help me. I am in great distress&mdash;and I have not a single
+friend whom I can trust&mdash;in whom I can confide.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall esteem it the highest honor if you will trust me,&quot; I said in
+deep earnestness. &quot;I can only assure you that I will remain loyal to
+your interests and to yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! I believe you will, Mr. Gregg!&quot; she declared with enthusiasm, her
+large, dark eyes turned upon me&mdash;the eyes of a woman in sheer and bitter
+despair. Her face was perfect, one of the most handsome I had ever gazed
+upon. The more I saw of her the greater was the fascination she held
+over me.</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell between us as she sat with her gloved hands lying idly in
+her lap. Her lips moved nervously, but no sound came from them, so
+agitated was she, so eager to tell me something; and yet at the same
+time reluctant to take me into her confidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I asked at last in a low voice. &quot;I am quite ready to render you
+any service, if you will only command me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! But I fear what I require will strike you as so unusual&mdash;you will
+hesitate to act when I explain what service I require of you,&quot; she said
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot tell you until I hear your wishes,&quot; I said, smiling, and yet
+puzzled at her attitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It concerns the terrible discovery made up in Rannoch Wood,&quot; she said
+in a hoarse, nervous voice at last. &quot;That unknown man was
+murdered&mdash;stabbed to the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she said, scarcely above a whisper, &quot;I have suspicions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of the murdered man's identity?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Of the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at her sharply and saw the intense look in her dark, wide-open
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You believe you know who dealt the blow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a suspicion&mdash;that is all. Only I want you to help me, if you
+will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most certainly,&quot; I responded. &quot;But if you believe you know the assassin
+you probably know something of the victim?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only that he looked like a foreigner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have seen him?&quot; I exclaimed, much surprised.</p>
+
+<p>My remark caused her to hold her breath for an instant. Then she
+answered, rather lamely, it seemed to me:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw him when the keepers brought the body to the castle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the
+dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore,
+that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end?</p>
+
+<p>I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but,
+nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very
+peculiar fact.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You judge him to be a foreigner?&quot; I remarked as casually as I could.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From his features and complexion I guessed him to be Italian,&quot; she
+responded quickly, at which I pretended to express surprise. &quot;I saw him
+after the keepers had found him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides,&quot; she went on, &quot;the stiletto was evidently an Italian one,
+which would almost make it appear that a foreigner was the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that your own suspicion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment, then in a low, eager voice she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because I have already seen that three-edged knife in another person's
+possession.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's pretty strong evidence,&quot; I declared. &quot;The person in question
+will have to prove that he was not in Rannoch Wood last evening at
+nightfall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you know it was done at nightfall?&quot; she asked quickly with some
+surprise, half-rising from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I merely surmised that it was,&quot; I responded, inwardly blaming myself
+for my ill-timed admission.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she said with a slight sigh, &quot;there is more mystery in this affair
+than we have yet discovered, Mr. Gregg. What, I wonder, brought the
+unfortunate young man up into our wood?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An appointment, without a doubt. But with whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father often goes to that spot to shoot pigeon in the evening. He
+told us so at luncheon to-day. How fortunate he was not there last
+night, or he might be suspected.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;It is a very fortunate circumstance, for it cannot be a
+pleasant experience to be under suspicion of being an assassin. He was
+at home last night, was he?&quot; I added casually.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. Don't you recollect that when you called he chatted with
+you? I did some typewriting for him in the study, and we were together
+all the afternoon&mdash;or at least till nearly five o'clock, when we went
+out into the hall to tea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then what is your theory regarding the affair?&quot; I inquired, rather
+puzzled why she should so decisively prove an alibi for her father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems certain that the poor fellow went to the wood by appointment,
+and was killed. But have you been up to the spot since the finding of
+the body?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Have you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. The affair interested me, and as soon as I recognized the old
+Italian knife in the hand of the keeper, I went up there and looked
+about. I am glad I did so, for I found something which seems to have
+escaped the notice of the detectives.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what's that?&quot; I asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, about three yards from the pool of blood where the unfortunate
+foreigner was found is another small pool of blood where the grass and
+ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle
+there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have
+staggered some distance before he fell dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall,
+would he not?&quot; she suggested. &quot;No. The police seem very dense, and this
+plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as
+what you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I
+believe that a second person also fell a victim,&quot; she added in a low,
+distinct tone.</p>
+
+<p>I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth?
+Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A second person!&quot; I echoed, as though in surprise. &quot;Then do you believe
+that a double murder was committed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck
+in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which
+separates the one mark from the other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he might have been slightly wounded&mdash;on the hand, or in the
+face&mdash;at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck
+fatally,&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her
+confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some
+unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments
+later she said to me:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is for this reason, Mr. Gregg, that I have sought you in confidence.
+Nobody must know that I have come here to you, or they would suspect;
+and if suspicion fell upon me it would bring upon me a fate worse than
+death. Remember, therefore, that my future is entirely in your hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't quite understand,&quot; I said, rising and standing before her in
+the fading twilight, while the rain drove upon the old diamond window
+panes. &quot;But I can only assure you that whatever confidence you repose in
+me, I shall never abuse, Miss Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, I know!&quot; she said quickly. &quot;I trust you in this matter
+implicitly. I have come to you for many reasons, chief of them being
+that if a second victim has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, it
+is, I know, a woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A woman! Whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At present I cannot tell you. I must first establish the true facts. If
+this woman were really stricken down, then her body lies concealed
+somewhere in the vicinity. We must find it and bring home the crime to
+the guilty one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if we succeed in finding it, could we place our hand upon the
+assassin?&quot; I asked, looking straight at her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we find it, the crime would then tell its own tale&mdash;it would convict
+the person in whose hand I have seen that fatal weapon,&quot; was her clear,
+bold answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you wish me to assist you in this search, Miss Leithcourt?&quot; I
+said, wondering if her suspicions rested upon that mysterious yachtsman,
+Philip Hornby, the man to whom she was engaged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I would beg of you to do your utmost in secret to endeavor to
+discover the body of the second victim. It is a woman&mdash;of that I am
+certain. Find her, and we shall then be able to bring the crime home to
+the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But my search may bring suspicion upon me,&quot; I remarked. &quot;It will be
+difficult to examine the whole wood without arousing the curiosity of
+somebody&mdash;the keeper or the police.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have already thought of that,&quot; she said. &quot;I will pretend to-morrow to
+lose this watch-bracelet in the wood,&quot; and she held up her slim wrist to
+show me the little enameled watch set in her bracelet. &quot;Then you and I
+will search for it diligently, and the police will never suspect the
+real reason of our investigation. To-morrow I shall write to you telling
+you about my loss, and you will come over to Rannoch and offer to help
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is Mr. Woodroffe back at the castle? I heard he was to return to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I had a letter from him from Bordeaux a week ago. He is still on
+the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he
+sometimes has business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr.
+Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company,&quot; I
+explained, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks flushed slightly, as though confused at my reference to her
+engagement, and she said mischievously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see why he should object in the least. If you are good enough
+to assist me to search for my bracelet, he surely ought to be much
+obliged to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to that dark-eyed, handsome
+girl the circumstances in which I had met her lover on the sunny
+Mediterranean shore, yet prudence forbade me to refer to the matter, and
+I at once gladly accepted her invitation to investigate the curious
+disappearance of the body of poor Olinto's fellow-victim.</p>
+
+<p>What secret knowledge could be possessed by that smart, handsome girl
+before me? That her suspicions were in the right direction I felt
+confident, yet if the dead woman had been removed and hidden by the
+assassin it must have been after the discovery made by me. The fellow
+must have actually dared to return to the spot and carry off the victim.
+Yet if he had actually done that, why did he allow the corpse of the
+Italian to remain and await discovery? He might perhaps have been
+disturbed and compelled to make good his escape.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some
+assistance,&quot; I pointed out. &quot;He could not have carried the body very far
+unaided.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had
+been committed alone and unaided.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you any idea as to the motive?&quot; I asked her, eager to hear her
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she answered hesitatingly, &quot;if the woman has fallen a victim,
+the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a
+complete mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny
+all knowledge of the murdered man!&quot; I exclaimed in a tone of slight
+reproach.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,&quot;
+was her answer. &quot;I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect
+is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most
+startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the
+life of another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then a man is the assassin, you think?&quot; I exclaimed quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so. But even of that I am not at all sure. We must first find
+the woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly
+<i>misericordia</i> that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had
+discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had
+been committed. But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own
+suspicions might become aroused. My own policy was to remain silent and
+to wait. The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little
+way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her
+departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left
+by one of the servants' entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart
+and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the
+gloom.</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I
+stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where
+Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking
+me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to
+Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone
+over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll
+together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or
+hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high
+shooting-boots and a tam-o'-shanter hat, while I also had on an old
+shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could
+prod likely spots.</p>
+
+<p>On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely
+corner, but she replied:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years,
+while this is only my first season here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; I answered. &quot;Let us place ourselves in the position of the
+murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the
+vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the
+wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords
+but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the
+valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore
+have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place
+to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle,
+examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
+beneath a thicket and well escape observation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
+way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
+minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
+great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
+very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
+which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
+surmise.</p>
+
+<p>All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
+Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
+received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
+scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
+any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
+admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
+that spot.</p>
+
+<p>More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
+discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
+such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
+complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
+be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
+watchful.</p>
+
+<p>When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
+was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
+find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
+was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
+beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
+stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
+wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
+of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
+point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
+mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
+no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
+wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
+kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
+covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
+fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
+undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
+fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is a most likely place,&quot; declared my dainty little companion as we
+approached it. &quot;Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
+down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end,&quot; she cried
+with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
+descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
+and then by springing from stone to stone&mdash;sometimes slipping into the
+water, be it said&mdash;we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
+examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
+athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
+water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
+and wringing out her wet skirt, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
+of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
+steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
+the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
+openly denounce the assassin.</p>
+
+<p>As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
+connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
+Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the <i>Bulwark</i>
+and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
+left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
+not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
+original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed&mdash;that
+girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
+hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
+was marvelous&mdash;and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
+determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
+truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
+convicting the guilty one?</p>
+
+<p>Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
+a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
+save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
+in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
+years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
+tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
+ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
+windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
+ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
+afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
+our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
+boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
+I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Someone is there,&quot; I whispered quickly. &quot;Behind that rock.&quot; She nodded
+in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.</p>
+
+<p>We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
+other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
+was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
+being disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
+intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
+huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
+diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
+This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
+the utterance of a single word.</p>
+
+<p>To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
+shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
+side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
+slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
+summit.</p>
+
+<p>Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
+figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
+glen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who are they, I wonder?&quot; I asked. &quot;Do you recognize them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. They are entire strangers to me,&quot; was her answer. &quot;But they seem
+fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
+the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I don't think they carried guns,&quot; I said. &quot;One of them had
+something over his shoulder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short&mdash;and
+seemed more like a spade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A spade!&quot; she gasped quickly in a low voice. &quot;A spade! Are you certain
+of that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
+We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
+broad and square&mdash;the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
+the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles.&quot; She only spoke in a
+whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.</p>
+
+<p>I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
+that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
+curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
+the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
+recently disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a spade the man is carrying!&quot; I cried excitedly. &quot;Look down
+there! They've just been burying something!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I really believe they have concealed something!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
+down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
+that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.</p>
+
+<p>Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
+we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
+freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
+with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
+had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
+really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
+large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
+over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
+high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
+ground had ever been interfered with.</p>
+
+<p>Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
+long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
+But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
+silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
+soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
+stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
+progress was very slow and difficult.</p>
+
+<p>At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
+standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
+suddenly cried:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why&mdash;whatever is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
+that I was held dumb and motionless.</p>
+
+<p>By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
+rather than diminished.</p>
+
+<p>I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
+blankly into my companion's face.</p>
+
+<p>The amazing enigma was surely complete!</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>CONTAINS A SURPRISE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
+was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
+proved to be part of a woman's skirt.</p>
+
+<p>With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
+soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.</p>
+
+<p>A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
+had dug.</p>
+
+<p>Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
+from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
+woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
+Olinto. Both had been assassinated!</p>
+
+<p>When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
+expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
+she had expected to find.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is she, I wonder?&quot; my companion ejaculated. &quot;Not a lady, evidently,
+by her dress and hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Evidently not,&quot; was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
+own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
+of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
+countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
+were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.</p>
+
+<p>Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
+black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
+was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
+dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
+issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
+struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those men&mdash;those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?&quot; my
+companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. &quot;We must follow them and
+ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
+and concealed the evidence of this second crime.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;Let us go after them. They must not escape us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
+waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
+point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
+disappeared in the darkness of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
+suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
+back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
+familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
+could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.</p>
+
+<p>We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and
+evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.
+But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night
+bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew
+their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had
+nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be
+already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet
+even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that
+of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat
+nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.</p>
+
+<p>We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew
+bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely
+faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills
+looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had
+so secretly concealed the body of their victim.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I said. &quot;And then
+I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be
+arrested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, do,&quot; she urged. &quot;I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for
+they must not see me in this terrible plight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as
+she did so I felt that she was shivering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are very wet,&quot; I remarked. &quot;I hope you won't take cold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and
+very often get drenched,&quot; was her reply. Then after a pause she said:
+&quot;We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and
+her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I think so,&quot; was my reply. &quot;I will tell the police all that we
+have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,&quot;
+she declared. &quot;One of them&mdash;the one in brown&mdash;was unusually
+broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?&quot;
+I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she answered. &quot;I expected to find an entirely different person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with
+whom you are acquainted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the
+identity of the assassins?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter
+in the hands of the police.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if the identity of the dead woman is established?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It might furnish me with a clue,&quot; she exclaimed quickly. &quot;Yes, try and
+discover who she is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was the woman you expected to find?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A friend&mdash;a very dear friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you not tell me her name?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, it would be unfair to her,&quot; she responded decisively, an answer
+which to me was particularly tantalizing.</p>
+
+<p>On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not
+strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger
+still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from
+Scotland, but away to the Continent?</p>
+
+<p>Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?</p>
+
+<p>It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who,
+tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good
+fortune in my investigations.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything,
+won't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind
+the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across
+the open fields to my uncle's house.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief
+police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair
+Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the
+previous day.</p>
+
+<p>When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related
+my adventure and the result of my investigation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What?&quot; he cried, jumping up. &quot;You've unearthed another body&mdash;a
+woman's?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have. And what is more, I can identify her,&quot; I replied. &quot;Her name is
+Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then both husband and wife were killed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without a doubt&mdash;a double tragedy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must find them.&quot; And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave
+him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all
+the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a
+charge of willful murder.</p>
+
+<p>When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned
+to me and asked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What induced you to search the wood? Why did you suspect a second
+crime?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His question nonplused me for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him
+to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had
+accompanied him here. It was entirely a vague surmise. I wondered
+whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had
+not also been struck down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction. I knew my
+explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import
+Muriel's name into the affair. I had given her my promise, and I
+intended to keep it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. If you wish, I will take you to the spot. I can drive you and your
+assistant up there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. Let us go,&quot; he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his
+bell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this
+gentleman's trap outside,&quot; he said to the constable who answered his
+summons. &quot;And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to
+Rannoch Wood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir,&quot; answered the man; and the door again closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity&mdash;a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn't stop those
+two men who buried the body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket
+before I mounted the rock,&quot; I explained. &quot;Besides, at the moment I had
+no suspicion of what they'd been doing. I believed them to be stragglers
+from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, most unfortunate!&quot; he said. &quot;I hope they don't escape us. If
+they're foreigners, they are not likely to get away. But if they're
+English or Scots, then I fear there's but little chance of us coming up
+with them. Yesterday at the inquest the identity of the murdered man was
+strictly preserved, and the inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course my name was not mentioned?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not,&quot; was the detective's reply. Then he asked: &quot;When do you
+expect to get a telegram from your friend, the Consul at Leghorn? I am
+anxious for that, in order that we may commence inquiries in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The day after to-morrow, I hope. He will certainly reply at once,
+providing the dead man's father can still be found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment a tall, thin man, who proved to be Detective
+Campbell, entered, and five minutes later we were all three driving over
+the uneven cobbles of Dumfries and out in the darkness towards Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley;
+but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill
+up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep,
+rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across the
+moor. When we reached the latter we all descended, and I led the horse,
+for owing to the many treacherous bogs it was unsafe to drive further.
+So, with Mackenzie and Campbell carrying lanterns, we walked on
+carefully, skirting the wood for nearly a mile until we came to the
+rough wall over which I had clambered with Muriel.</p>
+
+<p>I recognized the spot, and having tied up the cob we all three plunged
+into the pitch-darkness of the wood, keeping straight on in the
+direction of the glen, and halting every now and then to listen for the
+rippling of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after some difficulty, we discovered it, and searching along
+the bank with our three powerful lights, I presently detected the huge
+moss-grown boulder whereon I had stood when the pair of fugitives had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look!&quot; I cried. &quot;There's the spot!&quot; And quickly we clambered down the
+steep bank, lowering ourselves by the branches of the trees until we
+came to the water into which I waded, being followed closely by my two
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>On gaining the opposite side I clambered up to the base of the boulder
+and lowered my lantern to reveal to them the gruesome evidence of the
+second crime, but the next instant I cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! It's gone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone!&quot; gasped the two men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. It was here. Look! this is the hole where they buried it! But they
+evidently returned, and finding it exhumed, they've retaken possession
+of it and carried it away!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two detectives gazed down to where I indicated, and then looked at
+each other without exchanging a word.</p>
+
+<p>As we stood there dumbfounded at the disappearance of the body, the
+Highlander's quick glance caught something, and stooping he picked it up
+and examined the little object by the aid of his lantern.</p>
+
+<p>Within his palm I saw lying a tiny little gold cross, about an inch
+long, enameled in red, while in the center was a circular miniature of a
+kneeling saint, an elegant and beautifully executed little trinket which
+might have adorned a lady's bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is a pretty little thing!&quot; remarked the detective. &quot;It may
+possibly lead us to something. But, Mr. Gregg,&quot; he added, turning to me,
+&quot;are you quite certain you left the body here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certain?&quot; I echoed. &quot;Why, look at the hole I made. You don't think I
+have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all,&quot; he said apologetically. &quot;Only the whole affair seems so
+very inconceivable&mdash;I mean that the men, having once got rid of the
+evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and re-obtain
+possession of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unless they watched me exhume it, and feared the consequences if it
+fell into your hands,&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course they might have watched you from behind the trees, and when
+you had gone they came and carried it away somewhere else,&quot; he remarked
+dubiously; &quot;but even if they did, it must be in this wood. They would
+never risk carrying a body very far, and here is surely the best place
+of concealment in the whole country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The only thing remaining is to search the wood at daylight,&quot; I
+suggested. &quot;If the two men came back here during my absence they may
+still be on the watch in the vicinity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most probably they are. We must take every precaution,&quot; he said
+decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination
+of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish
+us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate
+Armida had disappeared&mdash;a fact which, knowing all that I did, was
+doubly mysterious.</p>
+
+<p>The pair had, without doubt, watched Muriel and myself, and as soon as
+we had gone they had returned and carried off the ghastly remains of the
+poor woman who had been so foully done to death.</p>
+
+<p>But who were the men&mdash;the fellow with the broad shoulders whom Muriel
+recognized, and the slim seafarer in his pilot-coat and peaked cap? The
+enigma each hour became more and more inscrutable.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn Mackenzie, with four of his men, made a thorough examination of
+the wood, but although they continued until dusk they discovered
+nothing, neither was anything heard of the mysterious seafarer and his
+companion in brown tweeds.</p>
+
+<p>I called on Muriel as arranged, and explained how the body had so
+suddenly disappeared, whereupon she stared at me pale-faced, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The assassins must have watched us! They are aware, then, that we have
+knowledge of their crime?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she cried hoarsely. &quot;Then we are both in deadly peril&mdash;peril of
+our own lives! These people will hesitate at nothing. Both you and I are
+marked down by them, without a doubt. We must both be wary not to fall
+into any trap they may lay for us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her very words seemed an admission that she was aware of the identity of
+the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them.</p>
+
+<p>We went out and up the drive together to the kennels, where her father,
+a tall, imposing figure in his shooting-kit, was giving orders to the
+keepers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa, Gregg!&quot; he cried merrily, extending his hand. &quot;You'll make one
+of a party to Glenlea to-morrow, won't you? Paton and Phillips are
+coming. Ten sharp here, and the ladies are coming out to lunch with us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks,&quot; I said, accepting with pleasure, for by so doing I saw that I
+might be afforded an opportunity of being near Muriel. The fact that the
+assassins were aware of our knowledge seemed to have caused her the
+greatest apprehension lest evil should befall us. Then, as we turned
+away to go back to the house, Leithcourt said to me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know all about the discovery up at the wood the other day! Horrible
+affair&mdash;a young foreigner found murdered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I've heard about it,&quot; I responded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the police are worse than useless,&quot; he declared with disgust. &quot;They
+haven't discovered who the fellow is yet. Why, if it had happened
+anywhere else but in Scotland, they'd have arrested the assassin before
+this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's an entire stranger, I hear,&quot; I remarked. And then added: &quot;You
+often go up to the wood of an evening after pigeons. It's fortunate you
+were not there that evening, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me quickly with his brows slightly contracted, as though
+he did not exactly comprehend me. In an instant I saw that my remark had
+caused him quick apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he answered with a sickly smile which he intended should convey
+to me utter unconcern. &quot;They might have suspected me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It certainly is a disagreeable affair to happen on one's property.&quot; I
+said, still watching him narrowly. And then Muriel at his side managed
+with her feminine ingenuity to divert the conversation into a different
+channel.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I accompanied the party over to Glenlea, about five miles
+distant, and at noon at a spot previously arranged, we found the ladies
+awaiting us with luncheon spread under the trees. As soon as we
+approached Muriel came forward quickly, handing me a telegram, saying
+that it had been sent over by one of my uncle's grooms at the moment
+they were leaving the castle.</p>
+
+<p>I tore it open eagerly, and read its contents. Then, turning to my
+companions, said in as quiet a voice as I could command&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go up to London to-night,&quot; whereat the men, one and all,
+expressed hope that I should soon return. Leithcourt's party were a
+friendly set, and at heart I was sorry to leave Scotland. Yet the
+telegram made it imperative, for it was from Frank Hutcheson in Leghorn,
+and read&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;Made inquiries. Olinto Santini married your servant Armida at Italian
+Consulate-General in London about a year ago. They live 64B, Albany
+Road, Camberwell: he is employed waiter Ferrari's Restaurant,
+Westbourne Grove.&mdash;British Consulate, Leghorn&quot;</i></p>
+
+<p>The lunch was a merry one, as shooting luncheons usually are, and while
+we ate the keepers packed our morning bag&mdash;a considerable one&mdash;into the
+Perth-cart in waiting. Then, when we could wander away alone together, I
+explained to Muriel that the reason of my sudden journey to London was
+in order to continue my investigations regarding the mysterious affair.</p>
+
+<p>This puzzled her, for I had not, of course, revealed to her that I had
+identified Olinto. Yet I managed to make such excuses and promises to
+return that I think allayed all her suspicions, and that night, after
+calling upon the detective Mackenzie, I took the sleeping-car express to
+Euston.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurant which Hutcheson had indicated was, I found, situated
+about half-way up Westbourne Grove, nearly opposite Whiteley's, a small
+place where confectionery and sweets were displayed in the window,
+together with long-necked flasks of Italian chianti, chump-chops, small
+joints and tomatoes. It was soon after nine o'clock when I entered the
+long shop with its rows of marble-topped tables and greasy lounges of
+red plush. An unhealthy-looking lad was sweeping out the place with wet
+saw-dust, and a big, dark-bearded, flabby-faced man in shirt-sleeves
+stood behind the small counter polishing some forks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish to see Signor Ferrari,&quot; I said, addressing him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no Ferrari, he is dead,&quot; responded the man in broken English.
+&quot;My name is Odinzoff. I bought the place from madame.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are Russian, I presume?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Polish, m'sieur&mdash;from Varsovie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had seen from the first moment we had met that he was no Italian. He
+was too bulky, and his face too broad and flat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have come to inquire after a waiter you have in your service, an
+Italian named Santini. He was my servant for some years, and I naturally
+take an interest in him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Santini?&quot; he repeated. &quot;Oh I you mean Olinto? He is not here yet. He
+comes at ten o'clock.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This reply surprised me. I had expected the restaurant-keeper to express
+regret at his disappearance, yet he spoke as though he had been at work
+as usual on the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I have a liqueur brandy?&quot; I asked, seeing that I would be compelled
+to take something. &quot;Perhaps you will have one with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ach no! But a k&uuml;mmel&mdash;yes, I will have a k&uuml;mmel!&quot; And he filled our
+glasses, and tossed off his own at a single gulp, smacking his lips
+after it, for the average Russian dearly loves his national decoction of
+caraway seeds.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You find Olinto a good servant, I suppose?&quot; I said, for want of
+something else to say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent. The Italians are the best waiters in the world. I am
+Russian, but dare not employ a Russian waiter. These English would not
+come to my shop if I did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked around, and it struck me that the trade of the place mainly
+consisted in chops and steaks for chance customers at mid-day, and tea
+and cake for those swarms of women who each afternoon buzz around that
+long line of windows of the &quot;world's provider.&quot; I could see that his was
+a cheap trade, as revealed by the printed notice stuck upon one of the
+long fly-blown mirrors: &quot;Ices <i>4d</i> and <i>6d</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long has Olinto been with you?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About a year&mdash;perhaps a little more. I trust him implicitly, and I
+leave him in charge when I go away for holidays. He does not get along
+very well with the cook&mdash;who is Milanese. These Italians from different
+provinces always quarrel,&quot; he added, laughing. &quot;If you live in Italy you
+know that, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed in chorus, and then glancing at my watch, said: &quot;I'll wait for
+him, if he will be here at ten. I'd much like to see him again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Russian was by no means nonplused, but merely remarked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is late sometimes, but not often. He lives on the other side of
+London&mdash;over at Camberwell.&quot; His confidence that the waiter would return
+struck me as extremely curious; nevertheless I possessed myself in
+patience, strolled up and down the restaurant, and then stood watching
+the traffic in the Grove outside.</p>
+
+<p>The man Odinzoff seemed a quick, hard-working fellow with a keen eye to
+business, for he fell to polishing the top of the marble tables with a
+pail and brush, at the same time directing the work of the
+pallid-looking youth. Suddenly a side door opened, and the cook put his
+head in to speak with his master in French. He was a typical Italian,
+about forty, with dark mustaches turned upwards, and an easy-going,
+careless manner. Seeing me, however, and believing me to be a customer,
+he turned and closed the door quickly. In that instant I noticed the
+high broadness of his shoulders, and his back struck me as strangely
+similar to that of the man in brown whom we had seen disappearing in
+Rannoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p>The suspicion held me breathless.</p>
+
+<p>Was this Russian endeavoring to deceive me when he declared that Olinto
+would arrive in a few minutes? It seemed curious, for the man now dead
+must, I reflected, have been away at least four days. Surely his
+absence from work had caused the proprietor considerable inconvenience?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was your cook, wasn't it? The Milanese who is quarrelsome?&quot; I
+laughed, when the side door had closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, m'sieur. But Emilio is a very good workman&mdash;and very honest, even
+though I had constantly to complain that he uses too much oil in his
+cooking. These English do not like the oil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stood in the doorway again watching the busy throng passing outside
+towards Royal Oak. Ten o'clock struck from a neighboring church, and I
+still waited, knowing only too well that I waited in vain for a man
+whose body had already been committed to the grave outside that far-away
+old Scotch town. But I waited in order to ascertain the motive of the
+bearded Russian in leading me to believe that the young fellow would
+really return.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Odinzoff went outside, carrying with him two boards upon which
+the menu of the &quot;Eight-penny Luncheon! This Day!&quot; was written in scrawly
+characters, and proceeded to affix them to the shop-front.</p>
+
+<p>This was my opportunity, and quick as thought I moved towards where the
+unhealthy youth was at work, and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll give you half-a-sovereign if you'll answer my questions
+truthfully. Now, tell me, was the cook, the man I've just seen, here
+yesterday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was he here the day before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir. He's been away ill for four days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your master?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's been away too, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had no time to put any further question, for the Russian re-entered at
+that moment, and the youth busied himself rubbing the front of the
+counter in pretense that I had not spoken to him. Indeed, I had some
+difficulty in slipping the promised coin into his hand at a moment when
+his master was not looking.</p>
+
+<p>Then I paced up and down the restaurant, waiting patiently and wondering
+whether the absence of Emilio had any connection with the tragedy up in
+Rannoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p>While I stood there a rather thin, respectably-dressed man entered, and
+seating himself upon one of the plush lounges at the further end,
+removed his bowler hat and ordered from the proprietor a chop and a pot
+of tea. Then, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he settled himself to
+read, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>And yet as I watched I saw that over the top of his paper he was
+carefully taking in the general appearance of the place, and his eyes
+were keenly following the Russian's movements. The latter shouted&mdash;in
+French&mdash;the order for the chop through the speaking-tube to the man
+Emilio, and then returning to his customer he spread out a napkin and
+placed a small cruet, with knife, fork, and bread before him. But the
+customer seemed immersed in his paper, and never looked up until after
+the Russian's back was turned. Then so deep was his interest in the
+place, and so keen those dark eyes of his, that the truth suddenly
+dawned upon me. Mackenzie had telegraphed to Scotland Yard, and the
+customer sitting there was a detective who had come to investigate. I
+had advanced to the counter to chat again with the proprietor, when a
+quick step behind me caused me to turn.</p>
+
+<p>Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy
+black jacket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Dio Signor Padrone!</i>&quot; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>I staggered as though I had received a blow.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>No words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I
+faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that gray stone
+slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.</p>
+
+<p>My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his
+paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently
+been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself,
+discovered him alive and living.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Signor Padrone!&quot; cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely
+bewildering. &quot;How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when
+I told you I worked at the Milano,&quot; he went on rapidly in Italian. &quot;But
+it was under compulsion&mdash;my actions that night were not my own&mdash;but
+those of others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I understand,&quot; I said. &quot;But come out into the street. I don't wish
+to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! only a very little,&quot; he answered, smiling. &quot;Have no fear of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But there is Emilio, the cook?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have met him!&quot; he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of
+apprehension. &quot;He is an undesirable person, signore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I gather,&quot; I answered. &quot;But I desire to speak to you outside&mdash;not
+here.&quot; And then turning with a smile to the Pole, I apologized for
+taking away his servant for a few minutes. &quot;Recollect, I am his old
+master, I added.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, m'sieur,&quot; answered the Pole, bowing politely. &quot;Speak with
+him where and how long you will. He is entirely at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And when we were outside in Westbourne Grove, Olinto walking by my side
+in wonderment, I asked suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me. Have you ever been in Scotland&mdash;at Dumfries?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never, signore, in my life. Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Answer me another question,&quot; I said quickly. &quot;You married Armida at the
+Italian Consulate. Where is she now&mdash;where is she this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned pale, and I saw a complete change in his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he responded, &quot;I only wish I could tell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is untrue that she is an invalid,&quot; I went on, &quot;or that you live in
+Lambeth. Your address is in Albany Road, Camberwell. You can't deny
+these facts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not deny them, Signor Commendatore. But how did you learn this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The authorities in Italy know everything,&quot; I answered. &quot;Like that of
+all your countrymen, your record is written down at the Commune.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a clean one, at any rate, signore,&quot; he declared with some slight
+warmth. &quot;I have a permesso to carry a revolver, which is in itself
+sufficient proof that I am a man of spotless character.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cast no reflection whatever upon you, Olinto,&quot; I answered. &quot;I have
+merely inquired after your wife, and you do not give me a direct reply.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had walked to the Royal Oak, and stood talking on the curb outside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you no reply, because I can't,&quot; he said in Italian. &quot;Armida&mdash;my
+poor Armida&mdash;has left home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you tell me such a tale of distress regarding her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I have already explained, signore, I was not then master of my own
+actions. I was ruled by others. But I saved your life at risk of my own.
+Some day, when it is safe, I will reveal to you everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us allow the past to remain,&quot; I said. &quot;Where is your wife now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment, looking straight into my face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Signor Commendatore, to tell the truth, she has disappeared.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Disappeared!&quot; I echoed. &quot;And have you not made any report to the
+police?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For reasons known only to myself I did not wish the police to pry into
+my private affairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know. Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife&mdash;eh?
+I recollect quite well that affair&mdash;a love affair, was it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Signor Commendatore. But I was a youth then&mdash;a mere boy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared,&quot; I
+urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset
+him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was
+bursting to tell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, signore,&quot; he said at last in a low tone of confidence, &quot;I don't
+like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told
+you when we last met.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on,&quot; I said. &quot;Tell me the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined
+to doubt him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously
+disappeared. Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the
+garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out. She
+apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of
+her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so
+strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon
+his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated
+to relate what I knew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She spoke English, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She could make herself understood very well,&quot; he said with a sigh, and
+I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow. That he was really devoted
+to her, I knew. With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is
+all-consuming&mdash;it is either perfect love or genuine hatred. The Tuscan
+character is one of two extremes.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered
+his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go
+away from home? Perhaps you had some words!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Words, signore!&quot; he echoed. &quot;Why, we were the happiest pair in all
+London. No unkind word ever passed between us. There seems absolutely no
+reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of
+farewell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why haven't you told the police?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For reasons that I have already stated. I prefer to make inquiries for
+myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And in what have your inquiries resulted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing&mdash;absolutely nothing,&quot; he said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not suspect any plot? I recollect that night in Lambeth you
+told me that you had enemies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! so I have, signore&mdash;and so have you!&quot; he exclaimed hoarsely. &quot;Yes,
+my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if entrapped, what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a
+fly,&quot; he said. &quot;Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people. I
+only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere,
+and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise. She
+delights in startling me,&quot; he added with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Poor fellow, I thought, she would never again be able to startle him.
+She had actually fallen a victim just as he dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you think she must have been called away from home by some urgent
+message?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the manner in which she left things, it seemed as though she went
+away hurriedly. There were five sovereigns in a drawer that we had saved
+for the rent, and she took them with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I paused again, hesitating whether to tell him the terrible truth. I
+recollected that the body had disappeared, therefore what proof had I of
+my allegation that she had been murdered?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me, Olinto,&quot; I said as we moved forward again in the direction of
+Paddington Station, &quot;have you any knowledge of a man named Leithcourt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He started suddenly and looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard of him,&quot; he answered very lamely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And of his daughter&mdash;Muriel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And also of her. But I am not acquainted with them&mdash;nor, to tell the
+truth, do I wish to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because they are enemies of mine&mdash;bitter enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His declaration was strange, for it threw some light upon the tragedy in
+Rannoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And of your wife also?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know that,&quot; he responded. &quot;My enemies are my wife's also, I
+suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have not told me the secret of that dastardly attempt upon me when
+we last met,&quot; I said in a low voice. &quot;Why not tell me the truth? I
+surely ought to know who my enemies really are, so as to be warned
+against any future plot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You shall know some day, signore. I dare not tell you now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You said that before,&quot; I exclaimed with dissatisfaction. &quot;If you are
+faithful to me, you ought at least to tell me the reason they wished to
+kill me in secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because they fear you,&quot; was his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should they fear me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture with his hands
+indicative of utter ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ask you one question. Answer yes or no. Is the man Leithcourt my
+enemy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young Italian paused, and then answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is not your friend. I am quite well aware of that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And his daughter? She is engaged, I hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where did you first meet Leithcourt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have known him several years. When we first met he was poor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suddenly became rich&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bought a fine house in the country; lives mostly at the Carlton when he
+and his wife and daughter are in London&mdash;although I believe they now
+have a house somewhere in the West End&mdash;and he often makes long cruises
+on his steam-yacht.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how did he make his money?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again Olinto elevated his shoulders, without replying.</p>
+
+<p>If he would only betray to me the reason he had been induced to entice
+me to that house, I might then be able to form some conclusion regarding
+the tenants of Rannoch and their friends.</p>
+
+<p>Who was the man who, having represented the man now before me, had been
+struck dead by an unerring hand? Was it possible that Armida had been
+called by telegram to meet her husband, and recognizing the fraud
+perpetrated upon her threatened to disclose it and, for that reason,
+shared the same fate as the masquerader?</p>
+
+<p>This was the first theory that occurred to me; one which I believed to
+be the correct one. The motive was a mystery, yet the facts seemed to me
+plain enough.</p>
+
+<p>As the young Italian had refused to give any satisfactory explanation, I
+resolved within myself to wait until the unfortunate woman's body was
+recovered before revealing to him the ghastly truth. Without doubt he
+had some reason in withholding from me the true facts, either because he
+feared that I might become unduly alarmed, or else he himself had been
+deeply implicated in the plot. Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to
+believe in the latter.</p>
+
+<p>He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with
+all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew
+concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal
+that I had only that morning returned from Scotland. Then at last we
+parted, and he retraced his steps to the little restaurant in Westbourne
+Grove, while I entered a hansom and drove to the well-known
+photographer's in New Bond Street, whose name had been upon the torn
+photograph of the young girl in the white piqu&eacute; blouse and her hair
+fastened with a bow of black ribbon, the picture that I had found on
+board the <i>Lola</i> on that memorable night in the Mediterranean, and a
+duplicate of which I had seen in Muriel's cosy little room up at
+Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>I recollected that she had told me the name of the original was Elma
+Heath, and that she had been a schoolfellow of hers at Chichester.
+Therefore I inquired of the photographer's lady-clerk whether she could
+supply me with a print of the negative.</p>
+
+<p>For a considerable time she searched in her books for the name, and at
+last discovered it. Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret, sir, that we can't give you a print, for the customer
+purchased the negative at the time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I'm very sorry for that,&quot; I said. &quot;To what address did you send
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The customer who ordered it was apparently a foreigner,&quot; she said, at
+the same time turning round the ledger so that I could read. And I saw
+that the entry was: &quot;Heath&mdash;Miss Elma&mdash;3 dozen cabinets and negative.
+Address: Baron Xavier Oberg, Vosnesenski Prospect 48, St. Petersburg,
+Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did this gentleman come with the young lady when her portrait was
+taken?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't tell, sir,&quot; she replied. &quot;I've only been here a year, and you
+see the date&mdash;over two years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The photographer would know, perhaps?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a new man, sir. He only came a month ago. In fact, the business
+changed hands a year ago, and none of the previous employees have
+remained.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! that's unfortunate,&quot; I said, greatly disappointed; and having
+copied the address to which the negative and prints had been sent, I
+thanked her and left.</p>
+
+<p>Who, I wondered, was this Baron Oberg, and what relation was he to Elma
+Heath?</p>
+
+<p>The picture of the girl in the white blouse somehow exercised a strange
+attraction for me.</p>
+
+<p>Have you never experienced the fascination of a photograph, inexplicable
+and yet forcible&mdash;a kind of magnetism from which you cannot release
+yourself? Perhaps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it
+from its frame on board the <i>Lola</i> and destroyed it that first aroused
+my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room
+at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often
+wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the
+yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.</p>
+
+<p>Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived
+in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I
+resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.</p>
+
+<p>At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend
+Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the
+name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German
+books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name
+did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He may be Russian&mdash;Polish most probably,&quot; added the captain, a tall,
+fair fellow in gold spectacles, whom I had known when he was third
+secretary of Embassy at Rome. His opinion was that it was not a German
+name, for there was a little place called Oberg, he said, on the railway
+between Lodz and Lowicz.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary,
+old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian
+days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open
+waste. I found the house where Olinto lived&mdash;a small, smoke-blackened,
+semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with
+a wooden veranda before the first floor windows. The house, according to
+the woman who kept a general shop at the corner, was occupied by two
+families. The &quot;Eye-talians,&quot; as she termed them, lived above, while the
+Gibbonses rented the ground floor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, sir. The foreigners are respectable enough. Always pays me
+ready money for everythink, except the milk. That they pays for weekly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand that the wife has disappeared. What have you heard about
+that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They do say, sir, that they 'ad some words together the other day, and
+that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe
+all you 'ear, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did they often quarrel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable
+persons for foreigners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I repassed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy
+Camberwell Road I took an omnibus back to the Hotel Cecil in the Strand
+where I had put up, tired and disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I ran down to Chichester, and after some difficulty found the
+Cheverton College for Ladies, a big old-fashioned house about
+half-a-mile out of the town on the Drayton Road. The seminary was
+evidently a first-class one, for when I entered I noticed how well
+everything was kept.</p>
+
+<p>To the principal, an elderly lady of a somewhat severe aspect, I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret, madam, to trouble you, but I am in search of information you
+can supply. It is with regard to a certain Elma Heath whom you had as
+pupil here, and who left, I believe, about two years ago. Her parents
+lived in Durham.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remember her perfectly,&quot; was the woman's response as she sat behind
+the big desk, having apparently at first expected that I had a daughter
+to put to school.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;there has been some little friction in the family, and
+I am making inquiries on behalf of another branch of it&mdash;an aunt who
+desires to ascertain the girl's whereabouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you that. The Baron, her uncle,
+came here one day and took her away suddenly&mdash;abroad, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Had she no school-friend to whom she would probably write?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was a girl named Leithcourt&mdash;Muriel Leithcourt&mdash;who was her
+friend, but who has also left.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And no one else?&quot; I asked. &quot;Girls often write to each other after
+leaving school, until they get married, and then the correspondence
+usually ceases.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The principal was silent and reflective.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she said at last, &quot;there was another pupil who was also on
+friendly terms with Elma&mdash;a girl named Lydia Moreton. She may have
+written to her. If you really desire to know, sir, I dare say I could
+find her address. She left us about nine months after Elma.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should esteem it a great favor if you would give me that young lady's
+address,&quot; I said, whereupon she unlocked a drawer in her writing-table
+and took therefrom a thick, leather-bound book which she consulted for a
+few minutes, at last exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, here it is&mdash;'Lydia Moreton, daughter of Sir Hamilton Moreton,
+K.C.M.G., Whiston Grange, Doncaster.'&quot; And she scribbled it in pencil
+upon an envelope, and handing it to me, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elma Heath was, I fear, somewhat neglected by her parents. She remained
+here for five years, and had no holidays like the other girls. Her
+uncle, the Baron, came to see her several times, but on each occasion
+after he had left I found her crying in secret. He was mean and unkind
+to her. Now that I recollect, I remember that Lydia had said she had
+received a letter from her, therefore she might be able to give you some
+information.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And with that I took my leave, thanking her, and returned to London.</p>
+
+<p>Could Lydia Moreton furnish any information? If so, I might find this
+girl whose photograph had aroused the irate jealousy of the mysterious
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>The ten o'clock Edinburgh express from King's Cross next morning took me
+up to Doncaster, and hiring a musty old fly at the station, I drove
+three miles out of the town on the Rotherham Road, finding Whiston
+Grange to be a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the center of a great
+park, with tall old twisted chimneys, and beautifully-kept gardens.</p>
+
+<p>When I descended at the door and rang, the footman was not aware whether
+Miss Lydia was in. He looked at me somewhat suspiciously, I thought,
+until I gave my card and impressed upon him meaningly that I had come
+from London purposely to see his young mistress upon a very important
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell her,&quot; I said, &quot;that I wish to see her regarding her friend, Miss
+Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Elma 'Eath,&quot; repeated the man. &quot;Very well, sir. Will you walk this
+way?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then I followed him across the big old oak-paneled hall, filled with
+trophies of the chase and arms of the civil wars, into a small paneled
+room on the left, the deep-set window with its diamond panes giving out
+upon the old bowling-green and the flower-garden beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the door opened, and a tall dark-haired girl in white entered
+with an enquiring expression upon her face as she halted and bowed to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Lydia Moreton, I believe?&quot; I commenced, and as she replied in the
+affirmative I went on: &quot;I have first to apologize for coming to you, but
+Miss Sotheby, the principal of the school at Chichester, referred me to
+you for information as to the present whereabouts of Miss Elma Heath,
+who, I believe, was one of your most intimate friends at school.&quot; And I
+added a lie, saying: &quot;I am trying, on behalf of an aunt of hers, to
+discover her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; responded the girl, &quot;I have had only one or two letters. She's
+in her uncle's hands, I believe, and he won't let her write, poor girl.
+She dreaded leaving us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! she would never say. She had some deep-rooted terror of her uncle,
+Baron Oberg, who lived in St. Petersburg, and who came over at long
+intervals to see her. But possibly you know the whole story?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know nothing,&quot; I cried eagerly. &quot;You will be furthering her
+interests, as well as doing me a great personal favor, if you will tell
+me what you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is very little,&quot; she answered, leaning back against the edge of the
+table and regarding me seriously. &quot;Poor Elma! Her people treated her
+very badly indeed. They sent her no money, and allowed her no holidays,
+and yet she was the sweetest-tempered and most patient girl in the whole
+school.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;and the story regarding her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was supposed that her people at Durham did not exist,&quot; she
+explained. &quot;Elma had evidently lived a greater part of her life abroad,
+for she could speak French and Italian better than the professor
+himself, and therefore always won the prizes. The class revolted, and
+then she did not compete any more. Yet she never told us of where she
+had lived when a child. She came from Durham, she said&mdash;that was all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You had a letter from her after the Baron came and took her away?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, from London. She said that she had been to several plays and
+concerts, but did not care for life in town. There was too much bustle
+and noise and study of clothes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what other letters did you receive from her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Three or four, I think. They were all from places abroad. One was from
+Vienna, one was from Milan, and one from some place with an
+unpronounceable name in Hungary. The last----&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the last?&quot; I gasped eagerly, interrupting her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the last I received only a fortnight ago. If you will wait a
+moment I will go and get it. It was so strange that I haven't destroyed
+it.&quot; And she went out, and I heard by the frou-frou of her skirts that
+she was ascending the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>After five minutes of breathless anxiety she rejoined me, and handing me
+the letter to read, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not in her handwriting&mdash;I wonder why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The paper was of foreign make, with blue lines ruled in squares. Written
+in a hand that was evidently foreign, for the mistakes in the
+orthography were many, was the following curious communication:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My Dear Lydia:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you may never get this letter&mdash;the last I shall ever be able to
+send you. Indeed, I run great risks in sending it. Ah! you do not know
+the awful disaster that has happened to me, all the terrors and the
+tortures I endure. But no one can assist me, and I am now looking
+forward to the time when it will all be over. Do you recollect our old
+peaceful days in the garden at Chichester? I think of them always,
+always, and compare that sweet peace of the past with my own terrible
+sufferings of to-day. Ah, how I wish I might see you once again; how
+that I might feel your hand upon my brow, and hear your words of hope
+and encouragement! But happiness is now debarred from me, and I am only
+sinking to the grave under this slow torture of body and of soul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This will pass through many hands before it reaches the post. If,
+however, it ever does get despatched and you receive it, will you do me
+one last favor&mdash;a favor to an unfortunate girl who is friendless and
+helpless, and who will no longer trouble the world? It is this: Take
+this letter to London, and call upon Mr. Martin Woodroffe at 98 Cork
+Street, Piccadilly. Show him my letter, and tell him from me that
+through it all I have kept my promise, and that the secret is still
+safe. He will understand&mdash;and also know why I cannot write this with my
+own hand. If he is abroad, keep it until he returns.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is all I ask of you, Lydia, and I know that if this reaches you, you
+will not refuse me. You have been my only friend and confidante, but I
+now bid you farewell, for the unknown beckons me, and from the grave I
+cannot write. Again farewell, and for ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your loving and affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elma.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A very strange letter, is it not?&quot; remarked the girl at my side. &quot;I
+can't make it out. You see there is no address, but the postmark is
+Russian. She is evidently in Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Finland,&quot; I said, examining the stamp and making out the post town
+to be Abo. &quot;But have you been to London and executed this strange
+commission?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. We are going up next week. I intend to call upon this person named
+Woodroffe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made no remark. He was, I knew, abroad, but I was glad at having
+obtained two very important clues: first, the address of the mysterious
+yachtsman, Woodroffe, alias Hornby, and, secondly, ascertaining that the
+young girl I sought was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Abo,
+the Finnish port on the Baltic.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Elma, you see, speaks in her letter of some secret, Mr. Gregg,&quot; my
+companion said. &quot;She says she wishes this Mr. Woodroffe, whoever he is,
+to know that she has kept her promise and has not divulged it. This only
+bears out what I have all along suspected.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are your suspicions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, from her deep, thoughtful manner, and from certain remarks she at
+times made to me, I believe that Elma is in possession of some great and
+terrible secret&mdash;a secret which her uncle, Baron Oberg, is desirous of
+learning. I know she holds him in deadly fear&mdash;she is in terror that she
+may inadvertently betray to him the truth!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a><h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The strange letter of Elma Heath, combined with what Lydia Moreton had
+told me, aroused within me a determination to investigate the mystery.
+From the moment I had landed from the <i>Lola</i> on that hot, breathless
+night at Leghorn, mystery had crowded upon mystery until it was all
+bewildering.</p>
+
+<p>It was now proved that the sweet-faced girl, the original of the torn
+photograph, held a secret, and that, by her own words, she knew that
+death was approaching. The incomprehensible attempt upon my life, the
+strange actions of Hornby and Chater&mdash;who, by the way, seemed to have
+entirely disappeared&mdash;the assassination of the man who by masquerading
+as the Italian waiter had met his death, and the murder of Olinto's wife
+were all problems which required solution.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been for the mystery of it all&mdash;and mystery ever arouses the
+human curiosity&mdash;I should have given up trying to get at the truth. Yet
+as a man with some leisure, and knowing by that letter of Elma Heath's
+that she was in sore distress, I redoubled my efforts to ascertain the
+reason of it all.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of the <i>Lola</i> was still a mystery along the Mediterranean.
+At every French and Italian port the yacht's false name and general
+build was written in the police-books, while at Lloyd's the name <i>Lola</i>
+was marked down as among the mysterious craft at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Chater was missing, while Hornby was abroad. Perhaps they were both
+cruising again, with their yacht repainted and bearing a fresh name. But
+why? What had been their motive?</p>
+
+<p>Stirred by the complete mystery which now seemed to enshroud the
+unfortunate girl, I set before myself the task of elucidating it.
+Hitherto I had remained passive rather than active, but I now realized
+by that curious letter that at least one woman's life was at stake&mdash;that
+Elma Heath was in possession of some secret.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving Leghorn I had given up all hope of tracing the mysterious
+yachtsman, and had left the matter in the hands of the Italian police.
+But, without any effort on my own part, I seemed to have been drawn into
+a veritable network of strange incidents, all of which combined to form
+the most complete and remarkable enigma ever presented in life. Surely
+no man was ever confronted by so many mysteries at one time as I was at
+this moment.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately I had been careful not to show my hand to anyone, and this
+perhaps gave me a distinct advantage. On my journey back to London, as
+the train swung through Peterborough and out across the rich level lands
+towards Hitchin, I recollected Jack Durnford's words when I had
+mentioned the <i>Lola</i>. What, I wondered, did he know?</p>
+
+<p>Next month, in November, he was due back in London after his three
+years' service on the Mediterranean station. Then we should meet in a
+few weeks I hoped. Would he tell me anything when he became aware of all
+I knew? He held some secret knowledge. Was it possible that his secret
+was the same as that held by the unfortunate girl in far-off, dreary
+Finland?</p>
+
+<p>I called at the house in Cork Street indicated by Elma, and learned
+from the old commissionaire who acted as lift-man and porter, that Mr.
+Woodroffe's chambers were closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'E's nearly always away, sir&mdash;abroad, I think,&quot; was all I could get out
+of the old soldier, who, like his class, was no doubt well paid to keep
+his mouth closed.</p>
+
+<p>For two days I lounged about Westbourne Grove watching Ferrari's
+restaurant. In such a busy, bustling thoroughfare, with so many shop
+windows as excuses for loitering, the task was easy. I saw that Olinto
+came regularly at ten o'clock in the morning, worked hard all day, and
+left at nine o'clock at night, taking an omnibus home from Royal Oak.
+His exterior was calm and unconcerned, unlike that of a man whose
+devoted wife had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>I would have approached him and explained the ghastly truth, had it not
+been for the fact that the poor woman's body was missing.</p>
+
+<p>Those September days were full of anxiety for me. Alone and unaided I
+was trying to solve one of the greatest of problems, plunged as I was in
+a veritable sea of mystery. I wanted to see Muriel Leithcourt, and to
+question her further regarding Elma Heath. Therefore again I left
+Euston, and, traveling through the night, took my seat at the
+breakfast-table at Greenlaw next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George, who was sitting alone&mdash;it not being my aunt's habit to
+appear early&mdash;welcomed me, and then in his bluff manner sniffed and
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nice goings on up at Rannoch! Have you heard of them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. What?&quot; I cried breathlessly, staring at him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, my suspicions that those Leithcourts were utter outsiders turns
+out to be about correct.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it's a very funny story, and there are a dozen different
+distorted versions of it,&quot; he said. &quot;But from what I can gather the true
+facts are these: About seven o'clock the night before last, as
+Leithcourt and his house-party were dressing for dinner, a telegram
+arrived. Mrs. Leithcourt opened it, and at once went off into hysterics,
+while her husband, in a breathless hurry, slipped off his evening
+clothes again and got into an old blue serge suit, tossed a few things
+into a bag, and then went along to Muriel's room to urge her to prepare
+for secret flight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Flight!&quot; I gasped. &quot;What, have they gone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen, and I'll tell you. The servants have described the whole affair
+down in the village, so there's no doubt about it. Leithcourt showed
+Muriel the telegram and urged her to fly. At first she refused, but for
+her father's sake was induced to prepare to accompany him. Of course,
+the guests were in ignorance of all this. The brougham was ordered to be
+ready in the stable-yard and not to go round, while Mrs. Leithcourt's
+maid tried to bring the lady back to her senses. Leithcourt himself, it
+seemed, rushed hither and thither, seizing the jewel-cases of his wife
+and daughter and whatever valuables he could place his hand upon, while
+the mother and daughter were putting on their things. As he rushed down
+the main staircase to the library, where his check-book and some ready
+cash were locked in the safe, he met a stranger who had just been
+admitted and shown into the room. Leithcourt closed the door and faced
+him. What afterwards transpired, however, is a mystery, for two hours
+later, after he and the two women had escaped, leaving the house-party
+to their own diversions, the stranger was found locked in a large
+cupboard and insensible. The sensation was a tremendous one. Cowan, the
+doctor, was called, and declared that the stranger had been drugged and
+was suffering from some narcotic. The servant who admitted him declared
+that the man had said he had an appointment with his master, and that no
+card was necessary. He, however, gave the name of Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chater!&quot; I cried, starting up. &quot;Are you certain of that name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I only know what Cowan told me,&quot; was my uncle's reply. &quot;But do you know
+him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all. Only I've heard that name before,&quot; I said. &quot;I knew a man
+out in Italy of the same name. But where is the visitor now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the hospital at Dumfries. They took him there in preference to
+leaving him alone at Rannoch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. Everyone has left, now the host and hostess have slipped off
+without saying good-bye. Scandalous affair, isn't it? But, my boy,
+you'll remember that I always said I didn't like those people. There's
+something mysterious about them, I feel certain. That telegram gave them
+warning of the visit of the man Chater, depend upon it, and for some
+reason they're afraid of him. It would be interesting to know what
+transpired between the two men in the library. And these are people
+who've been taken up by everybody&mdash;mere adventurers, I should call
+them!&quot; And old Sir George sniffed again at thought of such scandal
+happening in the neighborhood. &quot;If Gilrae must let Rannoch, then why in
+the name of Fortune doesn't he let it to respectable folk and not to the
+first fellow who answers his advertisement in <i>The Field?</i> It's simply
+disgraceful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly, it is a most extraordinary story,&quot; I declared. &quot;Leithcourt
+evidently wished to escape from his visitor, and that's why he drugged
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why he poisoned him, you mean. Cowan says the fellow is poisoned, but
+that he'll probably recover. He is already conscious, I hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I resolved to call on the doctor, who happened to be well known to me,
+and obtain further particulars. Therefore at eleven o'clock I drove into
+Dumfries and entered his consulting-room.</p>
+
+<p>He was a spare, short, fair man, a trifle bald, and when I was shown in
+he welcomed me warmly, speaking with his pronounced Galloway accent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it is a very mysterious case, Mr. Gregg,&quot; he said, after I had
+told him the object of my visit. &quot;The gentleman is still in the
+hospital, and I have to keep him very quiet. He was poisoned without a
+doubt, and has had a very narrow escape of his life. The police got wind
+of the affair, and Mackenzie called to question him. But he refused to
+make any statement whatever, apparently treating the affair very
+lightly. The police, however, are mystified as to the reason of Mr.
+Leithcourt's sudden flight, and are anxious to get at the bottom of the
+curious affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Naturally. And more especially after the tragedy up in Rannoch Wood a
+short time ago,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's just it,&quot; said the doctor, removing his pince-nez and rubbing
+them. &quot;Mackenzie seems to suspect some connection between Leithcourt's
+sudden disappearance and that mysterious affair. It seems very evident
+that the telegram was a warning to Leithcourt of the man Chater's
+intention of calling, and that the last-named was shown in just at the
+moment when the fugitive was on the point of leaving.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chater.&quot; I echoed. &quot;Do you know his Christian name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hylton Chater. He is apparently a gentleman. Curious that he will tell
+us nothing of the reason he called, and of the scene that occurred
+between them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Knowing all that I did, I was not surprised. Leithcourt had undoubtedly
+taken him unawares, but knights of industry never betray each other.</p>
+
+<p>My next visit was to Mackenzie, for whom I had to wait nearly an hour,
+as he was absent in another quarter of the town.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Mr. Gregg!&quot; he cried gladly, as he came in to find me seated in a
+chair patiently reading the newspaper. &quot;You are the very person I wish
+to see. Have you heard of this strange affair at Rannoch?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have,&quot; was my answer. &quot;Has the man in the hospital made any statement
+yet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None. He refuses point-blank,&quot; answered the detective. &quot;But my own idea
+is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries of
+the wood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first mystery&mdash;that of the man&mdash;proves to be a double mystery,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How? Explain it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the waiter Olinto Santini is alive and well in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; he gasped, starting up. &quot;Then he is not the person you
+identified him to be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. But he was masquerading as Santini&mdash;made up to resemble him, I
+mean, even to the mole upon his face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you identified him positively?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When a person is dead it is very easy to mistake countenances. Death
+alters the countenance so very much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's true,&quot; he said reflectively. &quot;But if the man we've buried is not
+the Italian, then the mystery is considerably increased. Why was the
+real man's wife here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where has her body been concealed? That's the question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Again a mystery. We have made a thorough search for four days, without
+discovering any trace of it. Quite confidentially, I'm wondering if this
+man Chater knows anything. It is curious, to say the least, that the
+Leithcourts should have fled so hurriedly on this man's appearance. But
+have you actually seen Olinto Santini?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and have spoken with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I sent up to London asking that inquiries should be made at the
+restaurant in Bayswater, but up to the present I have received no
+report.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have chatted with Olinto. His wife has mysteriously disappeared, but
+he is in ignorance that she is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did not tell him anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you did well. There is widespread conspiracy here, depend upon it,
+Mr. Gregg. It will be an interesting case when we get to the bottom of
+it all. I only wish this fellow Chater would tell us the reason he
+called upon Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does he say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Merely that he has no wish to prosecute, and that he has no statement
+to make.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't you compel him to say something?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I can't. That's the infernal difficulty of it. If he don't choose
+to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel
+confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective's belief.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on
+everyone's tongue in Dumfries. In the smoke-room of the railway hotel
+three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and
+the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the
+strange goings-on up at the Castle.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top
+before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the
+situation. I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet
+when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the
+<i>Lola</i>, I naturally hesitated. He was allied with Hornby, apparently
+against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby's friend.</p>
+
+<p>What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle
+which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through
+the rain? How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible
+and hiding him in that cupboard? Did he believe that he had killed him?</p>
+
+<p>If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of
+myself. No. I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so
+affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain
+in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge. Therefore I stayed for
+a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care
+that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that
+tantalizing silence. The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man
+in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful
+murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public
+had no knowledge, for the body was not discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Time after time I searched the wood alone, on the pretense of shooting
+pigeon, but discovered nothing. When not having sport on my uncle's
+property, I joined various parties in the neighborhood, not because
+Scotland at that time attracted me, but because I desired to watch
+events.</p>
+
+<p>Chater, as soon as he recovered, left the hospital and went south&mdash;to
+London, I ascertained&mdash;leaving the police utterly in the dark and filled
+with suspicion of the fugitives from Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>I longed to know the whereabouts of Muriel, hoping to gain from her some
+information regarding their visitor who had so nearly escaped with his
+life. That she was aware of the object of his visit was plain from the
+statements of the servants, all of whom had been left without either
+money or orders.</p>
+
+<p>One day I called at the castle, the front entrance of which I found
+closed. Gilrae, the owner, had come up from London, met his factor
+there, and discharged all the late tenant's servants, keeping on only
+three of his own who had been in service there for a number of years.
+Ann Cameron, a housemaid, was one of these, and it was she whom I met
+when entering by the servants' hall.</p>
+
+<p>On questioning her, I found her most willing to describe how she was in
+the corridor outside the young mistress's room when Mr. Leithcourt
+dashed along in breathless haste with the telegram in his hand. She
+heard him cry: &quot;Look at this! Read it, Muriel. We must go. Put on your
+things at once, my dear. Never mind about luggage. Every minute lost is
+of consequence. What!&quot; he cried a moment later. &quot;You won't go? You'll
+stay here&mdash;stay here and face them? Good Heavens! girl, are you mad?
+Don't you know what this means? It means that the secret is out&mdash;the
+secret is out, you hear! We must fly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman told me that she distinctly heard Miss Muriel sobbing, while
+her father walked up and down the room speaking rapidly in a low tone.
+Then he came out again and returned to his dressing-room, while Miss
+Muriel presumably changed from her evening-gown into a dark
+traveling-dress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she say anything to you?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only that they were called away suddenly, sir. But,&quot; the domestic
+added, &quot;the young lady was very pale and agitated, and we all knew that
+something terrible had happened. Mrs. Leithcourt gave orders that
+nothing was to be told to the guests, who dined alone, believing that
+their host and hostess had gone down to the village to see an old man
+who was dying. That was the story we told them, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And in the meantime the Leithcourts were in the express going to
+Carlisle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. They say in Dumfries that the police telegraphed after them,
+but they had reached Carlisle and evidently changed there, and so got
+away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By the administration of a judicious tip I was allowed to go up to Miss
+Muriel's room, an elegantly furnished little chamber in the front of the
+fine old place, with a deep old-fashioned window commanding a
+magnificent view across the broad Nithsdale.</p>
+
+<p>The room had been tidied by the maids, but allowed to remain just as she
+had left it. I advanced to the window, in which was set the large
+dressing-table with its big swing-mirror and silver-topped bottles, and
+on gazing out saw, to my surprise, it was the only window which gave a
+view of that corner of Rannoch Wood where the double tragedy had taken
+place. Indeed, any person standing at the spot would have a clear view
+of that one distant window while out of sight of all the rest. A light
+might be placed there at night as signal, for instance; or by day a
+towel might be hung from the window as though to dry and yet could be
+plainly seen at that distance.</p>
+
+<p>Another object in the room also attracted my attention&mdash;a pair of long
+field-glasses. Had she used these to keep watch upon that spot?</p>
+
+<p>I took them up and focused them upon the boundary of the wood, finding
+that I could distinguish everything quite plainly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's where they found the man who was murdered,&quot; explained the
+servant, who still stood in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; I replied. &quot;I was just trying the glasses.&quot; Then I put them
+down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red
+candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon
+the electric table-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Muriel was very fond of a red light,&quot; explained the young woman;
+and as I held it I wondered if that light had ever been placed upon the
+toilet-table and the blind drawn up&mdash;whether it had ever been used as a
+warning of danger?</p>
+
+<p>As I expressed a desire to see the young lady's boudoir, the maid
+Cameron took me down to the luxurious little room where, the first
+moment I entered, one fact struck me as peculiar. The picture of Elma
+Heath was no longer there. The photograph had been taken from its frame,
+and in its place was the portrait of a broad-browed, full-bearded man in
+a foreign military uniform&mdash;a picture that, being soiled and faded, had
+evidently been placed there to fill the empty frame.</p>
+
+<p>Whose hand had secured that portrait before the Leithcourt's flight?
+Why, indeed, should I, for the second time, discover the unhappy girl's
+picture missing?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the gentleman who called on the evening of Mr. Leithcourt's
+disappearance been back here again since he left the hospital?&quot; I
+inquired as a sudden idea occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. He called here in a fly on the day he came out, and at his
+request I took him over the castle. He went into the library, and spent
+half-an-hour in pacing across it, taking measurements, and examining
+the big cupboard in which he was found insensible. It was a strange
+affair, sir,&quot; added the young woman, &quot;wasn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The gentleman might have been in there now had I not gone into the
+library and found a lot of illustrated papers, which I always put in the
+cupboard to keep the place tidy, thrown out on to the floor. I went to
+put them back but discovered the door locked. The key I afterwards found
+in the grate, where Mr. Leithcourt had evidently thrown it, and on
+opening the door imagine the shock I had when I found the visitor lying
+doubled up. I, of course, thought he was dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And when he returned here on his recovery, did he question you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes. He asked about the Leithcourts, and especially about Miss
+Muriel. I believe he's rather sweet on her, by the way he spoke. And
+really no better or kinder lady never breathed, I'm sure. We're all very
+sorry indeed for her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she had nothing to do with the affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not. But she shares in the scandal and disgrace. You should
+have seen the effect of the news upon the guests when they knew that the
+Leithcourts had gone. It was a regular pandemonium. They ordered the
+best champagne out of the cellars and drank it, the men cleared all the
+cigar-boxes, and the women rummaged in the wardrobes until they seemed
+like a pack of hungry wolves. Everybody went away with their trunks full
+of the Leithcourt's things. They took whatever they could lay their
+hands on, and we, the servants, couldn't stop them. I did remonstrate
+with one lady who was cramming into her trunk two of Miss Muriel's best
+evening dresses, but she told me to mind my own business and leave the
+room. One man I saw go away with four of Mr. Leithcourt's guns, and
+there was a regular squabble in the billiard-room over a set of pearl
+and emerald dress-studs that somebody found in his dressing-room. Crane,
+the valet, says they tossed for them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Disgraceful!&quot; I ejaculated. &quot;Then as soon as the host and hostess had
+gone, they simply swept through the rooms and cleared them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. They took away all that was most valuable. They'd have had
+the silver, only Mason had thrown it into the plate-chest, all dirty as
+it was, locked it up and hid the key. The plate was Mr. Gilrae's, you
+know, sir, and Mason was responsible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He acted wisely,&quot; I said, surprised at the domestic's story. &quot;Why, the
+guests acted like a gang of thieves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were, sir. They rushed all over the house like demons let loose,
+and they even stole some of our things. I lost a silver chain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what did the stranger say when you told him of this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He smiled. It did not seem to surprise him in the least, for after all
+his visit was the cause of the sudden breaking up of the party, wasn't
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And did you show him over the whole house?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir,&quot; responded the servant. &quot;Curiously enough he had with him
+what seemed to be a large plan of the castle, and as we went from room
+to room he compared it with his plan. He was here for hours, and told me
+he wanted to make a thorough examination of the place and didn't want to
+be disturbed. He also said that he might probably take the place for
+next season, if he liked it. I think, however, he only told me this
+because he thought I would be more patient while he took his
+measurements and made his investigations. He was here from twelve till
+nearly six o'clock, and went through every room, even up to the
+turrets.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He came into this room, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir,&quot; she responded, with just a slight hesitation, I thought.
+&quot;This was the room where he stayed the longest. There was a photograph
+in that frame over there,&quot; she added, indicating the frame that had held
+the picture of Elma Heath, &quot;a portrait of a young lady, which he begged
+me to give him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you gave it to him?&quot; I cried quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;yes, sir. He begged so hard for it, saying that it was the
+portrait of a friend of his.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he gave you something handsome for it&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young woman, whom I knew could not refuse half-a-sovereign, colored
+slightly and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who put that picture in its place?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did, sir. I found it upstairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He didn't tell you who the young lady was, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir. He only said that that was the only photograph that existed,
+and that she was dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead!&quot; I gasped, staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. That was why he was so anxious for the picture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Elma Heath dead! Could it be true? That sweet-pictured face haunted me
+as no other face had ever impressed itself upon my memory. It somehow
+seemed to impel me to endeavor to penetrate the mystery, and yet Hylton
+Chater had declared that she was dead! I recollected the remarkable
+letter from Abo, and her own declaration that her end was near. That
+letter was, she said, the last she should write to her friend. Did
+Hylton Chater actually possess knowledge of the girl's death? Had he all
+along been acquainted with her whereabouts? What the young woman told
+me upset all my plans. If Elma Heath were really dead, then she was
+beyond discovery, and the truth would be hidden forever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After he had put the photograph in his pocket, the gentleman made a
+most minute search in this room,&quot; the domestic went on. &quot;He consulted
+his plan, took several measurements, and then tapped on the paneling all
+along this wall, as though he were searching for some hidden cupboard or
+hiding place. I looked at the plan, and saw a mark in red ink upon it.
+He was trying to discover that spot, and was greatly disappointed at not
+being able to do so. He was in here over an hour, and made a most
+careful search all around.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what explanation did he give?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He only said, 'If I find what I want, Ann, I shall make you a present
+of a ten-pound note.' That naturally made me anxious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He made no other remark about the young lady's death?&quot; I inquired
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Only he sighed, and looked steadily for a long time at the
+photograph. I saw his lips moving, but his words were inaudible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You haven't any idea of the reason why he called upon Mr. Leithcourt, I
+suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From what he said, I've formed my own conclusions,&quot; was her answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what is your opinion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I feel certain that there is, or was, something concealed in this
+house that he's very anxious to obtain. He came to demand it of Mr.
+Leithcourt, but what happened in the library we don't know. He, however,
+believes that Mr. Leithcourt has not taken it away, and that, whatever
+it may be, it is still hidden here.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a><h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>I SHOW MY HAND</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>On my return to London next day I made inquiry at the Admiralty and
+learned that the battleship <i>Bulwark</i> was lying at Palermo, therefore I
+telegraphed to Jack Durnford, and late the same afternoon his reply came
+at the Cecil:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Due in London twentieth. Dine with me at club that evening</i>&mdash;Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The twentieth! That meant nearly a month of inactivity. In that time I
+could cross to Abo, make inquiries there, and ascertain, perhaps, if
+Elma Heath were actually dead as Chater had declared.</p>
+
+<p>Two facts struck me as remarkable: Baron Oberg was said to be Polish,
+while the dark-bearded proprietor of the restaurant in Westbourne Grove
+was also of the same nationality. Then I recollected that pretty little
+enameled cross that Mackenzie had found in Rannoch Wood, and it suddenly
+occurred to me that it might possibly be the miniature of one of the
+European orders of chivalry. In the club library at midnight I found a
+copy of Cappelletti's <i>Storia degli Ordini Cavallereschi</i>, the standard
+work on the subject, and on searching the illustrations I at length
+discovered a picture of it. It was a Russian order&mdash;the coveted Order of
+Saint Anne, bestowed by the Czar only upon persons who have rendered
+eminent services to the State and to the sovereign. One fact was now
+certain, namely, that the owner of that tiny cross, the small replica of
+the fine decoration, must be a person of high official standing.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I spent in making inquiries with a view to discovering the
+house said to be occupied by Leithcourt. As it was not either in the
+Directory or the Blue Book, I concluded that he had perhaps rented it
+furnished, and after many inquiries and considerable difficulties I
+found that such was the fact. He had occupied the house of Lady
+Heathcote, a few doors from Grosvenor Square, for the previous season,
+although he had lived there but very little.</p>
+
+<p>Where the fugitives were in hiding I had no idea. I longed to meet
+Muriel again and tell her what I had discovered, yet it was plain that
+the trio were concealing themselves from Hylton Chater, whom I supposed
+to be now back in London.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn days were dull and rainy, and the streets were muddy and
+unpleasant, as they always are at the fall of the year. Compelled to
+remain inactive, I idled in the club with the recollection of that
+pictured face ever before me&mdash;the face of the unfortunate girl who
+wished her last message to be conveyed to Philip Hornby. What, I
+wondered, was her secret? What was really her fate?</p>
+
+<p>This latter question troubled me until I could bear it no longer. I felt
+that it was my duty to go to Finland and endeavor to learn something
+regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me
+declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing
+wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew
+how dull he was when alone. Even his Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer
+from homesickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a
+glass of homely bitter ale.</p>
+
+<p>But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of
+time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and
+how sweet are the recollections of our dear gray old England with her
+green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray,
+grimy cities. You have but one &quot;home,&quot; and England Is still your home,
+even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may
+have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year
+through.</p>
+
+<p>Duty&mdash;the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
+defenseless woman was a victim&mdash;called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
+passport properly vis&eacute;d and my papers all in order, I one night left
+Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
+weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
+capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
+plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
+Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
+those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
+knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
+perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
+had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
+landing on the half-deserted quay.</p>
+
+<p>In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
+passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
+forgotten to date the vis&eacute; which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
+It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon
+the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in
+Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before
+you can proceed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it is not my fault,&quot; I protested. &quot;It is the fault of the clerk at
+the Consulate-General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You should have examined it before leaving. You must send it to London,
+and return to Stockholm by to-night's boat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But this is outrageous!&quot; I cried, as he had already taken the papers of
+a passenger behind me and was looking at them with unconcern.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough!&quot; he exclaimed, glaring at me. &quot;You will return to-night, or if
+you choose to stay you will be arrested for landing without a passport.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall not go back!&quot; I declared defiantly. &quot;Your Consul-General vis&eacute;d
+my passport, and I claim, under international law, to be allowed to
+proceed without hindrance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The steamer leaves at six o'clock,&quot; he remarked without looking up. &quot;If
+you are in Abo after that it will be at your own risk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am English, recollect,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To me it does not matter what or who you are. Your passport, undated,
+is worthless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall complain to the Ambassador at Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Ambassador does not interest me in the least. He is not Ambassador
+here in Finland. There is no Czar here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Who is ruler in this country, pray?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency the Governor-General, an official who has love for
+neither England nor the pigs of English. So recollect that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said meaningly, &quot;I shall recollect it.&quot; And I turned and went
+out of the little wooden office, replacing my passport in my
+pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>I had already been directed to the hotel, and walked there, but as I
+did so I saw that I was already under the surveillance of the police,
+for two men in plain clothes who were lounging outside the
+passport-office strolled on after me, evidently to watch my movements.
+Truly Finland was under the iron-heel of autocracy.</p>
+
+<p>After taking my rooms, I strolled about the flat, uninteresting town,
+wondering how best to commence my search. If I had but a photograph to
+show people it would give me a great advantage, but I had nothing. I had
+never, indeed, set eyes upon the unfortunate girl.</p>
+
+<p>Six o'clock came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound
+for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost,
+therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in
+company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across from
+Stockholm.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock, however, just as we were idling over dessert, two
+gray-coated police officers entered and arrested me on the serious
+charge of landing without a passport.</p>
+
+<p>I accompanied them to the police-office, where I was ushered into the
+presence of the big, bristly Russian who held the town of Abo in terror,
+the Chief of Police. The officials which Russia sends into Finland are
+selected for their harsh discipline and hide-bound bureaucracy, and this
+human machine in uniform was no exception. Had he been the Minister of
+the Interior himself, he could not have been more self-opinionated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; he snapped, looking up at me as I was placed before him. &quot;Your
+name is Gordon Gregg, English, from Stockholm. No passport, and decline
+to leave even though warned&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a passport,&quot; I said firmly, producing it.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at it, and pointing with his finger, said: &quot;It has no date,
+and is therefore worthless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fault is not mine, but that of a Russian official. If you wish it
+to be dated, you may send it to your Consulate-General in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall not,&quot; he cried, glaring at me angrily. &quot;And for your insult to
+the law, I shall commit you to prison for one month. Perhaps you will
+then learn Russian manners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! so you will commit an Englishman to prison for a month, without
+trial&mdash;eh? That's very interesting! Perhaps if you attempt such a thing
+as that they may have something to say about it in Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You defy me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the least. I have presented my passport and demand common
+courtesy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your passport is worthless, I tell you!&quot; he cried. &quot;There, that's how
+much it is worth to me!&quot; And snatching it up he tore it in half and
+tossed the pieces of blue paper in my face.</p>
+
+<p>My blood was up at this insult, yet I bit my lips and remained quite
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you will kindly tell me who you are?&quot; I asked in as quiet a
+voice as I could command.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With pleasure. I am Michael Boranski, Chief of Police of the Province
+of Abo-Biornebourg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Well, Michael Boranski, I shall trouble you to pick up my passport,
+stick it together again, and apologize to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Apologize! Me apologize!&quot; And the fellow laughed aloud, while the
+police officers on either side of me grinned from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You refuse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Refuse? Certainly I do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, then,&quot; I said, re-opening my pocket-book and taking out an
+open letter. &quot;Perhaps you will kindly glance at that. It is in Russian,
+so you can read it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He snatched it from me with ill-grace, but not without curiosity. And
+then, as he read the lines, his face changed and he went paler. Raising
+his head, he stood staring at me open-mouthed in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I apologize to your Excellency!&quot; he gasped, blanched to the lips. &quot;I
+most humbly apologize. I&mdash;I did not know. You told me nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you will kindly mend my passport, and give it a proper vis&eacute;.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he was up from his chair, and having gathered the torn
+paper from the floor, proceeded to paste it together. On the back he
+endorsed that it had been torn by accident, and then gave it the proper
+vis&eacute;, affixing the stamps.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I trust, Excellency,&quot; he said, bowing low as he handed it to me, &quot;I
+trust that this affair will not trouble you further. I assure you I had
+no intention of insulting you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you had!&quot; I said. &quot;You insulted me merely because I am English.
+But recollect in future that the man who insults an Englishman generally
+pays for it, and I do not intend to let this pass. There is a higher
+power in Finland than even the Governor-General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Excellency,&quot; whined the fellow who only ten minutes ago had been
+such an insulting bully, &quot;I shall lose my position. I have a wife and
+six children&mdash;my wife is delicate, and my pay here is not a large one.
+You will forgive, won't you, Excellency? I have apologized&mdash;I most
+humbly apologize.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with
+trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:</p>
+
+<br>&quot;MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD,<br>
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 9em;">&quot;PALACE OF PETERHOF.</span><br>
+
+<p style="margin-top: 0; text-indent: 0;">&quot;The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom
+it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey
+through our dominion. And we hereby command all Governors of Provinces
+and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and
+privileges and immunities as Our guest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian,
+while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred
+and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from
+the gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific&mdash;&quot;Nicholas.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the
+invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry
+into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British
+public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them.
+It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in
+Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in
+European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return
+to Italy to recuperate. The document had therefore remained in my
+possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following
+summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked,
+and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the
+Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given
+me that most valuable document.</p>
+
+<p>Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a
+whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest
+of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He
+begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling
+himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded
+me with awe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires,&quot;
+declared the official. &quot;I will serve your Excellency in any way he may
+command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he
+feared me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said after some reluctance, &quot;there is a little matter in which
+you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my
+decision of complaining to Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what is that, Excellency?&quot; he gasped eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma
+Heath,&quot; I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper.
+&quot;Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a
+niece of a certain Baron Oberg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Baron Oberg!&quot; he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is
+somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she
+is, and I will say nothing more about my passport,&quot; I added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?&quot; he said
+reflectively, with the paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
+Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made,&quot; was his answer. &quot;When
+I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
+your Excellency's hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
+officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.</p>
+
+<p>On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
+Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
+an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
+south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and
+meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every
+hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the
+country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg
+to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian
+bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful
+neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most
+unscrupulous officials it could import.</p>
+
+<p>My fellow-traveler from Stockholm, who represented a firm of
+paper-makers in Hamburg, and who paid an annual visit to Abo and
+Helsingfors, acted as my guide around the town, while I awaited the
+information from the humbled Chief of Police. My German friend pointed
+out to me how, since Russia placed her hand upon Finland, progress had
+been arrested, and certainly plain evidences were on every hand. There
+was growing discontent everywhere, for many of the newspapers had
+recently been suppressed and the remainder were under a severe
+censorship; agriculture had already decreased, and many of the
+cotton-spinning and saw mills were silent and deserted. The exploitation
+of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated
+down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners
+were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression
+everywhere. Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the
+more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken,
+artificially isolated and oppressed Russia. The double-headed eagle was
+everywhere, and the people sat silent and brooding beneath its black
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There will be an uprising here before long,&quot; declared the German
+confidentially, as we were taking tea one day on the wooden balcony of
+the hotel where the sea and the low-lying islands stretched out before
+us in the pale yellow of the autumn sundown. &quot;The people will revolt, as
+they did in Poland. The Finnish Government can only appeal to the Czar
+through the Governor-General, and one can easily imagine that their
+suggestions never reach the Emperor. It is said here that the harsher
+and more corrupt the official, the greater honor does he receive from
+Petersburg. But trouble is brewing for Russia,&quot; he added. &quot;A very
+serious trouble&mdash;depend upon it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked upon the gray dismal scene, the empty port, the silent quay,
+the dark line of gloomy pine forest away beyond the town, the broken
+coast and the wide expanse of water glittering in the northern sunset.
+Yes. The very silence seemed to forbode evil and mystery. Truly what I
+saw of Finland impressed me even more than what I had witnessed in the
+far-off eastern provinces of European Russia.</p>
+
+<p>My object, however, was not to inquire into the internal condition of
+Finland, or of her resentment of her powerful conqueror. I was there to
+find that unfortunate girl who had written so strangely to her old
+school friend and whose portrait had, for some hidden reason, been
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the third day after my arrival at Abo, while sitting
+on the hotel veranda reading an old copy of the Paris <i>Journal</i>, many
+portions of which had been &quot;blacked out&quot; by the censor, the Chief of
+Police, in his dark green uniform, entered and saluted before me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Excellency, may I be permitted to speak with you in private?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; I responded, rising and conducting him to my bedroom, where
+I closed the door, invited him to a seat, and myself sat upon the edge
+of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have made various inquiries,&quot; he said, &quot;and I think I have found the
+lady your Excellency is seeking. My information, however, must be
+furnished to you in strictest confidence,&quot; he added, &quot;because there are
+reasons why I should withhold her whereabouts from you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; I inquired. &quot;What reasons?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;the lady is living in Finland in secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then she is alive!&quot; I exclaimed quickly. &quot;I thought she was dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the world she is dead,&quot; responded Michael Boranski, stroking his red
+beard. &quot;For that reason the information I give you must be treated as
+confidential.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should she be in hiding? She is guilty of no offense&mdash;is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this Baron Oberg? You tell me nothing of him,&quot; I said with
+dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I when I know nothing, Excellency?&quot; was his response.</p>
+
+<p>I felt certain that the fellow was not speaking the truth, for I had
+noticed his surprise when I had first uttered the mysterious nobleman's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I have already said, Excellency, I am desirous of atoning for my
+insult, and will serve you in every manner I can. For that reason I had
+sought news of the young English lady&mdash;the Mademoiselle Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have all foreigners registered in your books,&quot; I said. &quot;The
+search was surely not a difficult one. I know your police methods in
+Russia too well,&quot; I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, the lady was not registered,&quot; he said. &quot;There was a reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have told you, Excellency. She is in hiding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret that much as I desire, I dare not appear to have any
+connection with your quest. But I will direct you. Indeed, I will give
+you instructions to a second person to take you to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she in Abo?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Away in the country. If your Excellency will be down at the end of
+the quay to-morrow at noon you will find a carriage in waiting, and the
+driver will have full instructions how to take you to her and how to
+act. Follow his directions implicitly, for he is a man I can trust.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow!&quot; I cried anxiously. &quot;Why not to-day? I am ready to go at any
+moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief of Police remained thoughtful for a few moments, then said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if I could find the man, you might go to-day. Yet it is a long
+way, and you would not return before to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The roads are safe, I suppose? I don't mind driving in the night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The official glanced at the clock, and rising exclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, I will send for the man. If we find him, then the carriage
+will be at the same spot at the eastern end of the quay in two hours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At noon. Very well. I shall keep the appointment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And after seeing her, you will of course keep your promise of secrecy
+regarding our little misunderstanding?&quot; he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have already given my word,&quot; was the response; and the man bowed and
+left, much, I think, to the surprise of the hotel-proprietor and his
+staff. It was an unusual thing for such a high official as the Chief of
+Police to visit one of their guests in person. If he desired to
+interview any of them, he commanded them to attend at his office, or
+they were escorted there by his gray-coated agents.</p>
+
+<p>The day was cold, with a biting wind from the icy north, when after a
+hasty luncheon I put on my overcoat and strolled along the deserted quay
+where I lounged at the further end, watching the approach of a great
+pontoon of pine logs that had apparently floated out of one of the
+rivers and was now being navigated to the port by four men who seemed
+every moment in imminent danger of being washed off the raft into the
+sea as the waves broke over and drenched them. They had, however, lashed
+themselves to their raft, I saw, and now slowly piloted the great
+floating platform towards the quay.</p>
+
+<p>I think I must have waited half an hour, when my attention was suddenly
+attracted by the rattle of wheels over the stones, and turning I saw an
+old closed carriage drawn by three horses abreast, with bells upon the
+harness, approaching me rapidly. When it drew up, the driver, a
+burly-looking, fair-headed Finn in a huge sheepskin overcoat, motioned
+me to enter, urging in broken Russian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quickly, Excellency!&mdash;quickly!&mdash;you must not be seen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then the instant I was seated, and before I could close the door,
+the horses plunged forward and we were tearing at full gallop out of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road
+through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had
+already been garnered. There were no villages. All around was a
+houseless land, rolling miles of brown and green, broken and checkered
+by bits of forest and clumps of dark melancholy pines. The road ran ever
+and anon right down to where the cold, green waves broke upon the rocky
+shore. In a few weeks that coast would be ice-bound and snow-covered,
+and then the silence of the God-forsaken country would be complete.</p>
+
+<p>After five miles or so, the driver pulled up and descended to readjust
+his harness, whereupon I got out and asked him in the best Russian I
+could command:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To Nystad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How far is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sixty-eight,&quot; was his reply.</p>
+
+<p>I took him to imply kilometres, as being a Finn he would not speak of
+versts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Chief of Police has given you directions?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His high Excellency has told me exactly what to do,&quot; was the man's
+answer, as he took out his huge wooden pipe and filled it. &quot;You wish to
+see the young lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered, &quot;to first see her, and I do not know whether it will
+be necessary for me to make myself known to her. Where is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beyond Nystad,&quot; was his vague answer with a wave of his big fat hand in
+the direction of the dark pine forest that stretched before us. &quot;We
+shall be there about an hour after sundown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I re-entered the stuffy old conveyance that rocked and rolled as we
+dashed away over the uneven forest road, and sat wondering to what
+manner of place I was being conducted.</p>
+
+<p>Elma Heath was in hiding. Why? I recollected her curious letter and
+remembered every word of it. She wished Hornby to know that she had
+never revealed her secret. What secret, I wondered?</p>
+
+<p>I lit an abominable cigar, and tried to smoke, but I was too filled with
+anxiety, too bewildered by the maze of mystery in which I now found
+myself. Two hours later we pulled up before a long log-built post-house
+just beyond a small town in a hollow that faced the sea, and I alighted
+to watch the steaming horses being replaced by a trio of fresh ones. The
+place was Dadendal, I was informed, and the proprietor of the place,
+when I entered and tossed off a liqueur-glass of cognac, pointed out to
+me a row of granite buildings fallen much to decay as the ancient
+convent.</p>
+
+<p>Then, resuming our journey, the short day quickly drew to a close, the
+sun sank yellow and watery over the towering pines through which we went
+mile after mile, a dense, interminable forest wherein the wolves lurked
+in winter, often rendering the road dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>The temperature fell, and it froze again. Through the window in front I
+could see the big Finn driver throwing his arms across his shoulders to
+promote circulation, in the same manner as does the London &quot;cabby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When night drew on we changed horses again at a small, dirty post-house
+in the forest, at the edge of a lake, and then pushed forward again,
+although it was already long past the hour at which he had said we
+should arrive.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed slowly in the darkness, for we had no light, and the horses
+seemed to find their way by instinct. The rolling of the lumbering old
+vehicle after six hours had rendered me sleepy, I think, for I recollect
+closing my eyes and conjuring up that strange scene on board the
+<i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, I suppose I must have slept, for I was awakened by a light
+shining into my face and the driver shaking me by the shoulder. When I
+roused myself and, naturally, inquired the reason, he placed his finger
+mysteriously upon my lips, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush, your high nobility, hush! Come with me. But make no noise. If we
+are discovered, it means death for us&mdash;death. Come, give me your hand.
+Slowly. Tread softly. See, here is the boat. I will get in first. We
+shall not be heard upon the water. So.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the fellow led me, half-dazed, down to the bank of a broad, dark
+river which I could just distinguish&mdash;he led me to an unknown bourne.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat
+he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around
+a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the
+starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a
+distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot; I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young
+Englishwoman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current,
+steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed
+again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps
+indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of
+a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.</p>
+
+<p>After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake
+where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a
+long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one
+corner&mdash;an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small
+windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining
+upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had
+undoubtedly been placed there as signal.</p>
+
+<p>With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow
+of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the
+lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a
+moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers
+until it was wholly consumed.</p>
+
+<p>Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting
+five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark
+tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as
+any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege
+guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had
+probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.</p>
+
+<p>I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping,
+and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and
+half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had
+opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.</p>
+
+<p>My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper,
+and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the
+narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the
+darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival
+and watching our signal.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a
+match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her
+features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray
+wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of
+hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while
+around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized
+that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps,
+with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character,
+and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken
+figure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The sister speaks French?&quot; I hazarded in that language, knowing that in
+most convents throughout Europe French is known.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oui, m'sieur,&quot; was her answer. &quot;And a leetle Engleesh, too&mdash;a ve-ry
+leetle,&quot; she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know why I am here?&quot; I said, gratified that at least one person in
+that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I have already been told,&quot; was her answer with a strong accent, as
+we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the
+tower, once perhaps a prison. &quot;But are you not afraid to venture here?&quot;
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your
+presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive&mdash;so I
+warn you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am prepared to risk that,&quot; I said, smiling; at the same time my hand
+instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe.
+&quot;I wish to see Miss Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and
+found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all
+blame?&quot; she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her
+keen gray eyes. &quot;By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I
+should not have done were it not compulsory.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Compulsory! How?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order
+the closed door of the convent had been opened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not,&quot; I answered. &quot;Russian officialdom is all-powerful in
+Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?&quot; she asked in a
+hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am,&quot; I said. &quot;Lead me to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise
+me that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Sister!&quot; I cried. &quot;You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I
+come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question
+her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be
+permitted to speak with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You wish to learn the truth, sir!&quot; remarked the woman. &quot;I thought you
+were her lover&mdash;that you merely wished to see her once again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I am not her lover,&quot; I answered. &quot;Indeed, we have never yet met.
+But I am in search of the truth from her own lips.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you will never learn,&quot; she said, in a hard, changed voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!&quot; I cried. &quot;But I
+intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
+from England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
+impetuosity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English,&quot; she remarked in
+her broken English. &quot;If your object were known, you would never be
+spared to return to your own land. Ah!&quot; she sighed, &quot;you do not know the
+mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
+and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
+forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
+Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----&quot; and she shrugged her shoulders
+without finishing her sentence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Baron Oberg&mdash;Governor-General of Finland!&quot; I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. Did you not know?&quot; she said, dropping into French. &quot;It is
+four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
+poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot
+upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous
+of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man
+in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His
+niece&mdash;poor young lady!&mdash;can that be? Surely not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and
+sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart
+was really softer than I had believed it to be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where does this Baron live?&quot; I asked, surprised that he should occupy
+so high a place in Russian officialdom&mdash;the representative of the Czar,
+with powers as great as the Emperor himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Elma Heath is here&mdash;in this grim fortress! Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They
+account for so much, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is exactly my opinion,&quot; I said. &quot;She has been brought here against
+her will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five
+months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from
+civilization and see no new face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Terrible!&quot; I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that
+seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I
+supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and
+Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place.
+&quot;And have you been here long?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary
+life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and
+dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had
+half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the
+past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had
+been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a
+distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If
+so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I
+questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, m'sieur,&quot; she declared, &quot;they call him 'The Strangler of the
+Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until
+four of them died&mdash;and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for
+it&mdash;he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in
+prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in
+Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the
+officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered
+Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public
+education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the
+mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are
+filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and
+'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is
+submissive and is Russianized!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to
+time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of
+the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was &quot;The Strangler of
+Finland,&quot; the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country
+to a state of ruin and revolt!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cannot I see her?&quot; I asked, feeling that we had remained too long
+there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped
+from it the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, come,&quot; she said. &quot;But silence! Walk softly,&quot; and holding up the
+old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone
+corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages,
+all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we
+crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big
+nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right
+angles, I saw that we were in a kind of <i>cul de sac,</i> before the door of
+which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then,
+motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her,
+and leaving me in the pitch darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving
+within. No word was uttered, or if so, it was whispered so low that it
+did not reach me. For nearly five minutes I waited in impatience
+outside that closed door, until again the handle turned and my
+conductress beckoned me in silence within.</p>
+
+<p>I stepped into a small, square chamber, the floor of which was carpeted,
+and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light
+over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of
+sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there
+was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was
+another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment;
+then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown,
+a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever
+seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders,
+and as her hands were clasped before her she looked straight at me in
+surprise as she was led towards me.</p>
+
+<p>She walked but feebly, and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress,
+as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her
+beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such
+fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed
+them to be. I stood before her dumbfounded in admiration.</p>
+
+<p>In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with
+astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Elma Heath, I presume?&quot; I exclaimed at last. &quot;May I introduce
+myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan
+by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question&mdash;a question that
+concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.</p>
+
+<p>Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness.
+No sound escaped her.</p>
+
+<p>I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in
+a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.</p>
+
+<p>She was both deaf and dumb!</p>
+
+<p>She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in
+her splendid eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is this place?&quot; I demanded of the woman in the religious habit,
+when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction.
+&quot;Where am I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the Castle of Kajana&mdash;the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland,&quot;
+was her answer. &quot;The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and
+hearing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Deaf and dumb!&quot; I cried, looking at the beautiful original of that
+destroyed photograph on board the <i>Lola</i>. &quot;But she has surely not always
+been so!&quot; I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I think not always,&quot; replied the sister quietly. &quot;But you said you
+intended to question her, and did I not tell you that to learn the truth
+was impossible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she can write responses to my questions?&quot; I argued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alas! no,&quot; was the old woman's whispered reply. &quot;Her mind is affected.
+She is, unfortunately, a hopeless lunatic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked straight into those sad, wide-open, yet unflinching brown eyes
+utterly confounded.</p>
+
+<p>Those white wrists held in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the
+inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that
+letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands
+were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had
+spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was
+slowly being driven to suicide? She had kept her secret, and she wished
+the man Hornby&mdash;the man who was to marry Muriel Leithcourt&mdash;to know.</p>
+
+<p>The room in which we stood was evidently an apartment set apart for her
+use, for beyond was the tiny bedchamber; yet the small, high-up window
+was closely barred, and the cold bareness of the prison was sufficient
+indeed to cause anyone confined there to prefer death to captivity.</p>
+
+<p>Again I spoke to her slowly and kindly, but there was no response. That
+she was absolutely dumb was only too apparent. Yet surely she had not
+always been so! I had gone in search of her because the beauty of her
+portrait had magnetized me, and I had now found her to be even more
+lovely than her picture, yet, alas! suffering from an affliction that
+rendered her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth
+staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes
+upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the
+countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so full of blank
+unutterable despair.</p>
+
+<p>She placed her clasped hands to her mouth and made signs by shaking her
+head that she could neither understand nor respond. I therefore took my
+wallet from my pocket and wrote upon a piece of paper in a large hand
+the words: &quot;<i>I come from Lydia Moreton. My name is Gordon Gregg</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When her eager gaze fell upon the words she became instantly filled with
+excitement, and nodded quickly. Then holding her steel-clasped wrists
+towards me she looked wistfully at me, as though imploring me to release
+her from the awful bondage in that silent tomb.</p>
+
+<p>Though the woman who had led me there endeavored to prevent it, I
+handed her the pencil, and placed the paper on the table for her to
+write.</p>
+
+<p>The nun tried to snatch it up, but I held her arm gently and forcibly,
+saying in French:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I wish to see if she is really insane. You will at least allow me
+this satisfaction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And while we were in altercation, Elma, with the pencil in her fingers,
+tried to write, but by reason of her hands being bound so closely was
+unable. At length, however, after several attempts, she succeeded in
+printing in uneven capitals the response:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know you. You were on the yacht. I thought they killed you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thin-faced old woman saw her response&mdash;a reply that was surely
+rational enough&mdash;and her brows contracted with displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you here?&quot; I wrote, not allowing the sister to get sight of my
+question.</p>
+
+<p>In response, she wrote painfully and laboriously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am condemned for a crime I did not commit. Take me from here, or I
+shall kill myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed the old woman. &quot;You see, poor girl, she believes herself
+innocent! They all do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why is she here?&quot; I demanded fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know, m'sieur. It is not my duty to inquire the history of
+their crimes. When they are ill I nurse them; that is all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is the commandant of this fortress?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Colonel Smirnoff. If he knew that I had admitted you, you would never
+leave this place alive. This is the Schusselburg of Finland&mdash;the place
+of imprisonment for those who have conspired against the State.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The prison of political conspirators, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alas, m'sieur, yes! The place in which some of the poor creatures are
+tortured in order to obtain confessions and information with as much
+cruelty as in the black days of the Inquisition. These walls are thick,
+and their cries are not heard from the oubliettes below the lake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had long ago heard of the horrors of Schusselburg. Indeed who has not
+heard of them who has traveled in Russia? The very mention of the modern
+Bastille on Lake Ladoga, where no prisoner has ever been known to come
+forth alive, is sufficient to cause any Russian to turn pale. And I was
+in the Schusselburg of Finland!</p>
+
+<p>I turned over the sheet of paper and wrote the question&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did Baron Oberg send you here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In response, she printed the words&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so. I was arrested in Helsingfors. Tell Lydia where I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know Muriel Leithcourt?&quot; I inquired by the same means, whereupon
+she replied that they were at school together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you see me on board the <i>Lola</i>?&quot; I wrote.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. But I could not warn you, although I had overheard their
+intentions. They took me ashore when you had gone, to Siena. After three
+days I found myself deaf and dumb&mdash;I was made so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her allegation startled me. She had been purposely afflicted!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who did it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A doctor, I suppose. They put me under chloroform.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;People who said they were my friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned to the woman in the religious habit, and cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you see what she has written? She has been maimed by some friends
+who intended that the secret she holds should be kept. They feared to
+kill her, so they bribed a doctor to deliberately operate upon her so
+that she could neither speak nor hear. And now they are driving her to
+suicide!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M'sieur, I am astounded!&quot; declared the nun. &quot;I have always believed
+that she was not in her right mind, yet assuredly she seems to be as
+sane as I am, only willfully mutilated by some pretended friend who
+determined that no further word should pass her lips.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A shameful mutilation has been committed upon this poor defenseless
+girl!&quot; I cried in anger. &quot;And I will make it my duty to discover and
+punish the perpetrators of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, m'sieur. Do not act rashly, I pray of you,&quot; the woman said
+seriously, placing her hand upon my arm. &quot;Recollect you are in
+Finland&mdash;where the Baron Oberg is all-powerful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not fear the Baron Oberg,&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;If necessary, I will
+appeal to the Czar himself. Mademoiselle is kept here for the reason
+that she is in possession of some secret. She must be released&mdash;I will
+take the responsibility.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you must not try to release her from here. It would mean death to
+you both. The Castle of Kajana tells no secrets of those who die within
+its walls, or of those cast headlong into its waters and forgotten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again I turned to Elma, who stood in anxious wonder of the subject of
+our conversation, and had suddenly taken the old nun's hand and kissed
+it affectionately, perhaps in order to show me that she trusted her.</p>
+
+<p>Then upon the paper I wrote&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is the Baron Oberg your uncle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head in the negative, showing that the dreaded
+Governor-General of Finland had only acted a part towards her in which
+she had been compelled to concur.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is Philip Hornby?&quot; I inquired, writing rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My friend&mdash;at least, I believe so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Friend! And I had all along believed him to be an adventurer and an
+enemy!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did he go to Leghorn?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For a secret purpose. There was a plot to kill you, only I managed to
+thwart them,&quot; were the words she printed with much labor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I owe my life to you,&quot; I wrote. &quot;And in return I will do my utmost
+to rescue you from here, if you do not fear to place yourself in my
+hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And to this she replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I
+believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day.
+Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But,&quot;
+she wrote, &quot;I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined here
+on a life sentence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you are English, and if you have had no trial I can complain to our
+Ambassador.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England
+when I was a girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own
+country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that
+allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high
+official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of
+appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!</p>
+
+<p>A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A
+thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her,
+but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood
+there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me,
+notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was,
+perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered
+at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.</p>
+
+<p>Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that
+Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with
+bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both
+hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should
+be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in
+insanity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have decided,&quot; I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had
+conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the
+prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the
+calm attitude of the religious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not act with rashness?&quot; she implored in quick apprehension.
+&quot;Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!&quot; I answered, looking
+straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath
+a spell. &quot;They have drawn her into their power because she had no means
+of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!&quot; cried the old woman in a hoarse
+voice. &quot;If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both
+night and day they would shoot you both.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will risk it,&quot; I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny
+bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had
+verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to
+accompany me.</p>
+
+<p>The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to
+the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here,
+for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will
+not dare to accept such responsibility.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come,&quot; I said to Elma, although, alas! she could not hear my voice.
+&quot;Let us at least make a dash for freedom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be
+conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and
+making no noise.</p>
+
+<p>I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring
+to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone
+corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been
+first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt
+the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her
+faith in me as her deliverer.</p>
+
+<p>I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake
+how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable
+forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt
+the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I
+not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met
+that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though
+fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low
+corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the
+lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses
+awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or
+raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw
+that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my
+side.</p>
+
+<p>Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that
+unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the
+uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep
+voice cried out of the darkness in Russian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt! or I fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded
+carbine.</p>
+
+<p>A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes
+shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder
+within six feet of us.</p>
+
+<p>The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.</p>
+
+<p>My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the
+hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous
+Governor-General&mdash;fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very
+cleverly prepared for me.</p>
+
+<p>I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save
+the guards had ever been known to emerge&mdash;the Bastille of &quot;The Strangler
+of Finland!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw I was lost.</p>
+
+<p>The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speak!&quot; cried the fellow. &quot;Who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's
+hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it,
+but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his
+gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close
+with him was my only chance.</p>
+
+<p>Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn
+driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl
+whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a
+single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow,
+she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to
+wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying
+to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old
+trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and
+nearly fell.</p>
+
+<p>An oath escaped him, yet in that moment Elma succeeded in twisting the
+gun from his sinewy hands, which I now held with a strength begotten of
+a knowledge of my imminent peril. My whole future, as well as hers,
+depended upon my success in that desperate encounter. He was huge and
+powerful, with a strength far exceeding my own, yet I had been reckoned
+a good wrestler at Uppingham, and now my knowledge of that most ancient
+form of combat held me in good stead.</p>
+
+<p>The man shouted for help, his deep, hoarse voice sounding along the
+stone corridors. If heard by his comrades-in-arms, then the alarm would
+at once be given.</p>
+
+<p>We struggled desperately, swaying to and fro, he trying to throw me,
+while I, at every turn, practiced upon him the tricks learned in my
+youth. It seemed an even match, however, for he kept his feet by sheer
+brute force, and his muscles seemed hard and unbending as steel.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, as we were striving so vigorously and desperately,
+the English girl slipped past us with the carbine in her hand, and with
+a quick movement dragged open the heavy door that gave exit to the
+lake.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant I unfortunately made a false move, and his hand closed
+upon my throat like a band of steel. I fought and struggled to loose
+myself, exerting every muscle, but alas! he gained the advantage. I
+heard a splash, and saw that Elma no longer held the sentry's weapon in
+her hands, having thrown it into the water.</p>
+
+<p>Then at the same moment I heard a voice outside cry in a low tone:
+&quot;Courage, Excellency! Courage! I will come and help you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the faithful Finn, who had been awaiting me in the deep shadow,
+and with a few strokes pulled his boat up to the narrow rickety ledge
+outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take the lady!&quot; I succeeded in gasping in Russian. &quot;Never mind me,&quot; and
+I saw to my satisfaction that he guided Elma to step into the boat,
+which at that moment drifted past the little platform.</p>
+
+<p>I struggled valiantly, but against such a man of brute strength I was
+powerless. He held my throat, causing me excruciating pain, and each
+moment I felt my chance of victory grow smaller. My strength was
+failing. While I held his arms at his sides, I could keep him secure
+without much effort, but now with his fingers pressing in my windpipe I
+could not breathe.</p>
+
+<p>I was slowly being strangled.</p>
+
+<p>To be vanquished meant imprisonment there, perhaps even death. Victory
+meant Elma's life, as well as my own. Mine was therefore a fight for
+life. A sudden idea flashed across my mind, and I continued to struggle,
+at the same time gradually forcing my enemy backward towards the door.
+He shouted for help, but was unheard. He cursed and swore and shouted
+until, with a sudden and almost superhuman effort, I tripped him,
+bringing his head into such violent contact with the stone lintel of the
+door that the sound could surely be heard a considerable distance. For a
+moment he was stunned, and in that brief second I released his grip from
+my throat and hurled him backwards beyond the door.</p>
+
+<p>There was the sound of the crashing of wood as the rotten platform gave
+way, a loud splash, and next instant the dark waters closed over the
+big, bearded fellow who would have snatched Elma Heath from me, and have
+held me prisoner in that castle of terrors. He sank like a stone, for
+although I stood watching for him to rise, I could only distinguish the
+woodwork floating away with the current.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment, however, even as I stood there in horror at my deed of
+self-defense, the place suddenly resounded with shouts of alarm, and in
+the tower above me the great old rusty bell began to swing, ringing its
+brazen note across the broad expanse of waters.</p>
+
+<p>The fair-bearded Finn again shot the boat across to where I stood,
+crying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jump, Excellency! For your life, jump! The guards will be upon us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Behind me in the passage I saw a light and the glitter of arms. A shot
+rang out, and a bullet whizzed past me, but I stood unharmed. Then I
+jumped, and nearly upset the boat, but taking an oar I began to row for
+life, and as we drew away from those grim, black walls the fire belched
+forth from three rifles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Row!&quot; I shrieked, turning to see if my fair companion had been hit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Keep cool, Excellency,&quot; urged the Finn. &quot;See, right away there in the
+shadow. We might trick them, for the patrol-boat will be at the head of
+the river waiting to cut us off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again the guards fired upon us, but in the darkness their aim was
+faulty. Lights appeared in the high windows of the castle, and we could
+see that the greatest commotion had been caused by the escape of the
+prisoner. The men at the door in the tower were shouting to the
+patrol-boats, which were nowhere to be seen, calling them to row us down
+and capture us, but by plying our oars rapidly we shot straight across
+the lake until we got under the deep shadow of the opposite shore, and
+then crept gradually along in the direction we had come.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we meet the boats, Excellency, we must run ashore and take to the
+woods,&quot; explained the Finn. &quot;It is our only chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he spoken when out in the center of the lake we could just
+distinguish a long boat with three rowers going swiftly towards the
+entrance to the river, which we so desired to gain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look!&quot; cried our guide, backing water, and bringing the boat to a
+standstill. &quot;They are in search of us! If we are discovered they will
+fire. It is their orders. No boat is allowed upon this lake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Elma sat watching our pursuers, but still calm and silent. She seemed to
+intrust herself entirely to me.</p>
+
+<p>The guards were rowing rapidly, the oars sounding in the rowlocks,
+evidently in the belief that we had made for the river. But the
+Finlander had apparently foreseen this, and for that reason we were
+lying safe from observation in the deep shadow of an overhanging tree.</p>
+
+<p>A gray mist was slowly rising from the water, and the Finn, noticing it,
+hoped that it might favor us. In Finland in late autumn the mists are
+often as thick as our proverbial London fogs, only whiter, denser, and
+more frosty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we disembark we shall be compelled to make a detour of fully four
+days in the forest, in order to pass the marshes,&quot; he pointed out in a
+low whisper. &quot;But if we can enter the river we can go ashore anywhere
+and get by foot to some place where the lady can lie in hiding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you advise? We are entirely in your hands. The Chief of Police
+told me he could trust you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think it will be best to risk it,&quot; he said in Russian after a brief
+pause. &quot;We will tie up the boat, and I will go along the bank and see
+what the guards are doing. You will remain here, and I shall not be
+seen. The rushes and undergrowth are higher further along. But if there
+is danger while I am absent get out and go straight westward until you
+find the marsh, then keep along its banks due south,&quot; and drawing up the
+boat to the bank the shrewd, big-boned fellow disappeared into the dark
+undergrowth.</p>
+
+<p>There were no signs yet of the break of day. Indeed, the stars were now
+hidden, and the great plane of water was every moment growing more
+indistinct as we both sat in silence. My ears were strained to catch the
+dipping of an oar or a voice, but beyond the lapping of the water
+beneath the boat there was no other sound. I took the hand of the
+fair-faced girl at my side and pressed it. In return she pressed mine.</p>
+
+<p>It was the only means by which we could exchange confidences. She whom I
+had sought through all those months sat at my side, yet powerless to
+utter one single word.</p>
+
+<p>Still holding her hands in both my own I gripped them to show her that I
+intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as
+though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history?
+What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which
+had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and
+afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up
+before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very
+seriously, or such drastic means would never be employed to secure her
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and next moment a low
+voice spoke which I recognized as that of our friend, the Finn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is danger, Excellency&mdash;a grave danger!&quot; he said in a low half
+whisper. &quot;Three boats are in search of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And scarcely had he uttered those words when there was the flash of a
+rifle from the haze, a loud report, and again a bullet whizzed past just
+behind my head. In an instant the truth became apparent, for I saw the
+dark shadow of a boat rapidly rowed, bearing full upon us. The shot had
+been fired as a signal that we had been sighted, and were pursued. Other
+shots rang out, mingled with the wild exultant shouts of the guards as
+they bore down full upon us, and then I knew that, notwithstanding our
+escape, we were now lost. They were too close upon us to admit of
+eluding them. The peril we had dreaded had fallen. The Finn's presence
+on the bank had evidently been detected by a boat drawn up at the shore,
+and he had been followed to where we had lain in what we had so
+foolishly believed to be a safe hiding-place. Nought else was to be done
+but to face the inevitable. Three times the red fire of a rifle belched
+angrily in our faces, and yet, by good fortune, neither of us was
+struck. Yet we knew too well that the intention of our pursuers was to
+kill us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quick, Excellency! Fly! while there is yet time!&quot; gasped the Finn,
+grasping my hand and half dragging me from the boat, while, I, in turn,
+placed Elma upon the bank.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Hoida!</i> This way! Swiftly!&quot; cried our guide, and the three of us,
+heedless of the consequences, plunged forward into the impenetrable
+darkness, just as our fierce pursuers came alongside where we had only a
+moment ago been seated. They shouted wildly as they sprang to land after
+us, but our guide, who had been born and bred in these forests, knew
+well how to travel in a semi-circle, and how to conceal himself. It was
+a race for freedom&mdash;nay, for very life.</p>
+
+<p>So dark that we could see before us hardly a foot, we were compelled to
+place our hands in front of us to avoid collision with the big tree
+trunks, while ever and anon we found ourselves entangled in the mass of
+dead creepers and vegetable parasites that formed the dense undergrowth.
+Around us on every side we heard the shouts and curses of our pursuers,
+while above the rest we heard an authoritative voice, evidently that of
+a sergeant of the guard, cry&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shoot the man, but spare the woman! The Colonel wants her back. Don't
+let her escape! We shall be well rewarded. So keep on, comrades! <i>Mene
+edemm&auml;ski!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the trembling girl beside me heard nothing, and perhaps indeed it
+was best that she could not hear. My only fear was that our pursuers, of
+whom there now seemed to be a dozen, had extended, with the intention of
+encircling us. They, no doubt, knew every inch of that giant forest with
+its numerous bogs and marshes, and if they could not discover us would
+no doubt drive us into one or other of the bogs, where escape was
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Our gallant guide, on the other hand, seemed to utterly disregard the
+danger and kept on, every now and then stretching out his hand and
+helping along the afflicted girl we had rescued from that living tomb.
+Headlong we went in a straight line, until suddenly we began to feel
+our feet sinking into the soft ground, and then the Finlander turned to
+the left, at right angles, and we found ourselves in a denser
+undergrowth, where in the darkness our hands and faces became badly
+scratched.</p>
+
+<p>Another gun was fired as signal, echoing through the wood, but the sound
+came from the opposite direction to that we were traveling; therefore we
+hoped that we had eluded those whose earnest desire it was to capture us
+for the reward. Suddenly, however, a second gun, an answering signal,
+was fired from straight before us, and that revealed the truth. We were
+actually between the two parties, and they were closing in upon us! They
+had already driven us to the edge of the bog. The Finlander recognized
+our peril as quickly as I did, and halted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us turn straight back,&quot; he urged breathlessly. &quot;We may yet elude
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then we again turned off at right angles, traveling as quickly as we
+were able back towards the lake shore. It was an exciting chase in the
+darkness, for we knew not whither we were going, nor into what pitfall
+or ravine or treacherous marsh we might fall. Once we saw afar through
+the trees the light of a lantern held by a guard, and already the
+sweet-faced girl beside me seemed tired and terribly fatigued. But we
+hurried on and on, striving to make no noise, and yet the crackling of
+wood beneath our feet seemed to us to sound like the noise of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>At last, breathless, we halted to listen. We were already in sight of
+the gray mist where lay the silent lake that held so many secrets. There
+was not a sound. The guards had gone straight on, believing they had
+driven us into that deadly bog wherein, if we had entered, we must have
+been slowly sucked down and engulfed. They were surrounding it, no
+doubt, feeling certain of their prey.</p>
+
+<p>But we crept along the water's edge, until in the gray light we could
+distinguish two empty boats&mdash;that of the guards and our own. We were
+again at the spot where we had disembarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us row to the head of the lake,&quot; suggested the Finn. &quot;We may then
+land and escape them.&quot; And a moment later we were all three in the
+guards' boat, rowing with all our might under the deep shadow of the
+bank northward, in the opposite direction to the town of Nystad.</p>
+
+<p>We kept a sharp look-out for any other boat, but saw none. The signals
+ashore had attracted all the guards to that spot to join in the search,
+and now, having doubled back and again embarked, we were every moment
+increasing the distance between ourselves and our pursuers. I think we
+must have rowed several miles, for ere we landed again, upon a low, flat
+and barren shore, the first gray streak of day was showing in the east.</p>
+
+<p>Elma noticed it, and kept her great brown eyes fixed upon it
+thoughtfully. It was the dawn for her&mdash;the dawn of a new life. Our eyes
+met; she smiled at me, and then gazed again eastward, full of silent
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Having landed, we drew the boat up and concealed it in the undergrowth
+so that the guards, on searching, should not know the direction we had
+taken, and then we went straight on northward across the low-lying
+lands, to where the forest showed dark against the morning gray. The
+mist had now somewhat cleared, but the air was keen and frosty.</p>
+
+<p>This wood, we found, was of tall high pines, where walking was not
+difficult, a wide wilderness of trees which, hour after hour, we
+traversed in the vain endeavor to find the rough path which our guide
+told us led for a hundred miles from Alavo down to Tammerfors, the
+manufacturing center of the country. But to discover a path in a forest
+forty miles wide is a matter of considerable difficulty, and for hours
+we wandered on and on, but alas! always in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Faint and hungry, yet we still kept courage. Fortunately we found a
+little spring, and all three of us drank eagerly with our hands. But of
+food we had nothing, save a small piece of hard rye bread which the Finn
+had in his pocket, the remains of his evening meal; and this we gave to
+Elma, who, half famished, ate it quickly. We knew quite well that it
+would be an easy matter to die of starvation in that great trackless
+forest, therefore we kept on undaunted, while the yellow autumn sun
+struggled through the dark pines, glinting on the straight gray trunks
+and reflecting a golden light in that dead unbroken silence.</p>
+
+<p>How many miles we trudged I have no idea. It was a consolation to know
+that we now had no pursuers, yet what fate lay before us we knew not. If
+we could only find that forest-road we might come across some
+wood-cutter's hut, where we could obtain rough food of some sort, yet
+our guide, used as he was to those enormous woods of central Finland,
+was utterly out of his bearings, and no mark of civilization attracted
+his quick, experienced eye. The light above gradually faded, and over a
+sharp stone Elma stumbled and ripped her shoe.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at my watch, and found that it was already five o'clock. In an
+hour it would be dark, the beginning of the long northern night. Elma,
+who was weary and footsore, asked by signs to be permitted to lay down
+and rest. Therefore we gathered a bed of dried leaves for her, and she
+lay down, and while we watched she was soon asleep. The Finn, who
+declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and
+placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined
+features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss
+upon that soft inviting cheek. Yet I had no right to do so&mdash;no right to
+take such an advantage.</p>
+
+<p>The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused
+me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and
+notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals,
+we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write,
+therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner
+of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath
+the spell of her beauty. All the little acts of homage I was able to
+perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep
+luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.</p>
+
+<p>The mist had not cleared, for it was soon after dawn when we again moved
+along, hungry, chill, and yet hopeful. At a spring we obtained some
+water, and then, in silent procession, pressed forward in search of the
+rough track of the woodcutters.</p>
+
+<p>Elma's torn shoe gave her considerable trouble, and noticing her
+limping, I induced her to sit down while I took it off, hoping to be
+able to mend it, but, having unlaced it, I saw that upon her stocking
+was a large patch of congealed blood, where her foot itself had also
+been cut. I managed to beat the nails of the shoe with a stone, so that
+its sole should not be lost, and she readjusted it, allowing me to lace
+it up for her and smiling the while.</p>
+
+<p>Forward we trudged, ever forward, across that enormous forest where the
+myriad treetrunks presented the same dismal scene everywhere, a forest
+untrodden save by wild, half-savage lumbermen. Throughout that dull
+gray day we marched onward, faint with hunger, yet suffering but little
+pain, for the first pangs were now past, and were succeeded by slight
+light-headedness. My only fear was that we should be compelled to spend
+another night without shelter, and what its effect might be upon the
+delicately-reared girl whose hand I held tenderly in mine. Surely my
+position was a strange one. Her terrible affliction seemed to cause her
+to be entirely dependent upon me.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, just as the yellow sunlight overhead had begun to fade, the
+flat-faced Finn, whose name he had told me was Felix Estlander, cried
+joyfully&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Polushaite!</i> Look, Excellency! Ah! The road at last!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And as we glanced before us we saw that his quick, well-trained eyes had
+detected away in the twilight, at some distance, a path traversing our
+vista among the gray-green tree-trunks. Then, hurrying along, we found
+ourselves upon a track, on which we turned to the right&mdash;a track, rough
+and deeply-rutted by the felled trunks that were dragged along it to the
+nearest river.</p>
+
+<p>Elma made a gesture of renewed hope, and all three of us redoubled our
+pace, expecting every moment to come upon some log hut, the owner of
+which would surely give us hospitality for the night. But darkness came
+on quickly, and yet we still pushed forward. Poor Elma was limping, and
+I knew that her injured foot was paining her, even though she could tell
+me nothing.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, after walking for nearly four hours in the almost
+impenetrable forest gloom, always fearing lest we might miss the path,
+our hearts suddenly beat quickly by seeing before us a light shining in
+a window, and five minutes later Felix was knocking at the door, and
+asking in Finnish the occupant to give hospitality to a lady lost in
+the forest.</p>
+
+<p>We heard a low growl like a muttered imprecation within, and when the
+door opened there stood upon the threshold a tall, bearded, muscular old
+fellow in a dirty red shirt, with a big revolver shining in his hand. A
+quick glance at us satisfied him that we were not thieves, and he
+invited us in while Felix explained that we had landed from the lake,
+and our boat having drifted away we had been compelled to take to the
+woods. The man heard the Finn's picturesque story, and then said
+something to me which Felix translated into Russian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Excellency is welcome to all the poor fare he has. He gives up his
+bed in the room yonder to the lady, so that she may rest. He is honored
+by your Excellency's presence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And while he was making this explanation the herculean wood-cutter in
+the red shirt stirred the red embers whereon a big pot was simmering,
+and sending forth an appetizing odor, and in five minutes we were all
+three sitting down to a stew of capercailzie, with a foaming light beer
+as a fitting beverage. We finished the dish with such lightning rapidity
+that our host boiled us a number of eggs, which, I fear, denuded his
+larder.</p>
+
+<p>The place was a poor one of two low rooms, built of rough log-pines,
+with double windows for the winter and a high brick stove. Cleanliness
+was not exactly its characteristic, nevertheless we all passed a very
+comfortable hour, and received a warm welcome from the lonely old fellow
+who passed his life so far beyond European civilization, and whose
+house, he told us, was often snowed up and cut off from all the world
+for three or four months at a time.</p>
+
+<p>After we had finished our meal, I asked the sturdy old fellow for a
+pencil, but the nearest thing he possessed was a stick of thick
+charcoal, and with that it was surely difficult to communicate with our
+fair companion. Therefore she rose, gave me her hand, bowed smilingly,
+and then passed into the inner room and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>The old wood-cutter gave us some coarse tobacco, and after smoking and
+chatting for an hour we threw ourselves wearily upon the wooden benches
+and slept soundly.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, at early dawn, we were startled by a loud banging at
+the door, the clattering of hoofs, and authoritative shouts in Russian.
+The old wood-cutter sprang up, and looking through a chink in the heavy
+shutters turned to us with blanched face, whispering breathlessly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The police! What can they want of me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Open!&quot; shouted the horsemen outside. &quot;Open in the name of his Majesty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Felix and I sprang up facing each other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are entrapped!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an instant our guide Felix made a dash for the door of the inner room
+where Elma had retired, but next second he reappeared, gasping in
+Russian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellency! Why, the door is open! The lady has gone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone!&quot; I cried, dismayed, rushing into the little room, where I found
+the truckle couch empty, and the door leading outside wide open. She had
+actually disappeared!</p>
+
+<p>The police again battered at the opposite door, threatening loudly to
+break it in if it were not opened at once, whereupon the old wood-cutter
+drew the bolt and admitted them. Two big, hulking fellows in heavy
+riding-coats and swords strode in, while two others remained mounted
+outside, holding the horses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your names?&quot; demanded one of the fellows, glancing at us as we stood
+together in expectation.</p>
+
+<p>Our host told them his name, and asked why they wished to enter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana,&quot; was the
+reply. &quot;Have you seen any woman here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; responded the wood-cutter. &quot;We never see any woman out in these
+woods.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make
+certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked,
+&quot;Who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is my own affair,&quot; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She
+seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some
+warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore
+she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your identity is my affair,&quot; declared the man with the fair, bristly
+beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is your chief?&quot; I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Melnikoff, at Helsingfors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then this is not in the district of Abo?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gordon Gregg, British subject,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are the drosky-driver from Abo,&quot; remarked the fellow, turning
+to Felix. &quot;Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at
+Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the
+Czar, I arrest you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave
+peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron
+Oberg, the Strangler of Finland. Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing
+that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?&quot; I inquired as
+coolly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For aiding a prisoner to escape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and,
+secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly
+willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is outside my district,&quot; growled the fellow, but I saw that his
+hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make
+all the explanation necessary. Until we have an interview with him, I
+refuse to give any information concerning myself,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have a passport?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I drew it from my pocket, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is the woman?&quot; he demanded. &quot;Tell me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; was my reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you will tell me,&quot; he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with
+a sinister expression upon his face. &quot;Remember, these fugitives are
+found in your house, and you are liable to arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know&mdash;indeed I don't!&quot; protested the old fellow, trembling
+beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police,
+and held them in dread.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!&quot; he smiled. &quot;Well, perhaps your
+memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also
+arrested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, your Excellency, I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough!&quot; blared the bristly officer. &quot;You have given shelter to
+conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!&quot; the poor old man
+protested. &quot;His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall see afterwards,&quot; he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of
+police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully,
+an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They
+upset everything and pried everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may find papers or letters,&quot; said the officer. &quot;Search thoroughly.&quot;
+And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards
+in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly
+refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted
+on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by
+what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the
+Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom,
+I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared
+that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of
+the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be
+actively making a house-to-house search.</p>
+
+<p>But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her
+own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and
+dastardly plot. That gray dress of hers might, I recollected, betray her
+if she dared to venture near any town, while her affliction would, of
+itself, be plain evidence of identification. All I hoped was that she
+had gone and hidden herself in the forest somewhere in the vicinity to
+wait until the danger of recapture had passed.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly half an hour I argued with the police officer whose intention
+it was to take me under arrest to Helsingfors. Once there, however, I
+knew too well that my liberty would be probably gone for ever. Whatever
+was the Baron's motive in holding the poor girl a prisoner, it would
+also be his motive to silence me. I knew too much for his liking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I refuse to go to Helsingfors,&quot; I said defiantly. &quot;I am a British
+subject, and demand to be taken back to the port where my passport was
+vis&eacute;d.&quot; This argument I repeated time after time, until at length I
+succeeded in convincing him that I really had a right to be taken to
+Abo, and to seek the aid of the British Vice-Consul if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>For as long as possible I succeeded in delaying our departure, but at
+length, just as the yellow sun began to struggle through the gray
+clouds, we were all three compelled to depart in sorrowful procession.</p>
+
+<p>What, we wondered, had really happened to Elma? It was evident that she
+had not fallen into the hands of the police; nevertheless, the fact that
+the door of the inner room was open caused them to look upon the
+statement of the wood-cutter with distinct suspicion and disbelief.</p>
+
+<p>Our captors seemed quite well aware of all the circumstances of our
+escape from Kajana, and were consequently filled with chagrin that Elma,
+the person they so much desired to recapture, had slipped through their
+fingers. While the police rode, we were compelled to walk before them,
+and after trudging ten miles or so through the forest we came across
+another small posse of police, who were apparently in search of us, for
+they expressed delight when they saw us under arrest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is the woman?&quot; inquired one officer of the other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Still at liberty,&quot; replied the man who held us as prisoners. &quot;In hiding
+twenty versts back, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, we shall find her before long,&quot; he said confidently. &quot;Within twelve
+hours we shall have searched the whole forest. She cannot escape us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our captors explained who we were, and then we were pushed forward
+again, skirting a great wide lake called the Nasjarvi, along the wooded
+shore of which we walked the whole day long until, at sundown, we came
+to a picturesque little log-built town facing the water, called
+Filppula. Here we obtained a hasty meal, and afterwards took the train
+down to Abo, where we arrived next morning, after a very uncomfortable
+and sleepless journey.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock I stood in the big bare office of Michael Boranski,
+where only a few days before we had had such a heated argument. As soon
+as the Chief of Police entered, he recognized me under arrest, and
+dismissed my guards with a wave of the hand&mdash;all save the officer who
+had brought me there. The Finnish driver and the old wood-cutter were in
+another room, therefore I stood alone with the police-officer of
+Helsingfors and the Chief of Police at Abo. The latter listened to the
+officer's story of my arrest without saying a word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The prisoner, your Excellency, desired to be brought here to you before
+being taken to Helsingfors. He said you would be aware of the facts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so I am,&quot; remarked Boranski, with a smile. &quot;There is no conspiracy.
+You must at once release this gentleman and the other two prisoners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Excellency, the Governor-General has issued orders for the
+prisoner's arrest and deportation to Helsingfors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That may be. But I am Chief of Police in Abo, and I release him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The officer looked at me in such blank astonishment that I could not
+resist smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am well aware of the reason of this Englishman's visit to the north,&quot;
+added Boranski. &quot;More need not be said. Has the lady been arrested?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, your Excellency. Every effort is being made to find her. Colonel
+Smirnoff has already been relieved of his post as Governor of Kajana,
+and many of the guards are under arrest for complicity in the plot to
+allow the woman to escape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes. I see from the despatches that a reward is offered for her
+recapture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General is determined that she shall not escape,&quot; remarked
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is probably hidden in the forest, somewhere or other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. They are making a thorough search over every verst of it. If
+she is there, she will most certainly be found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; remarked Boranski, leaning back in his padded chair and
+looking at me meaningly across the littered table. &quot;And now I wish to
+speak to this Englishman privately, so please leave us. Also inform the
+other two prisoners that they are at liberty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But your Excellency does this upon his own responsibility,&quot; he said
+anxiously. &quot;Remember that I brought them to you under arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I release them entirely at my own discretion,&quot; he said. &quot;As Chief
+of Police of this province, I am permitted to use my jurisdiction, and I
+exercise it in this matter. You are liberty to report that at
+Helsingfors, if you so desire, but I should suggest that you say nothing
+unless absolutely obliged&mdash;you understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which Boranski spoke apparently decided my captor, for
+after a moment's hesitation he said, saluting:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If that is really your wish, then I will obey.&quot; And he left.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellency!&quot; exclaimed the Chief of Police, rising quickly and walking
+towards me as soon as the door was closed, and we were alone, &quot;you have
+had a very narrow escape&mdash;very. I did my best to assist you. I succeeded
+in bribing the water-guards at Kajana in order that you might secure the
+lady's release. But it seems that just at the very moment when you were
+about to get away one of the guards turned informer and roused the
+governor of the castle, with the result that you all three nearly lost
+your lives. The whole matter has been reported to me officially, and,&quot;
+he added with a grim smile, &quot;my men are now searching everywhere for
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why is Baron Oberg so extremely anxious to recapture Miss Heath?&quot; I
+asked earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no idea,&quot; was his reply. &quot;The secret orders from Helsingfors to
+me are to arrest her at all hazards&mdash;alive or dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which means that the Baron would not regret if she was dead,&quot; I
+remarked, in response to which he nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>I told him of the faithful services of Felix, the Finlander, whereupon
+he said simply:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I told you that you might trust him implicitly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But now that you have shown yourself my friend,&quot; I said, &quot;you will
+assist Miss Heath to escape this man, who desires to hold her prisoner
+in that awful place. They are driving her mad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will do my best,&quot; he answered, but shaking his head dubiously. &quot;But
+you must recollect that Baron Oberg is Governor-General of Finland,
+with all the powers of the Czar himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if Elma Heath again falls into his unscrupulous hands, she will
+die,&quot; I declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he sighed, looking me straight in the face, &quot;I fear that what you
+say is only too true. She evidently holds some secret which he fears she
+will reveal. He wishes to rearrest her in order&mdash;well&mdash;&quot; he added in a
+low tone, &quot;in order to close her lips. It would not be the first time
+that persons have been silenced in secret at Kajana. Many fatal
+accidents take place in that fortress, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;THE STRANGLER&quot;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Where was Elma? What was the cause of her inexplicable disappearance
+into the gloomy forest while we had slept?</p>
+
+<p>I returned to the hotel where I had stayed on my arrival, a comfortable
+place called the Phoenix, and lunched there alone. Both Felix, the Finn,
+and my host, the wood-cutter, had received their <i>douceurs</i> and left,
+but to the last-named I had given instructions to return home at once
+and report by telegraph any news of my lost one.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand conflicting thoughts arose within me as I sat in that crowded
+<i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i> filled with a gobbling crowd of the commercial men of
+Abo. I had, I recognized, now to deal with the most powerful man in that
+country, and I suffered a distinct disadvantage by being in ignorance of
+the reason he held that sweet English girl a prisoner. The tragedy of
+the dastardly manner in which she had been willfully maimed caused my
+blood to boil within me. I had never believed that in this civilized
+twentieth century such things could be.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Boranski had given his pledge to assist me, yet he had most
+plainly explained to me his fears. The Baron was intent upon again
+getting Elma into his power. Was it at his orders, I wondered, that the
+sweet-faced girl had been deprived of speech and hearing? Had she fallen
+an innocent victim to his infamous scheming?</p>
+
+<p>About me men were eating strange dishes and talking in Finnish, while
+others were smoking and drinking their vodka; but I was in no mood for
+observation. My only thought was of she who was now lost to me.</p>
+
+<p>Why had she disappeared without warning I was at loss to imagine, yet I
+could only surmise that her flight had been compulsory. Some women
+possess a mysterious sense of intuition, a curious and indescribable
+faculty of knowing when evil threatens them, that presents a strange and
+puzzling problem to our scientists. It is unaccountable, and yet many
+women possess it in a very marked degree. Was it, therefore, possible
+that Elma had awakened, and being warned of her peril had fled without
+arousing us? The suggestion was possible, but I feared improbable.</p>
+
+<p>Another very curious feature in the affair was the sudden manner in
+which Michael Boranski had exerted his power and influence in order to
+render me that service. He had actually bribed the guards of Kajana; he
+had instructed the faithful Felix, he had provided our boat, and he had
+ordered the nun to open the water-gate to me. Why?</p>
+
+<p>There was, I felt convinced, some hidden motive in all that sudden and
+marked friendliness. That he really hated the English I had seen plainly
+when we had first met, and I had only compelled him to serve me by
+presenting the order signed by the Emperor, which made me his guest
+within the Russian dominions. Even that document did not account for the
+length he had gone to secure the release of the woman I now loved in
+secret. The more I thought it over, the more anxious did I become. I
+could discern no motive for his friendliness, and, truth to tell, I
+always distrust those who are too friendly. What straight and decided
+line of action should I take? Carefully I went over all the strange
+events that had happened in England, and while anxious to obtain some
+solution of the amazing problem, yet I could not bring myself to leave
+Finland, and allow Elma to fall into the clutches of that high official
+who so persistently sought her end. No. I would go to him and face him.
+I was anxious to see what manner of man was &quot;The Strangler of Finland.&quot;
+Therefore, that same evening I left Abo, and traveled by rail up to the
+junction Toijala, whence, after a wait of six hours, I resumed by slow
+journey to Helsingfors. I put up at Kamp's, an elegant hotel on the long
+esplanade overlooking the port, and found the town, with its handsome
+streets and spacious squares, to be a much finer place than I had
+believed. When I inquired of the French director of my hotel for the
+residence of his Excellency, the Governor-General, he regarded me with
+some surprise, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron lives up at the Palace, m'sieur&mdash;that great building opposite
+the Salutong. The driver of your drosky will point it out to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is his Excellency in Helsingfors at the present moment?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron never leaves the Palace, m'sieur,&quot; responded the man. &quot;This
+is a strange country, you know,&quot; he added, with a grin. &quot;It is said that
+his Excellency is in hourly fear of assassination.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps not without cause,&quot; I remarked in a low voice, at which he
+elevated his shoulders and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>At noon I descended from a drosky before a long, gray, massive building,
+over the big doorway of which was a large escutcheon bearing the Russian
+arms emblazoned in gold, and on entering where a sentry stood on either
+side, a colossal concierge in livery of bright blue and gold came
+forward to meet me, asking in Russian:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom do you wish to see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency, the Governor-General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you an appointment?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency sees no one without an appointment,&quot; the man told me
+somewhat gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not here on public business, but upon a private matter,&quot; I
+explained. &quot;Perhaps I may see his Excellency's secretary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you wish, but I repeat that his Excellency sees no one without a
+previous appointment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew this quite well, for the &quot;Strangler of Finland,&quot; fearful of
+assassination, was as unapproachable as the Czar himself. Following the
+directions of the concierge, however, I crossed a great bare courtyard,
+and, ascending a wide stone staircase, was confronted by a servant, who,
+on hearing my inquiry took me into a waiting-room, and left with my card
+to Colonel Luganski, whom he informed me was the Baron's private
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>After ten minutes or so the man returned, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Colonel will see you if you will please step this way,&quot; and
+following him he conducted me into the richly furnished private
+apartments of the Palace, across a great hall filled with fine
+paintings, and then up a long thickly-carpeted passage to a small,
+elegant room, where a tall bald-headed man in military uniform stood
+awaiting me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your name is M'sieur Gregg,&quot; he exclaimed in very good French, &quot;and I
+understand you desire audience of his Excellency, the Governor-General.
+I regret, however, that he never gives audience to strangers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The matter upon which I desire to see his Excellency is of a purely
+private and confidential nature,&quot; I said, for used as I was to the ways
+of foreign officialdom, I spoke with the same firm courtesy as himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am very sorry, m'sieur, but I fear it will be necessary in that case
+for you to write to his Excellency, and mark your letter 'personal.' It
+will then go into the Governor-General's own hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I have to say cannot be committed to writing,&quot; was my reply. &quot;I
+must see Baron Oberg upon a matter which affects him personally, and
+which admits of no delay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me quickly, and then in a low voice inquired:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it in regard to a&mdash;well, a conspiracy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His question instantly suggested to me a ruse, and I replied in the
+affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you can place the facts before me without the slightest
+hesitation,&quot; he said, going to the door and slipping the bolt into its
+socket. &quot;Anything spoken into my ear is as though it were spoken into
+that of his Excellency himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I much regret, M'sieur the Colonel, that I must see the Baron in
+person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the plot assassination as its object&mdash;or revolt?&quot; he asked
+pointedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I will explain to the Baron only.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I tell you he will not see you. We have so many persons here with
+secret information concerning Finnish conspiracies against our Russian
+rule. Why, if his Excellency saw everyone who desired to see him, he
+would be compelled to give audience the whole twenty-four hours round.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At a glance I saw that this elegant Colonel, who seemed to take the
+greatest pride over his exquisitely kept person and his spotless
+uniform, did not intend to allow me the satisfaction of an audience of
+that most hated official of the Czar. The latter was in fear of the
+dagger, the pistol, or the bomb, and consequently hedged himself in by
+persons of the Colonel's type&mdash;courteous, diplomatic, but utterly
+unbending. After some further argument, I said at last in a firm tone:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish to impress upon you the extreme importance of the information I
+have to impart, and can only repeat that it is a matter concerning his
+Excellency privately. Will you therefore do me the favor to take my name
+to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency refuses to be troubled with the names of strangers,&quot; was
+his cold reply, as he turned over my card in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if I write upon it the nature of my business, and enclose it in an
+envelope, will you then take it to him?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated for a short time, twisting his mustache, and then replied
+with great reluctance:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if you are so determined, you may write your business upon your
+card.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I therefore took out one, and on the back wrote in French the words
+which I knew must have the effect of obtaining an audience for me:</p>
+
+<blockquote>&quot;<i>To give information regarding Miss Elma Heath</i>.&quot;</blockquote>
+<br>
+
+<p>This I enclosed in the envelope he handed to me, when, ringing a bell,
+he handed it to the footman who appeared, with orders to take it to his
+Excellency and await a reply. The response came in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency will give audience to the English m'sieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I rose and followed the footman through several wide corridors
+filled with palms and flowers, which formed a kind of winter-garden,
+until we crossed a red-carpeted ante-room, where two statuesque sentries
+stood on guard, and the man conducting me rapped at the great polished
+mahogany doors of the room beyond.</p>
+
+<p>A voice responded, the door was opened, and I found myself in a high,
+beautifully-painted room, with long windows hung with pastel-blue silk
+with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall
+a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle
+embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the
+center of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin,
+wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lapel of
+which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne. His
+hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position
+that when I entered I could not at first see his face against the
+strong, gray light behind.</p>
+
+<p>But when the footman had bowed and retired and we were alone, he turned
+slightly, and I then saw that his bony face, with high cheek-bones,
+slight gray side-whiskers, hard mouth and black eyes set closely
+together, was one that bore the mark of evil upon it&mdash;the keen, sinister
+countenance of one who could act without any compunction and without
+regret. Truly one would not be surprised at any cruel, dastardly action
+of a man with such a face&mdash;the face of an oppressor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; he snapped in French in a high-pitched voice. &quot;You want to see
+me concerning that mad English girl? What picturesque lies do you intend
+to tell me concerning her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no intention of telling any untruths concerning her,&quot; was my
+quick response, as I faced him unflinchingly. &quot;She has told me
+sufficient to&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has told you something! Ah! I guessed as much. I expected this!&quot;
+And I saw that his thin, crafty face went pale, while his eyes glanced
+evilly upon me. He believed that she had revealed to me her secret. He
+placed his hand upon the back of a chair wherein was concealed an
+electric button, and next instant a little stout man in shabby black
+appeared as though by magic through a secret door hidden in the dark
+paneling of the audience chamber&mdash;the man who was his personal guard
+against the plots for his assassination.</p>
+
+<p>His Excellency spoke, and the words he uttered staggered me. I stood
+aghast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seize that man!&quot; he cried, pointing to me. &quot;He is armed! He has just
+threatened to kill me! He is the man against whom we were recently
+warned&mdash;the Englishman!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I cried, standing before the thin-faced official of the Czar, the
+unscrupulous man who had crushed Finland beneath the iron heel of
+Russia, and who, by his lying allegation, now held me in his power. &quot;I
+see your object, Baron Oberg! You intend to arrest me as a conspirator!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Search the fellow. He has a revolver there in his hip-pocket,&quot; declared
+the Governor-General, and in an instant the short, ferret-eyed little
+man had run his hands down me and felt my weapon.</p>
+
+<p>I drew it forth and handed it to him, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are quite welcome to it if you fear that I am here with any
+sinister motive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He obtained admission by a clever ruse,&quot; the Baron explained to the
+police agent. &quot;And then he threatened me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's untrue,&quot; I protested hotly. &quot;I have merely called to see you
+regarding the young English lady, Elma Heath&mdash;the unfortunate lady whom
+you consigned to the fortress of Kajana.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The mad woman, you mean!&quot; he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is not mad,&quot; I cried, &quot;but as sane as you yourself. It is you who
+intended that the horrors of the castle should drive her insane, and
+thus your secret should be kept!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you suggest?&quot; he demanded, stepping a few paces towards me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean, Xavier Oberg, that you would kill Elma Heath if you dared to
+do so,&quot; I answered plainly, as I faced him unflinchingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see?&quot; he laughed, turning to the stout man at my side. &quot;The fellow
+is insane. He does not know what he is talking about. Ah, my dear
+Malkoff, I've had a narrow escape! He came here intending to shoot me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not,&quot; I protested. &quot;I am here to demand satisfaction on behalf of
+Miss Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&mdash;well, if the lady cares to come here herself, I will give her the
+satisfaction she desires,&quot; was his crafty reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The lady has escaped you, and it is therefore hardly likely she will
+willingly return to Helsingfors,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was you who succeeded, by throwing the guard into the water, in
+abducting her from the castle,&quot; he remarked. &quot;But,&quot; he added sneeringly,
+with a sinister smile, &quot;I presume your gallantry was prompted by
+affection&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is my own affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A deaf and dumb woman is surely not a very cheerful companion!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who caused her that affliction?&quot; I cried hotly. &quot;When she was at
+Chichester she possessed speech and hearing as other girls. Indeed, she
+was not afflicted when on board the <i>Lola</i> in Leghorn harbor only a few
+months ago. Perhaps you recollect the narrow escape the yacht had on the
+Meloria sands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes met mine, and I saw by his drawn face and narrow brows that my
+words were causing him the utmost consternation. My object was to make
+him believe that I knew more than I really did&mdash;to hold him in fear, in
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps the man whom some know as Hornby, or Woodroffe, could tell an
+interesting story,&quot; I went on. &quot;He will, no doubt, when he meets Elma
+Heath, and finds the terrible affliction of which she has been the
+victim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His thin, bony countenance was bloodless, his mouth twitched and his
+gray brows contracted quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't the least idea what you mean, my dear sir,&quot; he stammered.
+&quot;All that you say is entirely enigmatical to me. What have I to do with
+this mad Englishwoman's affairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Send out this man,&quot; I said, pointing to the detective Malkoff, who had
+appeared from behind the paneling of the audience-chamber. &quot;Send him
+out, and I will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the representative of the Czar, always as much in dread of
+assassination as his imperial master, refused. I saw that what I had
+said had upset him, and that he was not at all clear as to how much or
+how little of the true facts I knew.</p>
+
+<p>The connection between the little miniature cross of the Order of St.
+Anne and that red and yellow ribbon in his button-hole struck me
+forcibly at that moment, and I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no desire to make any statements before a second person. I came
+here to see you privately, and in private will I speak. I have certain
+information that will, I feel confident, be of the utmost interest to
+you--concerning another woman, Armida Santini.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His lips were pressed together, and I noticed how he started when I
+uttered the name of that woman whom I had found dead in Rannoch Wood,
+and whose body had so mysteriously disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what on earth can the woman concern me?&quot; he asked, with a brave
+attempt to remain cool, still speaking in French.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only that you knew her,&quot; was my brief reply. Then, with my eyes still
+fixed upon his, I asked: &quot;Will you not now request this gentleman to
+retire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment, and then with a wave of his hand dismissed the
+man he had summoned to his aid. A moment later the &quot;Strangler's&quot;
+personal protector had disappeared through that secret door in the
+paneling by which he had entered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; asked the Baron, turning quickly to me again, his dark, evil
+eyes trying to fathom my intentions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I asked. &quot;And what, pray, can you profit by denouncing me as an
+assassin? Remember, Baron, that your secret is mine,&quot; I said in a clear
+voice full of meaning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your intention is blackmail&mdash;eh?&quot; he snapped, walking to the window
+and back again. &quot;How much do you want?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My intention is nothing of the kind. My object is to avenge the
+outrageous injury to Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. That is only natural, m'sieur, if you have fallen in love
+with her,&quot; he said. &quot;But are not your intentions somewhat ill-advised
+considering her position as a criminal lunatic?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is neither,&quot; I protested quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well. You know better than myself,&quot; he laughed. &quot;The offense for
+which she was condemned to confinement in a fortress was the attempted
+assassination of Madame Vakuroff, wife of the General commanding the
+Uleaborg Military Division.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Assassination!&quot; I cried. &quot;Have you actually sent her to prison as a
+murderess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have not. The Criminal Court of Abo did so,&quot; he said dryly. &quot;The
+offense has since been proved to have been the outcome of a political
+conspiracy, and the Minister of the Interior in Petersburg last week
+signed an order for the prisoner's transportation to the island of
+Saghalien.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I remarked with set teeth. &quot;Because you fear lest she shall write
+down your secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are insulting! You evidently do not know what you are saying,&quot; he
+exclaimed resentfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know what I am saying quite well. You have requested her removal to
+Saghalien in order that the truth shall be never known. But Baron
+Oberg,&quot; I added with mock politeness, &quot;you may do as you will, you may
+send Elma Heath to her grave, you may hold me prisoner if you dare, but
+there are still witnesses of your crime that will rise against you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he went ghastly pale, and I knew that my blind shot had
+struck its mark. The man before me was guilty of some crime, but what it
+was only Elma herself could tell. That he had had her arrested for an
+attempted political assassination only showed how ingeniously and
+craftily the heartless ruler of that ruined country had laid his plans.
+He feared Elma, and therefore had conspired to have her sent out to that
+dismal penal island in the far-off Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not fear arrest, m'sieur?&quot; he asked, as though with some
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the least&mdash;at least, not arrest by you. You may be the
+representative of the Emperor in Finland, but even here there is justice
+for the innocent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sinister smile played around the thin, gray lips of the man whose very
+name was hated through the great empire of the Czar, and was synonymous
+of oppression, injustice, and heartless tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All I can repeat,&quot; he said, &quot;is that if you bring the young
+Englishwoman here I shall be quite prepared to hear her appeal.&quot; And he
+laughed harshly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ask that because you know it is impossible,&quot; I said, whereat he
+again laughed in my face&mdash;a laugh which made me wonder whether Elma had
+not already fallen into his hands. The uncertainty of her fate held me
+in terrible suspense.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that I have not the
+slightest interest whatsoever in the person in question,&quot; he said
+coldly. &quot;You seem to have formed some romantic attachment towards this
+young woman who attempted to poison Madame Vakuroff, and to have
+succeeded in rescuing her from Kajana. You afterwards disregard the fact
+that you are liable to a long term of imprisonment yourself, and
+actually have the audacity to seek audience of me and make all sorts of
+hints and suggestions that I have held the woman a prisoner for my own
+ends!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not only do I repeat that, Baron Oberg,&quot; I said quickly. &quot;But I also
+allege that it was at your instigation that in Siena an operation was
+performed upon the unfortunate girl which deprived her of speech and
+hearing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At my instigation?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, at yours!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again, but uneasily, a forced laugh, and leaned against the
+edge of the big writing-table near the window.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what next?&quot; he inquired, pretending to be interested in my
+allegations. &quot;What do you want of me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I desire you to give the Mademoiselle Heath her complete freedom,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All&mdash;for the present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But her future is not in my hands. The Minister in Petersburg has
+decreed her removal to Saghalien as a person dangerous to the State.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which means that she will be ill-treated&mdash;knouted to death, perhaps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We do not use the knout in the Russian prisons nowadays,&quot; he said
+briefly. &quot;His Majesty has decreed its abolition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you adopt torture in Kajana and Schusselburg instead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My time is too limited to discuss our penal system, m'sieur,&quot; he
+exclaimed impatiently, while I could well see that he was anxious to
+escape before I made any further charges against him. I had already
+shown him that Elma had spoken, and he feared that she had told the
+truth. While this would embitter him against her and cause him to seek
+to silence her at all hazards, it was of course in my own interests that
+he should fear any revelations that I might make.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have posed in England as the uncle of Elma Heath, and yet you here
+hold her prisoner. For what reason?&quot; I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is held prisoner by the State&mdash;for conspiracy against Russian
+rule&mdash;not by herself personally.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who enticed her here? Why you, yourself. Who conspired to throw the
+guilt of this attempted murder of the general's wife upon her? You&mdash;you,
+the man whom they call 'The Strangler of Finland'! But I will avenge the
+cruel and abominable affliction you have placed upon her. Her
+secret&mdash;your secret, Baron Oberg&mdash;shall be published to the world. You
+are her enemy&mdash;and therefore mine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; he growled between his teeth, advancing towards me
+threateningly, his fists clenched in his rage. &quot;Recollect, m'sieur, that
+you have insulted me. Recollect that I am Governor-General of Finland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you were Czar himself, I should not hesitate to denounce you as the
+tyrant and mutilator of a poor defenseless woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And to whom, pray, will you tell this romantic story of yours?&quot; he
+laughed hoarsely. &quot;To your prison walls below the lake at Kajana? Yes,
+M'sieur Gregg, you will go there, and once within the fortress you shall
+never again see the light of day. You threaten me&mdash;the Governor-General
+of Finland!&quot; he laughed in a strange, high-pitched key as he threw
+himself into a chair and scribbled something rapidly upon paper,
+appending his signature in his small crabbed handwriting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not threaten,&quot; I said in open defiance, &quot;I shall act.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so shall I,&quot; he said with an evil grin upon his bony face as he
+blotted what he had written and took it up, adding: &quot;In the darkness
+and silence of your living tomb, you can tell whatever strange stories
+you like concerning me. They are used to idiots where you are going,&quot; he
+added grimly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! And where am I going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Back to Kanaja. This order consigns you to confinement there as a
+dangerous political conspirator, as one who has threatened me&mdash;it
+consigns you to the cells below the lake&mdash;for life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed aloud, and my hand sought my wallet wherein was that
+all-powerful document&mdash;the order of the Emperor which gave me, as an
+imperial guest, immunity from arrest. I would produce it as my
+trump-card.</p>
+
+<p>Next second, however, I held my breath, and I think I must have turned
+pale. My pocket was empty! My wallet had been stolen! Entirely and
+helplessly I had fallen into the hands of the tyrant of the Czar.</p>
+
+<p>His own personal interest would be to consign me to a living tomb in
+that grim fortress of Kajana, the horrors of which were unspeakable. I
+had seen enough during my inspection of the Russian prisons as a
+journalist to know that there, in strangled Finland, I should not be
+treated with the same consideration or humanity as in Petersburg or
+Warsaw. The Governor-General consigned me to Kajana as a &quot;political,&quot;
+which was synonymous with a sentence of death in those damp, dark
+<i>oubliettes</i> beneath the water-dungeons every whit as awful as those of
+the Paris Bastile.</p>
+
+<p>We faced each other, and I looked straight into his gray, bony face, and
+answered in a tone of defiance:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are Governor-General, it is true, but you will, I think, reflect
+before you consign me, an Englishman, to prison without trial. I know
+full well that the English are hated by Russia, yet I assure you that in
+London we entertain no love for your nation or its methods.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he laughed, &quot;you are quite right. Russia has no use for an
+effete ally such as England is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Effete or powerful, my country is still able to present an ultimatum
+when diplomacy requires it,&quot; I said. &quot;Therefore I have no fear. Send me
+to prison, and I tell you that the responsibility rests upon yourself.&quot;
+And folding my arms I kept my eyes intently upon his, so that he should
+not see that I wavered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As for the responsibility, I certainly do not fear that, m'sieur,&quot; he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the exposure that will result&mdash;are you prepared to face that?&quot; I
+asked. &quot;Perhaps you are not aware that others beside myself&mdash;one other,
+indeed, who is a diplomatist&mdash;is aware of my journey here? If I do not
+return, your Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Petersburg will be pressed
+for a reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which they will not give.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then if they do not, the truth will be out,&quot; I said laughing harshly,
+for I saw how determined he had become to hold me prisoner. &quot;Come, call
+up your myrmidon and send me to Kajana. It will be the first step
+towards your own downfall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall see,&quot; he growled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! you surely do not think that I, after ten years' service in the
+British diplomatic service, would dare to come to Finland upon this
+quest&mdash;would dare to face the rotten and corrupt officialdom which
+Russia has placed within this country&mdash;without first taking some
+adequate precaution? No, Baron. Therefore I defy you, and I leave
+Helsingfors to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not. You are under arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed heartily and snapped my fingers, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Before you give me over to your police, first telegraph to your
+Minister of Finance, Monsieur de Witte, and inquire of him who and what
+I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have merely to send my name and description to the Minister and ask
+for a reply,&quot; I said. &quot;He will give you instructions&mdash;or, if you so
+desire, ask his Majesty yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why, pray, does his Majesty concern himself about you?&quot; he asked,
+at once puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will learn later, after I am confined in Kajana and your secret is
+known in Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean,&quot; I said, &quot;I mean that I have taken all the necessary steps to
+be forearmed against you. The day I am incarcerated by your order, the
+whole truth will be known. I shall not be the sufferer&mdash;but you will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My words, purposely enigmatical, misled him. He saw the drift of my
+argument, and being of course unaware of how much I knew, he was still
+in fear of me. My only uncertainty was of the actual fate of poor Elma.
+My wallet had been stolen&mdash;with a purpose, without a doubt&mdash;for the
+thief had deprived me of that most important of all documents, the open
+sesame to every closed door, the ukase of the Czar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You defy me!&quot; he said hoarsely, turning back to the window with the
+written order for my imprisonment as a political still in his hand. &quot;But
+we shall see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You rule Finland,&quot; I said in a hard tone, &quot;but you have no power over
+Gordon Gregg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have power, and intend to exert it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For your own ruin,&quot; I remarked with a self-confident smile. &quot;You may
+give your torturers orders to kill me&mdash;orders that a fatal accident
+shall occur within the fortress&mdash;but I tell you frankly that my death
+will neither erase nor conceal your own offenses. There are others, away
+in England, who are aware of them, and who will, in order to avenge my
+death, speak the truth. Remember that although Elma Heath has been
+deprived of both hearing and of speech, she can still write down the
+true facts in black and white. The Czar may be your patron, and you his
+favorite, but his Majesty has no tolerance of officials who are guilty
+of what you are guilty of. You talk of arresting me!&quot; I added with a
+smile. &quot;Why, you ought rather to go on your knees and beg my silence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went white with rage at my cutting sarcasm. He literally boiled over,
+for he saw that I was quite cool and had no fear of him or of the
+terrible punishment to which he intended to consign me. Besides which,
+he was filled with wonder regarding the exact amount of information
+which Elma had imparted to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are certain persons,&quot; I went on, &quot;to whom it would be of intense
+interest to know the true reason why the steam-yacht <i>Lola</i> put into
+Leghorn; why I was entertained on board her; why the safe in the
+British Consulate was rifled, and why the unfortunate girl, kept a
+prisoner on board, was taken on shore just before the hurried sailing of
+the vessel. And there are other mysteries which the English police are
+trying to solve, namely, the reason Armida Santini and a man disguised
+as her husband died in Scotland at the hand of an assassin. But surely I
+need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the
+truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For whom?&quot; he asked, opening his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For you. Come, Baron,&quot; I said, &quot;can we not yet speak frankly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he was silent for a moment, a fact which was in itself proof that my
+pointed argument had caused him to reconsider his intention of sending
+me under escort back to that castle of terror.</p>
+
+<p>If my journey there was in order to meet my love, I would not have
+cared. It was the ignorance of her whereabouts or of her fate that held
+me in such deep, all-consuming anxiety. Each hour that passed increased
+my fond and tender affection for her. And yet what irony of
+circumstance! She had been cruelly snatched from me at the very moment
+that freedom had been ours.</p>
+
+<p>I think it was well that I assumed that air of defiance with the man who
+had ground Finland beneath his heel. He was unused to it. No one dared
+to go against his will, or to utter taunt or threat to him. He was
+paramount, with all the powers of an emperor&mdash;the power, indeed, of life
+and death. Therefore he was not in the habit of being either thwarted or
+criticised, and I could see that my words had aroused within him a
+boiling tumult of resentment and of rage. I told him nothing of the loss
+of my wallet or of the precious document that it had contained. My
+defiance was merely upon principle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Arrest me if you like. Denounce me by means of any lie that arises to
+your lips, but remember that the truth is known beyond the confines of
+the Russian Empire, and for that reason traces will be sought of me and
+full explanation demanded. I have taken precaution, Xavier Oberg,&quot; I
+added, &quot;therefore do your worst. I repeat again that I defy you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paced the big room, his thin claw-like hands still clenched, his
+yellow teeth grinding, his dark, deep-set eyes fixed straight before
+him. If he had dared, he would have struck me down at his feet. But he
+did not dare. I saw too plainly that even though my wallet was gone I
+still held the trump-card&mdash;that he feared me.</p>
+
+<p>The mention I had made of the Minister of Finance, however, seemed to
+cause him considerable hesitation. That high official had the ear of the
+Emperor, and if I were a friend there might be inquiries. As I stood
+before him leaning against a small buhl table, I watched all the complex
+workings of his mind, and tried to read the mysterious motive which had
+caused him to consign poor Elma to Kajana.</p>
+
+<p>He was a proud bully, possessing neither pity nor remorse, an average
+specimen of the high Russian official, a hide-bound bureaucrat, a slave
+to etiquette and possessing a veneer of polish. But beneath it all I saw
+that he was a coward in deadly fear of assassination&mdash;a coward who
+dreaded lest some secret should be revealed. That concealed door in the
+paneling with the armed guard lurking behind was sufficiently plain
+evidence that he was not the fearless Governor-General that was
+popularly supposed. He, &quot;The Strangler of Finland,&quot; had crushed the
+gallant nation into submission, ruining their commerce, sapping the
+country by impressing its youth into the Russian army, forbidding the
+use of the Finnish language, and taxing the people until the factories
+had been compelled to close down while the peasantry starved. And now,
+on the verge of revolt, there had arisen a band of patriots who resented
+ruin, and who had already warned his Majesty by letter that if Baron
+Oberg were not removed from his post he would die.</p>
+
+<p>These and other thoughts ran through my mind in the silence that
+followed our heated argument, for I saw well that he was in actual fear
+of me. I had led him to believe that I knew everything, and that his
+future was in my hands, while he, on his part, was anxious to hold me
+prisoner, and yet dared not do so.</p>
+
+<p>My wallet had probably been stolen by some lurking police-spy, for
+Russian agents abound everywhere in Finland, reporting conspiracies that
+do not exist and denouncing the innocent as &quot;politicals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Baron had halted, and was looking through one of the great windows
+down upon the courtyard below where the sentries were pacing. The palace
+was for him a gilded prison, for he dared not go out for a drive in one
+or other of the parks or for a blow on the water across to Hogholmen or
+Dagero, being compelled to remain there for months without showing
+himself publicly. People in Abo had told me that when he did go out into
+the streets of Helsingfors it was at night, and he usually disguised
+himself in the uniform of a private soldier of the guard, thus escaping
+recognition by those who, driven to desperation by injustice, sought his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>A long silence had fallen between us, and it now occurred to me to take
+advantage of his hesitation. Therefore I said in a firm voice, in
+French&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think, Baron, our interview is at an end, is it not? Therefore I wish
+you good-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned upon me suddenly with an evil flash in his dark eyes, and a
+snarling imprecation in Russian upon his lips. His hand still held the
+order committing me to the fortress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But before I leave you will destroy that document. It may fall into
+other hands, you know,&quot; and I walked towards him with quick
+determination.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall do nothing of the kind!&quot; he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>Without further word I snatched the paper from his thin white fingers
+and tore it up before his face. His countenance went livid. I do not
+think I have ever seen a man's face assume such an expression of
+fiendish vindictiveness. It was as though at that instant hell had been
+let loose within his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But I turned upon my heel and went out, passing the sentries in the
+ante-room, along the flower-filled corridors and across the courtyard to
+the main entrance where the gorgeous concierge saluted me as I stepped
+forth into the square.</p>
+
+<p>I had escaped by means of my own diplomacy and firmness. The Czar's
+representative&mdash;the man who ruled that country&mdash;feared me, and for that
+reason did not hold me prisoner. Yet when I recalled that evil look of
+revenge on my departure, I could not help certain feelings of grave
+apprehension arising within me.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to my hotel, I smoked a cigar in my room and pondered. Where
+was Elma? was the chief question which arose within my mind. By
+remaining in Helsingfors I could achieve nothing further, now that I had
+made the acquaintance of the oppressor, whereas if I returned to Abo I
+might perchance be able to obtain some clue to my love's whereabouts. I
+call her my love because I both pitied and loved the poor afflicted girl
+who was so helpless and defenseless.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I took the midnight train back to Abo, arriving at the hotel
+next morning. After an hour's rest I set out anxiously in search of
+Felix, the drosky-driver. I found him in his log-built house in the
+Ludno quarter, and when he asked me in I saw, from his face, that he had
+news to impart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I inquired. &quot;And what of the lady? Has she been found?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! your Excellency. It is a pity you were not here yesterday,&quot; he said
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why? Tell me quickly. What has happened?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been assisting the police as spy, Excellency, as I often do, and
+I have seen her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seen her! Where?&quot; I cried in quick anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here, in Abo. She arrived yesterday morning from Tammerfors accompanied
+by an Englishman. She had changed her dress, and was all in black. They
+lunched together at the Restaurant du Nord opposite the landing stage,
+and an hour later left by steamer for Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An Englishman!&quot; I cried. &quot;Did you not inform the Chief of Police,
+Boranski?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, your Excellency. But he said that their passports being in order
+it was better to allow the lady to proceed. To delay her might mean her
+rearrest in Finland,&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then their passports were vis&eacute;d here on embarking?&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;What
+was the name upon that of the Englishman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have it here written down, Excellency. I cannot pronounce your
+difficult English names.&quot; And he produced a scrap of dirty paper whereon
+was written in a Russian hand the name&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Martin Woodroffe.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>I went to the railway station, and from the time-table gathered that if
+I left Abo by rail at noon I could be in Petersburg an hour before noon
+on the morrow, or about four hours before the arrival of the steamer by
+which the silent girl and her companion were passengers. This I decided
+upon doing, but before leaving I paid a visit to my friend, Boranski,
+who, to my surprise and delight, handed me my wallet with the Czar's
+letter intact, saying that it had been found upon a German thief who had
+been arrested at the harbor on the previous night. The fellow had, no
+doubt, stolen it from my pocket believing I carried my paper money in
+the flap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The affair of the English lady is a most extraordinary one,&quot; remarked
+the Chief of Police, toying with his pen as he sat at his big table.
+&quot;She seems to have met this Englishman up at Tammerfors, or at some
+place further north, yet it is curious that her passport should be in
+order even though she fled so precipitately from Kajana. There is a
+mystery connected with her disappearance from the wood-cutter's hut that
+I confess I cannot fathom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither can I,&quot; I said. &quot;I know the man who is with her, and cannot
+help fearing that he is her bitterest enemy&mdash;that he is acting in
+concert with the Baron.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why is he taking her to the capital&mdash;beyond the jurisdiction of
+the Governor-General?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am going straight to Petersburg to ascertain,&quot; I said. &quot;I have only
+come to thank you for your kindness in this matter. Truth to tell, I
+have been somewhat surprised that you should have interested yourself on
+my behalf,&quot; I added, looking straight at the uniformed official.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was not on yours, but on hers,&quot; he answered, somewhat enigmatically.
+&quot;I know something of the affair, but it was my duty as a man to help the
+poor girl to escape from that terrible place. She has, I know, been
+unjustly condemned for the attempted assassination of the wife of a
+General&mdash;condemned with a purpose, of course. Such a thing is not
+unusual in Finland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Abominable!&quot; I cried. &quot;Oberg is a veritable fiend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the man only shrugged his shoulders, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The orders of his Excellency the Governor-General have to be obeyed,
+whatever they are. We often regret, but we dare not refuse to carry them
+out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Russian rule is a disgrace to our modern civilization,&quot; I declared
+hotly. &quot;I have every sympathy with those who are fighting for freedom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you are not alone in that,&quot; he sighed, speaking in a low whisper,
+and glancing around. &quot;His Majesty would order reforms and ameliorate the
+condition of his people, if only it were possible. But he, like his
+officials, are powerless. Here we speak of the great uprising with bated
+breath, but we, alas! know that it must come one day--very soon&mdash;and
+Finland will be the first to endeavor to break her bonds&mdash;and the Baron
+Oberg the first to fall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For nearly an hour I sat with him, surprised to find how, although his
+exterior was so harsh and uncouth, yet his heart really bled for the
+poor starving people he was so constantly forced to oppress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have ruined this town of Abo,&quot; he declared, quite frankly. &quot;To my
+own knowledge five hundred innocent persons have gone to prison, and
+another two hundred have been exiled to Siberia. Yet what I have done is
+only at direct orders from Helsingfors&mdash;orders that are stern, pitiless
+and unjust. Men have been torn from their families and sent to the
+mines, women have been arrested for no offense and shipped off to
+Saghalien, and mere children have been cast into prison on charges of
+political conspiracy with their elders&mdash;in order to Russify the
+province! Only,&quot; he added anxiously, &quot;I trust you will never repeat what
+I tell you. You have asked me why I assisted the English Mademoiselle to
+escape from Kajana, and I have explained the reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We ate a hearty meal in company at the <i>Sampalinna</i>, a restaurant built
+like a Swiss ch&acirc;let, and at noon I entered the train on the first stage
+of my slow, tedious journey through the great silent forests and along
+the shores of the lakes of Southern Finland, by way of Tavestehus and
+Viborg, to Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of
+wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended
+the steep gradients. I had not even a newspaper with which to while away
+the time, only my own apprehensive thoughts of whither my helpless love
+was being conducted.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>Surely to no man was there ever presented such a complicated problem as
+that which I was now trying so vigorously to solve. I loved Elma Heath.
+The more I reflected, the deeper did her sweet countenance and tender
+grace impress themselves upon my heart. I loved her, therefore I was
+striving to overtake her.</p>
+
+<p>The steamer, I learned, would call at Hango and Helsingfors. Would they,
+I wonder, disembark at either of those places? Was the man whom I had
+known as Hornby, the owner of the <i>Lola</i>, taking her to place her again
+in the fiendish hands of Xavier Oberg? The very thought of it caused me
+to hold my breath.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight came at last, cold and gray, over those dreary interminable
+marshes where game, especially snipe, seemed abundant, and at a small
+station at the head of a lake called Davidstadt I took my morning glass
+of tea; then we resumed our journey down to Viborg, where a short,
+thick-set Russian of the commercial class, but something of a dandy,
+entered my compartment, and we left express for Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>We had passed by a small station called Galitsina, near which were many
+villas occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, and were
+traveling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveler,
+having asked permission to smoke, commenced to chat affably. He seemed a
+pleasant fellow, and told me that he was a wool merchant, and that he
+had been having a pleasant vacation trout fishing in the Vuoski above
+the falls of the Imatra, where the pools between the rapids abound with
+fish.</p>
+
+<p>He had told me that on account of the shore being so full of weeds and
+the clearness of the water, fishing from the banks was almost an
+impossibility, and how they had to accustom themselves to troll from a
+boat so small as to only accommodate the rower and the fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remarked suddenly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are English, I presume&mdash;possibly from Helsingfors?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I answered. &quot;From Abo. I crossed from Stockholm, and am going to
+Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I also. I live in Petersburg,&quot; he added. &quot;We may perhaps meet one
+day. Do you know the capital?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained that I had visited it once before, and had done the usual
+round of sight-seeing. His manner was brisk and to the point, as became
+a man of business, but when we stopped at Bele-Ostrof, on the opposite
+side of the small winding river that separates Finland from Russia
+proper, the Customs officer who came to examine our baggage exchanged a
+curious meaning look with him.</p>
+
+<p>My fellow-traveler believed that I had not observed, yet, keenly on the
+alert as I now was, I was shrewd to detect the least sign or look, and I
+at once resolved to tell the fellow nothing further of my own affairs.
+He was, no doubt, a spy of &quot;The Strangler's,&quot; who had followed me all
+the way from Abo, and had only entered my carriage for the final stage
+of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>This revelation caused me some uneasiness, for even though I was able to
+evade the man on arrival in Petersburg, he could no doubt quickly obtain
+news of my whereabouts from the police to whom my passport must be sent.
+I pretended to doze, and lay back with my eyes half-closed watching him.
+When he found me disinclined to talk further, he took up the paper he
+had bought and became engrossed in it, while I, on my part, endeavored
+to form some plan by which to mislead and escape his vigilance.</p>
+
+<p>The fellow meant mischief&mdash;that I knew. If Elma was flying in secret and
+he watched me, he would know that she was in Petersburg. At all hazards,
+for my love's sake as well as for mine, I saw that I must escape him.
+The ingeniousness and cleverness of Oberg's spies was proverbial
+throughout Finland, therefore he might not be alone, or in any case, on
+arrival in Petersburg would obtain assistance in keeping observation
+upon me. I knew that the Baron desired my death, and that therefore I
+could not be too wary of pitfalls. That fatal chair so cunningly
+prepared for me in Lambeth was still vividly within my memory.</p>
+
+<p>As we passed Lanskaya, and ran through the outer suburbs of Petersburg,
+my fellow-traveler became inquisitive as to where I was going, but I was
+somewhat unresponsive, and busied myself with my bag until we entered
+the great echoing terminus whence I could see the Neva gleaming in the
+pale sunlight and the city beyond. The fellow made no attempt to follow
+me&mdash;he was too clever a secret agent for that. He merely wished me
+&quot;<i>sdravstvuite</i>&quot; raised his hat politely and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>A porter carried my bag out of the station, and I drove across the
+bridge to the large hotel where I had stopped before, the Europe, on the
+corner of the Nevski Prospect and the Michael Street. There I engaged a
+front room looking down into the broad Nevski, had a wash, and then
+watched at the window for the appearance of the spy. I had already a
+good four hours before the steamer from Abo was due, and I intended to
+satisfy myself whether or not I was being followed.</p>
+
+<p>Within twenty minutes the fellow lounged along on the opposite side of
+the road, just as I had expected. He had changed his clothes, and
+presented such a different appearance that at first sight I failed to
+recognize him. He knew that I had driven there, and intended to follow
+me if I came forth. My position was one of extreme difficulty, for if I
+went down to the quay he would most certainly follow me.</p>
+
+<p>Having watched his movements for ten minutes or so I descended to the
+big <i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i> and there ate my luncheon, chatting to the French
+waiter the while. I sat purposely in an alcove, so as to be away from
+the other people lunching there, and in order that I might be able to
+talk with the waiter without being overheard.</p>
+
+<p>Just as I had finished my meal, and he was handing me my bill, I bent
+towards him and asked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to earn twenty roubles?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, m'sieur,&quot; he answered, looking at me with some surprise. &quot;They
+would be acceptable. I am a married man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I want to escape from this place without being observed. There is
+a disagreeable little matter regarding a lady, and I fear a fracas with
+a man who is awaiting me outside in the Nevski.&quot; Then, seeing that he
+hesitated, I assured him that I had committed no crime, and that I
+should return for my baggage that evening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You could pass through the kitchen and out by the servants' entrance,&quot;
+he said, after a moment's reflection. &quot;If m'sieur so desires, I will
+conduct him out. The exit is in a back street which leads on to the
+Catherine Canal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent!&quot; I said. &quot;Let us go. Of course you will say nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a word, m'sieur,&quot; and he gathered up the notes plus twenty roubles
+with which I paid my bill, and taking my hat I followed him to the end
+of the <i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i> behind a high wooden screen, across the huge
+kitchen, and then through a long stone corridor at the end of which sat
+a gruff old doorkeeper. My guide spoke a word to him, and then the door
+opened and I found myself in a narrow back slum with the canal beyond.</p>
+
+<p>My first visit was to a clothier's, where I purchased and put on a new
+light overcoat and then to a hatter's for a hat of different shape to
+that I was wearing. I carried the hat back to a quiet alley which I had
+noticed, and quickly exchanged the one I was wearing for it, leaving my
+old hat in a corner. Then I entered a <i>caf&eacute;</i> in order to while away the
+hours until the vessel from Finland was due.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock I was out upon the quay, straining my eyes seaward for
+any sign of smoke, but could see nothing. The sun was sinking, and the
+broad expanse of water westward danced like liquid gold. The light died
+out slowly, the cold gray of evening crept on. A chill wind sprang up
+and swept the quay, causing me to shiver. I asked of a dock laborer
+whether the steamer was usually late, whereupon he told me that it was
+often five or six hours behind time, depending upon the delay at
+Helsingfors.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight deepened into night, and the rain fell heavily, yet I still
+paced the wet flags in patience, my eyes ever seaward for the light of
+the vessel which I hoped bore my love. My presence there aroused some
+speculation among the loungers, I think; nevertheless, I waited in
+deepest anxiety whether, after all, Elma and Hornby had not disembarked
+at Helsingfors.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after ten o'clock a light shone afar off, and the movement of the
+police and porters on the quay told me that it was the vessel. Then
+after a further anxious quarter of an hour it came, amid great shouting
+and mutual imprecations, slowly alongside the quay, and the passengers
+at last began to disembark in the pelting rain.</p>
+
+<p>One after another they walked up the gangway, filing into the
+passport-office and on into the Custom House, people of all sorts and
+all grades&mdash;Swedes, Germans, Finns, and Russians&mdash;until suddenly I
+caught sight of two figures&mdash;one a man in a big tweed traveling-coat and
+a golf-cap, and the other the slight figure of a woman in a long dark
+cloak and a woolen tam-o'-shanter. The electric rays fell upon them as
+they came up the wet gangway together, and there once again I saw the
+sweet face of the silent woman whom I had grown to love with such
+fervent desperation. The man behind her was the same who had
+entertained me on board the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;the man who was said to be the
+lover of the fugitive Muriel Leithcourt.</p>
+
+<p>Without betraying my presence I watched them pass through the
+passport-office and Custom House, and then, overhearing the address
+which Martin Woodroffe gave the <i>isvoshtchik</i>, I stood aside, wet to the
+skin, and saw them drive away.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock on the following day I found myself installed in the
+Hotel de Paris, a comfortable hostelry in the Little Morskaya, having
+succeeded in evading the vigilance of the spy who had so cleverly
+followed me from Abo, and in getting my suit-case round from the Hotel
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>I was beneath the same roof as Elma, although she was in ignorance of my
+presence. Anxious to communicate with her without Woodroffe's knowledge,
+I was now awaiting my opportunity. He had, it appeared, taken for her a
+pleasant front room with sitting-room adjoining on the first floor,
+while he himself occupied a room on the third floor. The apartments he
+had engaged for her were the most expensive in the hotel, and as far as
+I could gather from the French waiter whom I judiciously tipped, he
+appeared to treat her with every consideration and kindness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, poor young lady!&quot; the man exclaimed as he stood in my room
+answering my questions, &quot;What an affliction! She writes down all her
+orders&mdash;for she can utter no word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the Englishman received any visitors?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One man&mdash;a Russian&mdash;an official of police, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he receives anyone else, let me know,&quot; I said. &quot;And I want you to
+give Mademoiselle a letter from me in secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bien, m'sieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned to the little writing-table and scribbled a few hasty lines to
+my love, announcing my presence, and asking her to grant me an interview
+in secret as soon as Woodroffe was absent. I also warned her of the
+search for her instigated by the Baron, and urged her to send me a line
+in reply.</p>
+
+<p>The note was delivered into her hand, but although I waited in suspense
+nearly all day she sent no reply. While Woodroffe was in the hotel I
+dared not show myself lest he should recognize me, therefore I was
+compelled to sham indisposition and to eat my meals alone in my room.</p>
+
+<p>Both the means by which she had met Martin Woodroffe and the motive were
+equally an enigma. By that letter she had written to her schoolfellow it
+was apparent that she had some secret of his, for had she not wished to
+send him a message of reassurance that she had divulged nothing? This
+would seem that they were close friends; yet, on the other hand,
+something seemed to tell me that he was acting falsely, and was really
+an ally of the Baron's.</p>
+
+<p>Why had he brought her to Petersburg? If he had desired to rescue her he
+would have taken her in the opposite direction&mdash;to Stockholm, where she
+would be free&mdash;whereas he took her, an escaped prisoner, into the very
+midst of peril. It was true that her passport was in order, yet I
+remembered that an order had been issued for her transportation to
+Saghalien, and now once arrested she must be lost to me for ever. This
+thought filled me with fierce anxiety. She was in Petersburg, that city
+where police spies swarm, and where every fresh arrival is noted and his
+antecedents inquired into. No attempt had been made to disguise who she
+was, therefore before long the police would undoubtedly come and arrest
+her as the escaped criminal from Kajana.</p>
+
+<p>For several hours I sat at my window watching the life and movement
+down in the street below, my mind full of wonder and dark forebodings.
+Was Martin Woodroffe playing her false?</p>
+
+<p>Just after half-past six o'clock the waiter entered, and handing me a
+note on a salver, said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mademoiselle has, I believe, only this moment been able to write in
+secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I tore it open and read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>DEAR FRIEND.&mdash;<i>I am so surprised. I thought you were still in Abo.
+Woodroffe has an appointment at eight o'clock on the other side of the
+city, therefore come to me at 8.15. I must see you, and at once. I am in
+peril</i>.&mdash;ELMA HEATH.</p>
+
+<p>My love was in peril! It was just as I had feared. I thanked Providence
+that I had been sent to help her and extricate her from that awful fate
+to which &quot;The Strangler of Finland&quot; had consigned her.</p>
+
+<p>At the hour she named, after the waiter had come to me and announced the
+Englishman's departure, I descended to her sitting-room and entered
+without rapping, for if I had rapped she could not, alas! have heard.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment was spacious and comfortable, thickly carpeted, with heavy
+furniture and gilding. Before the long window were drawn curtains of
+dark green plush, and on one side was the high stove of white porcelain
+with shining brass bands, while from her low lounge-chair a slim wan
+figure sprang up quickly and came forward to greet me, holding out both
+her hands and smiling happily.</p>
+
+<p>I took her hands in mine and held them tightly in silence for some
+moments, as I looked earnestly into those wonderfully brilliant eyes of
+hers. She turned away laughing, a slight flush rising to her cheeks in
+her confusion. Then she led me to a chair, and motioned me to be
+seated.</p>
+
+<p>Ours was a silent meeting, but her gestures and the expression of her
+eyes were surely more eloquent than mere words. I knew well what
+pleasure that re-encounter caused her&mdash;equal pleasure with that it gave
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>Until that moment I had never really loved. I had admired and flirted
+with women. What man has not? Indeed, I had admired Muriel Leithcourt.
+But never until now had I experienced in my heart the real flame of true
+burning affection. The sweetness of her expression, the tender caress of
+those soft, tapering hands, the deep mysterious look in those
+magnificent eyes, and the incomparable grace of all her movements,
+combined to render her the most perfect woman I had ever met&mdash;perfect in
+all, alas! save speech and hearing, of which, with such dastard
+wantonness, she had been deprived.</p>
+
+<p>She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her
+hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret. Then
+turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote
+something with a gold pencil and handed to me. It read&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed
+you from England. He is my enemy. You must take me from here and hide
+me. They intend to send me into exile. Have you ever been in Petersburg
+before? Do you know anyone here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will do my best, dear friend. I have been once in Petersburg. But is
+it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Impossible at present,&quot; she wrote. &quot;We should both be arrested at the
+frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I
+believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that
+he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he
+learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and
+discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter's
+hut. Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were
+asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window. At first I was
+alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend. He told me that the
+police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I
+fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here. At
+that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get
+me out of the Baron's clutches and wring from me my secret. If I
+confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the
+mines.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does your secret concern him?&quot; I asked in writing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she wrote in response. &quot;It would be equally in his interests as
+well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity
+effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore
+with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust in me,&quot; I scribbled quickly. &quot;I will act upon any suggestion you
+make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you
+until this danger is past?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is one friend&mdash;a true friend. Will you take a note to her?&quot; she
+wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the
+contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat
+watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching
+her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and
+unblemished in her youthful womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: &quot;Madame Olga
+Stassulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff.&quot; I knew
+that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the
+Little Neva.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I
+will prepare to be ready when you return,&quot; she wrote. &quot;If Olga is not at
+home, ask to see the Red Priest&mdash;in Russian, '<i>Krasny-pastor</i>.' Return
+quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I assured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later
+I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the canal and across
+the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let
+out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large brass plate
+bearing the name, &quot;Olga Stassulevitch: modes.&quot; I pressed the electric
+button, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame is not at home,&quot; was his brief reply to my inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will see the Red Priest,&quot; I said in a lower tone. &quot;I come from
+Elma Heath.&quot; Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into
+the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the gas was
+not lighted. But striking a match he led me up the broad staircase and
+into a small, cosy, well-furnished room on the second floor, evidently
+the sitting-room of some studious person, judging from the books and
+critical reviews lying about.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes I waited there, until the door reopened, and there
+entered a man of medium height, with a shock of long snow-white hair
+and almost patriarchal beard, whose dark eyes that age had dimmed
+flashed out at me with a look of curious inquiry, and whose movements
+were those of a person not quite at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have called on behalf of Mademoiselle Elma Heath, to give this letter
+to Madame Stassulevitch, or if she is absent to place it in the hands of
+the Red Priest,&quot; I explained in my best Russian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, sir,&quot; the old man responded in quite good English. &quot;I am the
+person you seek,&quot; and taking the letter he opened it and read it
+through.</p>
+
+<p>I saw by the expression on his furrowed face that its contents caused
+him the utmost consternation. His countenance, already pale, blanched to
+the lips, while in his eyes there shot a fire of quick apprehension. The
+thin, almost transparent hand holding the letter trembled visibly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know Mademoiselle&mdash;eh?&quot; he asked in a hoarse, strained voice as he
+turned to me. &quot;You will help her to escape?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will risk my own life in order to save hers,&quot; I declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your devotion to her is prompted by what?&quot; he inquired
+suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>I was silent for a moment. Then I confessed the truth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My affection.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he sighed deeply. &quot;Poor young lady! She, who has enemies on every
+hand, sadly needs a friend. But can we trust you&mdash;have you no fear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of being implicated in the coming revolution in Russia? Remember I am
+the Red Priest. Have you never heard of me? My name is Otto Kampf.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Otto Kampf!</p>
+
+<p>I stood before him open-mouthed. Who in Russia had not heard of that
+mysterious unknown person who had directed a hundred conspiracies
+against the Imperial Autocrat, and yet the identity of whom the police
+had always failed to discover. It was believed that Kampf had once been
+professor of chemistry at Moscow University, and that he had invented
+that most terrible and destructive explosive used by the revolutionists.
+The ingredients of the powerful compound and the mode of firing it was
+the secret of the Nihilists alone&mdash;and Otto Kampf, the mysterious
+leader, whose personality was unknown even to the conspirators
+themselves, directed those constant attempts which held the Emperor and
+his Government in such hourly terror.</p>
+
+<p>Rewards without number had been offered by the Ministry of the Interior
+for the betrayal and arrest of the unseen man whose power in Russia,
+permeating every class, was greater than that of the Emperor himself&mdash;at
+whose word one day the people would rise in a body and destroy their
+oppressors.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, the Ministers, the police, and the bureaucrats knew this,
+yet they were powerless&mdash;they knew that the mysterious professor who had
+disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been
+seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would
+stagger and crush the Empire from end to end&mdash;yet of his whereabouts
+they were in utter ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are surprised,&quot; the old man laughed, noticing my amazement. &quot;Well,
+you are not one of us, yet I need not impress upon you the absolute
+necessity, for Mademoiselle's sake, to preserve the secret of my
+existence. It is because you are not a member of 'The Will of the
+People,' that you have never heard of 'The Red Priest'&mdash;red because I
+wrote my ultimatum to the Czar in the blood of one of his victims
+knouted in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and priest because I preach
+the gospel of freedom and justice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall say nothing,&quot; I said, gazing at the strangely striking figure
+before me&mdash;the unknown man who directed the great upheaval that was to
+revolutionize Russia. &quot;My only desire is to save Mademoiselle Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are prepared to do so at risk of your own liberty&mdash;your own
+life? Ah! you said you love her. Would not this be a test of your
+affection?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am prepared for any test, as long as she escapes the trap which her
+enemies have set for her. I succeeded in saving her from Kajana, and I
+intend to save her now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was it you who actually entered Kajana and snatched her from that
+tomb!&quot; he exclaimed, and he took my hand enthusiastically, adding&mdash;&quot;I
+have no further need to doubt you.&quot; And turning to the table he wrote an
+address upon a slip of paper, saying, &quot;Take Mademoiselle there. She will
+find a safe place of concealment. But go quickly, for every moment
+places you both in more deadly peril. Hide yourself there also.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him and left at once, but as I stepped out of the house and
+re-entered the drosky I saw close by, lurking in the shadow, the spy of
+&quot;The Strangler of Finland,&quot; who had traveled with me from Abo.</p>
+
+<p>Our eyes met, and he recognized me, notwithstanding my light overcoat
+and new hat.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with heart-sinking, the ghastly truth flashed upon me. All had
+been in vain. Elma was lost to me.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Instantly the danger was apparent, and instead of driving back to the
+hotel, I called out to the man to take me to the Moscow railway station,
+in order to put the spy off the scent. I knew he would follow me, but as
+he was on foot, with no drosky in sight, I should be able to reach the
+station before he could, and there elude him.</p>
+
+<p>Over the stones we rattled, leaving the lurking agent standing in the
+deep shadow, but on turning back I saw him dash across the road to a
+by-street, where, in all probability, he had a conveyance in waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after we had crossed the Neva, I countermanded my order to the
+man, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't go right up to the station. Turn into the Liteinoi Prospect to
+the left, and put me down there. Drive quickly, and I'll pay double
+fare.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He whipped his horses, and we turned into that maze of dark, ill-lit,
+narrow streets that lies between the Vosnesenski and the Nevski, turning
+and winding until we emerged at last into the main thoroughfare again,
+and then at last we turned into the street I had indicated&mdash;a wide road
+of handsome buildings where I knew I was certain to be able to instantly
+get another drosky. I flung the man his money, alighted, and two minutes
+later was driving on towards the Alexander Bridge, traveling in a circle
+back to the hotel. Time after time I glanced behind, but saw nothing of
+the Baron's spy, who had evidently gone to the station with all speed,
+expecting that I was leaving the capital.</p>
+
+<p>I found Elma in her room, ready dressed to go out, wearing a long
+traveling-cloak, and in her hand was a small dressing-case. She was pale
+and full of anxiety until I showed her the slip of paper which Otto
+Kampf had given me with the address written upon it, and then together
+we hurried forth.</p>
+
+<p>The house to which we drove was, we discovered, a large one facing the
+Fontanka Canal, one of the best quarters of the town, and on descending
+I asked the liveried <i>dvornick</i> for Madame Zurloff, the name which the
+&quot;Red Priest&quot; had written.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean the Princess Zurloff,&quot; remarked the man through his red beard.
+&quot;Whom shall I say desires to see her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take that,&quot; I said, handing to him the piece of paper which, beside the
+address, bore a curious cipher-mark like three triangles joined.</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door, leaving us in the wide carpeted hall, the statuary
+in which showed us that it was a richly-furnished place, and when a few
+minutes later he returned, he conducted us upstairs to a fine gilded
+salon, where an elderly gray-haired lady in black stood gravely to
+receive us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Allow me to present Mademoiselle Elma Heath, Princess,&quot; I said,
+speaking in French and bowing, and afterwards telling her my own name.</p>
+
+<p>Our hostess welcomed my love in a graceful speech, but I said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mademoiselle unfortunately suffers a terrible affliction. She is deaf
+and dumb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, how very, very sad!&quot; she exclaimed sympathetically. &quot;Poor girl!
+poor girl!&quot; and she placed her hand tenderly upon Elma's shoulder and
+looked into her eyes. Then, turning to me, she said: &quot;So the Red Priest
+has sent you both to me! You are in danger of arrest, I suppose&mdash;you
+wish me to conceal you here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would only ask sanctuary for Mademoiselle,&quot; was my reply. &quot;For
+myself, I have no fear. I am English, and therefore not a member of the
+Party.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Mademoiselle fears arrest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is an order signed for her banishment to Saghalein,&quot; I said. &quot;She
+was imprisoned at Kajana, the fortress away in Finland, but I succeeded
+in liberating her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has actually been in Kajana!&quot; gasped the Princess. &quot;Ah! we have all
+heard sufficient of the horrors of that place. And you liberated her!
+Why, she is the only person who has ever escaped from that living tomb
+to which Oberg sends his victims.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so, Princess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And may I take it, m'sieur, that the reason you risked your life for
+her is because you love her? Pardon me for suggesting this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have guessed correctly,&quot; I answered. Then, knowing that Elma could
+not hear, I added: &quot;I love her, but we are not lovers. I have not told
+her of my affection. Hers is a long and strange story, and she will
+perhaps tell you something of it in writing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; exclaimed the gray-haired lady smiling, leading my love across
+the luxurious room, the atmosphere of which was filled with the scent of
+flowers, and taking off her cloak with her own hands, &quot;you are safe
+here, my poor child. If spies have not followed you, then you shall
+remain my guest as long as you desire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sure it is very good of you, Princess,&quot; I said gratefully. &quot;Miss
+Heath is the victim of a vile and dastardly conspiracy. When I tell you
+that she has been afflicted as she is by her enemies&mdash;that an operation
+was performed upon her in Italy while she was unconscious&mdash;you will
+readily see in what deadly peril she is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; she cried. &quot;Have her enemies actually done this? Horrible!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She will perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her&mdash;a
+mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian
+subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself
+is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! the Strangler!&quot; she exclaimed with a quick flash in her dark eyes.
+&quot;But his end is near. The Movement is active in Helsingfors. At any
+moment now we may strike our blow for freedom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was an enthusiastic revolutionist, I could see, unsuspected,
+however, by the police on account of her high position in Petersburg
+society. It was she who, as I afterwards discovered, had furnished the
+large sums of money to Kampf for the continuation of the revolutionary
+propaganda, and indeed secretly devoted the greater part of her revenues
+from her vast estates in Samara and Kazan to the Nihilist cause. Her
+husband, himself an enthusiast of freedom, although of the high
+nobility, had been killed by a fall from his horse six years before, and
+since that time she had retired from society and lived there quietly,
+making the revolutionary movement her sole occupation. The authorities
+believed that her retirement was due to the painful loss she had
+sustained, and had no suspicion that it was her money that enabled the
+mysterious &quot;Red Priest&quot; to slowly but surely complete the plot for the
+general uprising.</p>
+
+<p>She compelled me to remove my coat, and tea was served by a Tartar
+footman, whose family she explained had been serfs of the Zurloffs for
+three centuries, and then Elma exchanged confidences with her by means
+of paper and pencil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is this man Martin Woodroffe, of whom she speaks?&quot; asked the
+Princess presently, turning to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have met him twice&mdash;only twice,&quot; I replied, &quot;and under strange
+circumstances.&quot; Then, continuing, I told her something concerning the
+incidents of the yacht <i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He may be in love with her, and desires to force her into marriage,&quot;
+she suggested, expressing amazement at the curious narrative I had
+related.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think not, for several reasons. One is because I know she holds some
+secret concerning him, and another because he is engaged to an English
+girl named Muriel Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leithcourt? Leithcourt?&quot; repeated the Princess, knitting her brows with
+a puzzled air. &quot;Do you happen to know her father's name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Philip Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And has he actually been living in Scotland?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered in quick anxiety. &quot;He rented a shoot called Rannoch,
+near Dumfries. A mysterious incident occurred on his estate&mdash;a double
+murder, or murder and suicide; which is not quite clear&mdash;but shortly
+afterwards there appeared one evening at the house a man named Chater,
+Hylton Chater, and the whole family at once fled and disappeared.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Princess Zurloff sat with her lips pressed close together, looking
+straight at the silent girl before her. Elma had removed her hat and
+cloak, and now sat in a deep easy chair of yellow silk, with the
+lamplight shining on her chestnut hair, settled and calm as though
+already thoroughly at home. I smiled to myself as I thought of the
+chagrin of Woodroffe when he returned to find his victim missing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Highness evidently knows the Leithcourts,&quot; I hazarded, after a
+brief silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard of them,&quot; was her unsatisfactory reply. &quot;I go to England
+sometimes. When the Prince was alive, we were often at Claridge's for
+the season. The Prince was for five years military <i>attach&eacute;</i> at the
+Embassy under de Staal, you know. What I know of the Leithcourts is not
+to their credit. But you tell me that there was a mysterious incident
+before their flight. Explain it to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the long white doors of the handsome salon were thrown
+open by the faithful Tartar servitor, and there entered a man whose hair
+fell over the collar of his heavy overcoat, but whom, in an instant, I
+recognized as Otto Kampf.</p>
+
+<p>Both Elma and I sprang to our feet, while advancing to the Princess he
+bent and gallantly kissed the hand she held forth to him. Then he shook
+hands with Elma, and acknowledging my own greetings, took off his coat
+and threw it upon a chair with the air of an accustomed visitor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I come, Princess, in order to explain to you,&quot; he said. &quot;Mademoiselle
+fears rearrest, and the only house in Petersburg that the police never
+suspect is this. Therefore I send her to you, knowing that with your
+generosity you will help her in her distress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is all arranged,&quot; was her Highness's response. &quot;She will remain
+here, poor girl, until it is safe for her to get out of Russia.&quot; Then,
+after some further conversation, and after my well-beloved had made
+signs of heartfelt gratitude to the man known from end to end of the
+Russian empire as &quot;The Red Priest,&quot; the Princess turned to me, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would much like to know what occurred before the Leithcourts left
+Scotland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Leithcourts!&quot; exclaimed Kampf in utter surprise. &quot;Do you know the
+Leithcourts&mdash;and the English officer Durnford?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked into his eyes in abject amazement. What connection could Jack
+Durnford, of the Marines, have with the adventurer Philip Leithcourt?
+I, however, recollected Jack's word, when I had described the visit of
+the <i>Lola</i> to Leghorn, and further I recollected that very shortly he
+would be back in London from his term of Mediterranean service.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said after a pause, &quot;I happen to know Captain Durnford very
+well, but I had no idea that he was friendly with Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Red Priest smiled, stroking his white beard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Explain to her Highness what she desires to know, and I will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My eyes met Elma's, and I saw how intensely eager and interested she
+was, watching the movement of my lips and trying to make out what words
+I uttered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;a mysterious tragedy occurred on the edge of a wood
+near the house rented by Leithcourt&mdash;a tragedy which has puzzled the
+police to this day. An Italian named Santini and his wife were found
+murdered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Santini!&quot; gasped Kampf, starting up. &quot;But surely he is not dead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. That's the curious part of the affair. The man who was killed was a
+man disguised to represent the Italian, while the woman was actually the
+waiter's wife herself. I happen to know the man Santini well, for both
+he and his wife were for some years in my employ.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Princess and the director of the Russian revolutionary movement
+exchanged quick glances. It was as though her Highness implored Kampf to
+reveal to me the truth, while he, on his part, was averse to doing so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And upon whom does suspicion rest?&quot; asked her Highness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As far as I can make out, the police have no clue whatever, except one.
+At the spot was found a tiny miniature cross of one of the Russian
+orders of chivalry&mdash;the Cross of Saint Anne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no suspicion upon Leithcourt?&quot; she asked with some undue
+anxiety I thought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he entertain any guests at the shooting-box?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A good many.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No foreigners among them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never met any. They seemed all people from London&mdash;a smart set for
+the most part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why did the Leithcourts disappear so suddenly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because of the appearance of the man Chater,&quot; I replied. &quot;It is evident
+that they feared him, for they took every precaution against being
+followed. In fact, they fled leaving a big party of friends in the
+house. The man Woodroffe, now at the Hotel de Paris, is a friend of
+Leithcourt as well as of Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was not a guest of Leithcourt when this man representing Santini was
+assassinated?&quot; asked Kampf, again stroking his beard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. As soon as Woodroffe recognized me as a visitor he left&mdash;for
+Hamburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was afraid to face you because of the ransacking of the British
+Consul's safe at Leghorn,&quot; remarked the Princess, who, at the same
+moment, took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then,
+turning to me, she said: &quot;What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg,
+throws a new light upon certain incidents that had hitherto puzzled us.
+The mystery of it all is a great and inscrutable one&mdash;the mystery of
+this poor unfortunate girl, greatest of all. But both of us will
+endeavor to help you to elucidate it; we will help poor Elma to crush
+her enemies&mdash;these cowardly villains who had maimed her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Princess!&quot; I cried. &quot;If you will only help and protect her, you
+will be doing an act of mercy to a defenseless woman. I love her&mdash;I
+admit it. I have done my utmost: I have striven to solve the dark
+mystery, but up to the present I have been unsuccessful, and have only
+remained, even till to-day, the victim of circumstance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let her stay with me,&quot; the kindly woman answered, smiling tenderly upon
+my love. &quot;She will be safe here, and in the meantime we will endeavor to
+discover the real and actual truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And in response I took the Princess's hand and pressed it fervently.
+Although that striking, white-headed man and the rather stiff, formal
+woman in black were the leaders of the great and all-powerful movement
+in Russia known through the civilized world as &quot;The Terror,&quot; yet they
+were nevertheless our friends. They had pledged themselves to help us
+thwart our enemies.</p>
+
+<p>I scribbled a few hasty words upon paper and handed it to Elma. And for
+answer she smiled contentedly, looking into my eyes with an expression
+of trust, devotion and love.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>JUST OFF THE STRAND</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>A week had gone by. The Nord Express had brought me posthaste across
+Europe from Petersburg to Calais, and I was again in London. I had left
+Elma in the care of the Princess Zurloff, whom I knew would conceal her
+from the horde of police-agents now in search of her.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery had so increased until now it had become absolutely
+bewildering. The more I had tried to probe it, the more inexplicable had
+I found it. My brain was awhirl as I sat in the <i>wagon-lit</i> rushing
+across those wide, never-ending plains that lie between the Russian
+capital and Berlin and the green valleys between the Rhine-lands and the
+sea. The maze of mystery rendered me utterly incapable of grasping one
+solid tangible fact, so closely interwoven was each incident of the
+strange life-drama in which, through mere chance, I was now playing a
+leading part. I was aware of one fact only, that I loved Elma with all
+my soul, even though I knew not whom she really was&mdash;or her strange life
+story. Her sweet face, with those soft, brown eyes, so tender and
+intense, stood out ever before me, sleeping or waking. Each moment as
+the express rushed south increased the distance between us, yet was I
+not on my way back to England with a clear and distinct purpose? I
+snatched at any clue, however small, with desperate eagerness, as a
+drowning man clutches at a straw.</p>
+
+<p>The spy from Abo had seen me on the railway platform on my departure
+from Petersburg. He had overheard me buy a ticket for London, and
+previous to stepping into the train I had smiled at him in glad triumph.
+My journey was too long a one for him to follow, and I knew that I had
+at last outwitted him. He had expected to see Elma with me, no doubt,
+and his disappointment was plainly marked. But of Woodroffe I had
+neither seen nor heard anything.</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>It was a cold but dry November night in London, and I sat dining with
+Jack Durnford at a small table in the big, well-lit room of the Junior
+United Service Club. Easy-going and merry as of old, my friend was
+bubbling over with good spirits, delighted to be back again in town
+after three years sailing up and down the Mediterranean, from Gib. to
+Smyrna, Maneuvering always, yet with never a chance of a fight. His
+well-shaven face bore the mark of the southern suns, and the backs of
+his hands were tanned by the heat and the sea. He was, indeed, as smart
+an officer as any at the Junior, for the Marines are proverbial for
+their neatness, and his men on board the <i>Bulwark</i> had received many a
+pleasing compliment from the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Glad to be back!&quot; he exclaimed, as he helped himself to a &quot;peg.&quot; &quot;I
+should rather think so, old chap. You know how awfully wearying the life
+becomes out there. Lots going on down at Palermo, Malta, Monte Carlo, or
+over at Algiers, and yet we can never get a chance of it. We're always
+in sight of the gay places, and never land. I don't blame the youngsters
+for getting off from Leghorn for two days over here in town when they
+can. Three years is a bigger slice out of a fellow's life than anyone
+would suppose. But, by the way, I saw Hutcheson the other day. We put
+into Spezia, and he came out to see the Admiral&mdash;got despatches for
+him, I think. He seems as gay as ever. He lunched at mess, and said how
+sorry he was you'd deserted Leghorn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't exactly deserted it,&quot; I said. &quot;But I really don't love it
+like he does.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. A year or two of the Mediterranean blue is quite sufficient to last
+any fellow his lifetime. I shouldn't live in Leghorn if I had my choice.
+I'd prefer somewhere up in the mountains, beyond Pisa, or outside
+Florence, where you can have a good time in winter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then a silence fell between us, and I sat eating on until the end of the
+meal, wondering how to broach the question I so desired to put to him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall try if I can get on recruiting service at home for a bit,&quot; he
+said presently. &quot;There's an appointment up in Glasgow vacant, and I
+shall try for it. It'll be better, at any rate, than China or the
+Pacific.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was just about to turn the conversation to the visit of the mysterious
+<i>Lola</i> to Leghorn, when two men he knew entered the dining-room, and,
+recognizing him, came across to give him a welcome home. One of the
+newcomers was Major Bartlett, whom I at once recollected as having been
+a guest of Leithcourt's up at Rannoch, and the other a younger man whom
+Durnford introduced to me as Captain Hanbury.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Major!&quot; I cried, rising and grasping his hand. &quot;I haven't seen you
+since Scotland, and the extraordinary ending to your house-party.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he laughed. &quot;It was an amazing affair, wasn't it? After the
+Leithcourts left it was like pandemonium let loose; the guests collared
+everything they could lay their hands upon! It's a wonder to me the
+disgraceful affair didn't get into the papers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But where's Leithcourt now?&quot; I asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Haven't the ghost of an idea,&quot; replied the Major, standing astride with
+his hands in his pockets. &quot;Young Paget of ours told me the other day
+that he saw Muriel driving in the Terminus Road at Eastbourne, but she
+didn't notice him. They were a queerish lot, those Leithcourts,&quot; he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa! What are you saying about the Leithcourts, Charley?&quot; exclaimed
+Durnford, turning quickly from Hanbury. &quot;I know some people of that
+name&mdash;Philip Leithcourt, who has a daughter named Muriel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, they sound much the same. But if you know them, my dear old chap,
+I really don't envy you your friends,&quot; declared the Major with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Gregg will tell you,&quot; he said. &quot;He knows, perhaps, more than I
+do. But,&quot; he added, &quot;they may not, of course, be the same people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I first met them yachting over at Algiers,&quot; Jack said. &quot;And then again
+at Malta, where they seemed to have quite a lot of friends. They had a
+steam-yacht, the <i>Iris</i>, and were often up and down the Mediterranean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Must be the same people,&quot; declared the Major. &quot;Leithcourt spoke once or
+twice of his yacht, but we all put it down as a non-existent vessel,
+because he was always drawing the long bow about his adventures.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how did you first come to know him?&quot; I asked of the Major eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't know. Somebody brought him to mess, and we struck up an
+acquaintance across the table. He seemed a good chap, and when he asked
+me to shoot I accepted. On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing
+struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was
+asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town. He called
+himself Martin Woodroffe up there&mdash;although I'd known him at the old
+Corinthian Club as Dick Archer. He was believed then to be one of a
+clever gang of international thieves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I first met him he gave me the name of Hornby,&quot; I said. &quot;It was in
+Leghorn, where he was on board a yacht called the <i>Lola</i>, of which he
+represented himself as owner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He left Rannoch very suddenly,&quot; remarked Bartlett. &quot;We understood that
+he was engaged to marry Muriel. If so, I'm sorry for her, poor girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; cried Durnford, starting up. &quot;That man to marry Muriel
+Leithcourt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But his countenance had turned pale, and he gave no answer to my
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If these same Leithcourts are really friends of yours, Durnford, old
+fellow, I'm sorry I've said anything against them,&quot; the Major exclaimed
+in an apologetic tone. &quot;Only the end of my visit was so abrupt and so
+extraordinary, and the company such a mixed one, that&mdash;well, to tell you
+the truth, the people are a mysterious lot altogether.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps our Leithcourts are not the same as those Jack knows,&quot; I
+remarked, in order to escape from a rather difficult situation;
+whereupon Durnford, as though eager to conceal his surprise, said with a
+forced laugh, &quot;Oh! probably not,&quot; and reseated himself at table. Then
+the Major quickly changed the topic of conversation, and afterwards he
+and his friend passed along to their table and sat down to eat.</p>
+
+<p>I could not help noticing that Jack Durnford was upset at what he had
+learnt, yet I hesitated just then to put any question to him. I resolved
+to approach the subject later, so as to allow him time to question me
+if he wished to do so.</p>
+
+<p>After smoking an hour we went across to the Empire, where we spent the
+evening in the grand circle, meeting many men we knew and having a
+rather pleasant time among old acquaintances. If a man who had lived the
+club life of London returns from abroad, he can always run across
+someone he knows in the circle of the Empire about ten o'clock at night.
+Jack was, however, not his old self that he had been before dinner. His
+brow was now heavy and thoughtful, and he appeared deeply immersed in
+some intricate problem, for his eyes were fixed vacantly when
+opportunity was afforded him to think, and he appeared to desire to
+avoid his friends rather than to greet them.</p>
+
+<p>After the theater I induced him to come round to the Cecil, and in the
+wicker chair in the big portico before the entrance we sat to smoke our
+final cigars. It is a favorite spot of mine when in London, for at
+afternoon, when the string band plays and the Americans and other
+cosmopolitans drink tea, there is a continual coming and going, a little
+panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely
+interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the
+shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to
+speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of
+London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than
+perhaps at any other spot. All grades pass before you, from the pushful
+American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud
+Indian Rajah with his turbaned suite; from the variety actress to the
+daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've been a bit down in the mouth to-night, Jack,&quot; I said presently,
+after we had been watching the cabs coming up, depositing the
+home-coming revelers from the Savoy or the Carlton.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he sighed. &quot;And surely I have enough to cause me&mdash;after what I've
+heard from Bartlett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! Did the facts he told us convey any bad news to you?&quot; I inquired
+with pretended ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said hoarsely, after a brief pause. Then he added: &quot;Bartlett
+said you could tell me what happened up in Scotland, where Leithcourt
+had shooting. Tell me everything,&quot; he added with the air of a man in
+whom all hope is dead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I began, &quot;the Leithcourts took Rannoch Castle, close to my
+uncle's place, near Dumfries. I got to know them, of course, and often
+shot with his party. One day, however, I was amazed to notice in one of
+the rooms the photograph of a lady, the exact counterpart of that
+picture which, I recollect, I told you when in Leghorn I had found torn
+up on board the <i>Lola</i>. You recollect what I narrated about my strange
+adventure, don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remember every word,&quot; was his answer. &quot;Go on. What did you do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing. I held my tongue. But when I discovered that the fellow who
+called himself Woodroffe&mdash;the man who had represented himself as the
+owner of the <i>Lola</i>, and who, no doubt, had had a hand in breaking open
+Hutcheson's safe in the Consulate&mdash;was engaged to Muriel, I became full
+of suspicion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Woodroffe, after meeting me, disappeared&mdash;went to Hamburg, they said,
+on business. Then other things occurred. A man and woman were found
+murdered up in the wood about a mile and a half from the castle. The man
+was made up to represent my man Olinto--I believe you've seen him in
+Leghorn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! They've killed Olinto?&quot; he gasped, starting from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. The fellow was made up very much like him. But his wife Armida was
+killed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They killed the woman, and believed they had also killed her husband,
+eh?&quot; he said bitterly through his teeth, and I saw that his strong hands
+grasped the arms of his chair firmly. &quot;And Martin Woodroffe is engaged
+to Muriel Leithcourt. Are you certain of this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; quite certain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And is there no suspicion as to who is the assassin of the woman
+Santini and this mysterious man who posed as her husband?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For some time Jack Durnford smoked in silence, and I could just
+distinguish his white, hard face in the faint light, for it was now
+late, and the big electric lamps had been turned out and we were in
+semi-darkness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That fellow shall never marry Muriel,&quot; he declared in a fierce, hoarse
+voice. &quot;What you have just told me reveals the truth. Did you meet
+Chater?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He appeared suddenly at Rannoch, and the Leithcourts fled precipitately
+and have not since been heard of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no wonder!&quot; he remarked with a dry laugh. &quot;No wonder! But look
+here, Gordon, I'm not going to stand by and let that scoundrel Woodroffe
+marry Muriel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You love her, perhaps?&quot; I hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do love her,&quot; he admitted. &quot;And, by heaven!&quot; he cried, &quot;I will
+tell the truth and crush the whole of their ingenious plot. Have you met
+Elma Heath?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said in quick anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then listen,&quot; he said in a low, earnest voice. &quot;Listen, and I'll tell
+you something.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is a greater mystery surrounding that yacht, the <i>Lola</i>, than you
+have ever imagined, my dear old chap,&quot; declared Jack Durnford, looking
+me straight in the face. &quot;When you told me about it on the quarter-deck
+that day outside Leghorn, I was half a mind to tell you what I knew.
+Only one fact prevented me&mdash;my disinclination to reveal my own secrets.
+I loved Muriel Leithcourt, yet, afloat as I was, I could never see
+her&mdash;I could not obtain from her own lips the explanation I desired. Yet
+I would not prejudge her&mdash;no, and I won't now!&quot; he added with a fierce
+resolution.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I love her,&quot; he went on, &quot;and she reciprocates my love. Ours is a
+secret engagement made in Malta two years ago, and yet you tell me that
+she has pledged herself to that fellow Woodroffe&mdash;the man known here in
+London as Dick Archer. I can't believe it--I really can't, old fellow.
+She could never write to me as she has done, urging patience and secrecy
+until my return.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unless, of course, she desired to gain time,&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>But my friend was silent; his brows were deep knit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Woodroffe is at the present moment in Petersburg,&quot; I said. &quot;I've just
+come back from there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In St. Petersburg!&quot; he gasped, surprised. &quot;Then he is with that
+villainous official, Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; Oberg is living shut up in his palace at Helsingfors, fearing to go
+out lest he shall be assassinated,&quot; was my answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Elma? What has become of her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is in hiding in Petersburg, awaiting such time as I can get her
+safely out of Russia,&quot; and then, continuing, I explained how she had
+been maimed and rendered deaf and dumb.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; he cried fiercely. &quot;Have they actually done that to the poor
+girl? Then they feared that she should reveal the nature of their plot,
+for she had seen and heard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seen and heard what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be patient; we will elucidate this mystery, and the motive of this
+terrible infliction upon her. Muriel wrote to me saying that poor Elma,
+her friend, had disappeared, and she feared that some evil had also
+happened to her. So Oberg had sent her to his fortress&mdash;his own private
+Bastille&mdash;the place to which, on pretended charges of conspiracy against
+Russia, he sends those who thwart him to a living tomb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have seen him, and I have defied him,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have! Man alive! be careful. He's not a fellow who sticks at
+trifles,&quot; said Jack warningly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't fear,&quot; I replied. &quot;Elma's enemies are also mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I take it, old fellow, that notwithstanding her affliction, you
+are actually in love with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I intend to rescue, and to marry her,&quot; I answered quite frankly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But first we must tear aside this veil of mystery and ascertain all the
+facts concerning her,&quot; he said. &quot;At present I only know one or two very
+vague details. The baron is certainly not her uncle, as he represents
+himself to be, but it seems certain that she is the daughter of
+Anglo-Russian parents, and was born in Russia and brought to England
+when a child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But from whom do you expect I can obtain the true facts concerning her,
+and the reason of the baron's desire to keep her silent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he said, twisting his mustache thoughtfully. &quot;That's just the
+question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive
+of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow
+Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot,
+whatever it may be, I feel convinced. She may be the victim of that
+blackleg Woodroffe, who, as Bartlett has told you, is one of the most
+expert swindlers in London, and who has already done two terms of penal
+servitude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what was the motive in breaking open the Consul's safe, if not to
+obtain the Foreign Office or Admiralty ciphers? Perhaps they wanted to
+steal them and sell them to a foreign government?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; that was not their object. I've thought over it many, many times
+since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a
+fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows
+his ciphers to remain behind. When he leaves his post he always deposits
+those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his
+Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port. They'd surely
+ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet. The affair was a
+risky one, and Dick Archer is known as a man of many precautions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he is on extremely friendly terms with Elma. It was he who
+succeeded in finding her in Finland, and taking her beyond Oberg's
+sphere of influence to Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then it is certainly only an affected friendship, with some sinister
+motive underlying it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She wrote a letter from her island prison to an old schoolfellow named
+Lydia Moreton, asking her to see Woodroffe at his rooms in Cork Street,
+and tell him that through all she was suffering she had kept her promise
+to him, and that the secret was still safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly. And now the fellow fears that as you are so actively searching
+out the truth, she may yield to your demands and explain. He therefore
+intends to silence her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! to kill her, you mean?&quot; I gasped, in quick apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, he might do so, in order to save himself, you see,&quot; Jack replied,
+adding: &quot;He certainly would have no compunction if he thought that it
+would not be brought home to him. Only he, no doubt, fears you, because
+you have found her, and are in love with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I admitted the force of his argument, but recollected that my dear one
+was safe in concealment, and that the Princess was our friend, even
+though I, as an Englishman, had no sympathy with the doctrine of the
+bomb and the knife.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to get from him all that he knew concerning Elma, but he seemed,
+for some curious reason, disinclined to tell. All I could gather was
+that Leithcourt was in league with Chater and Woodroffe, and that Muriel
+had acted as an entirely innocent agent. What the conspiracy was, or
+what was its motive, I could not discern. I was as far off the solution
+of the problem as ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must first find Muriel,&quot; he declared, when I pressed him to tell me
+everything he knew. &quot;There are facts you have told me which negative my
+own theories, and only from her can we obtain the real truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But surely you know where she is? She writes to you,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last letter, which I received at Gib. ten days ago, was from the
+Hotel Bristol, at Botzen, in the Tyrol, yet Bartlett says she has been
+seen down at Eastbourne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have an address where you always write to her, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a secret one. I have written and made an appointment, but she has
+not kept it. She has been prevented, of course. She may be with her
+parents, and unable to come to London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did not know that they had fled, and were in hiding?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not. What I've heard to-night is news to me&mdash;amazing news.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And does it not convey to you the truth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It does&mdash;a ghastly truth concerning Elma Heath,&quot; he answered in a low
+voice, as though speaking to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me. What? I'm dying, Jack, to know everything concerning her. Who
+is that fellow Oberg?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her enemy. She, by mere accident, learned his secret and Woodroffe's,
+and they now both live in deadly fear of her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And for that reason she was taken to Siena, where some villainous
+Italian doctor was bribed to render her deaf and dumb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Chater?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know very little concerning him. He may have conspired with them, or
+he may be innocent. It seems as though he were antagonistic to their
+schemes, if Leithcourt and his family really fled from him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet he was on board the <i>Lola</i>. Indeed, he may have helped to
+commit the burglary at the Consulate,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite likely,&quot; he answered. &quot;But our first object must be to rediscover
+Muriel. Paget says she is in Eastbourne. If she is there, we shall
+easily find her. They publish visitors' lists in the papers, don't they,
+like they do at Hastings?&quot; Then he added: &quot;Visitors' lists are most
+annoying when you find your name printed in them when you are supposed
+officially to be somewhere else. I was had once like that by the
+Bournemouth papers, when I was supposed to be on duty over at
+Queenstown. I narrowly escaped a terrible wigging.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall we go to Eastbourne?&quot; I suggested eagerly. &quot;I'll go there with
+you in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or would it not be best to send an urgent wire to the address where I
+always write? She would then reply here, no doubt. If she's in
+Eastbourne, there may be reasons why she cannot come up to town. If her
+people are in hiding, of course she won't come. But she'll make an
+appointment with me, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well. Send a wire,&quot; I said. &quot;And make it urgent. It will then be
+forwarded. But as regards Olinto? Would you like to see him? He might
+tell you more than he has told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; by no means. He must not know that I have returned to London,&quot;
+declared my friend quickly. &quot;You had better not see him&mdash;you
+understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then his interests are&mdash;well, not exactly our own?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why don't you tell me more about Elma?&quot; I urged, for I was eager to
+learn all he knew. &quot;Come, do tell me!&quot; I implored.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've told you practically everything, my dear old fellow,&quot; was his
+response. &quot;The revelation of the true facts of the affair can be made
+only by Muriel. I tell you, we must find her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, we must&mdash;at all hazards,&quot; I said. &quot;Let's go across to the
+telegraph office opposite Charing Cross. It's open always.&quot; And we rose
+and walked out along the Strand, now nearly deserted, and despatched an
+urgent message to Muriel at an address in Hurlingham Road, Fulham.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards we stood outside on the curb, still talking, I loth to part
+from him, when there passed by in the shadow two men in dark overcoats,
+who crossed the road behind us to the front of Charing Cross station,
+and then continued on towards Trafalgar Square.</p>
+
+<p>As the light of the street lamp fell upon them, I thought I recognized
+the face of one as that of a person I had seen before, yet I was not at
+all certain, and my failure to remember whom the passer-by resembled
+prevented me from saying anything further to Jack than:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A fellow I know has just gone by, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We seem to be meeting hosts of friends to-night,&quot; he laughed. &quot;After
+all, old chap, it does one good to come back to our dear, dirty old town
+again. We abuse it when we are here, and talk of the life in Paris, and
+Vienna, and Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so
+dear to us, for it is 'home.' But there!&quot; he laughed, &quot;I'm actually
+growing romantic. Ah! if we could only find Muriel! But we must
+to-morrow. Ta-ta! I shall go around to the club and sleep, for I haven't
+fixed on any diggings yet. Come in at ten to-morrow, and we will decide
+upon some plan. One thing is plainly certain; Elma must at once be got
+out of Russia. She's in deadly peril of her life there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;And you will help me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With all my heart, old fellow,&quot; answered my friend, warmly grasping my
+hand, and then we parted, he strolling along towards the National
+Gallery on his way back to the &quot;Junior,&quot; while I returned to the <i>Cecil</i>
+alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>MARKED MEN</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Durnford?&quot; I inquired of the hall-porter of the club next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not here, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he slept here last night,&quot; I remarked. &quot;I have an appointment with
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man consulted the big book before him, and answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Durnford went out at 9:27 last night, sir, but has not
+returned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Strange, I thought, but although I waited in the club nearly an hour, he
+did not put in an appearance. I called again at noon, and he had not
+come in, and again at two o'clock, but he had not even then made his
+appearance. Then I began to be anxious. I returned to the hotel,
+resolved to wait for a few hours longer. He might have altered his mind
+and gone to Eastbourne in search of Muriel; yet, had he done so, he
+would surely have telegraphed to me.</p>
+
+<p>About four o'clock, as I was passing through the big hall of the hotel,
+I heard a voice behind me utter a greeting in Italian, and turning in
+surprise, found Olinto, dressed in his best suit of black, standing hat
+in hand.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I recollected what Jack had told me, and regarded him with
+some suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Signor Commendatore,&quot; he said in a low voice, as though fearing to be
+overheard, &quot;may I be permitted to speak in private with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; I said, and I took him in the lift up to my room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have come to warn you, signore,&quot; he said, when I had given him a
+seat. &quot;Your enemies mean harm to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who are they, pray?&quot; I asked, biting my lips. &quot;The same, I suppose,
+who prepared that ingenious trap in Lambeth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not here to reveal to you who they are, signore, only to warn you
+to have a care of yourself,&quot; was the Italian's reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, Olinto!&quot; I exclaimed determinedly, &quot;I've had enough of this
+confounded mystery. Tell me the truth regarding the assassination of
+your poor wife up in Scotland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he answered sadly in a changed voice, &quot;I do not know. It
+was a plot. Someone represented me&mdash;but he was killed also. They
+believed they had struck me down,&quot; he added, with a bitter laugh. &quot;Poor
+Armida's body was found concealed behind a rock on the opposite side of
+the wood. I saw it&mdash;ah!&quot; he cried shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you are ignorant of the identity of your wife's assassin?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Entirely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me one thing,&quot; I said. &quot;Did Armida possess any trinket in the form
+of a little enameled cross&mdash;like a miniature cross of cavaliere?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I gave it to her. I found it on the floor at the Mansion House,
+where I was engaged as odd waiter for a banquet. I know I ought to have
+given it up to the Lord Mayor's servants, but it was such a pretty
+little thing that I was tempted to keep it. It probably had fallen from
+the coat of one of the diplomatists dining there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. The faint suspicion that Oberg had been at that spot was
+now entirely removed. The only clue I had was satisfactorily accounted
+for.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you ask, Signor Commendatore?&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because the cross was found at the spot, and was believed to have been
+dropped by the assassin,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>The police had, it seemed, succeeded in discovering the unfortunate
+woman after all, and had found that she was his wife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know a man named Leithcourt?&quot; I asked a few moments later. &quot;Now,
+tell the truth. In this affair, Olinto, our interests are mutual, are
+they not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, after a moment's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you know also a man named Archer&mdash;who is sometimes known as Hornby,
+or Woodroffe&mdash;as well as a friend of his called Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Si, signore,&quot; he said. &quot;I have met them all&mdash;to my regret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And have you ever met a Russian&mdash;a certain Baron Oberg&mdash;and his niece,
+Elma Heath?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His niece? She isn't his niece.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then who is she?&quot; I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do I know? I have seen her once or twice. But she's dead, isn't
+she? She knew the secret of those men, and they intended to kill her. I
+tried to prevent them taking her away on the yacht, and I would have
+gone to the police&mdash;only I dare not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, because my own hands were not quite clean,&quot; he answered after a
+pause, his eyes fixed upon mine the while. &quot;I knew they intended to
+silence her, but I was powerless to save her, poor young lady. They took
+her on board Leithcourt's yacht, the <i>Iris</i>, and they sailed for the
+Mediterranean, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the name and appearance of the yacht was altered on the voyage,
+and it became the <i>Lola</i>,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; he smiled. &quot;The <i>Iris</i> was a steamer of many names, and had,
+I believe, been painted nearly all the colors of the rainbow at various
+times. It was a mysterious vessel, but she exists no more. They scuttled
+her somewhere up in the Baltic, I've heard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is this Oberg?&quot; I inquired, urging him to reveal to me all he
+knew concerning him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He stands in great fear of the poor young lady, I believe, for it was
+at his instigation that Leithcourt and his friends took her on that
+fatal yachting cruise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what was your connection with them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I was Leithcourt's servant,&quot; was his reply. &quot;I was steward on the
+<i>Iris</i> for a year, until I suppose they thought that I began to see too
+much, and then I was placed in a position ashore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what did you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;More than I care to tell, signore. If they were arrested I should be
+arrested, too, you see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I mean to solve this mystery, Olinto,&quot; I said fiercely, for I was
+in no trifling mood. &quot;I'll fathom it if it costs me my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the signore solves it himself, then I cannot be charged with
+revealing the truth,&quot; was the man's diplomatic reply. &quot;But I fear that
+they are far too wary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armida has lost her life. Surely that is sufficient incentive for you
+to bring them all to justice?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. But if the law falls upon them, it will also fall upon me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained the terrible affliction to which my love had been subjected
+by those heartless brutes, whereupon he cried enthusiastically:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then she is not dead! She can tell us everything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But cannot you tell us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; not all. The secret she knows has never been revealed. They feared
+she might be incautious, and for that reason Oberg made the villainous
+suggestion of the yachting trip. She was to be drowned&mdash;accidentally, of
+course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is in St. Petersburg now. I left her a week ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Russia! Ah, signore, for her sake, don't allow the young lady to
+remain there. The Baron is all-powerful. He does what he wishes in
+Russia, and the more merciless he is to the people he governs, the
+greater rewards he receives from the Czar. I have never been in Russia,
+but surely it must be a strange country, signore!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, sitting upon the edge of the bed and looking at him.
+&quot;Are you prepared to denounce them if I bring the Signorina Heath here,
+to England?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what is the use, if we have no clear proof?&quot; was his evasive reply.
+I could see plainly that he feared being himself implicated in some
+extraordinary plot, the exact nature of which he so steadfastly refused
+to reveal to me.</p>
+
+<p>We talked on for fully half an hour, and from his conversation I
+gathered that he was well acquainted with Elma.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore, she was such a pleasant and kind-hearted young lady. I
+always felt very sorry for her. She was in deadly fear of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because they were thieves?&quot; I hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, worse!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why did they induce you to entice me to that house in Lambeth? Why
+did they so evidently desire that I should be killed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By accident,&quot; he interrupted, correcting me. &quot;Always by accident,&quot; and
+he smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely you know their secret motive?&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the time I did not,&quot; he declared. &quot;I acted on their instructions,
+being compelled to, for they hold my future in their hands. Therefore I
+could not disobey. You knew too much, therefore you were marked down for
+death&mdash;just as you are now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is it who is now seeking my life?&quot; I inquired gravely. &quot;I only
+returned from Russia yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your movements are well known,&quot; answered the young Italian. &quot;You cannot
+be too careful. Woodroffe has been in Russia with you, has he not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought so, but was not quite sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Chater?&quot; I inquired; &quot;where is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the Leithcourts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of ignorance, adding: &quot;The
+Signorina Muriel returned to London from Eastbourne this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where can I find her?&quot; I inquired eagerly. &quot;It is of the utmost
+importance that I should see her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is with a relation, a cousin, I think, at Bassett Road, Notting
+Hill. The house is called 'Holmwood.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have seen her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I heard she had returned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And her father is still in hiding from Chater?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is still in hiding, but Chater is his best friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is curious,&quot; I remarked, recollecting the hurried departure from
+Rannoch. &quot;They've made it up, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They never quarreled, to my knowledge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why did Leithcourt leave Scotland so hurriedly on Chater's
+arrival? You know all about the affair, of course?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, saying with a grim smile, &quot;Yes; I know. The party up there
+must have been a very interesting one. If the police could have made a
+raid on the place they would have found among the guests certain persons
+long 'wanted.' But the arrival of Chater and the flight of Leithcourt
+had an ulterior object. Chater had never been Leithcourt's enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I can't understand that,&quot; I said. &quot;Why should Leithcourt have
+attacked Chater, rendered him unconscious, and shut him up in the
+cupboard in the library?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was it Leithcourt who did that?&quot; he asked dubiously. &quot;I think not. It
+was another of the guests who was Chater's bitterest enemy. But Philip
+Leithcourt took advantage of the fracas in order to make believe that he
+had fled because of Chater's arrival. Ah!&quot; he added, &quot;you haven't any
+idea of their ruses. They are amazing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it seems,&quot; I said, nevertheless only half convinced that the Italian
+was telling me the truth. If it was really, as he had said, that the
+arrival of Chater and the flight was merely a &quot;blind,&quot; then the mystery
+was again deepened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then who was the man who attacked Chater?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only Chater himself knows. It was one of the guests, that is quite
+evident.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you say that the flight had been prearranged?&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, with a distinct motive,&quot; he said; then, after a pause, he added,
+with a strange, earnest look in his dark eyes, &quot;Pardon me, Signor
+Commendatore, if I presume to suggest something, will you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. What do you suggest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you should remain here, in this hotel, and not venture out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For fear of something unfortunate happening to me!&quot; I laughed. &quot;I'm
+really not afraid, Olinto,&quot; I added. &quot;You know I carry this,&quot; and I drew
+out my revolver from my hip-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, signore,&quot; he said anxiously. &quot;But you might not be afforded
+opportunity for using it. When they lay a trap they bait it well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know. They're a set of the most ingenious scoundrels in London, it is
+very evident. Yet I don't fear them in the least,&quot; I declared. &quot;I must
+rescue the Signorina Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, signore, have a care for yourself,&quot; cried the Italian, laying his
+hand upon my arm. &quot;You are a marked man. Ah! do I not know,&quot; he
+exclaimed breathlessly. &quot;If you go out you may run right into&mdash;well, the
+fatal accident.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never fear, Olinto,&quot; I said reassuringly. &quot;I shall keep my eyes well
+open. Here, in London, one's life is safer than anywhere else in the
+world, perhaps&mdash;certainly safer than in some places I could name in your
+own country, eh?&quot; at which he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment he grew serious again, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I only warn the signore that if he goes out it is at his own peril.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then let it be so,&quot; I laughed, feeling self-confident that no one could
+lead me into any trap. I was neither a foreigner nor a country cousin. I
+knew London too well. He was silent and shook his head; then, after
+telling me that he was still at the same restaurant in Westbourne Grove,
+he took his departure, warning me once more not to go forth.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later, disregarding his words, I strode out into the
+Strand, and again walked round to the &quot;Junior.&quot; The short wintry day had
+ended, the gas-lamps were lit, and the darkness of night was gradually
+creeping on.</p>
+
+<p>Jack had not been to the club, and I began now to grow thoroughly
+uneasy. He had parted from me at the corner of the Strand with only a
+five minutes' walk before him, and yet he had apparently disappeared. My
+first impulse was to drive to Notting Hill to inquire of Muriel if she
+had news of him, but somehow the Italian's warning words made me wonder
+if he had met with foul play.</p>
+
+<p>I suddenly recollected those two men who had passed by as we had talked,
+and how that the features of one had seemed strangely familiar.
+Therefore I took a cab to the police-station down at Whitehall, and made
+inquiry of the inspector on duty in the big bare office with its flaring
+gas-jets in wire globes. He heard me to the end, then turning back the
+book of &quot;occurrences&quot; before him, glanced through the ruled entries.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should think this is the gentleman, sir,&quot; he said. And he read to me
+the entry as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P.C. 462A reports that at 2.07 a.m., while on duty outside the National
+Gallery, he heard a revolver shot, followed by a man's cry. He ran to
+the corner of Suffolk Street, where he found a gentleman lying upon the
+pavement suffering from a serious shot-wound in the chest and quite
+unconscious. He obtained the assistance of P.C.'s 218A and 343A, and the
+gentleman, who was not identified, was taken to the Charing Cross
+Hospital, where the house-surgeon expressed a doubt whether he could
+live. Neither P.C.'s recollect having noticed any suspicious-looking
+person in the vicinity.</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 5em;">&quot;JOHN PERCIVAL, <i>Inspector</i>.&quot;</span><br>
+
+<p>I waited for no more, but rushed round to the hospital in the cab, and
+was, five minutes later, taken along the ward, where I identified poor
+Jack lying in bed, white-faced and unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The doctor was here a quarter of an hour ago,&quot; whispered the sister.
+&quot;And he fears he is sinking.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has uttered no words?&quot; I asked anxiously. &quot;Made no statement?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None. He has never regained consciousness, and I fear, sir, he never
+will. It is a case of deliberate murder, the police told me early this
+morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I clenched my fists and swore a fierce revenge for that dastardly act.
+And as I stood beside the narrow bed, I realized that what Olinto had
+said regarding my own peril was the actual truth. I was a marked man.
+Was I never to penetrate that inscrutable and ever-increasing mystery?</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TRUTH ABOUT THE &quot;LOLA&quot;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Throughout the long night I called many times at the hospital, but the
+reply was always the same. Jack had not regained consciousness, and the
+doctor regarded his case as hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I drove in hot haste to Bassett Road, Notting Hill, and
+at the address Olinto had given me found Muriel. When she entered the
+room with folding doors into which I had been shown, I saw that she was
+pale and apprehensive, for we had not met since her flight, and she was,
+no doubt, at a loss for an explanation. But I did not press her for one.
+I merely told her that the Italian Santini had given me her address and
+that I came as bearer of unfortunate news.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; she gasped quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It concerns Captain Durnford,&quot; I replied. &quot;He has been injured in the
+street, and is in Charing Cross Hospital.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she cried. &quot;I see. You do not explain the truth. By your face I
+can tell there is something more. He's dead! Tell me the worst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I said gravely, &quot;not dead, but the doctors fear
+that he may not recover. His wound is dangerous. He has been shot by
+some unknown person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shot!&quot; she echoed, bursting into tears. &quot;Then they have followed him,
+after all! They have deceived me, and now, as they intend to take him
+from me, I will myself protect him. You, Mr. Gregg, have been in peril
+of your life, that I know, but Jack's enemies are yours, and they shall
+not go unpunished. May I see him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I fear not, but we will ask at the hospital.&quot; And after the exchange of
+some further explanations, we took a hansom back to Charing Cross.</p>
+
+<p>At first the sister refused to allow Muriel to see the patient, but she
+implored so earnestly that at last she consented, and the distressed
+girl in the black coat and hat crept on tiptoe to the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was conscious for a quarter of an hour or so,&quot; whispered the nurse
+who sat there, &quot;He asked after some lady named Muriel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl at my side burst into low sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell him,&quot; she said, &quot;that Muriel is here&mdash;that she has seen him, and
+is waiting for him to recover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were not allowed to linger there, and on leaving the hospital I took
+her back again to Notting Hill, promising to keep her well informed of
+Jack's condition. He had returned to consciousness, therefore there was
+now a faint hope for his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Day succeeded day, and although I was not allowed to visit my friend, I
+was told that he was very slowly progressing. I idled at the Hotel Cecil
+longing daily for news of Elma. Only once did a letter come from her, a
+brief, well-written note from which it appeared that she was quite well
+and happy, although she longed to be able to go out. The Princess was
+very kind indeed to her, and, she added, was making secret arrangements
+for her escape across the Russian frontier into Germany.</p>
+
+<p>I knew what that meant. Use was to be made of certain Russian officials
+who were secretly allied with the Revolutionists in order to secure her
+safe conduct beyond the power of that order of exile of the tyrant de
+Plehve. I wrote to her under cover to the Princess, but there had been
+no time yet for a reply.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Muriel many times, but never once did she refer to Rannoch or
+their sudden departure. Her only thought was of the man she loved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I always believed that you were engaged to Mr. Woodroffe,&quot; I said one
+day, when I called to tell her of Jack's latest bulletin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is true that he asked me to marry him,&quot; she responded. &quot;But there
+were reasons why I did not accept.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reasons connected with his past, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Mr. Gregg, it is all a strange and very tragic story. I must see
+Jack. When do you think they will allow me to go to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained that the doctor feared to cause the patient any undue
+excitement, but that in two or three days there was hope of her being
+allowed to visit him. Several times the police made inquiry of me, but I
+could tell them nothing. I could not for the life of me recollect where
+I had before seen the face of that man who had passed in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, ten days after the attempt upon Jack, I was allowed to
+sit by his bedside and question him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Gordon, old fellow!&quot; he said faintly, &quot;I've had a narrow escape&mdash;by
+Jove! After I left you I walked quickly on towards the club, when, all
+of a sudden, two scoundrels sprang out of Suffolk Street, and one of
+them fired a revolver full at me. Then I knew no more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But who were the men? Did you recognize them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not at all. That's the worst of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Muriel knows who they were!&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes! Bring her here, won't you?&quot; the poor fellow implored, &quot;I'm
+dying to see her once again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I told him how she had looked upon him while unconscious, and how I
+had taken the daily bulletin to her. For an hour I talked with him,
+urging him to get well soon, so that we could unite in probing the
+mystery, and bringing to justice those responsible for the dastardly
+act.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Muriel knows, and if she loves you she will no doubt assist us,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, she does love me, Gordon, I know that,&quot; said the prostrate man,
+smiling contentedly, and when I left I promised to bring her there on
+the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>This I did, but having conducted her to the bed at the end of the ward I
+discreetly withdrew. What she said to him I am not, of course, aware.
+All I know is that an hour later when I returned I found them the
+happiest pair possible to conceive, and I clearly saw that Jack's trust
+in her was not ill-placed.</p>
+
+<p>But of Elma? No further word had come from her, and I began to grow
+uneasy. The days went on. I wrote twice, but no reply was forthcoming.
+At last I could bear the suspense no longer, and began to contemplate
+returning to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, when at last discharged from the hospital, came across to the
+Cecil and lived with me in preference to the &quot;Junior.&quot; He was very weak
+at first, and I looked after him, while every day Muriel came and ate
+with us, brightening our lives by her smart and merry chatter. She knew
+that I loved Elma and was also aware of the exciting events in Russia,
+Jack having told her of them during their long drives in hansoms when he
+went out with her to take the air.</p>
+
+<p>One day I received a brief note from the Princess in Petersburg, urging
+me to remain patient and saying Elma was quite safe and well. There
+were reasons, however, why she was unable to write, she added. What were
+they, I wondered? Yet I could only wait until I received word to travel
+back to Russia and fetch her home. The Princess had promised to arrange
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>December came, and we still remained on at the hotel. Once Olinto had
+written me repeating his warning, but I did not heed it. I somehow
+distrusted the fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, now thoroughly recovered, called almost daily at Bassett Road, and
+would often bring Muriel to the Cecil to tea or to luncheon. Often I
+inquired the whereabouts of her father and of Hylton Chater, but she
+declared herself in entire ignorance, and believed they were abroad.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, shortly before Christmas, as we were idling in the
+American bar of the hotel, my friend told me that Muriel had invited us
+to tea at her cousin's that afternoon, and accordingly we went there in
+company.</p>
+
+<p>The drawing-room into which we were ushered was familiar to me as the
+apartment wherein I had told Muriel of the attempt upon her lover's
+life.</p>
+
+<p>As we sat together Muriel, a smart figure in a pale blue gown, poured
+tea for us and chatted more merrily, I thought, than ever before. She
+seemed quick and nervous and yet full of happiness, as she should indeed
+have been, for Jack Durnford was one of the best fellows in the world,
+and his restoration to health little short of miraculous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gordon,&quot; he said to me with a sudden seriousness when tea had ended and
+we had placed down our cups. &quot;I want to tell you something&mdash;something
+I've been longing always to tell you, and now I have got dear Muriel's
+consent. I want to tell you about her father and his friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And about Elma, too?&quot; I said in quick eagerness. &quot;Yes, tell me
+everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not everything, for I don't know it myself. But what I know I will
+explain as briefly as I can, and leave you to form your own conclusions.
+It is,&quot; he went on, &quot;a strange&mdash;most amazing story. When I myself became
+first cognizant of the mystery I was on board the flagship the <i>Renown</i>,
+under Admiral Sir John Fisher. We were lying in Malta when there arrived
+the English yacht <i>Iris</i>, owned by Mr. Philip Leithcourt, and among
+those on board cruising for pleasure were Mr. Martin Woodroffe, Mr.
+Hylton Chater, and the owner's wife and daughter Muriel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Muriel and I met first at a tennis-party, and afterwards frequently at
+various houses in Malta, for anyone who goes there and entertains is
+soon entertained in return. A mutual attachment sprang up between Muriel
+and myself,&quot; he said, placing his hand tenderly upon hers and smiling,
+&quot;and we often met in secret and took long walks, until quite suddenly
+Leithcourt said that it was necessary to sail for Smyrna to pick up some
+friends who had been traveling in Palestine. The night they sailed a
+great consternation was caused on the island by the news that the safe
+in the Admiral Superintendent's office had been opened by expert
+safe-breakers, and certain most important secret documents stolen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I asked, much interested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Again, two months later, when the villa of the Prince of Montevachi, at
+Palmero, was broken into and the whole of the famous jewels of the
+Princess stolen, it was a very strange fact that the <i>Iris</i> was at the
+moment in that port. But it was not until the third occasion, when the
+yacht was at Villefranche, and our squadron being at Toulon I got four
+days' leave to go along the Riviera, that my suspicions were aroused,
+for at the very hour when I was dining at the London House at Nice with
+Muriel and a schoolfellow of hers, Elma Heath&mdash;who was spending the
+winter there with a lady who was Baron Oberg's cousin&mdash;that a great
+robbery was committed in one of the big hotels up at Cimiez, the wife of
+an American millionaire losing jewels valued at thirty thousand pounds.
+Then the robberies, coincident with the visit of the yacht, aroused my
+strong suspicion. I remarked the nature of those documents stolen from
+Malta, and recognized that they could only be of service to a foreign
+government. Then came the Leghorn incident of which you told me. The
+yacht's name had been changed to the <i>Lola</i>, and she had been repainted.
+I made searching inquiry, and found that on the evening she was
+purposely run aground in order to strike up a friendship at the
+Consulate, a Russian gunboat was lying in the vicinity. The Consul's
+safe was rifled, and the scheme certainly was to transfer anything
+obtained from it to the Russian gunboat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what was in the safe?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fortunately nothing. But you see they knew that our squadron was due in
+Leghorn, and that some extremely important despatches were on the way to
+the Admiral&mdash;secret orders based upon the decision of the British
+Cabinet as to the vexed question of Russian ships passing the
+Dardanelles&mdash;they expected that they would be lodged in the safe until
+the arrival of the squadron, as they always are. They were, however,
+bitterly disappointed because the despatches had not arrived.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the only Russian who appeared to have any connection with them
+was Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland, whose habit it was to
+spend part of the winter in the Mediterranean. From Elma Heath's
+conversation at dinner that evening at Nice I gathered that she and her
+uncle had been guests on the <i>Iris</i> on several occasions, although I
+must say that Muriel was extremely reticent regarding all that concerned
+the yacht.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; she said quickly. &quot;Now that I have told you the truth,
+Jack, don't you think it was only natural?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most certainly, dear,&quot; he answered, still holding her hand. &quot;Yours was
+not a secret that you could very well tell to me until you could
+thoroughly trust me, especially as your father had been implicated in
+the theft of those documents from Malta. The truth is,&quot; he said, turning
+to me, &quot;Philip Leithcourt has all along been the catspaw of Baron Oberg.
+A few years ago he was a well-known money-lender in the city, and in
+that capacity met the Baron, who, being in disgrace, required a loan. He
+was also in the habit of having certain shady transactions with that
+daring gang of continental thieves of whom Dick Archer and Hylton Chater
+were leaders. For this reason he purchased a yacht for their use, so
+that they might not only use it for the purpose of storing the stolen
+goods, but for the purpose of sailing from place to place under the
+guise of wealthy Englishmen traveling for pleasure. Upon that vessel,
+indeed, was stored thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of jewels
+and objects of value, the proceeds of many great robberies in England,
+France and Belgium. Sometimes they traveled for the purpose of disposing
+of the jewels in various inland towns where the gems, having been recut,
+were not recognized, while at other times, Chater and Archer, assisted
+by Mackintosh, the captain, and Olinto Santini, the steward, sailed for
+a port, landed, committed a robbery, and then sailed away again, quite
+unsuspected, as rich Englishmen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the crew?&quot; I asked, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were, of course, well paid, and were kept in ignorance of what
+the supposed owner and his friends did ashore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Oberg's connection with it?&quot; I asked, surprised at those
+revelations.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed Muriel. &quot;The ingenuity of that crafty villain is
+fiendish. Before he got into the Czar's favor he owed my father a large
+sum, and then sought how to evade repayment. By means of his spies he
+discovered the real purpose of the cruises of the <i>Iris</i>&mdash;for I was
+often taken on board with a maid in order to allay any suspicion that
+might arise if only men were cruising. Then he not only compelled my
+father to cancel the debt, but he impressed the vessel and those who
+owned and navigated it into the secret service of Russia. A dozen times
+did we make attempts to obtain secret papers from Italian, French and
+English dockyards, but only once in the case of Malta and once at Toulon
+did we succeed. Ah! Mr. Gregg,&quot; she added, &quot;you do not know all the
+anxiety I suffered, how at every hour we were in danger of betrayal or
+capture, and of the hundred narrow escapes we have had of Custom House
+officers rummaging the yacht for contraband. You will no doubt recollect
+the sensation caused by the theft of the jewels of the Princess
+Wilhelmine of Schaumbourg-Lippe from the lady's-maid in the rapide
+between Cannes and Les Arcs, the robbery from the Marseilles branch of
+the Cr&eacute;dit Lyonnais, and the great haul of plate from the ch&acirc;teau of
+Bardon, the Paris millionaire, close to Arcachon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, for they were all robberies of which I had read in the
+newspapers a couple of years before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she said, &quot;they were all committed by Archer or Woodroffe and
+his gang&mdash;with accomplices ashore, of course&mdash;and never once did it seem
+that any suspicion fell upon us. While the police were frantically
+searching hither and thither, we used to weigh anchor and calmly steam
+away with our booty on board. We had with us an old Dutch lapidary, and
+one of the cabins was fitted as a workshop, where he altered the
+appearance of the stones, and prepared them ready for sale, while the
+gold was melted in a crucible and put ashore to be sent to agents in
+Hamburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But that night in Leghorn?&quot; I said. &quot;What happened to poor Elma?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know,&quot; was Muriel's reply. &quot;We were both on board together,
+and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that
+evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against
+your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the
+proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on
+board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some
+conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in
+great fear the whole time lest they might injure you. Yet it seemed,
+after all, as though their idea was the same as always, to worm
+themselves into your confidence. The instant, however, you went ashore,
+Chater, Woodroffe&mdash;whom you called Hornby&mdash;and Mackintosh, the
+captain&mdash;who, by the way, was an old ticket-of-leave man&mdash;went ashore,
+and, of course, broke into the Consulate. Then, as soon as they
+returned, Elma came to my cabin, awoke me, and said that the Baron was
+taking her ashore, and that they were to travel overland back to London.
+She was ready dressed to go, therefore I kissed her, and promising to
+meet her soon, we parted. That was the last I saw of her. What happened
+to her afterwards only she alone can tell us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she is not the Baron's niece?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. There is some mystery,&quot; declared Muriel. &quot;She holds some secret
+which he fears she may divulge. But of what nature, I am in ignorance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you say that your father has never taken any active part in the
+robberies?&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. He commenced by lending money, and amassed a considerable fortune.
+Then avarice seized him, as it does so many men, and coming into contact
+with Archer and his friends, he saw that the idea of the yacht was a
+safe and profitable one. Therefore he purchased the vessel, and ran it
+at the disposition of the thieves, and subsequently under compulsion in
+the secret service of Russia, as I have already described to you. The
+profits were colossal. In one year my father's share was eighty thousand
+pounds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where is your father now?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she exclaimed sadly, her face pale and haggard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard that the vessel was scuttled somewhere in the Baltic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is true. Oberg's purpose having been served, he demanded half the
+property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval
+authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail
+my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was
+frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma,
+defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors,
+telegraphed to the admiral of the Russian fleet in the Baltic. The crew
+from the <i>Iris</i> were at once landed at Riga, and only Mackintosh and my
+father put to sea again. Ah! my father was desperate, for he knew the
+merciless character of that man whose victim he had been for so long.
+They watched a Russian cruiser bearing down upon them, when, just as it
+drew near, they got off in a boat and blew up the yacht, which sank in
+three minutes with its ill-obtained wealth on board.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your father?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, and I saw tears standing in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was a tragedy,&quot; Jack explained in a low, hoarse voice. &quot;He and
+the captain did not, unfortunately, get sufficiently far from the yacht
+when they blew her up, and they went down with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I looked in silence at Muriel, who stood with her head bent and her
+white face covered with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at the same moment there was a low tap at the door, and the
+servant-maid announced:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Santini, miss.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed Jack quickly, as Olinto entered the room. &quot;Then you had
+my note! We have asked you here to reveal to us this dastardly plot
+which seemed to have been formed against Mr. Gregg and myself. As you
+know, I've had a narrow escape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, signore. And the Signor Commendatore is also threatened.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By those who killed my poor wife, and who intended also to silence me,&quot;
+was his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same who compelled you take me to that house where the fatal chair
+was prepared, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was Archer, who, fearing that you came to London in search of them,
+devised that devilish contrivance,&quot; he said in his broken English. Then
+continuing, he went on fiercely: &quot;Now that I have discovered why my poor
+Armida was killed, I will tell the truth, and not spare them. Since you
+left Scotland, signore, I have been up in Dumfries, and have discovered
+several facts which prove that for some reason known only to himself,
+Leithcourt, while at Rannoch, wrote to both Armida and myself
+separately, making an appointment to see us at the same time at that
+spot on the edge of the wood, as he had some secret commission to
+entrust to us. The letter addressed to me apparently fell into someone
+else's hands&mdash;probably one of the secret agents of Baron Oberg, who were
+always watching Leithcourt's doings, and he, anxious to learn what was
+intended, made himself up to look like me, and kept the appointment in
+my place. Armida, having received the letter unknown to me, went up to
+Scotland, and was also there at the appointed time. What actually
+transpired can only be surmised, yet it seems that Leithcourt was in the
+habit of going up to that spot and loitering there in the evening in
+order to meet Chater in secret, as the latter was in hiding in a small
+hotel in Dumfries. Therefore those who formed the plot must have
+endeavored to throw suspicion upon Leithcourt. It is plain, however, as
+both myself and Armida knew the gang, it was to their interest to get
+rid of us, because the suspicions of the police had at last become
+aroused. Poor Armida was therefore deliberately enticed there to her
+death, while the inquisitive man whom the assassin took to be myself was
+also struck down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not by Chater, for he was in London on that night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then by Woodroffe?&quot; Durnford said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without a doubt. It was all most cleverly thought out. It was to his
+advantage alone to close our lips, because in that same fatal chair in
+Lambeth old Jacob Moser, the Jew bullion-broker of Hatton Garden, met
+his death&mdash;a most dastardly crime, with which none of his friends were
+associated, and of which we alone held knowledge. He therefore wrote to
+us as though from Leithcourt, calling us up to Rannoch, in order to
+strike the blows in the darkness,&quot; he added in his peculiar Italian
+manner. &quot;Besides, he feared we would tell the signore the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have not told the police?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare not, signore. Surely the less the police know about this matter
+the better, otherwise the Signorina Leithcourt must suffer for her
+father's avarice and evil-doing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; cried Jack anxiously. &quot;That's right, Olinto. The police must know
+nothing. The reprisals we must make ourselves. But who was it who shot
+me in Suffolk Street?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same man, Martin Woodroffe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the assassin is back from Russia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He followed closely behind the Signor Commendatore. Markoff, a clever
+secret agent of Baron Oberg's, came with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then for the first time I recollected that the man I had recognized in
+the Strand was a fellow I had seen lounging in the ante-room of the
+palace of the Governor-General of Finland. The pair, fearing that I
+should reveal what I knew, were undoubtedly in London to take my life in
+secret. Now that Leithcourt was dead, Woodroffe had united forces with
+Oberg, and intended to silence me because they feared that Elma, besides
+escaping them, had also revealed her secret.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I trust that the Signorina Leithcourt has explained the story of the
+yacht and its crew,&quot; Olinto remarked. &quot;And has also shown you how I was
+implicated. You will therefore discern the reason why I have hitherto
+feared to give you any explanation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, &quot;Miss Leithcourt has told me a great deal, but not
+everything. I cannot yet gather for what reason she and her father fled
+from Rannoch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will tell you,&quot; said Muriel quickly. &quot;My father suspected
+Woodroffe of being the assassin in Rannoch Wood, for he knew that he had
+broken away from the original compact, and had now allied himself with
+Oberg. Yet it was also my father's object to appear in fear of them,
+because he was only awaiting an opportunity to lay plans for poor Elma's
+rescue from Finland. Therefore one evening Woodroffe called, and my
+father encountered him in the avenue, and admitted him with his own
+latchkey by one of the side doors of the castle, afterwards taking him
+up to the study. He knew that he had come to try and make terms for
+Oberg, therefore he saw that he must fly at once to Newcastle, where the
+<i>Iris</i> was lying, get on board, and sail away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With some excuse he left him in the study, and then warned my mother
+and myself to prepare to leave. But while we were packing, it appeared
+that Chater, who had followed, was shown into the study by the butler,
+or rather he entered there himself, being well acquainted with the
+house. Thus the two men, now bitter enemies, met. A fierce quarrel must
+have ensued, and Chater was poisoned and concealed, Woodroffe, of
+course, believing he had killed him. My father entered the study again,
+and seeing only Woodroffe there, did not know what had occurred. Some
+words probably arose, when my father again turned and left. Then we fled
+to Carlisle and on to Newcastle, and next morning were on board the
+yacht out in the North Sea, afterwards landing at Rotterdam. Those,&quot; she
+added, &quot;are briefly the facts, as my poor father related them to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what of poor Elma&mdash;and of her secret? When, I wonder, shall I see
+her?&quot; I cried in despair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will see her now, signore,&quot; answered Olinto. &quot;A servant of the
+Princess Zurloff brought her to London this afternoon, and I have just
+conveyed her from the station. She is in the next room, in ignorance,
+however, that you are here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And without another word I fled forward joyfully, and threw open the
+folding-doors which separated me from my silent love.</p>
+
+<p>Silent, yes! But she could, nevertheless, tell her story&mdash;surely the
+strangest that any woman has ever lived to tell.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Before me stood my love, a slim, tragic, rather wan figure in a heavy
+dark traveling-coat and felt toque, her sweet lips parted and a look of
+bewildered amazement upon her countenance as I burst in so suddenly upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In silence I grasped her tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in
+silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark
+eyes&mdash;those eyes that spoke although she was mute&mdash;met mine, and in them
+was a look that I had never seen there before&mdash;a look which as plainly
+as any words told me that my wild fevered passion was reciprocated.</p>
+
+<p>She gazed beyond into the room where the others had assembled, and then
+looked at me inquiringly, whereupon I led her forward to where they
+were, and Muriel fell upon her and kissed her with tears streaming from
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I prepared this surprise for you, Mr. Gregg,&quot; Muriel said, laughing
+through her tears of joy. &quot;Olinto learnt that she was on her way to
+London, and I sent him to meet her. The Princess has managed
+magnificently, has she not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Thank God she is free!&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;But we must induce her to
+tell us everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Muriel was already helping my love out of her heavy Russian coat, a
+costly garment lined with sable, and when, after greeting Jack and
+Olinto, she was comfortably seated, I took some notepaper from the
+little writing-table by the window and scribbled in pencil the words:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I need not write how delighted I am that you are safe&mdash;that the
+Almighty has heard my prayers for you. Jack and Muriel have told me all
+about Leithcourt and his scoundrelly associates. I know, too, dear&mdash;for
+I may call you that, may I not?&mdash;how terribly you must have suffered in
+silence through it all. Leithcourt is dead. He sank the yacht with all
+the stolen property on board, but by accident was himself engulfed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bending and watching intently as I wrote, she drew back in horror and
+surprise at the words. Then I added: &quot;We are all four determined that
+the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
+you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love&mdash;I am bold enough
+to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
+caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
+your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
+unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
+tell us everything&mdash;all that you know&mdash;without fear, for now that we are
+united no harm can assail us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
+first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
+her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
+extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
+to us the absolute truth.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
+chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
+though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
+her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write,
+she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.</p>
+
+<p>All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her,
+but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started,
+however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence
+for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the
+pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become
+seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw
+we were in real, dead earnest.</p>
+
+<p>I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
+across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
+speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly,
+peerless above all others.</p>
+
+<p>With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
+in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
+written to me.</p>
+
+<p>In breathless eagerness I read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it true, dear love&mdash;for I call you so in return&mdash;that you were
+impelled towards me by the mysterious hand that directs all things? You
+came in search of me, and you risked your life for mine at Kajana,
+therefore you have a right to know the truth. You, as my champion, and
+the Princess as my friend, have contrived to effect my freedom. Were it
+not for you, I should ere this have been on my way to Saghalien, to the
+tomb to which Oberg had so ingeniously contrived to consign me. Ah! you
+do not know&mdash;you never can know&mdash;all that I have suffered ever since I
+was a girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here the statement broke off, and recommenced as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In order that you should understand the truth, I had better begin at
+the beginning. My father was an English merchant in Petersburg, and my
+mother, Vera Bessanoff, who, before her marriage with my father, was
+celebrated at Court for her beauty, and was one of the maids-of-honor to
+the Czarina. She was the only daughter of Count Paul Bessanoff,
+ex-Governor of Kharkoff, and before marrying my father she had, with her
+mother, been a well-known figure in society. Immediately after her
+marriage her father died, leaving her in possession of an ample fortune,
+which, with my father's own wealth, placed them among the richest and
+most influential in Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Among my father's most intimate friends was Baron Xavier Oberg&mdash;who, at
+that time, held a very subordinate position in the Ministry of the
+Interior&mdash;and from my earliest recollections I can remember him coming
+frequently to our house and being invited to the brilliant
+entertainments which my mother gave. When I was thirteen, however, my
+father died of a chill contracted while boar-hunting on his estate in
+Kiev, and within a few months a further disaster happened to us. One
+night, while I was sitting alone reading aloud to my mother, two
+strangers were announced, and on being shown in they arrested my dear
+mother on a charge of complicity in a revolutionary plot against the
+Czar which had been discovered at Peterhof. I stood defiant and
+indignant, for my mother was certainly no Nihilist, yet they said that
+the bomb had been introduced into the palace by the Countess Anna
+Shiproff, one of the ladies-in-waiting, who was an intimate friend of my
+mother's and often used to visit her. They alleged that the conspiracy
+had been hatched in our house, color being lent to that theory by the
+fact that a year before a well-known Russian with whom my father had had
+many business dealings had been proved to be the author of the plot by
+which the Czar's train was blown up near Lividia. They tore my mother
+away from me and placed her in that gray prison-van, the sight of which
+in the streets of Petersburg strikes terror into the heart of every
+Russian, for a person once in that rumbling vehicle is, as you know,
+lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed
+in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted, for I
+recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the
+gray dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth came back to me. My
+mother was gone from me for ever!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In sheer desperation I went to the Ministry of the Interior and sought
+an interview with the Baron, who, when I told him of the disaster,
+appeared greatly concerned, and went at once to the Police Department to
+make inquiry. Next day, however, he came to me with the news that the
+charge against my mother had been proved by a statement of the woman
+Shiproff herself, and that she had already started on her long journey
+to Siberia&mdash;she had been exiled to one of those dreaded Arctic
+settlements beyond Yakutsk, a place where it is almost eternal winter,
+and where the conditions of life are such that half the convicts are
+insane. The Baron, however, declared that, as my father's friend, it was
+his duty to act as guardian to me, and that as my father had been
+English I ought to be put to an English school. Therefore, with his
+self-assumed title of uncle, he took me to Chichester. For years I
+remained there, until one day he came suddenly and fetched me away,
+taking me over to Helsingfors&mdash;for the Czar had now appointed him
+Governor-General to Finland. There, for the first time, he introduced me
+to his son Michael, a pimply-faced lieutenant of cavalry, and said in a
+most decisive manner that I must marry him. I naturally refused to marry
+a man of whom I knew so little, whereupon, finding me obdurate, he
+quickly altered his tactics and became kindness itself, saying that as I
+was young he would allow me a year in which to make up my mind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A week later, while living in the palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a
+conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to
+me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself
+who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had
+made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the
+reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father,
+came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in
+order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in
+the hands of that unscrupulous pair, and I recognized, too, sufficient
+of the Baron's methods as 'The Strangler of Finland,' to show me what
+kind of character he was beneath that calm, eminently respectable
+black-coated exterior. After deliberately sending my poor mother to
+Siberia, he had assumed the role of my guardian in order that he might,
+when I came of age, obtain control of my inheritance, the idea no doubt
+being that I should marry Michael, and then, after the necessary legal
+formalities, I should, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, share the
+same fate as my mother had done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The infernal scoundrel!&quot; I ejaculated, when I read her words, while
+from Jack, who had been looking over my shoulder, escaped a fierce and
+forcible vow of vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron took me with him to Petersburg when he went on official
+business, and we remained there nearly a month,&quot; the narrative went on.
+&quot;While there I received a secret message from 'The Red Priest,' the
+unseen and unknown power of Nihilism, who has for so many years baffled
+the police. I went to see him, and he revealed to me how Oberg had
+contrived to have my mother banished upon a false charge. He warned me
+against the man who had pretended to be my father's friend, and also
+told me that he had known my father intimately, and that if I got into
+any further difficulty I was to communicate with him and he would assist
+me. Oberg took me back to Helsingfors a few months later, and in summer
+we went to England. He was a marvelously clever diplomatist. His tactics
+he could change at will. When I was at school he was rough and brutal in
+his manner towards me, as he was to all; but now he seemed to be
+endeavoring to inspire my confidence by treating me with kindly regard
+and pleasant affability.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In London, at Claridge's, we met my old schoolfellow Muriel and her
+father&mdash;a friend of Oberg's&mdash;and in response to their invitation went
+for a cruise on their yacht, the <i>Iris</i>, from Southampton. Our party was
+a very pleasant one, and included Woodroffe and Chater, while our cruise
+across the Bay of Biscay and along the Portuguese coast proved most
+delightful. One night, while we were lying outside Lisbon, Woodroffe and
+Chater, together with Olinto, went ashore, and when they returned in the
+early hours of the morning they awoke me by crossing the deck above my
+head. Then I heard someone outside my cabin-door working as though with
+a screwdriver, unscrewing a screw from the woodwork. This aroused my
+interest, and next day I made a minute examination of the paneling,
+where, in one part, I found two small brass screws that had evidently
+been recently removed. Therefore I succeeded in getting hold of a
+screwdriver from the carpenter's shop, and next night, when everyone was
+asleep, I crept out and unscrewed the panel, when to my surprise I saw
+that the secret cavity behind was filled with beautiful jewelry, diamond
+collars, tiaras, necklets, fine pearls, emeralds and turquoises, all
+<i>thrown</i> in indiscriminately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I replaced the panel and kept careful watch. At Marseilles, where we
+called, more jewelry and a heavy bagful of plate was brought aboard and
+secreted behind another panel. Then I knew that the men were thieves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But surely,&quot; continued the strange story my mute love had written, &quot;I
+need not describe all that occurred upon that eventful voyage, except to
+tell you of one very curious incident which occurred. I had spoken
+confidentially with Muriel regarding my suspicions of the men who were
+our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on
+board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced
+that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some
+unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that
+since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and
+that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however,
+never suspected the truth until I pointed it out to her. Well, one hot
+summer's night we were lying off Naples, and as it was a grand festa
+ashore and there was to be a gala performance at the theater, Leithcourt
+took a box and the whole party were rowed ashore. The crew were also
+given shore-leave for the evening, but as the great heat had upset me I
+declined to accompany the theater-party, and remained on board with one
+sailor named Wilson to constitute the watch. We had anchored about half
+a mile from land, and earlier in the evening the Baron had gone ashore
+to send telegrams to Russia, and had not returned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About ten o'clock I went below to try and sleep, but I had a slight
+attack of fever, and was unable. Therefore I redressed and sat with the
+light still out, gazing across the starlit bay. Presently from my
+port-hole I saw a shore-boat approaching, and recognized in it the Baron
+with a well-dressed stranger. They both came on board, and the boatman,
+having been paid, pulled back to the shore. Then the Baron and his
+friend&mdash;a dark, middle-aged, full-bearded man, evidently a person of
+refinement&mdash;went below to the saloon, and after a few moments called to
+the man Wilson who was on the watch, and gave him a glass of whisky and
+water, which he took up on deck to drink at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The unusual character of my fellow-guests on board that craft was such
+that my suspicion was constantly on the alert, therefore curiosity
+tempted me to creep along and peep in at the crack of the door standing
+ajar. A closer view revealed the fact that the stranger was a high
+Russian official to whom I had once been introduced at the Government
+Palace at Helsingfors, the Privy-Councillor and Senator Paul Polovstoff.
+They were smoking together, and were discussing in Russian the means by
+which he, Polovstoff, had arranged to obtain plans of some new British
+fortifications at Gibraltar. From what he said, it seemed that some
+Russian woman, married to an Englishman, a captain in the garrison, had
+been impressed into the secret service against her will, but that she
+had, in order to save herself, promised to obtain the photographs and
+plans that were required. I heard the Englishman's name, and I resolved
+to take some steps to inform him in secret of the intentions of the
+Russian agent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Presently the two men took fresh cigars, ascended on deck, and cast
+themselves in the long cane chairs amidships. Still all curiosity to
+hear further details on the ingenious piece of espionage against my own
+nation, I took off my shoes and crept up to a spot where I could crouch
+concealed and overhear their conversation, for the Italian night was
+calm and still. They talked mainly about affairs in Finland, and with
+some of Oberg's expressions of opinion Polovstoff ventured to differ.
+This aroused the Baron's anger, and I knew from the cold sarcasm of his
+remarks, and the peculiarly hard tone of his voice, that he was more
+incensed than he outwardly showed himself to be. He rose and stood with
+his back to the bulwarks facing his friend, who still sat leaning back
+in his deck-chair insisting upon his own views. He was quite calm, and
+not in the least perturbed by the evil glint in the Baron's eye. Perhaps
+he did not know him so well as I did. He did not know what that look
+meant. Suddenly, while the Privy-Councillor lay back in his chair
+pulling thoughtfully at his cigar, there was a bright, blood-red flash,
+a dull report, and a man's short agonized cry. Startled, I leaned around
+the corner of the deck-house, when, to my abject horror, I saw under the
+electric rays the Czar's Privy-Councillor lying sideways in his chair
+with part of his face blown away. Then the hideous truth in an instant
+became apparent. The cigar which Oberg had pressed upon him down in the
+saloon had exploded, and the small missile concealed inside the
+diabolical contrivance had passed upwards into his brain. For a moment I
+stood utterly stupefied, yet as I looked I saw the Baron, in a paroxysm
+of rage, shake his fist in the dead man's face, and cry with a fearful
+imprecation: 'You hound! You have plotted to replace me in the Czar's
+favor. You intended to become Governor-General of Finland! You knew
+certain facts which you intended to put before his Majesty, knowing
+that the revelations would result in my disgrace and downfall. But, you
+infernal cur, you did not know that those who attempt to thwart Xavier
+Oberg either die by accident or go for life to Kajana or the mines!' And
+he spurned the body with his foot and laughed to himself as he gloated
+over his dastardly crime.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I watched his rage, unable to utter a single word. I saw him, after he
+had searched the dead man's pockets, raise the inert body with its awful
+featureless face and drag it to the bulwarks. Then I rushed forward and
+faced him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In an instant he sprang at me, and I screamed. But no aid came. The man
+Wilson was sleeping soundly in the bows, for the whisky he had given him
+had been doctored,&quot; went on the narrative. &quot;Upon his face was a fierce,
+murderous look such as I had never seen before. 'You!' he screamed, his
+dark eyes starting from their sockets as he realized that I had been a
+witness of his cowardly crime. 'You have spied upon me, girl!' he
+hissed, 'and you shall die also!' I sank upon my knees imploring him to
+spare me, but he only laughed at my entreaty. 'See!' he cried, 'as you
+saw how he enjoyed his cigar, you may as well see this!' And with an
+effort he raised the dead body in his arms, poised it for a moment on
+the vessel's side, and then, with a hoarse laugh of triumph, heaved it
+into the sea. There was a splash, and then we were alone. 'And you!' he
+cried in a fierce voice&mdash;'you who have spied upon me&mdash;you will follow!
+The water there will close your chattering mouth!' I shrieked, begged,
+and implored, but his trembling hands were upon my throat. First he
+dragged me to my feet, then he threw me upon my knees, and at last, with
+that grim brutality which characterizes him, he directed me to go and
+get a mop and bucket from the forecastle and remove the dark red stains
+from the chair and deck. This he actually forced me to do, gloating over
+my horror as I removed for him the traces of his cowardly crime. Then,
+with his hand upon my shoulder, he said, 'Girl! Recollect that you keep
+to-night's work secret. If not, you shall die a death more painful than
+that dog has died&mdash;one in which you shall experience all the tortures of
+the damned. Recollect, not a single word&mdash;or death! Now, go to your
+cabin, and never pry into my affairs again.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I went back to my cabin as I was bid, and sat speechless in abject
+horror. The fiendish actions of the man who was my guardian frightened
+me. And yet I was utterly helpless. What could I do? Who in holy Russia
+would hear me? Oberg was a power in the Empire; the Czar himself trusted
+him. If I spoke, who would believe me; who would heed the words of a
+defenseless girl whom he would at once declare to be hysterical? Thus I
+waited alone in the darkness, watching the lights of the port gleaming
+across the placid waters until nearly one o'clock, when the gay party
+returned, and the Baron greeted them merrily as though nothing had
+happened. But my heart was frozen within me by the recollection of the
+awful crime that had been committed.&quot;</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! Now I remember!&quot; cried Muriel, amazed. &quot;I remember that night
+quite well, how white you were when you came to my cabin and asked to be
+allowed to sleep in my spare berth. You would tell me nothing, and only
+said you were ill. None of us had any idea that such a terrible tragedy
+had been enacted. But of course the Baron had arranged it all, for it
+was at his instigation, I recollect, that the crew had been given
+shore-leave. Mackintosh suggested that only half the crew should go,
+but he declared that if Wilson alone were left it would be sufficient.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I, too, recollect the affair quite well,&quot; Jack declared, tugging at his
+mustache, utterly amazed at my love's strange story. It was a plain
+statement of hard, astounding facts, and she now stood clinging to me,
+looking eagerly into my eyes, reading every thought that passed through
+my mind. &quot;A great sensation was caused when the body was discovered. The
+squadron was lying off Naples about a week after the <i>Iris</i> had left,
+and while we were there the body was washed up near Sorrento. At first
+but little notice was taken of it, but by the marks on the dead man's
+linen it was discovered that he was Polovstoff, one of the highest
+Russian officials who had, it was said, been warned on several occasions
+by the Nihilists. It was, therefore, concluded that his death had been
+due to Nihilist vengeance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Elma pointed to the paper, and made a sign that I was to read on. This I
+did, and the statement ran as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The real reason why the Baron spared my life was because, if I died, my
+fortune would pass to a distant cousin living at Durham. Yet his manner
+towards me was now most polite and pleasant&mdash;a change that I felt boded
+no good. He intended to obtain my money by marrying me to his son
+Michael, whose evil reputation as a gambler was well known in
+Petersburg. We traveled back to Finland in the autumn, and in the winter
+he took me to stay with his sister in Nice. Yet almost daily he referred
+to that tragedy at Naples, and threatened me with death if ever I
+uttered a single word, or even admitted that I had ever seen the man who
+was his rival and his victim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Last June,&quot; commenced another paragraph, &quot;we were in Helsingfors, when
+one day the Baron called me suddenly and told me to prepare for a
+journey. We were to cross to Stockholm and thence to Hull, where the
+<i>Iris</i> was awaiting us, for Mr. Leithcourt and Muriel had invited us for
+a summer cruise to the Greek Islands. We boarded the yacht much against
+my will, yet I was powerless, and dare not allege the facts that I had
+already established concerning our fellow-guests. Muriel and I, it
+seems, were taken merely in order to blind the shore-guards and Customs
+officials as to the real nature of the vessel, which when safely out of
+the Channel, was repainted and renamed the <i>Lola</i>, until her exterior
+presented quite a different appearance from the <i>Iris</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The port of Leghorn was our first place of call, and for some reason we
+ran purposely upon a sandbank and were towed off by Italian
+torpedo-boats. Next evening you came on board and dined, Muriel and
+myself having strict orders not to show ourselves. We, however, watched
+you, and I saw you pick up my photograph which I had that day torn up.
+Then immediately after you had left, Woodroffe, Chater and Mackintosh
+went ashore and were away a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
+Just before they returned the Baron rapped at the door of my cabin
+saying that he must go ashore, and telling me to dress and accompany
+him. He would never allow me the luxury of a maid, fearing, I suppose,
+that she might learn too much. In obedience I rose and dressed, and when
+I went forth he told me to get my traveling-cloak and dressing-bag,
+adding that he was compelled to go north, as to continue the cruise
+would occupy too much time. He was due back at his official duties, he
+said. As soon as I had finished packing, the three men returned to the
+vessel, all of them looking dark-faced and disappointed. Woodroffe
+whispered some words to the Baron, after which I went to Muriel's cabin
+and wished her good-bye, and we went ashore, taking the train first to
+Colle Salvetti, thence to Pisa, and afterwards to the beautiful old city
+of Siena, which I had so longed to see. One of my teeth gave me pain,
+and the Baron, after a couple of days at the Hotel de Sienne, took me to
+a queer-looking little old Italian&mdash;a dentist who, he said, enjoyed an
+excellent reputation. I was quick to notice that the two men had met
+before, and as I sat in the chair and gas was given to me I saw them
+exchange meaning glances. In a few moments I became insensible, but when
+I awoke an hour later I was astounded to feel a curious soreness in my
+ears. My tongue, too, seemed paralyzed, and in a few moments the awful
+truth dawned upon me. I had been rendered deaf and dumb!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron pretended to be greatly concerned about me,&quot; it went on, &quot;but
+I quickly realized that I had been the victim of a foul and dastardly
+plot, and that he had conceived it, fearing lest I might speak the truth
+concerning the Privy-Councillor Polovstoff, for of exposure he lived in
+constant fear. To encompass my end would be against his own interests,
+as he would lose my fortune, so he had silenced me lest I should reveal
+the terrible truth concerning both him and his associates. He was not
+rich, and I have reason to believe that from time to time he gave
+information as to persons who possessed valuable jewels, and thus shared
+in the plunder obtained by those on the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From Italy we traveled on to Berlin, thence to Petersburg, and back to
+dreary Helsingfors, journeying as quickly as we could, yet never
+allowing me opportunity of being with strangers. Both my ears and tongue
+were very painful, but I said nothing. He was surely a fiend in a black
+coat, and my only thought now was how to escape him. From the moment
+when that so-called dentist had ruined my hearing and deprived me of
+power of speech, he kept me aloof from everyone. The fear that I should
+reveal everything had apparently grown to haunt him, and he had
+conceived that terrible mode of silencing my lips. But the true depth of
+his villainy was not yet apparent until I was back in Finland.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the night of our arrival he called in his son, who had traveled with
+us from Petersburg, and in writing again demanded that I should marry
+him. I wrote my reply&mdash;a firm refusal. He struck the table angrily with
+his fist and wrote saying that I should either marry his son or die.
+Then next day, while walking alone out beyond the town of Helsingfors,
+as I often used to do, I was arrested upon the false charge of an
+attempt upon the life of Madame Vakuroff and transported, without trial,
+to the terrible fortress of Kajana, some of the horrors of which you
+have yourself experienced. The charge against me was necessary before I
+could be incarcerated there, but once within, it was the scheme of the
+Governor-General to obtain my consent to the marriage by threats and by
+the constant terrors of the place. He even went so far as to obtain a
+ministerial order for my banishment to Saghalien and brought it to me to
+Kajana, declaring that if in one month I did not consent he should allow
+me to be sent to exile. While I was in Kajana he knew that his secret
+was safe, therefore by every means in his power he urged me to consent
+to the odious union.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All the rest is known to you&mdash;how Providence directed you to me as my
+deliverer, and how Woodroffe followed you in secret, and pretending to
+be my friend took me with him to Petersburg. He had learnt of my fortune
+from the Baron, and intended to marry me himself. But now that all is
+over it appears to me like some terrible dream. I never believed that so
+much iniquity existed in the world, or that men could fight a
+defenseless woman with such double-dealing and cruel ingenuity. Ah! the
+tortures I endured in Kajana are beyond human conception. Yet surely
+Oberg and Woodroffe will obtain their well-merited deserts&mdash;if not in
+this world, then in the world to come. Are we not taught by Holy Writ to
+forgive our enemies? Therefore, let us forgive.&quot;</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>There my silent love's strange story ended. A bald, straightforward
+narrative that held us all for some moments absolutely speechless&mdash;one
+of the strangest and most startling stories ever revealed.</p>
+
+<p>She watched every expression of my countenance, and then, when I had
+finished reading and placed my arm tenderly about her slim waist, she
+raised her beautiful face to mine to receive the passionate kiss I
+imprinted upon those soft, full lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This, of course, makes everything plain,&quot; exclaimed Jack. &quot;Polovstoff
+was a very liberal-minded and upright official who was greatly in the
+favor of the Czar, and a serious rival to Oberg, whose drastic and
+merciless methods in Finland were not exactly approved by the Emperor.
+The Baron was well aware of this, and by ingeniously enticing him on
+board the <i>Iris</i> he succeeded by handing that small bomb concealed in a
+cigar&mdash;a Nihilist contrivance that had probably been seized by his
+police in Finland&mdash;in freeing himself from the rival who was destined to
+occupy his post.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said with a sigh. &quot;The mystery is cleared up, it is true, yet
+my poor Elma is still the victim.&quot; And I kissed my love passionately
+again and again upon the lips.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CONCLUSION"></a><h2>CONCLUSION</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Nearly two years have now gone by.</p>
+
+<p>There have been changes in holy Russia&mdash;many great and amazing changes
+consequent upon war and its disasters. Russia is no longer the great
+power that she once was supposed to be. Many events that have startled
+the world have occurred since that day when I first enfolded my silent
+love within my arms. One of them is known to you all.</p>
+
+<p>You read in the newspapers, without a doubt, how the Baron Xavier Oberg,
+the persecutor of Finland, the enemy of education, the relentless foe of
+the defenseless, the man who ordered women to be knouted to death in
+Kajana, the heartless official whom the Finns called &quot;The Strangler,&quot;
+was blown to pieces by a bomb thrown beneath his carriage as he drove to
+the railway station at Helsingfors on his way to have audience with the
+Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The secret truth was that the &quot;Red Priest&quot; decreed that Oberg should
+die, and the plot was swiftly put into execution, and although five
+hundred arrests were made the police are unaware to this day of the
+identity of the person who directed it, or of who threw the fatal
+missile. From pillar to post the revolutionists have been hunted by the
+bloodhounds of police, yet the &quot;Red Priest&quot; still lives on quietly in
+Petersburg, and the Princess Zurloff, still unsuspected, devotes the
+greater part of her enormous income to the cause of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Of Jack and Muriel I need only say they were married about three months
+after Elma's return from Russia, and at the present time they are
+living on the outskirts of Glasgow, where Jack has secured the shore
+appointment which he so long coveted.</p>
+
+<p>By some means&mdash;exactly how is not quite certain&mdash;the police discovered
+that Dick Archer, alias Woodroffe, alias Hornby, was concerned in the
+clever robbery of a dressing-bag, containing the Dowager Lady
+Lancashire's jewels, from her footman on Euston platform, and after a
+long search they found him hiding at an hotel in Liverpool. When,
+however, they went to arrest him, he laughed in the faces of the
+detectives, placed something swiftly in his mouth and swallowed it
+before they could prevent him&mdash;then ten minutes later he fell dead. He
+knew what terrible revelations must be made if we gave evidence against
+him, and he therefore preferred death by his own hand to that following
+a judicial sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Chater, although one of the most expert jewel thieves in Europe, had
+never been actually guilty of any graver offense, and when we heard that
+he was in San Francisco, where he had opened a small bar and was trying
+to live honestly, we resolved to allow him to remain there. Indeed, Jack
+wrote to him about nine months ago warning him never to set foot on
+English soil again on pain of arrest.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road,
+Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well.</p>
+
+<p>And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell
+you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic&mdash;that is all I
+can say.</p>
+
+<p>My proposal of marriage was made to Elma a very few days after she wrote
+down her startling and romantic story, and a year ago at a little
+village church in Hertfordshire we became man and wife, there being
+present at our wedding Madame Heath, my bride's mother, to whom, by my
+exertions in official quarters in Petersburg, the Czar's clemency was
+extended, and she was released from that far-off Arctic prison to which
+she had been sent with such cruel injustice.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the greatest London specialists have continually treated my dear
+wife, and under them she has already recovered her speech&mdash;so far,
+indeed, that she can now whisper in a low, soft voice. But they tell me
+they are hopeful that ere long her voice will become stronger, and
+speech practically restored. Already, too, she can begin to hear.</p>
+
+<p>After all the storms and perils of the past, our lives are now indeed
+full of a calm, sweet peace. In our own comfortable little house, with
+its trellised porch covered with roses and honeysuckle, that faces the
+blue Channel at St. Margaret's Bay, beyond Dover, we lead a life of
+mutual trust and boundless love. We are supremely content&mdash;the happiest
+pair in all the world, we think.</p>
+
+<p>Often as we sit together at evening, gazing out upon the great ships
+passing darkly away into the mysterious afterglow, our hands clasp
+mutually in a silence more eloquent than words, and as we gaze into each
+other's eyes there occurs to us the Divine injunction: &quot;WHOM GOD HATH
+JOINED, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>THE END
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10102 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10102 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10102)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Czar's Spy, by William Le Queux
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Czar's Spy
+       The Mystery of a Silent Love
+
+Author: William Le Queux
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10102]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CZAR'S SPY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Susan Woodring and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CZAR'S SPY
+
+_The Mystery of a Silent Love_
+
+By CHEVALIER WILLIAM LE QUEUX
+_Author of "The Closed Book," Etc._
+
+
+
+ 1905.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+    I. HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE
+
+   II. WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED
+
+  III. THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"
+
+   IV. IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES
+
+    V. CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES
+
+   VI. THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS
+
+  VII. CONTAINS A SURPRISE
+
+ VIII. LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM
+
+   IX. STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE
+
+    X. I SHOW MY HAND
+
+   XI. THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
+
+  XII. "THE STRANGLER"
+
+ XIII. A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+  XIV. HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
+
+   XV. JUST OFF THE STRAND
+
+  XVI. MARKED MEN
+
+ XVII. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"
+
+XVIII. CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE
+
+
+"There was a mysterious affair last night, signore."
+
+"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Anything that interests us?"
+
+"Yes, signore," replied the tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking
+with a strong accent. "An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria
+about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought
+the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which
+managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the
+Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make
+away with the vessel."
+
+"To lose her, you mean?"
+
+The faithful Francesco, whose English had mostly been acquired from
+sea-faring men, and was not the choicest vocabulary, nodded, and, true
+Tuscan that he was, placed his finger upon his closed lips, indicative
+of silence.
+
+"Sounds curious," I remarked. "Since the Consul went away on leave
+things seem to have been humming--two stabbing affrays, eight drunken
+seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being
+cast away--a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people
+complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They
+should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and they'd soon alter their
+opinion."
+
+"Yes, they would, signore," responded the thin-faced old fellow with a
+grin, as he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Francesco Carducci was a
+well-known character in Leghorn; interpreter to the Consulate, and
+keeper of a sailor's home, an honest, good-hearted, easy-going fellow,
+who for twenty years had occupied the same position under half a dozen
+different Consuls. At that moment, however, there came from the outer
+office a long-drawn moan.
+
+"Hulloa, what's that?" I enquired, startled.
+
+"Only a mad stoker off the _Oleander_, signore. The captain has brought
+him for you to see. They want to send him back to his friends at
+Newcastle."
+
+"Oh! a case of madness!" I exclaimed. "Better get Doctor Ridolfi to see
+him. I'm not an expert on mental diseases."
+
+My old friend Frank Hutcheson, His Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at
+the port of Leghorn, was away on leave in England, his duties being
+relegated to young Bertram Cavendish, the pro-Consul. The latter,
+however, had gone down with a bad touch of malaria which he had picked
+up in the deadly Maremma, and I, as the only other Englishman in
+Leghorn, had been asked by the Consul-General in Florence to act as
+pro-Consul until Hutcheson's return.
+
+It was in mid-July, and the weather was blazing in the glaring
+sun-blanched Mediterranean town. If you know Leghorn, you probably know
+the Consulate with its black and yellow escutcheon outside, a large,
+handsome suite of huge, airy offices facing the cathedral, and
+overlooking the principal piazza, which is as big as Trafalgar Square,
+and much more picturesque. The legend painted upon the door, "Office
+hours, 10 to 3," and the green persiennes closed against the scorching
+sun give one the idea of an easy appointment, but such is certainly not
+the case, for a Consul's life at a port of discharge must necessarily
+be a very active one, and his duties never-ending.
+
+Carducci had left me to the correspondence for half an hour or so, and I
+confess I was in no mood to write replies in that stifling heat,
+therefore I sat at the Consul's big table, smoking a cigarette and
+stretched lazily in my friend's chair, resolving to escape to the cool
+of England as soon as he returned in the following week. Italy is all
+very well for nine months in the year, but Leghorn is no place for the
+Englishman in mid-July. My thoughts were wandering toward the English
+lakes, and a bit of grouse-shooting with my uncle up in Scotland, when
+the faithful Francesco re-entered, saying--
+
+"I've sent the captain and his madman away till this afternoon, signore.
+But there is an English signore waiting to see you."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"I don't know him. He will give no name, but wants to see the Signor
+Console."
+
+"All right, show him in," I said lazily, and a few moments later a tall,
+smartly-dressed, middle-aged Englishman, in a navy serge yachting suit,
+entered, and bowing, enquired whether I was the British Consul.
+
+When he had seated himself I explained my position, whereupon he said--
+
+"I couldn't make much out of your clerk. He speaks so brokenly, and I
+don't know a word of Italian. But perhaps I ought to first introduce
+myself. My name is Philip Hornby," and he handed me a card bearing the
+name with the addresses "Woodcroft Park, Somerset ------ Brook's." Then
+he added: "I am cruising on board my yacht, the _Lola_, and last night
+we unfortunately went aground on the Meloria. I have a new captain whom
+I engaged a few months ago, and he seems an arrant fool. Very
+fortunately for us a fishing-boat saw our plight and gave the alarm at
+port. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats and a tug, and after about
+three hours they managed to get us off."
+
+"And you are now in harbor?"
+
+"Yes. But the reason I've called is to ask you to do me a favor and
+write me a letter of thanks in Italian to the Admiral, and one to the
+Captain of the Port--polite letters that I can copy and send to them.
+You know the kind of thing."
+
+"Certainly," I replied, the more interested in him on account of the
+curious suspicion that the port authorities seemed to entertain. He was
+evidently a gentleman, and after I had been with him ten minutes I
+scouted the idea that he had endeavored to cast away the _Lola_.
+
+I took down a couple of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two
+letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when
+addressing Italian officialdom.
+
+"Fortunately, I left my wife in England, or she would have been terribly
+frightened," he remarked presently. "There was a nasty wind blowing all
+night, and the fool of a captain seemed to add to our peril by every
+order he gave."
+
+"You are alone, then?"
+
+"I have a friend with me," was the answer.
+
+"And how many of the crew are there?"
+
+"Sixteen, all told."
+
+"English, I suppose?"
+
+"Not all. I find French and Italians are more sober than English, and
+better behaved in port."
+
+I examined him critically as he sat facing me, and the mere fact of his
+desire to send thanks to the authorities convinced me that he was a
+well-bred gentleman. He was about forty-five, with a merry round,
+good-natured face, red with the southern sun, blue eyes, and a short
+fair beard. His countenance was essentially that of a man devoted to
+open-air sport, for it was slightly furrowed and weather-beaten as a
+true yachtsman's should be. His speech was refined and cultivated, and
+as we chatted he gave me the impression that as an enthusiastic lover of
+the sea, he had cruised the Mediterranean many times from Gibraltar up
+to Smyrna. He had, however, never before put into Leghorn.
+
+After we had arranged that his captain should come to me in the
+afternoon and make a formal report of the accident, we went out together
+across the white sunny piazza to Nasi's, the well-known pastry-cook's,
+where it is the habit of the Livornese to take their ante-luncheon
+vermouth.
+
+The more I saw of Hornby, the more I liked him. He was chatty and witty,
+and treated his accident as a huge joke.
+
+"We shall be here quite a week, I suppose," he said as we were taking
+our vermouth. "We're on our way down to the Greek Islands, as my friend
+Chater wants to see them. The engineer says there's something strained
+that we must get mended. But, by the way," he added, "why don't you dine
+with us on board to-night? Do. We can give you a few English things that
+may be a change to you."
+
+This invitation I gladly accepted for two reasons. One was because the
+suspicions of the Captain of the Port had aroused my curiosity, and the
+other was because I had, honestly speaking, taken a great fancy to
+Hornby.
+
+The captain of the _Lola_, a short, thickset Scotsman from Dundee, with
+a barely healed cicatrice across his left cheek, called at the Consulate
+at two o'clock and made his report, which appeared to me to be a very
+lame one. He struck me as being unworthy his certificate, for he was
+evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The
+owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly
+he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact,
+run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was
+running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he
+was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a very
+perilous position.
+
+"Very fortunate it wasn't more serious, sir," he added, after telling me
+his story, which I wrote at his dictation for the ultimate benefit of
+the Board of Trade.
+
+"Didn't you send up signals of distress?" I Inquired.
+
+"No, sir--never thought of it."
+
+"And yet you knew that you might be lost?" I remarked with recurring
+suspicion.
+
+The canny Scot, whose name was Mackintosh, hesitated a few moments, then
+answered--
+
+"Well, sir, you see the fishing-boat had sighted us, and we saw her
+turning back to port to fetch help."
+
+His excuse was a neat one. Probably it was his neglect to make signals
+of distress that had aroused the suspicions of the Captain of the Port.
+From first to last the story of the master of the _Lola_ was, I
+considered, a very unsatisfactory one.
+
+"How long have you been in Mr. Hornby's service?" I inquired.
+
+"Six months, sir," was the man's reply. "Before he engaged me, I was
+with the Wilsons, of Hull, running up the Baltic."
+
+"As master?"
+
+"I've held my master's certificate these fifteen years, sir. I was with
+the Bibbys before the Wilsons, and before that with the General Steam.
+I did eight years in the Mediterranean with them, when I was chief
+mate."
+
+"And you've never been into Leghorn before?"
+
+"Never, sir."
+
+I dismissed the captain with a distinct impression that he had not told
+me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal
+appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I
+wished he would bring them to me on the morrow.
+
+Was it possible that an attempt had actually been made to cast away the
+yacht, and that it had been frustrated by the master of the felucca, who
+had sighted the vessel aground? There certainly seemed some mystery
+surrounding the circumstances, and my interest in the yacht and its
+owner deepened each hour. How, I wondered, had the captain received that
+very ugly wound across the cheek? I was half-inclined to inquire of him,
+but on reflection decided that it was best to betray no undue curiosity.
+
+That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory,
+bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands
+of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant
+horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within
+the inner harbor, I found the _Lola_, one of the most magnificent
+private vessels I had ever seen. Her dimensions surprised me. She was
+painted dead white, with shining brass everywhere. At the stern hung
+limply the British flag, while at the masthead the ensign of the Royal
+Yacht Squadron. The yellow funnel emitted no smoke, and as she lay
+calmly in the sunset a crowd of dock-loungers and crimps leaned upon the
+parapet discussing her merits and wondering who could be the rich
+Englishman who could afford to travel in a small liner of his own--for
+her size surprised even those Italian dock-hands, used as they were to
+seeing every kind of craft enter the busy port.
+
+On stepping on deck Hornby, who like myself wore a clean suit of white
+linen as the most sensible dinner-garb in a hot climate, came forward to
+greet me, and took me along to the stern where, lying in a long wicker
+deck-chair beneath the awning, was a tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven man
+of about forty, also dressed in cool white linen. His keen face gave one
+the impression that he was a barrister.
+
+"My friend, Hylton Chater--Mr. Gordon Gregg," he said, introducing us,
+and then when, as we shook hands, the clean-shaven man exclaimed,
+smiling pleasantly--
+
+"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gregg. You are not a stranger by
+any means to Hornby or myself. Indeed, we've got a couple of your books
+on board. But I had no idea you lived out here."
+
+"At Ardenza," I said. "Three miles along the sea-shore. To-morrow I hope
+you'll both come and dine with me."
+
+"Delighted, I'm sure," declared Hornby. "To eat ashore is quite a treat
+when one has been boxed up on board for some time. So we'll accept,
+won't we, Hylton?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the other; and then we began chatting about the
+peril of the previous night, Hornby telling me how he had copied the two
+letters of thanks in Italian and sent them to their respective
+addresses.
+
+"Phil blasphemed like a Levant skipper when he copied those Italian
+words!" laughed Chater. "He had made three copies of each letter before
+he could get all the lingo in accordance with your copy."
+
+"I've been the whole afternoon at them--confound them!" declared the
+owner of the _Lola_ with a laugh. "But, of course, I didn't want to make
+a lot of errors in spelling. These Italians are so very punctilious."
+
+"Well, you certainly did the right thing to thank the Admiral," I said.
+"It's very unusual for him to send out torpedo-boats to help a vessel in
+distress. That is generally left to the harbor tug."
+
+"Yes, I feel that it was most kind of him. That's why I took all the
+trouble to write. I don't understand a word of Italian, neither does
+Chater."
+
+"But you have Italians on board?" I remarked. "The two sailors who rowed
+me out are Genoese, from their accent."
+
+Hornby and Chater exchanged glances--glances of distinct uneasiness, I
+thought.
+
+Then the owner of the _Lola_ said--
+
+"Yes, they are useful for making arrangements and buying things in
+Italian ports. We have a Spaniard, a Greek, and a Syrian, all of whom
+act as interpreters in different places."
+
+"And make a handsome thing in the way of secret commissions, I suppose?"
+I laughed.
+
+"Of course. But to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant,"
+declared the man with the fair beard. "In Greece and the Levant they are
+more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want
+squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and discovering mares'
+nests."
+
+"Did you have any trouble here?" I inquired.
+
+"They didn't visit us," he said with a smile, and at the same time he
+rubbed his thumb and finger together, the action of feeling paper money.
+
+This increased my surprise, for I happened to know that the Leghorn
+Customs officers were not at all given to the acceptance of bribes. They
+were too well watched by their superiors. If the yacht had really
+escaped a search, then it was a most unusual thing. Besides, what motive
+could Hornby have in eluding the Customs visit? They would, of course,
+seal up his wines and liquors, but even if they did, they would leave
+him out sufficient for the consumption of himself and his friends.
+
+No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to
+avoid the visit of the _dogana_. If he really had paid, he must have
+paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.
+
+Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly
+appointed craft?
+
+Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted
+saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone
+with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some
+artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles
+peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale
+blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely
+wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.
+
+Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him,
+chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked
+dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine of a
+brand which only a millionaire could keep in his cellar, while our host,
+apparently a most abstemious man, took only a glass of iced Cinciano
+water.
+
+The two smart stewards served in a manner which showed them to be well
+trained to their duties, and as the evening light filtering through the
+pale blue silk curtains over the open port-holes slowly faded, we
+gossiped on as men will gossip over an unusually good dinner.
+
+From his remarks I discerned that, contrary to my first impression,
+Hylton Chater was an experienced yachtsman. He owned a craft called the
+_Alicia_, and was a member of the Cork Yacht Club. He lived in London,
+he told me, but gave me no information as to his profession. It might be
+the law, as I had surmised.
+
+"You've seen our ass of a captain, Mr. Gregg?" he remarked presently.
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Well," I said rather hesitatingly, "to tell the truth, I don't think
+very much of his seamanship--nor will the Board of Trade when his report
+reaches them."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Hornby, "I was a fool to engage him. From the very first
+I mistrusted him, only my wife somehow took a fancy to the fellow, and,
+as you know, if you want peace you must always please the women. In this
+case, however, her choice almost cost me the vessel, and perhaps our
+lives into the bargain."
+
+"You knew nothing of him previously?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And he engaged the crew?" I asked.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Are they all fresh hands?"
+
+"All except the cook and the two stewards."
+
+I was silent. I did not like Mackintosh. Indeed, I entertained a
+distinct suspicion of both master and crew.
+
+"The captain seems to have had a nasty cut across the cheek," I
+remarked, whereupon my two companions again exchanged quick,
+apprehensive glances.
+
+"He fell down the other day," explained Chater, with a rather sickly
+smile, I thought. "His face caught the edge of an iron stair in the
+engine-room, and caused a nasty gash."
+
+I smiled within myself, for I knew too well that the ugly wound in the
+captain's face had never been inflicted by falling on the edge of a
+stair. But I remained silent, being content that they should endeavor
+to mislead me.
+
+After dessert had been served we rose, and in the summer twilight, when
+all the ports were opened, Hornby took me over the vessel. Everywhere
+was abundant luxury--a veritable floating palace. To each of the cabins
+of the owner and his guests a bathroom was attached with sea-water or
+fresh water as desired, while the ladies' saloon, the boudoir, the
+library, and the smoking-room were furnished richly with exquisite
+taste. As he was conducting me from his own cabin to the boudoir we
+passed a door that had been blown open by the wind, and which he
+hastened to close, not, however, before I had time to glance within. To
+my surprise I discovered that it was an armory crammed with rifles,
+revolvers and ammunition.
+
+It had not been intended that I should see that interior, and the reason
+why the Customs officers had been bribed was now apparent.
+
+I passed on without remark, making believe that I had not discerned
+anything unusual, and we entered the boudoir, Chater having gone back to
+the saloon to obtain cigars.
+
+The dainty little chamber was upholstered in carnation-pink silk with
+furniture of inlaid rosewood, and bore everywhere the trace of having
+been arranged by a woman's hand, although no lady passenger was on
+board.
+
+Just as we had entered, and I was admiring the dainty nest of luxury,
+Chater shouted to his host asking for the keys of the cigar cupboard,
+and Hornby, excusing himself, turned back along the gangway to hand them
+to his friend, thus leaving me alone for a few moments.
+
+I stood glancing around, and as I did so my eyes fell upon a quantity of
+photographs, framed and unframed, that were scattered about--evidently
+portraits of Hornby's friends. Upon a small side table, however, stood a
+heavy oxidized silver frame, but empty, while lying on the floor beneath
+a couch was the photograph it had contained, which had apparently been
+taken hastily out, torn first in half and then in half again, and cast
+away.
+
+Curiosity prompted me to stoop, pick up the four pieces and place them
+together, when I found them to form the cabinet portrait of a
+sweet-looking and extremely pretty English girl of eighteen or nineteen,
+with a bright, smiling expression, and wearing a fresh morning blouse of
+white piqué. Her hair was dressed low and fastened with a bow of black
+ribbon, while the brooch at her throat was in the form of a heart edged
+with pearls. Whether it was her sweet expression, or whether the curious
+look in her eyes had attracted my attention and riveted the face upon my
+memory, I know not. Perhaps it was the mystery of why it should have
+been so hastily torn from its frame and destroyed that held my
+attention.
+
+It seemed as though it had been torn up surreptitiously by someone who
+had been sitting on that couch, and who had had no opportunity of
+casting the fragments away through the port-hole into the water.
+
+I looked at the back of the torn photograph, and saw that it had been
+taken by a well-known and fashionable firm in New Bond Street.
+
+About the expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot
+describe--a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both
+attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were
+indelibly impressed upon my memory.
+
+Next second, however, hearing Hornby's returning footsteps, I flung the
+fragments hastily beneath the couch where I had discovered them.
+
+Why, I wondered, had the picture been destroyed--and by whom?
+
+The face of the empty frame had been purposely turned towards the
+panelling, therefore when he entered he did not notice that the picture
+had been destroyed; but after a brief pause, explaining that that cosy
+little place was his wife's particular nook, he conducted me on through
+the ladies' saloon and afterwards on deck, where we flung ourselves into
+the long chairs, took our coffee and certosina, that liqueur essentially
+Tuscan, and smoked on as the moon rose and the lights of the harbor
+began to twinkle in the steely night.
+
+As I sat talking, my thoughts ran back to that torn photograph. To me it
+seemed as though some previous visitor that day had sat upon the couch,
+destroyed the picture, and cast it where I had found it. But for what
+reason? Who was the merry-faced girl whose picture had aroused such
+jealousy or revenge?
+
+I purposely led the conversation to Hornby's family, and learned from
+him that he had no children.
+
+"You'll get the repairs to your engines done at Orlando's, I suppose?" I
+remarked, naming the great shipbuilding firm of Leghorn.
+
+"Yes. I've already given the order. They are contracted to be finished
+by next Thursday, and then we shall be off to Zante and Chio."
+
+For what reason, I wondered, recollecting that formidable armory on
+board. Already I had seen quite sufficient to convince me that the
+_Lola_, although outwardly a pleasure yacht, was built of steel, armored
+in its most vulnerable parts, and capable of resisting a very sharp
+fire.
+
+The hours passed, and beneath the brilliant moon we smoked long into the
+night, for after the blazing sunshine of that Tuscan town the cool
+sea-wind at night is very refreshing. From where we sat we commanded a
+view of the whole of the sea-front of Leghorn and Ardenza, with its
+bright open-air café-concerts and restaurants in full swing--all the
+life and gayety of that popular watering-place.
+
+Presently, when Hornby had risen to call a steward and left me alone
+with Hylton Chater, the latter whispered to me in confidence--
+
+"If you find my friend Hornby a little bit strange in his manner, Mr.
+Gregg, you must take no notice. To tell the truth, he is a man who has
+become suddenly wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and I fear
+it has had an effect upon his brain. He does very queer things at
+times."
+
+I looked at my companion in surprise. He was either telling the truth,
+or else he was endeavoring to allay my suspicions by an extremely clever
+ruse. Now I had already decided that Philip Hornby was no eccentric, but
+a particularly level-headed and practical man. Therefore I instantly
+arrived at the conclusion that the clean-shaven fellow who looked so
+much like a London barrister had some distinct and ulterior purpose in
+arousing within my mind suspicion of his host's sanity.
+
+It was past midnight when, having bade the strange pair adieu, I was put
+ashore by the two sailors who had rowed me out and drove home along the
+sea-front, puzzled and perplexed.
+
+Next morning, on my arrival at the Consulate, old Francesco, who had
+entered only a moment before, met me with blanched face, gasping--
+
+"There have been thieves here in the night, signore! The Signor
+Console's safe has been opened!"
+
+"The safe!" I cried, dashing into Hutcheson's private room, and finding
+to my dismay the big safe, wherein the seals, ciphers and other
+confidential documents were kept, standing open, and the contents in
+disorder, as though a hasty search had been made among them.
+
+Was it possible that the thieves had been after the Admiralty and
+Foreign Office ciphers, copies of which the Chancelleries of certain
+European Powers were ever endeavoring to obtain? I smiled within myself
+when I realized how bitterly disappointed the burglars must have been,
+for a British Consul when he goes on leave to England always takes his
+ciphers with him, and deposits them at the Foreign Office for
+safekeeping. Hutcheson had, of course, taken his, according to the
+regulations.
+
+Curiously enough, however, the door of the Consulate and the safe had
+been opened with the keys which my friend had left in my charge. Indeed,
+the small bunch still remained in the safe door.
+
+In an instant the recollection flashed across my mind that I had felt
+the keys in my pocket while at dinner on board the _Lola_. Had I lost
+them on my homeward drive, or had my pocket been picked?
+
+Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations
+upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his
+master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers
+in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend to the caller.
+
+In a few moments he returned, saying--
+
+"The English yacht left suddenly last night, signore, and the Captain of
+the Port has sent to inquire whether you know to what port she is
+bound."
+
+"Left!" I gasped in amazement "Why, I thought her engines were
+disabled!"
+
+A quarter of an hour later I was sitting in the private office of the
+shrewd, gray-haired functionary who had sent this messenger to me.
+
+"Do you know, Signor Commendatore," he said, "some mystery surrounds
+that vessel. She is not the _Lola_, for yesterday we telegraphed to
+Lloyd's, in London, and this morning I received a reply that no such
+yacht appears on their register, and that the name is unknown. The
+police have also telegraphed to your English police inquiring about the
+owner, Signor Hornby, with a like result. There is no such place as
+Woodcroft Park, in Somerset, and no member of Brook's Club of the name
+of Hornby."
+
+I sat staring at the official, too amazed to utter a word. Certainly
+they had not allowed the grass to grow beneath their feet.
+
+"Unfortunately the telegraphic replies from England are only to hand
+this morning," he went on, "because just before two o'clock this morning
+the harbor police, whom I specially ordered to watch the vessel, saw a
+boat come to the wharf containing a man and woman. The pair were put
+ashore, and walked away into the town, the woman seeming to walk with
+considerable difficulty. The boat returned, and an hour after, to the
+complete surprise of the two detectives, steam was suddenly got up and
+the yacht turned and went straight out to sea."
+
+"Leaving the man and the woman?"
+
+"Leaving them, of course. They are probably still in the town. The
+police are now searching for traces of them."
+
+"But could not you have detained the vessel?" I suggested.
+
+"Of course, had I but known I could have forbidden her departure. But as
+her owner had presented himself at the Consulate, and was recognized as
+a respectable person, I felt that I could not interfere without some
+tangible information--and that, alas! has come too late. The vessel is
+a swift one, and has already seven hours start of us. I've asked the
+Admiral to send out a couple of torpedo-boats after her, but,
+unfortunately, this is impossible, as the flotilla is sailing in an hour
+to attend the naval review at Spezia."
+
+I told him how the Consul's safe had been opened during the night, and
+he sat listening with wide-open eyes.
+
+"You dined with them last night," he said at last. "They may have
+surreptitiously stolen your keys."
+
+"They may," was my answer. "Probably they did. But with what motive?"
+
+The Captain of the Port elevated his shoulders, exhibited his palms, and
+declared--
+
+"The whole affair from beginning to end is a complete and profound
+mystery."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED
+
+
+That day was an active one in Questura, or police office, of Leghorn.
+
+Detectives called, examined the safe, and sagely declared it to be
+burglar-proof, had not the thieves possessed the key. The Foreign Office
+knew that, for they supply all the safes to the Consulates abroad, in
+order that the precious ciphers shall be kept from the prying eyes of
+foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it
+was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much
+relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing
+Street.
+
+His conjecture was the same as my own, namely, that the reason of
+Hornby's call upon me was to ascertain the situation of the Consulate
+and the whereabouts of the safe, which, by the way, stood in a corner of
+the Consul's private room. Captain Mackintosh, too, had taken his
+bearings, and probably while I sat at dinner on board the _Lola_ my keys
+had been stolen and passed on to the scarred Scotsman, who had promptly
+gone ashore and ransacked the place while I had remained with his master
+smoking and unsuspicious.
+
+But what was the motive? Why had they ransacked all those confidential
+papers?
+
+My own idea was that they were not in search of the ciphers at all, but
+either wanted some blank form or other, or else they desired to make use
+of the Consular seal. The latter, however, still remained on the floor
+near the safe, as though it had rolled out and been left unheeded. As
+far as Francesco and I could ascertain, nothing whatever had been taken.
+Therefore, we re-arranged the papers, re-locked the safe and resolved
+not to telegraph to Hutcheson and unduly disturb him, as in a few days
+he would return from England, and there would be time enough then to
+explain the remarkable story.
+
+One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
+station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
+lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which
+left at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They
+were foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as
+though they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed,
+however, that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in
+question. To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the
+Maremma, passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to
+any of the great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious
+pair who had come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had
+merely taken tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle
+Salvetti, the junction with that long main line which connects Genoa
+with Rome.
+
+The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the _Lola_ and
+first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
+alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
+first man who came aboard.
+
+"They were English!" remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
+sea, grinning knowingly. "And the English, when they drink their cognac,
+know not what they do."
+
+"Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?" I
+asked.
+
+"Reward!" echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. "Not a soldo!
+The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed that
+they were trying to make away with the vessel."
+
+The description of the _Lola_, its owner, his guest, and the captain
+were circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a
+request that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really
+one of mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across
+to some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
+vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
+that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any of
+the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
+first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
+tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
+evaded their watchers and got clean away.
+
+Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
+the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
+circumstances had prevented this and the _Lola_ had consequently
+escaped.
+
+For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
+and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris on
+to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
+extraordinary story.
+
+"The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident," he responded, holding up
+the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which contained
+his jealously-guarded ciphers. "By Jove!" he laughed, "how disappointed
+they must have been!"
+
+"It may be so," I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
+"But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
+that you possess."
+
+"What can my papers concern them?" exclaimed the jovial, round-faced
+Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper trading up and
+down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the most cultured and
+popular men in the British Consular Service. "I don't keep bank notes in
+that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't roll in gold as our
+public at home appears to think."
+
+"No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
+them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
+Englishmen abroad, you know."
+
+"Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
+registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
+papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon, depend
+upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it so as
+to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and sail
+merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave you a
+jolly good dinner and got nothing in return."
+
+"They might very easily have carried me off too," I declared.
+
+"Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had
+the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!"
+
+"But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she sailed,
+and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder who they were?
+Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were alone, and yet there
+was evidently a lady and a gentleman on board. I guessed there was a
+woman there, from the way the boudoir and ladies' saloon were arranged,
+and certainly no man's hand decorated a dinner table as that was
+decorated."
+
+"Yes. That's decidedly funny," remarked the Consul thoughtfully. "They
+went to Colle Salvetti, you say? They changed there, of course.
+Expresses call there, one going north and the other south, within a
+quarter of an hour after the train arrives from Leghorn. They showed a
+lot of ingenuity, otherwise they'd have gone direct to Pisa."
+
+"Ingenuity! I should think so! The whole affair was most cleverly
+planned. Hornby would have deceived even you, my dear old chap. He had
+the air of the perfect gentleman, and a glance over the yacht convinced
+me that he was a wealthy man traveling for pleasure."
+
+"You said something about an armory."
+
+"Yes, there were Maxims stowed away in one of the cabins. They aroused
+my suspicions."
+
+"They would not have aroused mine," replied my friend. "Yachts carry
+arms for protection in many cases, especially if they are going to
+cruise along uncivilized coasts where they must land for water or
+provisions."
+
+I told him of the torn photograph, which caused him some deep
+reflection.
+
+"I wonder why the picture had been torn up. Had there been a row on
+board--a quarrel or something?"
+
+"It had been destroyed surreptitiously, I think."
+
+"Pity you didn't pocket the fragments. We could perhaps have discovered
+from the photographer the identity of the original."
+
+"Ah!" I sighed regretfully. "I never thought of that. I recollect the
+name of the firm, however."
+
+"I shall have to report to London the whole occurrence, as British
+subjects are under suspicion," Hutcheson said. "We'll see whether
+Scotland Yard knows anything about Hornby or Chater. Most probably they
+do. Not long ago a description of men on board a yacht was circulated
+from London as being a pair of well-known burglars who were cruising
+about in a vessel crammed with booty which they dared not get rid of.
+They are, however, not the same as our friends on the _Lola_, for both
+men wanted were arrested in New Orleans about eight months ago, without
+their yacht, for they confessed that they had deliberately sunk it on
+one of the islands in the South Pacific."
+
+"Then these fellows might be another pair of London burglars!" I
+exclaimed eagerly, as the startling theory occurred to me.
+
+"They might be. But, of course, we can't form any opinion until we hear
+what Scotland Yard has to say. I'll write a full report in the morning
+if you will give me minute descriptions of the men, as well as of the
+captain, Mackintosh."
+
+Next morning I handed over my charge of the Consulate to Frank, and then
+assisted him to go through the papers in the safe which had been
+examined by the thieves.
+
+"The ruffians seem to have thoroughly overhauled everything," remarked
+the Consul in dismay when he saw the disordered state of his papers.
+"They seem to have read every one deliberately."
+
+"Which shows that had they been in search for the cipher-books they
+would only have looked for them alone," I remarked decisively. "What on
+earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports
+and things?"
+
+"Goodness only knows," replied my friend. Then, calling Cavendish, a
+tall, fair young man, who had now recovered from his touch of fever and
+had returned to the Consulate, he commenced to check the number of those
+adhesive stamps, rather larger than ordinary postage-stamps, used in
+the Consular service for the registration of fees received by the
+Foreign Office. The values were from sixpence to one pound, and they
+were kept in a portfolio.
+
+After a long calculation the Consul suddenly raised his face to me and
+said--
+
+"Then six ten shilling ones have been taken!"
+
+"Why? There must be some motive!"
+
+"They are of no use to anyone except to Consuls," he explained. "Perhaps
+they were wanted to affix to some false certificate. See," he added,
+opening the portfolio, "there were six stamps here, and all are gone."
+
+"But they would have to be obliterated by the Consular stamp," remarked
+Cavendish.
+
+"Ah! of course," exclaimed Hutcheson, taking out the brass seal from the
+safe and examining it minutely. "By Jove!" he cried a second later,
+"it's been used! They've stamped some document with it. Look! They've
+used the wrong ink-pad! Can't you see that there's violet upon it, while
+we always use the black pad!"
+
+I took it in my hand, and there, sure enough, I saw traces of violet ink
+upon it--the ink of the pad for the date-stamp upon the Consul's table.
+
+"Then some document has been stamped and sealed!" I gasped.
+
+"Yes. And my signature forged to it, no doubt. They've fabricated some
+certificate or other which, bearing the stamp, seal and signature of the
+Consulate, will be accepted as a legal document. I wonder what it is?"
+
+"Ah!" I said. "I wonder!" And the three of us looked at each other in
+sheer bewilderment.
+
+"The reason the papers are all upset is because they were evidently in
+search of some blank form or other, which they hoped to find," remarked
+my friend. "As you say, the whole affair was most carefully and
+ingeniously planned."
+
+We crossed the great sunlit piazza together and entered the Questura,
+that sun-blanched old palace with its long cool loggia where the sentry
+paces day and night. The Chief of Police, whom we saw, had no further
+information. The mysterious yacht had not put in at any Italian port.
+From him, however, we learned the name of the detective who had seen the
+two strangers leave Leghorn by the early morning train, and an hour
+afterwards the police-officer, a black-eyed man short of stature, but of
+an intelligent type, sat in the Consulate replying to our questions.
+
+"As far as I could make out, signore," he said, "the man was an
+Englishman, wearing a soft black felt hat and a suit of dark blue serge.
+He had hair just turning gray, a small dark mustache and rather high
+cheek-bones. In his hand he carried a small bag of tan leather of that
+square English shape. He seemed in no hurry, for he was calmly smoking a
+cigarette as he went across to the ticket office."
+
+"And his companion?" asked the Consul.
+
+"She was in black. Rather tall and slim. Her hair was fair, I noticed,
+but she wore a black veil which concealed her features."
+
+"Was she young or old?"
+
+"Young--from her figure," replied the police agent. "As she passed me
+her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in
+them--the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror."
+
+Next day the town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the
+Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the
+Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the
+night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had
+come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had
+maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic
+battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats,
+despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the
+coast.
+
+In the bright morning sunlight the sight was both picturesque and
+imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the
+great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all
+the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters
+was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the
+overwhelming force which upheld Britain's right in that oft-disputed
+sea.
+
+A couple of thousand British sailors were ashore on leave, their white
+caps conspicuous in the streets everywhere as they walked orderly in
+threes and fours to inspect the town. In the square outside the
+Consulate a squad from the flagship were setting up a temporary
+band-stand, where the ship's band was to play when evening fell, while
+Hutcheson, perspiring in his uniform, drove with the Admiral to make the
+calls of courtesy upon the authorities which international etiquette
+demanded.
+
+Myself, I had taken a boat out to the _Bulwark_, the great battleship
+flying the Admiral's flag, and was sitting on deck with my old friend
+Captain Jack Durnford, of the Royal Marines. Each year when the fleet
+put into Leghorn we were inseparable, for in long years past, at
+Portsmouth, we had been close friends, and now he was able to pay me
+annual visits at my Italian home.
+
+He was on duty that morning, therefore could not get ashore till after
+luncheon.
+
+"I'll dine with you, of course, to-night, old chap," he said. "And you
+must tell me all the news. We're in here for six days, and I was half a
+mind to run home. Two of our chaps got leave from the Admiral and left
+at three this morning for London--four days in the train and two in
+town! Gone to see their sweethearts, I suppose."
+
+The British naval officer in the Mediterranean delights to dash across
+Europe for a day at home if he can get leave and funds will allow. It is
+generally reckoned that such a trip costs about two pounds an hour while
+in London. And yet when a man is away from his _fiancée_ or wife for
+three whole years, his anxiety to get back, even for a brief day, is
+easily understood. The youngsters, however, go for mere
+caprice--whenever they can obtain leave. This is not often, for the
+Admiral has very fixed views upon the matter.
+
+"Your time's soon up, isn't it?" I remarked, as I lolled back in the
+easy deck-chair, and gazed away at the white port and its background of
+purple Apennines.
+
+The dark, good-looking fellow in his smart summer uniform leaned over
+the bulwark, and said, with a slight sigh, I thought--
+
+"Yes. This is my last trip to Leghorn, I think. I go back in November,
+and I really shan't be sorry. Three years is a long time to be away from
+home. You go next week, you say? Lucky devil to be your own master! I
+only wish I were. Year after year on this deck grows confoundedly
+wearisome, I can tell you, my dear fellow."
+
+Durnford was a man who had written much on naval affairs, and was
+accepted as an expert on several branches of the service. The Admiralty
+do not encourage officers to write, but in Durnford's case it was
+recognized that of naval topics he possessed a knowledge that was of
+use, and, therefore, he was allowed to write books and to contribute
+critical articles to the service magazines. He had studied the relative
+strengths of foreign navies, and by keeping his eyes always open he had,
+on many occasions, been able to give valuable information to our naval
+_attachés_ at the Embassies. More than once, however, his trenchant
+criticism of the action of the naval lords had brought upon his head
+rebukes from head-quarters; nevertheless, so universally was his talent
+as a naval expert recognized, that to write had never been forbidden him
+as it had been to certain others.
+
+"How's Hutcheson?" he asked a moment later, turning and facing me.
+
+"Fit as a fiddle. Just back from his month's leave at home. His wife is
+still up in Scotland, however. She can't stand Leghorn in summer."
+
+"No wonder. It's a perfect furnace when the weather begins to stoke up."
+
+"I go as soon as you've sailed. I only stayed because I promised to act
+for Frank," I said. "And, by Jove! a funny thing occurred while I was in
+charge--a real first-class mystery."
+
+"A mystery--tell me," he exclaimed, suddenly interested.
+
+"Well, a yacht--a pirate yacht, I believe it was--called here."
+
+"A pirate! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, she was English. Listen, and I'll tell you the whole affair.
+It'll be something fresh to tell at mess, for I know how you chaps get
+played out of conversation."
+
+"By Jove, yes! Things slump when we get no mail. But go on--I'm
+listening," he added, as an orderly came up, saluted, and handed him a
+paper.
+
+"Well," I said, "let's cross to the other side. I don't want the sentry
+to overhear."
+
+"As you like--but why such mystery?" he asked as we walked together to
+the other side of the spick-and-span quarter-deck of the gigantic
+battleship.
+
+"You'll understand when I tell you the story." And then, standing
+together beneath the awning, I related to my friend the whole of the
+curious circumstances, just as I have recorded them in the foregoing
+pages.
+
+"Confoundedly funny!" he remarked with his dark eyes fixed upon mine. "A
+mystery, by Jove, it is! What name did the yacht bear?"
+
+"The _Lola_."
+
+"What!" he gasped, suddenly turning pale. "The _Lola_? Are you quite
+sure it was the _Lola_--_L-O-L-A_?"
+
+
+"Absolutely certain," I replied. "But why do you ask? Do you happen to
+know anything about the craft?"
+
+"Me!" he stammered, and I could see that he had involuntarily betrayed
+the truth, yet for some reason he wished to conceal his knowledge from
+me. "Me! How should I know anything about such a craft? They were
+thieves on board evidently--perhaps pirates, as you say."
+
+"But the name _Lola_ is familiar to you, Jack! I'm sure it is, by your
+manner."
+
+He paused a moment, and I could see what a strenuous effort he was
+making to avoid betraying knowledge.
+
+"It's--well--" he said hesitatingly, with a rather sickly smile. "It's a
+girl's name--a girl I once knew. The name brings back to me certain
+memories."
+
+"Pleasant ones--I hope."
+
+"No. Bitter ones--very bitter ones," he said in a hard tone, striding
+across the deck and back again, and I saw in his eyes a strange look,
+half of anger, half of deep regret.
+
+Was he telling the truth, I wondered? Some tragic romance or other
+concerning a woman had, I knew, overshadowed his life in the years
+before we had become acquainted. But the real facts he had never
+revealed to me. He had never before referred to the bitterness of the
+past, although I knew full well that his heart was in secret filled by
+some overwhelming sorrow.
+
+Outwardly he was as merry as the other fellows who officered that huge
+floating fortress; on board he was a typical smart marine, and on shore
+he danced and played tennis and flirted just as vigorously as did the
+others. But a heavy heart beat beneath his uniform.
+
+When he returned to where I stood I saw that his face had changed: it
+had become drawn and haggard. He bore the appearance of a man who had
+been struck a blow that had staggered him, crushing out all life and
+hope.
+
+"What's the matter, Jack?" I asked. "Come! Tell me--what ails you?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear old chap," he answered hoarsely. "Really nothing--only
+a touch of the blues just for a moment," he added, trying hard to smile.
+"It'll pass."
+
+"What I've just told you about that yacht has upset you. You can't deny
+it"
+
+He started. His mouth was, I saw, hard set. He knew something concerning
+that mysterious craft, but would not tell me.
+
+The sound of a bugle came from the further end of the ship, and
+immediately men were scampering along the deck beneath as some order or
+other was being obeyed with that precision that characterizes the "handy
+man."
+
+"Why are you silent?" I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon my friend the
+officer. "I have told you what I know, and I want to discover the
+motive of the visit of those men, and the reason they opened Hutcheson's
+safe."
+
+"How can I tell you?" he asked in a strained, unnatural voice.
+
+"I believe you know something concerning them. Come, tell me the truth."
+
+"I admit that I have certain grave suspicions," he said at last,
+standing astride with his hands behind his back, his sword trailing on
+the white deck. "You say that the yacht was called the _Lola_--painted
+gray with a black funnel."
+
+"No, dead white, with a yellow funnel."
+
+"Ah! Of course," he remarked, as though to himself. "They would repaint
+and alter her appearance. But the dining saloon. Was there a long carved
+oak buffet with a big, heavy cornice with three gilt dolphins in the
+center--and were there not dolphins in gilt on the backs of the
+chairs--an armorial device?"
+
+"Yes," I cried. "You are right. I remember them! You've surely been on
+board her!"
+
+"And there is a ladies' saloon and a small boudoir in pink beyond, while
+the smoking-room is entirely of marble for the heat?"
+
+"Exactly--the same yacht, no doubt! But what do you know of her?"
+
+"The captain, who gave his name to you as Mackintosh, is an undersized
+American of a rather low-down type?"
+
+"I took him for a Scotsman."
+
+"Because he put on a Scotch accent," he laughed. "He's a man who can
+speak a dozen languages brokenly, and pass for an Italian, a German, a
+Frenchman, as he wishes."
+
+"And the--the man who gave his name as Philip Hornby?"
+
+Durnford's mouth closed with a snap. He drew a long breath, his eyes
+grew fierce, and he bit his lip.
+
+"Ah! I see he is not exactly your friend," I said meaningly.
+
+"You are right, Gordon--he is not my friend," was his slow, meaning
+response.
+
+"Then why not be outspoken and tell me all you know concerning him?
+Frank Hutcheson is anxious to clear up the mystery because they've
+tampered with the Consular seals and things. Besides, it would be put
+down to his credit if he solved the affair."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, I'm mystified myself. I can't yet discern
+their motive."
+
+"But at any rate you know the men," I argued. "You can at least tell us
+who they really are."
+
+He shook his head, still disinclined, for some hidden reason, to reveal
+the truth to me.
+
+"You saw no woman on board?" he asked suddenly, looking straight into my
+eyes.
+
+"No. Hornby told me that he and Chater were alone."
+
+"And yet an hour after you left a man and a woman came ashore and
+disappeared! Ah! If we only had a description of that woman it would
+reveal much to us."
+
+"She was young and dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious
+fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor
+veil, so that he could not clearly discern her features."
+
+"And her companion?"
+
+"Middle-aged, prematurely gray, with a small dark mustache."
+
+Jack Durnford sighed and stroked his chin.
+
+"Ah! Just as I thought," he exclaimed. "And they were actually here, in
+this port, a week ago! What a bitter irony of fate!"
+
+"I don't understand you," I said. "You are so mysterious, and yet you
+will tell me nothing!"
+
+"The police, fools that they are, have allowed them to escape, and they
+will never be caught now. Ah! you don't know them as I do! They are the
+cleverest pair in all Europe. And they have the audacity to call their
+craft the _Lola_--the _Lola_, of all names!"
+
+"But as you know who and what the fellows are, you ought, I think, in
+common justice to Hutcheson, to tell us something," I complained. "If
+they are adventurers, they ought to be traced."
+
+"What can I do--a prisoner here on board?" he argued bitterly. "How can
+I act?"
+
+"Leave it all to me. I'm free to travel after them, and find out the
+truth if only you will tell me what you know concerning them," I said
+eagerly.
+
+"Gordon, let me be frank and open with you, my dear old fellow. I would
+tell you everything--everything--if I dared. But I cannot--you
+understand!" And his final words seemed to choke him.
+
+I stood before him, open-mouthed in astonishment.
+
+"You really mean--well, that you are in fear of them--eh?" I whispered.
+
+He nodded slowly in the affirmative, adding: "To tell you the truth
+would be to bring upon myself a swift, relentless vengeance that would
+overwhelm and crush me. Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know--you cannot
+dream--what brought those desperate men into this port. I can guess--I
+can guess only too well--but I can only tell you that if you ever do
+discover the terrible truth--which I fear is unlikely--you will solve
+one of the strangest and most remarkable mysteries of modern times."
+
+"What does the mystery concern?" I asked, in breathless eagerness.
+
+"It concerns a woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"
+
+
+The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
+is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
+Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
+heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.
+
+One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
+year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
+people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
+continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
+for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
+month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.
+
+London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
+dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
+it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
+seaside.
+
+I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
+north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
+found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
+Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
+just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
+fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
+merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
+rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
+in linen.
+
+I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
+friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
+voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian--
+
+"Ah, signore!--why, actually, my padrone!"
+
+And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
+neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
+had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
+better himself.
+
+"Why, Olinto!" I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. "You--in London--eh?
+Well, and how are you getting on?"
+
+"Most excellently, signore," he answered in broken English, smiling.
+"But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
+fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!"
+
+"Where are you working?" I inquired.
+
+"At the Restaurant Milano, in Oxford Street--only a small place, but we
+gain discreetly, so I must not complain. I live over in Lambeth, and am
+on my way home."
+
+"I heard you married after you left me. Is that true?"
+
+"Yes, signore. I married Armida, who was in your service when I first
+entered it. You remember her? Ah, well!" he added, sighing. "Poor thing!
+I regret to say she is very ill indeed. She cannot stand your English
+climate. The doctor says she will die if she remains here. Yet what can
+I do? If we go back to Italy we shall only starve." And I saw that he
+was in deep distress, and that mention of his ailing wife had aroused
+within him bitter thoughts.
+
+Olinto Santini walked back at my side in the direction of Trafalgar
+Square, answering the questions I put to him. He had been a good,
+hard-working servant, and I was glad to see him again. When he left me
+he had gone as steward on one of the Anchor Line boats between Naples
+and New York, and that was the last I had heard of him until I found him
+there in London, a waiter at a second-rate restaurant.
+
+When I tried to slip some silver into his hand he refused to take it,
+and with a merry laugh said--
+
+"I wonder if you would be offended, signore, if I told you of something
+for which I had been longing and longing?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Well, the signore smokes our Tuscan cigars. I wonder if by chance you
+have one? We cannot get them in London, you know."
+
+I felt in my pocket, laughing, and discovered that I had a couple of
+those long thin penny cigars which I always smoke in Italy, and which
+are so dear to the Tuscan palate. These I handed him, and he took them
+with delight as the greatest delicacy I could have offered him. Poor
+fellow! As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that
+reminded him of his own beloved country.
+
+When we halted before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some
+further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking
+housemaid whom he had married.
+
+"Ah, signore!" he responded in a voice choked with emotion, dropping
+into Italian. "It is the one great sorrow of my life. I work hard from
+early morning until late at night, but what is the use when I see my
+poor wife gradually fading away before my very eyes? The doctor says
+that she cannot possibly live through the next winter. Ah! how delighted
+the poor girl would be if she could see the padrone once again!"
+
+I felt sorry for him. Armida had been a good servant, and had served me
+well for nearly three years. Old Rosina, my housekeeper, had often
+regretted that she had been compelled to leave to attend to her aged
+mother. The latter, he told me, had died, and afterwards he had married
+her. There is more romance and tragedy in the lives of the poor Italians
+in London than London ever suspects. We are too apt to regard the
+Italian as a bloodthirsty person given to the unlawful use of the knife,
+whereas, as a whole, the Italian colony in London is a hard-working,
+thrifty, and law-abiding one, very different, indeed, to those colonies
+of aliens from Northern Europe, who are so continually bringing filth,
+disease, and immorality into the East End, and are a useless incubus in
+an already over-populated city.
+
+He spoke so wistfully that his wife might see me once more that, having
+nothing very particular to do that evening, and feeling a deep sympathy
+for the poor fellow in his trouble, I resolved to accompany him to his
+house and see whether I could not, in some slight manner, render him a
+little help.
+
+He thanked me profusely when I consented to go with him.
+
+"Ah, signor padrone!" he said gratefully, "she will be so delighted. It
+is so very good of you."
+
+We hailed a hansom and drove across Westminster Bridge to the address he
+gave--a gloomy back street off the York Road, one of those narrow, grimy
+thoroughfares into which the sun never shines. Ah, how often do the poor
+Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our
+dismal, sordid streets! Dirt and squalor do not affect them; it is the
+damp and cold and lack of sunshine that so very soon proves fatal.
+
+A low-looking, evil-faced fellow opened the door to us and growled
+acquaintance with Olinto, who, striking a match, ascended the worn,
+carpetless stairs before me, apologizing for passing before me, and
+saying in Italian--
+
+"We live at the top, signore, because it is cheaper and the air is
+better."
+
+"Quite right," I said. "Quite right. Go on." And I thought I heard my
+cab driving away.
+
+It was a gloomy, forbidding, unlighted place into which I would
+certainly have hesitated to enter had not my companion been my trusted
+servant. I instinctively disliked the look of the fellow who had opened
+the door. He was one of those hulking loafers of the peculiarly Lambeth
+type. Yet the alien poor, I recollected, cannot choose where they shall
+reside.
+
+Contrary to my expectations, the sitting-room we entered on the top
+floor was quite comfortably furnished, clean and respectable, even
+though traces of poverty were apparent. A cheap lamp was burning upon
+the table, but the apartment was unoccupied.
+
+Olinto, in surprise, passed into the adjoining room, returning a moment
+later, exclaiming--
+
+"Armida must have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the
+people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are
+very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a
+chair, signore." And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted
+it with his handkerchief.
+
+I allowed him to go and fetch her, rather surprised that she should be
+well enough to get about after all he had told me concerning her
+illness. Yet consumption does not keep people in bed until its final
+stages.
+
+As I stood there, gazing round the room, I could not well distinguish
+its furthermost corners, for the lamp bore a shade of green paste-board,
+which threw a zone of light upon the table, and left the remainder of
+the room in darkness. When, however, my eyes grew accustomed to the dim
+light, I discerned that the place was dusty and somewhat disordered. The
+sofa was, I saw, a folding iron bedstead with greasy old cushions, while
+the carpet was threadbare and full of holes. When I drew the old rep
+curtains to look out of the window, I found that the shutters were
+closed, which I thought unusual for a room so high up as that was.
+
+Olinto returned in a few moments, saying that his wife had evidently
+gone to do some shopping in the Lower-Marsh, for it is the habit of the
+denizens of that locality to go "marketing" in the evening among the
+costermongers' stalls that line so many of the thoroughfares. Perishable
+commodities, the overplus of the markets and shops, are cheaper at night
+than in the morning.
+
+"I hope you are not pressed for time, signore?" he said apologetically.
+"But, of course, the poor girl does not know the surprise awaiting her.
+She will surely not be long."
+
+"Then I'll wait," I said, and flung myself back into the chair he had
+brought forward for me.
+
+"I have nothing to offer you, signer padrone," he said, with a laugh. "I
+did not expect a visitor, you know."
+
+"No, no, Olinto. I've only just had dinner. But tell me how you have
+fared since you left me."
+
+"Ah!" he laughed bitterly. "I had many ups and downs before I found
+myself here in London. The sea did not suit me--neither did the work.
+They put me in the emigrants' quarters, and consequently I could gain
+nothing. The other stewards were Neapolitans, therefore, because I was a
+Tuscan, they relegated me to the worst post. Ah, signore, you don't know
+what it is to serve those emigrants! I made two trips, then returned and
+married Armida. I called on you, but Tito said you were in London. At
+first I got work at a café in Viareggio, but when the season ended, and
+I was thrown out of employment, I managed to work my way from Genoa to
+London. My first place was scullion in a restaurant in Tottenham Court
+Road, and then I became waiter in the beer-hall at the Monico, and
+managed to save sufficient to send Armida the money to join me here.
+Afterwards I went to the Milano, and I hope to get into one of the big
+hotels very soon--or perhaps the grill-room at the Carlton. I have a
+friend who is there, and they make lots of money--four or five pounds
+every week in tips, they say."
+
+"I'll see what I can do for you," I said. "I know several hotel-managers
+who might have a vacancy."
+
+"Ah, signore!" he cried, filled with gratification. "If you only would!
+A word from you would secure me a good position. I can work, that you
+know--and I do work. I will work--for her sake."
+
+"I have promised you," I said briefly.
+
+"And how can I sufficiently thank you?" he cried, standing before me,
+while in his eyes I thought I detected a strange wild look, such as I
+had never seen there before.
+
+"You served me well, Olinto," I replied, "and when I discover real
+sterling honesty I endeavor to appreciate it. There is, alas! very
+little of it in this world."
+
+"Yes," he said in a hoarse voice, his manner suddenly changing. "You
+have to-night shown me, signore, that you are my friend, and I will, in
+return, show you that I am yours." And suddenly grasping both my hands,
+he pulled me from the chair in which I was sitting, at the same time
+asking in a low intense whisper: "Do you always carry a revolver here in
+England, as you do in Italy?"
+
+"Yes," I answered in surprise at his action and his question. "Why?"
+
+"Because there is danger here," he answered in the same low earnest
+tone. "Get your weapon ready. You may want it."
+
+"I don't understand," I said, feeling my handy Colt in my back pocket to
+make sure it was there.
+
+"Forget what I have said--all--all that I have told you to-night, sir,"
+he said. "I have not explained the whole truth. You are in peril--in
+deadly peril!"
+
+"How?" I exclaimed breathlessly, surprised at his extraordinary change
+of manner and his evident apprehension lest something should befall me.
+
+"Wait, and you shall see," he whispered. "But first tell me, signore,
+that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly
+affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the hands of your
+enemies."
+
+"My enemies! Who are they?"
+
+"They are unknown, and for the present must remain so. But if you doubt
+your peril, watch--" and taking the rusty fire-tongs from the grate he
+carefully placed them on end in front of the deep old armchair in which
+I had sat, and then allowed them to fall against the edge of the seat,
+springing quickly back as he did so.
+
+In an instant a bright blue flash shot through the place, and the irons
+fell aside, fused and twisted out of all recognition.
+
+I stood aghast, utterly unable for the moment to sufficiently realize
+how narrowly I had escaped death.
+
+"Look! See here, behind!" cried the Italian, directing my attention to
+the back legs of the chair, where, on bending with the lamp, I saw, to
+my surprise, that two wires were connected, and ran along the floor and
+out of the window, while concealed beneath the ragged carpet, in front
+of the chair, was a thin plate of steel, whereon my feet had rested.
+
+Those who had so ingeniously enticed me to that gloomy house of death
+had connected up the overhead electric light main with that
+innocent-looking chair, and from some unseen point had been able to
+switch on a current of sufficient voltage to kill fifty men.
+
+I stood stock-still, not daring to move lest I might come into contact
+with some hidden wire, the slightest touch of which must bring instant
+death upon me.
+
+"Your enemies prepared this terrible trap for you," declared the man who
+was once my trusted servant. "When I entered into the affair I was not
+aware that it was to be fatal. They gave me no inkling of their
+dastardly intention. But there is no time to admit of explanations now,
+signore," he added breathlessly, in a low desperate voice. "Say that you
+will not prejudge me," he pleaded earnestly.
+
+"I will not prejudge you until I've heard your explanation," I said. "I
+certainly owe my life to you to-night."
+
+"Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
+use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
+you."
+
+"But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me," I cried in desperation.
+
+"_Dio!_ Go! Go!" he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. "Fly,
+or we shall both die--both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
+dashing after you."
+
+I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
+he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
+though I had escaped him.
+
+A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
+fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
+instant later found myself out in the street.
+
+It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
+life--surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
+wondered, did it mean?
+
+Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
+Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
+policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
+Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
+No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
+Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
+ever heard of the "Milano."
+
+Even Olinto had played me false!
+
+I was filled with chagrin, for I had trusted him as honest, upright, and
+industrious; and was puzzled to know the reason he had deceived me, and
+why he had enticed me to the very brink of the grave.
+
+He had told me that he himself had fallen into the trap laid by my
+enemies, and yet he had steadfastly refused to tell me who they were!
+The whole thing was utterly inexplicable.
+
+I drove over to Lambeth and wandered through the maze of mean streets
+off the York Road, yet for the life of me I could not decide into which
+house I had been taken. There were a dozen which seemed to me that they
+might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with
+my life.
+
+Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow
+gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from
+the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He
+was the envoy of my unknown enemies, who had so ingeniously and so
+relentlessly plotted my destruction.
+
+That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is
+an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the
+pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile. But the unseen
+enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive
+reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets "over the
+water," as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main
+arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.
+
+My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly
+plot to kill me. With what motive?
+
+I wondered as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto
+Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had
+given my word not to prejudge him until he revealed to me the truth. Yet
+I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.
+
+When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always
+much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and
+every action of a friend covers the ruse of a suspected enemy.
+
+That day I did my business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not
+knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life
+were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go
+innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every
+possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of
+London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the
+old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could be out of town had left for
+the country or the sea.
+
+The only trace I found of the Italian was that he was registered at the
+office of the International Society of Hotel Servants, in Shaftesbury
+Avenue, as being employed at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery, but on inquiry
+there I found he had left more than a year before, and none of his
+fellow-waiters knew his whereabouts.
+
+Thus being defeated in every inquiry, and my business at last concluded
+in London, I went up to Dumfries on a duty visit which I paid annually
+to my uncle, Sir George Little. Having known Dumfries since my earliest
+boyhood, and having spent some years of my youth there, I had many
+friends in the vicinity, for Sir George and my aunt were very popular in
+the county and moved in the best set.
+
+Each time I returned from abroad I was always a welcome guest at
+Greenlaw, as their place outside the city of Burns was called, and this
+occasion proved no exception, for the country houses of Dumfries are
+always gay in August in prospect of the shooting.
+
+"Some new people have taken Rannoch Castle. Rather nice they seem,"
+remarked my aunt as we were sitting together at luncheon the day after
+my arrival. "Their name is Leithcourt, and they've asked me to drive you
+over there to tennis this afternoon."
+
+"I'm not much of a player, you know, aunt. In Italy we don't believe in
+athletics. But if it's out of politeness, of course, I'll go."
+
+"Very well," she said. "Then I'll order the victoria for three."
+
+"There are several nice girls there, Gordon," remarked my uncle
+mischievously. "You have a good time, so don't think you are going to be
+bored."
+
+"No fear of that," was my answer. And at three o'clock Sir George, his
+wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands
+high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of
+the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long
+ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was
+sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if
+somewhat impecunious owner.
+
+We could see its great round towers, standing grim and gray on the
+hillside commanding the whole of the valley, long before we approached
+it, and when we drove into the grounds we found a gay party in summer
+toilettes assembled on the ancient bowling-green, now transformed into a
+modern tennis-lawn.
+
+Mrs. Leithcourt and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed
+man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I
+joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were
+entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality was on a scale
+quite in keeping with the fine old place they rented.
+
+Tea was served on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired
+of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright,
+dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and
+flannel tennis skirt.
+
+I was apologizing for my terribly bad play, explaining that I had no
+practice out in Italy, whereupon she said--
+
+"I know Italy slightly. I was in Florence and Naples with mother last
+season."
+
+And then we began to discuss pictures and sculptures and the sights of
+Italy generally. I discerned from her remarks that she had traveled
+widely; indeed, she told me that both her father and mother were never
+happier than when moving from place to place in search of variety and
+distraction. We had entered the huge paneled hall of the Castle, and had
+passed up the quaint old stone staircase to the long banqueting hall
+with its paneled oak ceiling, which in these modern days had been
+transformed into a bright, pleasant drawing-room, from the windows of
+which was presented a marvelous view over the lovely Nithsdale and
+across to the heather-clad hills beyond.
+
+It was pleasant lounging there in the cool old room after the hot
+sunshine outside, and as I gazed around the place I noted how much more
+luxurious and tasteful it now was to what it had been in the days when I
+had visited its owner several years before.
+
+"We are awfully glad to be up here," my pretty companion was saying. "We
+had such a busy season in London." And then she went on to describe the
+Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I
+had read in my English paper beside the Mediterranean.
+
+She attracted me on account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen
+sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter.
+Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with
+Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there
+were others present, in order that our companions should understand.
+Therefore her gossip interested me, and as the golden sunset flooded the
+handsome old room I sat listening to her, inwardly admiring her innate
+grace and handsome countenance.
+
+I had no idea who or what her father was--whether a wealthy
+manufacturer, like so many who take expensive shoots and give big
+entertainments in order to edge their way into Society by its back door,
+or whether he was a gentleman of means and of good family. I rather
+guessed the latter, from his gentlemanly bearing and polished manner.
+His appearance, tall and erect, was that of a retired officer, and his
+clean-cut face was one of marked distinction.
+
+I was telling my pretty companion something of my own life, how, because
+I loved Italy so well, I lived in Tuscany in preference to living in
+England, and how each year I came home for a month or two to visit my
+relations and to keep in touch with things.
+
+Suddenly she said--
+
+"I was once in Leghorn for a few hours. We were yachting in the
+Mediterranean. I love the sea--and yachting is such awfully good fun, if
+you only get decent weather."
+
+The mention of yachting brought back to my mind the visit of the _Lola_
+and its mysterious sequel.
+
+"Your father has a yacht, then?" I remarked, with as little concern as I
+could.
+
+"Yes. The _Iris_. My uncle is cruising on her up the Norwegian Fiords.
+For us it is a change to be here, because we are so often afloat. We
+went across to New York in her last year and had a most delightful
+time--except for one bad squall which made us all a little bit nervous.
+But Moyes is such an excellent captain that I never fear. The crew are
+all North Sea fishermen--father will engage nobody else. I don't blame
+him."
+
+"So you must have made many long voyages, and seen many odd corners of
+the world, Miss Leithcourt?" I remarked, my interest in her increasing,
+for she seemed so extremely intelligent and well-informed.
+
+"Oh, yes. We've been to Mexico, and to Panama, besides Morocco, Egypt,
+and the West Coast of Africa."
+
+"And you've actually landed at Leghorn!" I remarked.
+
+"Yes, but we didn't stay there more than an hour--to send a telegram, I
+think it was. Father said there was nothing to see there. He and I went
+ashore, and I must say I was rather disappointed."
+
+"You are quite right. The town itself is ugly and uninteresting. But the
+outskirts--San Jacopo, Ardenza and Antigniano are all delightful. It was
+unfortunate that you did not see them. Was it long ago when you put in
+there?"
+
+"Not very long. I really don't recollect the exact date," was her reply.
+"We were on our way home from Alexandria."
+
+"Have you ever, in any of the ports you've been, seen a yacht called the
+_Lola_?" I asked eagerly, for it occurred to me that perhaps she might
+be able to give me information.
+
+"The _Lola_!" she gasped, and instantly her face changed. A flush
+overspread her cheeks, succeeded next moment by a death-like pallor.
+"The _Lola_!" she repeated in a strange, hoarse voice, at the same time
+endeavoring strenuously not to exhibit any apprehension. "No. I have
+never heard of any such a vessel. Is she a steam-yacht? Who's her
+owner?"
+
+I regarded her in amazement and suspicion, for I saw that mention of the
+name had aroused within her some serious misgiving. That look in her
+dark eyes as they fixed themselves upon me was one of distinct and
+unspeakable terror.
+
+What could she possibly know concerning the mysterious craft?
+
+"I don't know the owner's name," I said, still affecting not to have
+noticed her alarm and apprehension. "The vessel ran aground at the
+Meloria, a dangerous shoal outside Leghorn, and through the stupidity of
+her captain was very nearly lost."
+
+"Yes?" she gasped, in a half-whisper, bending to me eagerly, unable to
+sufficiently conceal the terrible anxiety consuming her. "And you--did
+you go aboard her?"
+
+"Yes," was the only word I uttered.
+
+A silence fell between us, and as my eyes fixed themselves upon her, I
+saw that from her handsome mobile countenance all the light and life had
+suddenly gone out, and I knew that she was in secret possession of the
+key to that remarkable enigma that so puzzled me.
+
+Of a sudden the door opened, and a voice cried gayly--
+
+"Why, I've been looking everywhere for you, Muriel. Why are you hidden
+here? Aren't you coming?"
+
+We both turned, and as she did so a low cry of blank dismay
+involuntarily escaped her.
+
+Next instant I sprang to my feet. The reason of her cry was apparent,
+for there, in the full light of the golden sunset streaming through the
+long open windows, stood a broad-shouldered, fair-bearded man in tennis
+flannels and a Panama hat--the fugitive I knew as Philip Hornby!
+
+I faced him, speechless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES
+
+
+Neither of us spoke. Equally surprised at the unexpected encounter, we
+stood facing each other dumbfounded.
+
+Hornby started quickly as soon as his eyes fell upon me, and his face
+became blanched to the lips, while Muriel Leithcourt, quick to notice
+the sudden change in him, rose and introduced us in as calm a voice as
+she could command.
+
+"I don't think you are acquainted," she said to me with a smile. "This
+is Mr. Martin Woodroffe--Mr. Gordon Gregg."
+
+I bowed to him in sudden resolve to remain silent in pretense that I
+doubted whether the man before me was actually my host of the _Lola_. I
+intended to act as though I was not sufficiently convinced to openly
+express my doubt. Therefore we bowed, exchanging greetings as strangers,
+while, carefully watching, I saw how greatly the minds of both were
+relieved. They shot meaning glances at each other, and then, as though
+reassured that I was mystified and uncertain, the man who called himself
+Woodroffe explained to my companion------
+
+"I've been over to Newton Stewart with Fred all day, and only got back a
+quarter of an hour ago. Aren't you playing any more to-day?"
+
+"I think not," was her reply. "We've been out there the whole afternoon,
+and I'm rather tired. But they're still on the lawn. You can surely get
+a game with someone."
+
+"If you don't play, I shan't. I returned to keep the promise I made
+this morning," he laughed, standing before the big open fireplace,
+holding his tennis racquet behind his back.
+
+I examined his countenance, and was more than ever convinced that he was
+actually the man who gave me the name of Hornby and the false address in
+Somerset. The pair seemed to be on familiar terms, and I wondered
+whether they were engaged. In any case, the man seemed quite at home
+there.
+
+As he chatted with the daughter of the house, he cast a quick, covert
+glance at me, and then darted a meaning look at her--a look of renewed
+confidence, as though he felt that he had successfully averted any
+suspicions I might have held.
+
+We talked of the prospects of the grouse and the salmon, and from his
+remarks he seemed to be as keen at sport as he had once made out himself
+to be at yachting.
+
+"My friend Leithcourt is awfully fortunate in getting such a splendid
+old place as this. On every hand I hear glowing accounts of the number
+of birds. The place has been well preserved in the past, and there's
+plenty of good cover."
+
+"Yes," I said. "Gilrae, the owner, is a keen sportsman, and before he
+became so hard up he spent a lot of money on the estate, which, I
+believe, has always been considered one of the very best in the
+southwest. There's salmon, they say, down in the Glen yonder--but I've
+never tried for any."
+
+"Certainly there is. I've seen several. I hope to try one of these days.
+The Glen is deep and shady--an ideal place for fish. The only
+disappointment here, as far as I can make out, is the very few head of
+black-game."
+
+"Yes, but every year they are getting rarer and rarer in this part of
+Scotland. A really fine black-cock is quite an event nowadays," I said.
+
+While we were talking, or rather while I was carefully watching the
+rapid working of his mind, Leithcourt himself entered and joined us. He
+had been playing tennis, and had come in to rest and cool.
+
+Host and guest were evidently on the most intimate terms. Leithcourt
+addressed him as "Martin," and began to relate a quarrel which his
+head-gamekeeper had had that day with one of the small farmers on the
+estate regarding the killing of some rabbits. And while they were
+talking Muriel suggested that we should stroll down to the tennis-courts
+again, an invitation which, much as I regretted leaving the two men, I
+was bound to accept.
+
+It seemed as though she wished purposely to take me away from that man's
+presence, fearing that by remaining there longer my suspicions might
+become confirmed. She was acting in conjunction with the man whom I had
+known as Hornby.
+
+There were still a good many people watching the game, for it was
+pleasant in those old-world gardens in the sunset hour. The dried-up
+moat was now transformed into a garden filled with rhododendrons and
+bright azaleas, while the high ancient beech-hedges, the quaint old
+sundial with its motto: "Each time ye shadowe turneth ys one daye nearer
+unto dethe," and the old stone balustrades gray with lichen, all spoke
+mutely of those glorious days when the fierce horsemen of the Lairds of
+Rannoch were feared across the Border, and when many a prisoner of the
+Black Douglas had pined and died in those narrow stone chambers in the
+grim north tower that still stood high above.
+
+Among the party strolling and lounging there prior to departure were
+quite a number of people I knew, people who had shooting-boxes in the
+vicinity and were my uncle's friends. In Scotland there is always a
+hearty hospitality among the sporting folk, and the laws of caste are
+far less rigorous than they are in England.
+
+I was standing chatting with two ladies who were about to take leave of
+their hostess, when Leithcourt returned, but alone. Hornby had not
+accompanied him. Was it because he feared to again meet me?
+
+In order to ascertain something regarding the man who had so
+mysteriously fled from Leghorn, I managed by the exercise of a little
+diplomacy to sit on the lawn with a young married woman named Tennant,
+wife of a cavalry captain, who was one of the house-party. After a
+little time I succeeded in turning the conversation to her fellow
+guests, and more particularly to the man I knew as Hornby.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Woodroffe is most amusing," declared the bright little woman.
+"He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is
+usually the life and soul of our party."
+
+"Yes," I said, "I like what little I have seen of him. He's a very good
+fellow, I should say. I've heard that he's engaged to Muriel," I
+hazarded. "Is that true?"
+
+"Of course. They've been engaged nearly a year, but he's been abroad
+until quite lately. He is rather close about his own affairs, and never
+talks about his travels and adventures, although one day Mr. Leithcourt
+declared that his hairbreadth escapes would make a most exciting book if
+ever written."
+
+"Leithcourt and he are evidently most intimate friends."
+
+"Oh, quite inseparable!" she laughed. "And the other man who is always
+with them is that short, stout, red-faced old fellow standing over there
+with the lady in pale blue, Sir Ughtred Gardner. Mr. Woodroffe has
+nicknamed him 'Sir Putrid.'" And we both laughed. "Of course, don't say
+I said so," she whispered. "They don't call him that to his face, but
+it's so easy to make a mistake in his name when he's not within hearing.
+We women don't care for him, so the nickname just fits."
+
+And she gossiped on, telling me much that I desired to know regarding
+the new tenant of Rannoch and his friends, and more especially of that
+man who had first introduced himself to me in the Consulate at Leghorn.
+
+Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with
+the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the
+Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make
+out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man
+who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning
+him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of
+evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril.
+Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The
+mystery grew deeper day by day, and was inexplicable.
+
+During the week that followed I sought to learn all I could regarding
+the new people at the castle.
+
+"They are taken up everywhere," declared my aunt when I questioned her.
+"Of course, we knew very little of them, except that they had a shoot up
+near Fort William two years ago, and that they have a town house in
+Green Street. They are evidently rather smart folks. Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"Judging from their house-party, yes," I responded. "They are about as
+gay a crowd as one could find north of Carlisle just at present."
+
+"Exactly. There are some well-known people among them, too," said my
+aunt. "I've asked them over to-morrow afternoon, and they've accepted."
+
+"Excellent!" I exclaimed, for I wanted an opportunity for another chat
+with the dark-eyed girl who was engaged to the man whose alias was
+Hornby. I particularly desired to ascertain the reason of her fear when
+I had mentioned the _Lola_, and whether she possessed any knowledge of
+Hylton Chater.
+
+The opportunity came to me in due course, for next afternoon the Rannoch
+party drove over in two large brakes, and with other people from the
+neighborhood and a band from Dumfries, my aunt's grounds presented a gay
+and animated scene. There was the usual tennis and croquet, while some
+of the men enjoyed a little putting on the excellent course my uncle, a
+golf enthusiast, had recently laid down.
+
+As I expected, Woodroffe did not accompany the party. Mrs. Leithcourt, a
+slightly fussy little woman, apologized for his absence, explaining that
+he had been recalled to London suddenly a few days before, but was
+returning to Rannoch again at the end of the week.
+
+"We couldn't afford to lose him," she declared to my aunt. "He is so
+awfully humorous--his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar
+each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic."
+
+I turned away and strolled with Muriel, pleading an excuse to show her
+my uncle's beautiful grounds, not a whit less picturesque than those of
+the castle, and perhaps rather better kept.
+
+"I only heard yesterday of your engagement, Miss Leithcourt," I remarked
+presently when we were alone. "Allow me to offer my best
+congratulations. When you introduced me to Mr. Woodroffe the other day I
+had no idea that he was to be your husband."
+
+She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of
+suspicion. Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a
+blank, hard voice--
+
+"It's very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant
+things."
+
+"And when is the happy event to take place?"
+
+"The date is not exactly fixed--early next year, I believe," and I
+thought she sighed.
+
+"And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?" I suggested,
+my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed
+remark. But she controlled herself perfectly.
+
+"I love the sea," she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight
+before her.
+
+"Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says."
+
+"Yes. He received a wire, and had to leave immediately. It was an awful
+bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey
+yesterday."
+
+"But he'll be back here again, won't he?"
+
+"I really don't know. It seems quite uncertain. I had a letter this
+morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business,
+instead of coming up to us again."
+
+There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could
+not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from
+Scotland because of my presence.
+
+How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the
+yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any
+undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the
+puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking
+ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her
+answers.
+
+As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly
+impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her
+parents. Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and
+terrible secret which she feared might be revealed. There was a distant
+look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in
+some constant and ever-present dread. Of course she told me nothing of
+her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and
+her bearing a curious apathy--a want of the real enthusiasm of
+affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it
+therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a
+matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the
+mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their
+daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and
+intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's
+happiness more often than the public ever dream. Tragedy is, alas!
+written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the
+fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the
+paragraph beneath. Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own
+free choice in the matter of a husband is, alas! nowadays the exception,
+for parents who want to "get on" up the social scale have found that
+pretty daughters are a marketable commodity, and many a man has been
+placed "on his legs," both financially and socially, by his son-in-law.
+Hence the marriage of convenience is fast becoming common, while in the
+same ratio the divorce petitions are unfortunately on the increase.
+
+I read tragedy in the dark luminous eyes of Muriel Leithcourt. I knew
+that her young heart was over-burdened by some secret sorrow or guilty
+knowledge that she would reveal to me if she dared. Her own words told
+me that she was perplexed; that she longed to confide and seek advice
+of someone, yet by reason of some hidden and untoward circumstance her
+lips were sealed.
+
+I tried to question her further regarding Woodroffe, of what profession
+he followed and of his past.
+
+But she evidently suspected me, for I had unfortunately mentioned the
+_Lola_.
+
+She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me
+nothing--absolutely nothing.
+
+Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch.
+
+Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended,
+indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the
+Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred
+people and very hospitable.
+
+We exchanged a good many visits and dinners, and while my uncle several
+times invited Leithcourt and his friends to his shoot with _al fresco_
+luncheon, which the ladies joined, the tenant of Rannoch always invited
+us back in return.
+
+Thus I gained many opportunities of talking with Muriel, and of watching
+her closely. I had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and on
+account of that it seemed that she was in no way averse to my
+companionship. She could handle a rook-rifle as well as any woman, and
+was really a very fair shot. Therefore we often found ourselves alone
+tramping across the wide open moorland, or along those delightful glens
+of the Nithsdale, glorious in the autumn tints of their luxurious
+foliage.
+
+Her father, on the other hand, seemed to view me with considerable
+suspicion, and I could easily discern that I was only asked to Rannoch
+because it was impossible to invite my uncle without including myself.
+
+Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever
+endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him
+alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our
+strange encounter in Leghorn?
+
+His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him
+surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have
+done. He was a man of gloomy mood, and often he would leave his guests
+and take walks alone, musing and brooding. On several occasions I
+followed him in secret, and found to my surprise that although he made
+long detours in various directions, yet he always arrived at the same
+spot at the same hour--five o'clock.
+
+The place where he halted was on the edge of a dark wood on the brow of
+a hill about three miles from Rannoch--a good place to get woodpigeon,
+as they came to roost. It was fully two miles across the hills from the
+high road to Moniaive, and from the break the gray wall where he was in
+the habit of sitting to rest and smoke, there stretched the beautiful
+panorama of Loch Urr and the heatherclad hills beyond.
+
+Leithcourt never went direct to the place, but always so timed his walks
+that he arrived just at five, and remained there smoking cigarettes
+until half-past, as though awaiting the arrival of some person he
+expected. Once or twice his guests suggested shooting pigeons at
+sundown, but he always had some excuse for opposing the proposal, and
+thus the party, unsuspecting the reason, were kept away from that
+particular lonely spot.
+
+In my youth I had sat many a quiet hour there in the darkening gloom and
+shot many a pigeon, therefore I knew the wood well, and was able to
+watch the tenant of Rannoch from points where he least suspected the
+presence of another.
+
+Once, when I was alone with Muriel, I mentioned her father's capacity
+for walking alone, whereupon she said--
+
+"Oh, yes, he was always fond of walking. He used to take me with him
+when we first came here, but he always went so far that I refused to go
+any more."
+
+She never once mentioned Woodroffe. I allowed her plenty of opportunity
+for doing so, chaffing her about her forthcoming marriage in order that
+she might again refer to him. But never did his name pass her lips. I
+understood that he had gone abroad--that was all.
+
+Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night
+when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown
+enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life
+had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day
+succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery
+surrounded me on every hand.
+
+Indeed, by one curious fact alone it was increased a hundredfold.
+
+Late one afternoon, when I had been out shooting all day with the
+Rannoch party, I drove back to the castle in the Perth-cart with three
+other men, and found the ladies assembled in the great hall with tea
+ready. A welcome log-fire was blazing in the huge old grate, for in
+October it is chilly and damp in Scotland and a fire is pleasant at
+evening.
+
+Muriel was seated upon the high padded fender--like those one has at
+clubs--which always formed a cosy spot for the ladies, especially after
+dinner. When I entered, she rose quickly and handed me my cup,
+exclaiming as she looked at me--
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gregg! what a state you are in!"
+
+"Yes, I was after snipe, and slipped into a bog," I laughed. "But it
+was early this morning, and the mud has dried."
+
+"Come with me, and I'll get you a brush," she urged. And I followed her
+through the long corridors and upstairs to a small sitting-room which
+was her own little sanctum, where she worked and read--a cosy little
+place with two queer old windows in the colossal wall, and a floor of
+polished oak, and great black beams above. When the owner had occupied
+the house that room had been disused, but it had, I found, been now
+completely transformed, and was a most tasteful little nest of luxury
+with its bright chintzes, its Turkey rugs and its cheerful fire on the
+old stone hearth.
+
+She laughed when I expressed admiration of her little den, and said--
+
+"I believe it was the armory in the old days. But it makes quite a comfy
+little boudoir. I can lock myself in and be quite quiet when the party
+are too noisy," she added merrily.
+
+But as my eyes wandered around they suddenly fell upon an object which
+caused me to start with profound wonder--a cabinet photograph in a frame
+of crimson leather.
+
+The picture was that of a young girl--a duplicate of the portrait I had
+found torn across and flung aside on board the _Lola_!
+
+The merry eyes laughed out at me as I stood staring at it in sheer
+bewilderment.
+
+"What a pretty girl!" I exclaimed quickly, concealing my surprise. "Who
+is she?"
+
+My companion was silent a moment, her dark eyes meeting mine with a
+strange look of inquiry.
+
+"Yes," she laughed, "everyone admires her. She was a schoolfellow of
+mine--Elma Heath."
+
+"Heath!" I echoed. "Where was she at school with you?"
+
+"At Chichester."
+
+"Long ago?"
+
+"A little over two years."
+
+"She's very beautiful!" I declared, taking up the photograph and
+discovering that it bore the name of the same well-known photographer in
+New Bond Street as that I had found on the carpet of the _Lola_ in the
+Mediterranean.
+
+"Yes. She's really prettier than her photograph. It hardly does her
+justice."
+
+"And where is she now?"
+
+"Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Gregg?" laughed the handsome girl.
+"Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?"
+
+"I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt," I answered
+with mock severity. "I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a
+flirt, could she?"
+
+"No. I will give you your due," she declared. "You never do flirt. That
+is why I like you."
+
+"Thanks for your candor, Miss Leithcourt," I said.
+
+"Only," she added, "you seem smitten with Elma's charms."
+
+"I think she's extremely pretty," I remarked, with the photograph still
+in my hand. "Do you ever see her now?"
+
+"Never," she replied. "Since the day I left school we have never met.
+She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after
+I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I
+have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a
+doctor."
+
+Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, retained knowledge of
+the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I
+might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was
+somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.
+
+What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single
+instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the
+picture which had created such a deep impression upon me should be
+preserved in her own little boudoir as a souvenir of a devoted
+school-friend.
+
+"Then you have heard absolutely nothing as to her present position or
+whereabouts--whether she is married, for instance?"
+
+"Ah!" she cried mischievously. "You betray yourself by your own words.
+You have fallen in love with her, I really believe, Mr. Gregg. If she
+knew, she'd be most gratified--or at least, she ought to be."
+
+At which I smiled, preferring that she should adopt that theory in
+preference to any other.
+
+She spoke frankly, as a pure honest girl would speak. She was not
+jealous, but she nevertheless resented--as women do resent such
+things--that I should fall in love with a friend's photograph.
+
+There was a mystery surrounding that torn picture; of that I was
+absolutely certain. The remembrance of that memorable evening when I had
+dined on board the _Lola_ arose vividly before me. Why had the girl's
+portrait been so ruthlessly destroyed and the frame turned with its face
+to the wall? There was some reason--some distinct and serious motive in
+it. Had Muriel told me the truth, I wondered, or was she merely seeking
+to shield the suspected man who was her lover?
+
+Hour by hour the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more
+inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the
+London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no
+house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of
+Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the
+castle, I found that they were really persons unknown in society. They
+were merely of that class of witty, well-dressed parasites who always
+cling on to the wealthy and make believe that they are smart and of the
+_grande monde_. Rannoch was an expensive place to keep up, with all that
+big retinue of servants and gamekeepers, and with those nightly dinners
+cooked by a French _chef_; yet Leithcourt seemed to possess a long
+pocket and smiled upon those parasites, officers of doubtful commission
+and younger sprigs of the pseudo-aristocracy who surrounded him, while
+his wife, keen-eyed and of superb bearing, was punctilious concerning
+all points of etiquette, and at the same time indefatigable that her
+mixed set of guests should enjoy a really good time.
+
+But I was not the only person who could not make them out. My uncle was
+the first to open my eyes regarding the true character of certain of the
+men staying at Rannoch.
+
+"I think, Gordon, that one or two of those fellows with Leithcourt are
+rank outsiders," he said confidentially to me one night after we had had
+a hard day's shooting, and were playing a hundred up at billiards before
+retiring. "One man, who arrived yesterday, I know too well. He was
+struck off the list at Boodle's three years ago for card-sharping--that
+thin-faced, fair-mustached man named Cadby. I suppose Leithcourt doesn't
+know it, or he wouldn't have him up here among respectable folk." And my
+uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half
+inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed
+beyond the pale of good society.
+
+"Better not say anything about it," I urged. "It's Leithcourt's own
+affair, uncle--not ours."
+
+"Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be
+allowed to ask us to meet such fellows. It's coming it a little too
+thick, Gordon. We men can stand the women of the party, but the
+men--well, I tell you candidly, I shan't accept his invites to shoot
+again."
+
+"No, no, uncle," I protested. "Probably it's owing to ignorance. You'll
+be able, a little later on, to give him valuable tips. He's a good
+fellow, and only wants experience in Scotland to get along all right."
+
+"Yes. But I don't like it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a
+fair game," declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. "I'm
+not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my
+house--and I tell you that plainly."
+
+Next day I shot with the Carmichaels of Crossburn, and about four
+o'clock, after a good day, took leave of the party in the Black Glen,
+and started off alone to walk home, a distance of about six miles. It
+was already growing dusk, and would be quite dark, I knew, before I
+reached my uncle's house. My most direct way was to follow the river for
+about two miles and then strike straight across the large dense wood,
+and afterwards over a wide moor full of treacherous bogs and pitfalls
+for the unwary.
+
+My gun over my shoulder, I had walked on for about three-quarters of an
+hour, and had nearly traversed the wood, at that hour so dark that I had
+considerable difficulty in finding my way, when--of a sudden--I fancied
+I distinguished voices.
+
+I halted. Yes. Men were talking in low tones of confidence, and in that
+calm stillness of evening they appeared nearer to me than they actually
+were.
+
+I listened, trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out
+nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself,
+for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs
+cracking as they forced their way through them.
+
+Of a sudden, while standing there not daring to breathe lest I should
+betray my presence, a strange sound fell upon my eager ears.
+
+Next moment I realized that I was at that place where Leithcourt so
+persistently kept his disappointed tryst, having approached it from
+within the wood.
+
+The sound alarmed me, and yet it was neither an explosion of fire-arms
+nor a startling cry for help.
+
+One word reached me in the darkness--one single word of bitter and
+withering reproach.
+
+Heedless of the risk I ran and the peril to which I exposed myself, I
+dashed forward with a resolve to penetrate the mystery, until I came to
+the gap in the rough stone wall where Leithcourt's habit was to halt
+each day at sundown.
+
+There, in the falling darkness, the sight that met my eyes at the spot
+held me rigid, appalled, stupefied.
+
+In that instant I realized the truth--a truth that was surely the
+strangest ever revealed to any man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES
+
+
+As I dashed forward to the gap in the boundary wall of the wood, I
+nearly stumbled over a form lying across the narrow path.
+
+So dark was it beneath the trees that at first I could not plainly make
+out what it was until I bent and my hands touched the garments of a
+woman. Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the
+cloak was a thick woolen one.
+
+Was she dead, I wondered? That cry--that single word of
+reproach--sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been
+struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words.
+
+I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
+Yet just at that moment my strained ears caught a sound--the sound of
+someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
+demanded who was there.
+
+There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
+ceased.
+
+As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
+about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
+however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
+well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.
+
+It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
+feet was a woman. But whom?
+
+Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
+matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
+receding--escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
+of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
+thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
+stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.
+
+I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
+so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
+wall of the wood.
+
+In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
+was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
+runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
+land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
+blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
+in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.
+
+Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
+the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
+the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
+behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
+two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
+it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
+or other of the two glens--which I could not decide.
+
+I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
+to act.
+
+Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?
+
+That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
+boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
+excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
+and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
+castle where the guests, ready dressed, were assembling prior to
+dinner.
+
+I was welcomed warmly, as I was always by the men of the party, who
+seeing my muddy plight at once offered me a glass of the sportsman's
+drink in Scotland, and while I was adding soda to it Leithcourt himself
+joined his guests, ready dressed in his dinner jacket, having just
+descended from his room.
+
+"Hulloa, Gregg!" he exclaimed heartily, holding out his hand. "Had a
+long day of it, evidently. Good sport with Carmichael--eh?"
+
+"Very fair," I said. "I remained longer with him than I ought to have
+done, and have got belated on my way home, so looked in for a
+refresher."
+
+"Quite right," he laughed merrily. "You're always welcome, you know. I'd
+have been annoyed if I knew you had passed without coming in."
+
+And Muriel, a pretty figure in a low-cut gown of turquoise chiffon,
+standing behind her father, smiled secretly at me. I smiled at her in
+return, but it was a strange smile, I fear, for with the knowledge of
+that additional mystery within me--the mystery of the woman lying
+unconscious or perhaps dead, up in the wood--held me stupefied.
+
+I had suspected Leithcourt because of his constant trysts at that spot,
+but I had at least proved that my suspicions were entirely without
+foundation. He could not have got home and dressed in the time, for I
+had taken the nearest route to the castle while the fugitive would be
+compelled to make a wide detour.
+
+I only remained a few minutes, then went forth into the darkness again,
+utterly undecided how to act. My first impulse was to return to the
+woman's aid, for she might not be dead after all.
+
+And yet when I recollected that hoarse cry that rang out in the
+darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this
+latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You
+will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there
+suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had so
+ingeniously escaped.
+
+If the victim were dead, what aid could I render? A knife had, I
+believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started
+off after the fugitive. The only doubt in my own mind was whether the
+unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my
+disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.
+
+Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave
+it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards
+transpired.
+
+I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
+before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
+Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
+always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
+present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
+and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.
+
+Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
+would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
+Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
+knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
+chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
+secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
+very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
+visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
+ignorance of what had transpired.
+
+But who was the woman? Was she young or old?
+
+A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
+that I might examine her features.
+
+One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
+lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
+that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
+from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
+truth?
+
+I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
+certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
+might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
+suspicion.
+
+I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
+was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.
+
+"It's the gun, I suppose," I remarked. "I've been carrying it all day,
+and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn."
+
+"The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear," my uncle
+remarked. "Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot."
+
+"They did, but he'd got another engagement--over at Kenmure Castle, I
+think."
+
+I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
+acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
+hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
+myself?
+
+I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
+the distant gloom, the black line of wood loomed up against the stormy
+sky. The stars were no longer shining and the rain clouds had gathered.
+I stood with my face turned to the dark indistinct spot that held the
+secret, lost in wonderment.
+
+At last I closed the window and turned in, but no sleep came to my
+eyes, so full was my mind of the startling events of those past few
+months and of that gruesome discovery I had made.
+
+Had the fugitive actually recognized me? Probably my voice when I had
+called out had betrayed me. Hour after hour I lay puzzling, trying to
+arrive at some solution of that intricate problem which now presented
+itself. Muriel could tell me what I wished to know. Of that I was
+certain. Yet she dared not speak. Some inexpressible terror held her
+dumb--she was affianced to the man Martin Woodroffe.
+
+Again I rose, lit the gas, and tried to read a novel. But I could not
+concentrate my thoughts, which were ever wandering to that strange
+mystery of the wood. At six I shaved, descended, and went out with the
+dogs for a short walk; but on returning I heard of nothing unusual, and
+was compelled to remain inactive until near mid-day.
+
+I was crossing the stable-yard where I had gone to order the carriage
+for my aunt, when an English groom, suddenly emerging from the
+harness-room, touched his cap, saying--
+
+"Have you 'eard, sir, of the awful affair up yonder?"
+
+"Of what?" I asked quickly.
+
+"Well, sir, there seems to have been a murder last night up in Rannoch
+Wood," said the man quickly. "Holden, the gardener, has just come back
+from that village and says that Mr. Leithcourt's under-gamekeeper as he
+was going home at five this morning came upon a dead body."
+
+"A dead body!" I exclaimed, feigning great surprise.
+
+"Yes, sir--a youngish man. He'd been stabbed to the heart."
+
+"A man!"
+
+"Yes, sir--so Holden says."
+
+"Call Holden. I'd like to know all he's heard," I said. And presently,
+when the gardener emerged from the grape-house, I sought of him all the
+particulars he had gathered.
+
+"I don't know very much, sir," was the man's reply. "I went into the inn
+for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking
+about it. A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood. The
+gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but
+from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a
+stranger in this district."
+
+"The body was that of a man, then?" I asked, trying to conceal my utter
+bewilderment.
+
+"Yes--about thirty, they say. The police have taken him to the mortuary
+at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot,
+they say."
+
+A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman--that I could swear.
+
+After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.
+
+When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to
+be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I
+thought, with considerable suspicion. My request was an unusual one.
+Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found
+myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death. From a small dingy window
+above the light fell upon an object lying upon a large slab of gray
+stone and covered with a soiled sheet.
+
+The sight was ghastly and gruesome; the body lay there awaiting the
+official inquiry into the cause of death. The silence of the tomb was
+unbroken, save for the heavy tread of the policeman, who having removed
+his helmet in the presence of the dead, lifted the end of the sheet,
+revealing to me a white, hard-set face, with closed eyes and dropped
+jaw.
+
+I started back as my eyes fell upon the dead countenance. I was entirely
+unprepared for such a revelation. The truth staggered me.
+
+The victim was the man who had acted as my friend--the Italian waiter,
+Olinto.
+
+I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to
+realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death
+distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in
+identifying him.
+
+"You recognize him, sir?" remarked the officer. "Who is he? Our people
+are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't
+succeeded in establishing his identity."
+
+I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that
+man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge
+must of necessity reflect upon me.
+
+"I will see your inspector," I answered with as much calmness as I could
+muster. "Where has the poor fellow been wounded?"
+
+"Through the heart," responded the constable, as turning the sheet
+further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the
+victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.
+
+"This is the weapon," he added, taking from a shelf close by a long,
+thin poignard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.
+
+In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old
+Florentine _misericordia_, a long thin, triangular blade, a quarter of
+an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a
+hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and
+poignards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles
+produced a wound that caused internal hemorrhage and which never
+healed--hence the name given to it by the Florentines.
+
+It was still blood-stained, but as I took the deadly thing in my hand I
+saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen
+of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a
+weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate the heart.
+
+And yet the person struck down was a woman, and not a man!
+
+A wound from a _misericordia_ always proves fatal, because the shape of
+the blade cuts the flesh into little flaps which, on withdrawing the
+knife, close up and prevent the blood from issuing forth. At the same
+time, however, no power can make them heal again. A blow from such a
+weapon is as surely fatal as the poisoned poignard of the Borgia or the
+Medici.
+
+I handed the stiletto back to the man without comment. My resolve was to
+say as little as possible, for I had no desire to figure publicly at the
+inquiry, and consequently negative all my own efforts to solve the
+mystery of the Leithcourts and of Martin Woodroffe.
+
+I returned to where the figure was lying so ghastly and motionless, and
+looked again for the last time upon the dead face of the man who had
+served me so well, and yet who had enticed me so nearly to my death. In
+the latter incident there was a deep mystery. He had relented at the
+last moment, just in time to save me from my secret enemies.
+
+Could it be that my enemies were his? Had he fallen a victim by the same
+hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me?
+
+Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in
+order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was
+Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to
+meet someone in secret?
+
+As I glanced down at the cold, inanimate countenance upon which mystery
+was written, I became seized by regret. He had been a faithful and
+honest servant, and even though he had enticed me to that fatal house in
+Lambeth, yet I recollected his words, how he had done so under
+compulsion. I remembered, too, how he had implored me not to prejudge
+him before I became aware of the full facts.
+
+With my own hand I re-covered the face with the sheet, and inwardly
+resolved to avenge the dastardly crime.
+
+I regretted that I was compelled to reveal the dead man's name to the
+police, yet I saw that to make some statement was now inevitable, and
+therefore I accompanied the constable to the inspector's office some
+distance across the town.
+
+Having been introduced to the big, fair-haired man in a rough tweed
+suit, who was apparently directing the inquiries into the affair, he
+took me eagerly into a small back room and began to question me. I was,
+however, wary not to commit myself to anything further than the
+identification of the body.
+
+"The fact is," I said confidentially, "you must omit me from the
+witnesses at the inquest."
+
+"Why?" asked the detective suspiciously.
+
+"Because if it were known that I have identified him, all chance of
+getting at the truth will at once vanish," I answered. "I have come here
+to tell you in strictest confidence who the poor fellow really is."
+
+"Then you know something of the affair?" he said, with a strong Highland
+accent.
+
+"I know nothing," I declared. "Nothing except his name."
+
+"H'm. And you say he's a foreigner--an Italian--eh?"
+
+"He was in my service in Leghorn for several years, and on leaving me he
+came to London and obtained an engagement as waiter in a restaurant. His
+father lived in Leghorn; he was doorkeeper at the Prefecture."
+
+"But why was he here, in Scotland?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"You know something of the affair. I mean that you suspect somebody, or
+you would have no objection to giving evidence at the inquiry."
+
+"I have no suspicions. To me the affair is just as much of an enigma as
+to you," I hastened at once to explain. "My only fear is that if the
+assassin knew that I had identified him he would take care not to betray
+himself."
+
+"You therefore think he will betray himself?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"By the fact that the man was attacked with an Italian stiletto, it
+would seem that his assailant was a fellow-countryman," suggested the
+detective.
+
+"The evidence certainly points to that," I replied.
+
+"You don't happen to be aware of anyone--any foreigner, I mean--who was,
+or might be his enemy?"
+
+I responded in the negative.
+
+"Ah," he went on, "these foreigners are always fighting among themselves
+and using knives. I did ten years' service in Edinburgh and made lots of
+arrests for stabbing affrays. Italians, like Greeks, are a dangerous lot
+when their blood is up." Then he added: "Personally, it seems to me that
+the murdered man was enticed from London to that spot and coolly done
+away with--from some motive of revenge, most probably."
+
+"Most probably," I said. "A vendetta, perhaps. I live in Italy, and
+therefore know the Italians well," I added.
+
+I had given him my card, and told him with whom I was staying.
+
+"Where were you yesterday, sir?" he inquired presently.
+
+"I was shooting--on the other side of the Nithsdale," I answered, and
+then went on to explain my movements, without, however, mentioning my
+visit to Rannoch.
+
+"And although you know the murdered man so intimately, you have no
+suspicion of anyone in this district who was acquainted with him?"
+
+"I know no one who knew him. When he left my service he had never been
+in England."
+
+"You say he was engaged in service in London?"
+
+"Yes, at a restaurant in Oxford Street, I believe. I met him
+accidentally in Pall Mall one evening, and he told me so."
+
+"You don't know the name of the restaurant?"
+
+"He did tell me, but unfortunately I have forgotten."
+
+The detective drew a deep breath of regret.
+
+"Someone who waited for him on the edge of that wood stepped out and
+killed him--that's evident," he said.
+
+"Without a doubt."
+
+"And my belief is that it was an Italian. There were two foreigners who
+slept at a common lodging-house two nights ago and went on tramp towards
+Glasgow. We have telegraphed after them, and hope we shall find them.
+Scotsmen or Englishmen never use a knife of that pattern."
+
+With his latter remark I entirely coincided. In my own mind that was the
+strongest argument in favor of Leithcourt's innocence. That the tenant
+of Rannoch had kept that secret tryst in daily patience I knew from my
+own observations, yet to me it scarcely seemed feasible that he would
+use a weapon so peculiarly Italian and yet so terribly deadly.
+
+And then when I reflected further, recollecting that the body I had
+discovered was that of a woman and not a man, I stood staggered and
+bewildered by the utterly inexplicable enigma.
+
+I promised the burly detective that in exchange for his secrecy
+regarding my statement that I would assist him in every manner possible
+in the solution of the problem.
+
+"The real name of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld," I
+urged. "It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only
+by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his
+name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know that
+I have identified him."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Well," I said with some hesitation, "while I am believed to be in
+ignorance we shall have opportunity for obtaining the truth."
+
+"Then you do really suspect?" he said, again looking at me with those
+cold, blue eyes.
+
+"I know not whom to suspect," I declared. "It is a mystery why the man
+who was once my faithful servant should be enticed to that wood and
+stabbed to the heart."
+
+"There is no one in the vicinity who knew him?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+"We might obtain his address in London through his father in Leghorn,"
+suggested the officer.
+
+"I will write to-day if you so desire," I said readily. "Indeed, I will
+get my friend the British Consul to go round and see the old man and
+telegraph the address if he obtains it."
+
+"Capital!" he declared. "If you will do us this favor we shall be
+greatly indebted to you. It is fortunate that we have established the
+victim's identity--otherwise we might be entirely in the dark. A
+murdered foreigner is always more or less of a mystery."
+
+Therefore, then and there, I took a sheet of paper and wrote to my old
+friend Hutcheson at Leghorn, asking him to make immediate inquiry of
+Olinto's father as to his son's address in London.
+
+I said nothing to the police of that strange adventure of mine over in
+Lambeth, or of how the man now dead had saved my life. That his enemies
+were my own he had most distinctly told me, therefore I felt some
+apprehension that I myself was not safe. Yet in my hip pocket I always
+carried my revolver--just as I did in Italy--and I rather prided myself
+on my ability to shoot straight.
+
+We sat for a long time discussing the strange affair. In order to betray
+no eagerness to get away, I offered the big Highlander a cigar from my
+case, and we smoked together. The inquiry would be held on the morrow,
+he told me, but as far as the public was concerned the body would remain
+as that of some person "unknown."
+
+"And you had better not come to my uncle's house, or send anyone," I
+said. "If you desire to see me, send me a line and I will meet you here
+in Dumfries. It will be safer."
+
+The officer looked at me with those keen eyes of his, and said:
+
+"Really, Mr. Gregg, I can't quite make you out, I confess. You seem to
+be apprehensive of your own safety. Why?"
+
+"Italians are a very curious people," I responded quickly. "Their
+vendetta extends widely sometimes."
+
+"Then you have reason to believe that the enemy of this poor fellow
+Santini may be your enemy also?"
+
+"One never knows whom one offends when living in Italy," I laughed, as
+lightly as I could, endeavoring to allay his suspicion. "He may have
+fallen beneath the assassin's knife by giving quite a small and possibly
+innocent offense to somebody. Italian methods are not English, you
+know."
+
+"By Jove, sir, and I'm jolly glad they're not!" he said. "I shouldn't
+think a police officer's life is a very safe one among all those secret
+murder societies I've read about."
+
+"Ah! what you read about them is often very much exaggerated," I assured
+him. "It is the vendetta which is such a stain upon the character of the
+modern Italian; and depend upon it this affair in Rannoch Wood is the
+outcome of some revenge or other--probably over a love affair."
+
+"But you will assist us, sir?" he urged. "You know the Italian language,
+which will be of great advantage; besides, the victim was your servant."
+
+"Be discreet," I said. "And in return I will do my very utmost to assist
+you in hunting down the assassin."
+
+And thus we made our compact. Half-an-hour after I was driving in the
+dog-cart through the pouring rain up the hill out of gray old Dumfries
+to my uncle's house.
+
+As I descended from the cart and gave it over to a groom, old Davis, the
+butler, came forward, saying in a low voice:
+
+"There's Miss Leithcourt waiting to see you, Mr. Gordon. She's in the
+morning-room, and been there an hour. She asked me not to tell anyone
+else she's here, sir."
+
+"Then my aunt has not seen her?" I exclaimed, scenting mystery in this
+unexpected visit.
+
+"No, sir. She wishes to see you alone, sir."
+
+I walked across the big hall and along the corridor to the room the old
+man had indicated.
+
+And as I opened the door and Muriel Leithcourt in plain black rose to
+meet me, I plainly saw from her white, haggard countenance that
+something had happened--that she had been forced by circumstances to
+come to me in strictest confidence.
+
+Was she, I wondered, about to reveal to me the truth?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS
+
+
+"Mr. Gregg," exclaimed the girl with agitation, as she put forth her
+black-gloved hand, "I--I suppose you know--you've heard all about the
+discovery to-day up at the wood? I need not tell you anything about it"
+
+"Yes, Miss Leithcourt, I only wish you would tell me about it," I said
+gravely, inviting her to a chair and seating myself. "I've heard some
+extraordinary story about a man being found dead, but I've been in
+Dumfries nearly all day. Who is the man?"
+
+"Ah! that we don't know," she replied, pale-faced and anxious. Her
+attitude was as though she wished to confide in me and yet still
+hesitated to do so.
+
+"You've been waiting for me quite a long time, Davis tells me. I regret
+that you should have done this. If you had left word that you wished to
+see me, I would have come over to you at once."
+
+"No. I wanted to see you alone--that's the reason I am here. They must
+not know at home that I've been over here, so I purposely asked the man
+not to announce me to your aunt."
+
+"You want to see me privately," I said in a low, earnest voice. "Why? Is
+there any service I can render you?"
+
+"Yes. A very great one," she responded with quick eagerness,
+"I--well--the fact is, I have summoned courage to come to you and beg
+of you to help me. I am in great distress--and I have not a single
+friend whom I can trust--in whom I can confide."
+
+"I shall esteem it the highest honor if you will trust me," I said in
+deep earnestness. "I can only assure you that I will remain loyal to
+your interests and to yourself."
+
+"Ah! I believe you will, Mr. Gregg!" she declared with enthusiasm, her
+large, dark eyes turned upon me--the eyes of a woman in sheer and bitter
+despair. Her face was perfect, one of the most handsome I had ever gazed
+upon. The more I saw of her the greater was the fascination she held
+over me.
+
+A silence fell between us as she sat with her gloved hands lying idly in
+her lap. Her lips moved nervously, but no sound came from them, so
+agitated was she, so eager to tell me something; and yet at the same
+time reluctant to take me into her confidence.
+
+"Well?" I asked at last in a low voice. "I am quite ready to render you
+any service, if you will only command me."
+
+"Ah! But I fear what I require will strike you as so unusual--you will
+hesitate to act when I explain what service I require of you," she said
+doubtfully.
+
+"I cannot tell you until I hear your wishes," I said, smiling, and yet
+puzzled at her attitude.
+
+"It concerns the terrible discovery made up in Rannoch Wood," she said
+in a hoarse, nervous voice at last. "That unknown man was
+murdered--stabbed to the heart."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," she said, scarcely above a whisper, "I have suspicions."
+
+"Of the murdered man's identity?"
+
+"No. Of the assassin."
+
+I glanced at her sharply and saw the intense look in her dark, wide-open
+eyes.
+
+"You believe you know who dealt the blow?"
+
+"I have a suspicion--that is all. Only I want you to help me, if you
+will."
+
+"Most certainly," I responded. "But if you believe you know the assassin
+you probably know something of the victim?"
+
+"Only that he looked like a foreigner."
+
+"Then you have seen him?" I exclaimed, much surprised.
+
+My remark caused her to hold her breath for an instant. Then she
+answered, rather lamely, it seemed to me:
+
+"I saw him when the keepers brought the body to the castle."
+
+Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the
+dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore,
+that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end?
+
+I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but,
+nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very
+peculiar fact.
+
+"You judge him to be a foreigner?" I remarked as casually as I could.
+
+"From his features and complexion I guessed him to be Italian," she
+responded quickly, at which I pretended to express surprise. "I saw him
+after the keepers had found him."
+
+"Besides," she went on, "the stiletto was evidently an Italian one,
+which would almost make it appear that a foreigner was the assassin."
+
+"Is that your own suspicion?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, then in a low, eager voice she said:
+
+"Because I have already seen that three-edged knife in another person's
+possession."
+
+"That's pretty strong evidence," I declared. "The person in question
+will have to prove that he was not in Rannoch Wood last evening at
+nightfall."
+
+"How do you know it was done at nightfall?" she asked quickly with some
+surprise, half-rising from her chair.
+
+"I merely surmised that it was," I responded, inwardly blaming myself
+for my ill-timed admission.
+
+"Ah!" she said with a slight sigh, "there is more mystery in this affair
+than we have yet discovered, Mr. Gregg. What, I wonder, brought the
+unfortunate young man up into our wood?"
+
+"An appointment, without a doubt. But with whom?"
+
+She shook her head, saying:
+
+"My father often goes to that spot to shoot pigeon in the evening. He
+told us so at luncheon to-day. How fortunate he was not there last
+night, or he might be suspected."
+
+"Yes," I said. "It is a very fortunate circumstance, for it cannot be a
+pleasant experience to be under suspicion of being an assassin. He was
+at home last night, was he?" I added casually.
+
+"Of course. Don't you recollect that when you called he chatted with
+you? I did some typewriting for him in the study, and we were together
+all the afternoon--or at least till nearly five o'clock, when we went
+out into the hall to tea."
+
+"Then what is your theory regarding the affair?" I inquired, rather
+puzzled why she should so decisively prove an alibi for her father.
+
+"It seems certain that the poor fellow went to the wood by appointment,
+and was killed. But have you been up to the spot since the finding of
+the body?"
+
+"No. Have you?"
+
+"Yes. The affair interested me, and as soon as I recognized the old
+Italian knife in the hand of the keeper, I went up there and looked
+about. I am glad I did so, for I found something which seems to have
+escaped the notice of the detectives."
+
+"And what's that?" I asked eagerly.
+
+"Why, about three yards from the pool of blood where the unfortunate
+foreigner was found is another small pool of blood where the grass and
+ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle
+there."
+
+"There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have
+staggered some distance before he fell dead."
+
+"Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall,
+would he not?" she suggested. "No. The police seem very dense, and this
+plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as
+what you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I
+believe that a second person also fell a victim," she added in a low,
+distinct tone.
+
+I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth?
+Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?
+
+"A second person!" I echoed, as though in surprise. "Then do you believe
+that a double murder was committed?"
+
+"I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck
+in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which
+separates the one mark from the other."
+
+"But he might have been slightly wounded--on the hand, or in the
+face--at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck
+fatally," I suggested.
+
+She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her
+confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some
+unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments
+later she said to me:
+
+"It is for this reason, Mr. Gregg, that I have sought you in confidence.
+Nobody must know that I have come here to you, or they would suspect;
+and if suspicion fell upon me it would bring upon me a fate worse than
+death. Remember, therefore, that my future is entirely in your hands."
+
+"I don't quite understand," I said, rising and standing before her in
+the fading twilight, while the rain drove upon the old diamond window
+panes. "But I can only assure you that whatever confidence you repose in
+me, I shall never abuse, Miss Leithcourt."
+
+"I know, I know!" she said quickly. "I trust you in this matter
+implicitly. I have come to you for many reasons, chief of them being
+that if a second victim has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, it
+is, I know, a woman."
+
+"A woman! Whom?"
+
+"At present I cannot tell you. I must first establish the true facts. If
+this woman were really stricken down, then her body lies concealed
+somewhere in the vicinity. We must find it and bring home the crime to
+the guilty one."
+
+"But if we succeed in finding it, could we place our hand upon the
+assassin?" I asked, looking straight at her.
+
+"If we find it, the crime would then tell its own tale--it would convict
+the person in whose hand I have seen that fatal weapon," was her clear,
+bold answer.
+
+"Then you wish me to assist you in this search, Miss Leithcourt?" I
+said, wondering if her suspicions rested upon that mysterious yachtsman,
+Philip Hornby, the man to whom she was engaged.
+
+"Yes, I would beg of you to do your utmost in secret to endeavor to
+discover the body of the second victim. It is a woman--of that I am
+certain. Find her, and we shall then be able to bring the crime home to
+the assassin."
+
+"But my search may bring suspicion upon me," I remarked. "It will be
+difficult to examine the whole wood without arousing the curiosity of
+somebody--the keeper or the police."
+
+"I have already thought of that," she said. "I will pretend to-morrow to
+lose this watch-bracelet in the wood," and she held up her slim wrist to
+show me the little enameled watch set in her bracelet. "Then you and I
+will search for it diligently, and the police will never suspect the
+real reason of our investigation. To-morrow I shall write to you telling
+you about my loss, and you will come over to Rannoch and offer to help
+me."
+
+I was silent for a moment.
+
+"Is Mr. Woodroffe back at the castle? I heard he was to return to-day."
+
+"No. I had a letter from him from Bordeaux a week ago. He is still on
+the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he
+sometimes has business."
+
+"I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr.
+Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company," I
+explained, smiling.
+
+Her cheeks flushed slightly, as though confused at my reference to her
+engagement, and she said mischievously:
+
+"I don't see why he should object in the least. If you are good enough
+to assist me to search for my bracelet, he surely ought to be much
+obliged to you."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to that dark-eyed, handsome
+girl the circumstances in which I had met her lover on the sunny
+Mediterranean shore, yet prudence forbade me to refer to the matter, and
+I at once gladly accepted her invitation to investigate the curious
+disappearance of the body of poor Olinto's fellow-victim.
+
+What secret knowledge could be possessed by that smart, handsome girl
+before me? That her suspicions were in the right direction I felt
+confident, yet if the dead woman had been removed and hidden by the
+assassin it must have been after the discovery made by me. The fellow
+must have actually dared to return to the spot and carry off the victim.
+Yet if he had actually done that, why did he allow the corpse of the
+Italian to remain and await discovery? He might perhaps have been
+disturbed and compelled to make good his escape.
+
+"If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some
+assistance," I pointed out. "He could not have carried the body very far
+unaided."
+
+She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had
+been committed alone and unaided.
+
+"Have you any idea as to the motive?" I asked her, eager to hear her
+reply.
+
+"Well," she answered hesitatingly, "if the woman has fallen a victim,
+the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a
+complete mystery."
+
+"You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny
+all knowledge of the murdered man!" I exclaimed in a tone of slight
+reproach.
+
+"Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,"
+was her answer. "I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect
+is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most
+startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the
+life of another."
+
+"Then a man is the assassin, you think?" I exclaimed quickly.
+
+"I believe so. But even of that I am not at all sure. We must first find
+the woman."
+
+She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly
+_misericordia_ that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had
+discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had
+been committed. But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own
+suspicions might become aroused. My own policy was to remain silent and
+to wait. The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.
+
+Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little
+way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her
+departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left
+by one of the servants' entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart
+and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the
+gloom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I
+stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where
+Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless
+sky.
+
+True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking
+me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to
+Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone
+over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll
+together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or
+hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high
+shooting-boots and a tam-o'-shanter hat, while I also had on an old
+shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could
+prod likely spots.
+
+On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely
+corner, but she replied:
+
+"I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years,
+while this is only my first season here."
+
+"Very well," I answered. "Let us place ourselves in the position of the
+murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the
+vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the
+wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords
+but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the
+valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore
+have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place
+to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle,
+examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
+beneath a thicket and well escape observation."
+
+And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
+way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
+minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
+great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
+very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
+which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
+surmise.
+
+All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
+Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
+received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
+exclaimed:
+
+"Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?"
+
+My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
+scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
+any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
+admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
+that spot.
+
+More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
+discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
+such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
+complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
+be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
+watchful.
+
+When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
+was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
+find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
+was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.
+
+Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
+beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
+stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
+wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.
+
+For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
+of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
+point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
+mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
+no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
+wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
+kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
+covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
+fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
+undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
+fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.
+
+"This is a most likely place," declared my dainty little companion as we
+approached it. "Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
+down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end," she cried
+with enthusiasm.
+
+Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
+descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
+and then by springing from stone to stone--sometimes slipping into the
+water, be it said--we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
+examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
+athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
+water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
+and wringing out her wet skirt, said:
+
+"It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
+of."
+
+And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
+steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
+the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
+openly denounce the assassin.
+
+As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
+connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
+Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Bulwark_
+and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
+left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
+not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
+original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed--that
+girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.
+
+The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
+hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
+was marvelous--and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
+determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
+truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
+convicting the guilty one?
+
+Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
+a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
+save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
+in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
+years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
+tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
+ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
+windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
+ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.
+
+The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
+afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
+our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
+boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
+I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.
+
+"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded
+in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.
+
+We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
+other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
+was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
+being disturbed.
+
+Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
+intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
+huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
+diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
+This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
+the utterance of a single word.
+
+To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
+shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
+side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
+slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
+summit.
+
+Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
+figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
+glen.
+
+"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"
+
+"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem
+fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
+the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."
+
+"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had
+something over his shoulder?"
+
+"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."
+
+"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short--and
+seemed more like a spade."
+
+"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain
+of that?"
+
+"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
+We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."
+
+"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
+broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
+the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a
+whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
+
+I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
+that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
+curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
+the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
+recently disturbed.
+
+"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down
+there! They've just been burying something!"
+
+Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:
+
+"I really believe they have concealed something!"
+
+Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
+down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
+that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
+
+Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
+we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
+freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
+
+Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
+with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
+had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
+really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
+large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
+over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
+high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
+ground had ever been interfered with.
+
+Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
+long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
+But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
+silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
+soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
+stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
+progress was very slow and difficult.
+
+At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
+standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
+suddenly cried:
+
+"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why--whatever is that?"
+
+I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
+that I was held dumb and motionless.
+
+By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
+rather than diminished.
+
+I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
+blankly into my companion's face.
+
+The amazing enigma was surely complete!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CONTAINS A SURPRISE
+
+
+The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
+was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
+proved to be part of a woman's skirt.
+
+With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
+soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
+
+A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
+had dug.
+
+Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
+from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
+woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
+Olinto. Both had been assassinated!
+
+When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
+expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
+she had expected to find.
+
+"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently,
+by her dress and hands."
+
+"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
+own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
+of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
+countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
+were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
+
+Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
+black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
+was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
+dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
+issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
+struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.
+
+"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my
+companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and
+ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
+and concealed the evidence of this second crime."
+
+"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."
+
+Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
+waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
+point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
+disappeared in the darkness of the wood.
+
+I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
+suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
+back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
+familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
+could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.
+
+We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and
+evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.
+But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night
+bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew
+their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had
+nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be
+already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet
+even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that
+of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat
+nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.
+
+We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew
+bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely
+faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills
+looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had
+so secretly concealed the body of their victim.
+
+"I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt," I said. "And then
+I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be
+arrested."
+
+"Yes, do," she urged. "I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for
+they must not see me in this terrible plight."
+
+It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as
+she did so I felt that she was shivering.
+
+"You are very wet," I remarked. "I hope you won't take cold."
+
+"Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and
+very often get drenched," was her reply. Then after a pause she said:
+"We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and
+her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man."
+
+"Yes, I think so," was my reply. "I will tell the police all that we
+have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body."
+
+"If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,"
+she declared. "One of them--the one in brown--was unusually
+broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop."
+
+"You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?"
+I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I expected to find an entirely different person."
+
+"And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with
+whom you are acquainted?"
+
+She nodded in the affirmative.
+
+"Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the
+identity of the assassins?"
+
+"No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter
+in the hands of the police."
+
+"But if the identity of the dead woman is established?" I asked.
+
+"It might furnish me with a clue," she exclaimed quickly. "Yes, try and
+discover who she is."
+
+"Who was the woman you expected to find?"
+
+"A friend--a very dear friend."
+
+"Will you not tell me her name?" I inquired.
+
+"No, it would be unfair to her," she responded decisively, an answer
+which to me was particularly tantalizing.
+
+On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not
+strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger
+still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from
+Scotland, but away to the Continent?
+
+Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?
+
+It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who,
+tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good
+fortune in my investigations.
+
+"I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything,
+won't you?"
+
+I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind
+the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across
+the open fields to my uncle's house.
+
+At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief
+police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair
+Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the
+previous day.
+
+When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related
+my adventure and the result of my investigation.
+
+"What?" he cried, jumping up. "You've unearthed another body--a
+woman's?"
+
+"I have. And what is more, I can identify her," I replied. "Her name is
+Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini."
+
+"Then both husband and wife were killed?"
+
+"Without a doubt--a double tragedy."
+
+"But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?"
+
+I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking--
+
+"We must find them." And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave
+him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all
+the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a
+charge of willful murder.
+
+When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned
+to me and asked--
+
+"What induced you to search the wood? Why did you suspect a second
+crime?"
+
+His question nonplused me for the moment.
+
+"Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him
+to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had
+accompanied him here. It was entirely a vague surmise. I wondered
+whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had
+not also been struck down."
+
+His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction. I knew my
+explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import
+Muriel's name into the affair. I had given her my promise, and I
+intended to keep it.
+
+"Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?"
+
+"Yes. If you wish, I will take you to the spot. I can drive you and your
+assistant up there."
+
+"Certainly. Let us go," he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his
+bell.
+
+"Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this
+gentleman's trap outside," he said to the constable who answered his
+summons. "And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to
+Rannoch Wood."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the man; and the door again closed.
+
+"It's a pity--a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn't stop those
+two men who buried the body."
+
+"They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket
+before I mounted the rock," I explained. "Besides, at the moment I had
+no suspicion of what they'd been doing. I believed them to be stragglers
+from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way."
+
+"Ah, most unfortunate!" he said. "I hope they don't escape us. If
+they're foreigners, they are not likely to get away. But if they're
+English or Scots, then I fear there's but little chance of us coming up
+with them. Yesterday at the inquest the identity of the murdered man was
+strictly preserved, and the inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight."
+
+"Of course my name was not mentioned?" I said.
+
+"Of course not," was the detective's reply. Then he asked: "When do you
+expect to get a telegram from your friend, the Consul at Leghorn? I am
+anxious for that, in order that we may commence inquiries in London."
+
+"The day after to-morrow, I hope. He will certainly reply at once,
+providing the dead man's father can still be found."
+
+And at that moment a tall, thin man, who proved to be Detective
+Campbell, entered, and five minutes later we were all three driving over
+the uneven cobbles of Dumfries and out in the darkness towards Rannoch.
+
+It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley;
+but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill
+up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep,
+rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across the
+moor. When we reached the latter we all descended, and I led the horse,
+for owing to the many treacherous bogs it was unsafe to drive further.
+So, with Mackenzie and Campbell carrying lanterns, we walked on
+carefully, skirting the wood for nearly a mile until we came to the
+rough wall over which I had clambered with Muriel.
+
+I recognized the spot, and having tied up the cob we all three plunged
+into the pitch-darkness of the wood, keeping straight on in the
+direction of the glen, and halting every now and then to listen for the
+rippling of the stream.
+
+At last, after some difficulty, we discovered it, and searching along
+the bank with our three powerful lights, I presently detected the huge
+moss-grown boulder whereon I had stood when the pair of fugitives had
+disappeared.
+
+"Look!" I cried. "There's the spot!" And quickly we clambered down the
+steep bank, lowering ourselves by the branches of the trees until we
+came to the water into which I waded, being followed closely by my two
+companions.
+
+On gaining the opposite side I clambered up to the base of the boulder
+and lowered my lantern to reveal to them the gruesome evidence of the
+second crime, but the next instant I cried--
+
+"Why! It's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" gasped the two men.
+
+"Yes. It was here. Look! this is the hole where they buried it! But they
+evidently returned, and finding it exhumed, they've retaken possession
+of it and carried it away!"
+
+The two detectives gazed down to where I indicated, and then looked at
+each other without exchanging a word.
+
+As we stood there dumbfounded at the disappearance of the body, the
+Highlander's quick glance caught something, and stooping he picked it up
+and examined the little object by the aid of his lantern.
+
+Within his palm I saw lying a tiny little gold cross, about an inch
+long, enameled in red, while in the center was a circular miniature of a
+kneeling saint, an elegant and beautifully executed little trinket which
+might have adorned a lady's bracelet.
+
+"This is a pretty little thing!" remarked the detective. "It may
+possibly lead us to something. But, Mr. Gregg," he added, turning to me,
+"are you quite certain you left the body here?"
+
+"Certain?" I echoed. "Why, look at the hole I made. You don't think I
+have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?"
+
+"Not at all," he said apologetically. "Only the whole affair seems so
+very inconceivable--I mean that the men, having once got rid of the
+evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and re-obtain
+possession of it."
+
+"Unless they watched me exhume it, and feared the consequences if it
+fell into your hands," I suggested.
+
+"Of course they might have watched you from behind the trees, and when
+you had gone they came and carried it away somewhere else," he remarked
+dubiously; "but even if they did, it must be in this wood. They would
+never risk carrying a body very far, and here is surely the best place
+of concealment in the whole country."
+
+"The only thing remaining is to search the wood at daylight," I
+suggested. "If the two men came back here during my absence they may
+still be on the watch in the vicinity."
+
+"Most probably they are. We must take every precaution," he said
+decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination
+of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish
+us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate
+Armida had disappeared--a fact which, knowing all that I did, was doubly
+mysterious.
+
+The pair had, without doubt, watched Muriel and myself, and as soon as
+we had gone they had returned and carried off the ghastly remains of the
+poor woman who had been so foully done to death.
+
+But who were the men--the fellow with the broad shoulders whom Muriel
+recognized, and the slim seafarer in his pilot-coat and peaked cap? The
+enigma each hour became more and more inscrutable.
+
+At dawn Mackenzie, with four of his men, made a thorough examination of
+the wood, but although they continued until dusk they discovered
+nothing, neither was anything heard of the mysterious seafarer and his
+companion in brown tweeds.
+
+I called on Muriel as arranged, and explained how the body had so
+suddenly disappeared, whereupon she stared at me pale-faced, saying--
+
+"The assassins must have watched us! They are aware, then, that we have
+knowledge of their crime?"
+
+"Of course," I said.
+
+"Ah!" she cried hoarsely. "Then we are both in deadly peril--peril of
+our own lives! These people will hesitate at nothing. Both you and I are
+marked down by them, without a doubt. We must both be wary not to fall
+into any trap they may lay for us."
+
+Her very words seemed an admission that she was aware of the identity of
+the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them.
+
+We went out and up the drive together to the kennels, where her father,
+a tall, imposing figure in his shooting-kit, was giving orders to the
+keepers.
+
+"Hulloa, Gregg!" he cried merrily, extending his hand. "You'll make one
+of a party to Glenlea to-morrow, won't you? Paton and Phillips are
+coming. Ten sharp here, and the ladies are coming out to lunch with us."
+
+"Thanks," I said, accepting with pleasure, for by so doing I saw that I
+might be afforded an opportunity of being near Muriel. The fact that the
+assassins were aware of our knowledge seemed to have caused her the
+greatest apprehension lest evil should befall us. Then, as we turned
+away to go back to the house, Leithcourt said to me--
+
+"You know all about the discovery up at the wood the other day! Horrible
+affair--a young foreigner found murdered."
+
+"Yes. I've heard about it," I responded.
+
+"And the police are worse than useless," he declared with disgust. "They
+haven't discovered who the fellow is yet. Why, if it had happened
+anywhere else but in Scotland, they'd have arrested the assassin before
+this."
+
+"He's an entire stranger, I hear," I remarked. And then added: "You
+often go up to the wood of an evening after pigeons. It's fortunate you
+were not there that evening, eh?"
+
+He glanced at me quickly with his brows slightly contracted, as though
+he did not exactly comprehend me. In an instant I saw that my remark had
+caused him quick apprehension.
+
+"Yes," he answered with a sickly smile which he intended should convey
+to me utter unconcern. "They might have suspected me."
+
+"It certainly is a disagreeable affair to happen on one's property." I
+said, still watching him narrowly. And then Muriel at his side managed
+with her feminine ingenuity to divert the conversation into a different
+channel.
+
+Next day I accompanied the party over to Glenlea, about five miles
+distant, and at noon at a spot previously arranged, we found the ladies
+awaiting us with luncheon spread under the trees. As soon as we
+approached Muriel came forward quickly, handing me a telegram, saying
+that it had been sent over by one of my uncle's grooms at the moment
+they were leaving the castle.
+
+I tore it open eagerly, and read its contents. Then, turning to my
+companions, said in as quiet a voice as I could command--
+
+"I must go up to London to-night," whereat the men, one and all,
+expressed hope that I should soon return. Leithcourt's party were a
+friendly set, and at heart I was sorry to leave Scotland. Yet the
+telegram made it imperative, for it was from Frank Hutcheson in Leghorn,
+and read--
+
+_"Made inquiries. Olinto Santini married your servant Armida at Italian
+Consulate-General in London about a year ago. They live 64B, Albany
+Road, Camberwell: he is employed waiter Ferrari's Restaurant,
+Westbourne Grove.--British Consulate, Leghorn"_
+
+The lunch was a merry one, as shooting luncheons usually are, and while
+we ate the keepers packed our morning bag--a considerable one--into the
+Perth-cart in waiting. Then, when we could wander away alone together, I
+explained to Muriel that the reason of my sudden journey to London was
+in order to continue my investigations regarding the mysterious affair.
+
+This puzzled her, for I had not, of course, revealed to her that I had
+identified Olinto. Yet I managed to make such excuses and promises to
+return that I think allayed all her suspicions, and that night, after
+calling upon the detective Mackenzie, I took the sleeping-car express to
+Euston.
+
+The restaurant which Hutcheson had indicated was, I found, situated
+about half-way up Westbourne Grove, nearly opposite Whiteley's, a small
+place where confectionery and sweets were displayed in the window,
+together with long-necked flasks of Italian chianti, chump-chops, small
+joints and tomatoes. It was soon after nine o'clock when I entered the
+long shop with its rows of marble-topped tables and greasy lounges of
+red plush. An unhealthy-looking lad was sweeping out the place with wet
+saw-dust, and a big, dark-bearded, flabby-faced man in shirt-sleeves
+stood behind the small counter polishing some forks.
+
+"I wish to see Signor Ferrari," I said, addressing him.
+
+"There is no Ferrari, he is dead," responded the man in broken English.
+"My name is Odinzoff. I bought the place from madame."
+
+"You are Russian, I presume?"
+
+"Polish, m'sieur--from Varsovie."
+
+I had seen from the first moment we had met that he was no Italian. He
+was too bulky, and his face too broad and flat.
+
+"I have come to inquire after a waiter you have in your service, an
+Italian named Santini. He was my servant for some years, and I naturally
+take an interest in him."
+
+"Santini?" he repeated. "Oh I you mean Olinto? He is not here yet. He
+comes at ten o'clock."
+
+This reply surprised me. I had expected the restaurant-keeper to express
+regret at his disappearance, yet he spoke as though he had been at work
+as usual on the previous day.
+
+"May I have a liqueur brandy?" I asked, seeing that I would be compelled
+to take something. "Perhaps you will have one with me?"
+
+"Ach no! But a kümmel--yes, I will have a kümmel!" And he filled our
+glasses, and tossed off his own at a single gulp, smacking his lips
+after it, for the average Russian dearly loves his national decoction of
+caraway seeds.
+
+"You find Olinto a good servant, I suppose?" I said, for want of
+something else to say.
+
+"Excellent. The Italians are the best waiters in the world. I am
+Russian, but dare not employ a Russian waiter. These English would not
+come to my shop if I did."
+
+I looked around, and it struck me that the trade of the place mainly
+consisted in chops and steaks for chance customers at mid-day, and tea
+and cake for those swarms of women who each afternoon buzz around that
+long line of windows of the "world's provider." I could see that his was
+a cheap trade, as revealed by the printed notice stuck upon one of the
+long fly-blown mirrors: "Ices _4d_ and _6d_."
+
+"How long has Olinto been with you?" I inquired.
+
+"About a year--perhaps a little more. I trust him implicitly, and I
+leave him in charge when I go away for holidays. He does not get along
+very well with the cook--who is Milanese. These Italians from different
+provinces always quarrel," he added, laughing. "If you live in Italy you
+know that, no doubt."
+
+I laughed in chorus, and then glancing at my watch, said: "I'll wait for
+him, if he will be here at ten. I'd much like to see him again."
+
+The Russian was by no means nonplused, but merely remarked--
+
+"He is late sometimes, but not often. He lives on the other side of
+London--over at Camberwell." His confidence that the waiter would return
+struck me as extremely curious; nevertheless I possessed myself in
+patience, strolled up and down the restaurant, and then stood watching
+the traffic in the Grove outside.
+
+The man Odinzoff seemed a quick, hard-working fellow with a keen eye to
+business, for he fell to polishing the top of the marble tables with a
+pail and brush, at the same time directing the work of the
+pallid-looking youth. Suddenly a side door opened, and the cook put his
+head in to speak with his master in French. He was a typical Italian,
+about forty, with dark mustaches turned upwards, and an easy-going,
+careless manner. Seeing me, however, and believing me to be a customer,
+he turned and closed the door quickly. In that instant I noticed the
+high broadness of his shoulders, and his back struck me as strangely
+similar to that of the man in brown whom we had seen disappearing in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+The suspicion held me breathless.
+
+Was this Russian endeavoring to deceive me when he declared that Olinto
+would arrive in a few minutes? It seemed curious, for the man now dead
+must, I reflected, have been away at least four days. Surely his
+absence from work had caused the proprietor considerable inconvenience?
+
+"That was your cook, wasn't it? The Milanese who is quarrelsome?" I
+laughed, when the side door had closed.
+
+"Yes, m'sieur. But Emilio is a very good workman--and very honest, even
+though I had constantly to complain that he uses too much oil in his
+cooking. These English do not like the oil."
+
+I stood in the doorway again watching the busy throng passing outside
+towards Royal Oak. Ten o'clock struck from a neighboring church, and I
+still waited, knowing only too well that I waited in vain for a man
+whose body had already been committed to the grave outside that far-away
+old Scotch town. But I waited in order to ascertain the motive of the
+bearded Russian in leading me to believe that the young fellow would
+really return.
+
+Presently Odinzoff went outside, carrying with him two boards upon which
+the menu of the "Eight-penny Luncheon! This Day!" was written in scrawly
+characters, and proceeded to affix them to the shop-front.
+
+This was my opportunity, and quick as thought I moved towards where the
+unhealthy youth was at work, and whispered:
+
+"I'll give you half-a-sovereign if you'll answer my questions
+truthfully. Now, tell me, was the cook, the man I've just seen, here
+yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Was he here the day before?"
+
+"No, sir. He's been away ill for four days."
+
+"And your master?"
+
+"He's been away too, sir."
+
+I had no time to put any further question, for the Russian re-entered at
+that moment, and the youth busied himself rubbing the front of the
+counter in pretense that I had not spoken to him. Indeed, I had some
+difficulty in slipping the promised coin into his hand at a moment when
+his master was not looking.
+
+Then I paced up and down the restaurant, waiting patiently and wondering
+whether the absence of Emilio had any connection with the tragedy up in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+While I stood there a rather thin, respectably-dressed man entered, and
+seating himself upon one of the plush lounges at the further end,
+removed his bowler hat and ordered from the proprietor a chop and a pot
+of tea. Then, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he settled himself to
+read, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.
+
+And yet as I watched I saw that over the top of his paper he was
+carefully taking in the general appearance of the place, and his eyes
+were keenly following the Russian's movements. The latter shouted--in
+French--the order for the chop through the speaking-tube to the man
+Emilio, and then returning to his customer he spread out a napkin and
+placed a small cruet, with knife, fork, and bread before him. But the
+customer seemed immersed in his paper, and never looked up until after
+the Russian's back was turned. Then so deep was his interest in the
+place, and so keen those dark eyes of his, that the truth suddenly
+dawned upon me. Mackenzie had telegraphed to Scotland Yard, and the
+customer sitting there was a detective who had come to investigate. I
+had advanced to the counter to chat again with the proprietor, when a
+quick step behind me caused me to turn.
+
+Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy
+black jacket.
+
+"_Dio Signor Padrone!_" he cried.
+
+I staggered as though I had received a blow.
+
+Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM
+
+
+No words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I
+faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that gray stone
+slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.
+
+My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his
+paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently
+been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself,
+discovered him alive and living.
+
+"Signor Padrone!" cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely
+bewildering. "How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when
+I told you I worked at the Milano," he went on rapidly in Italian. "But
+it was under compulsion--my actions that night were not my own--but
+those of others."
+
+"Yes, I understand," I said. "But come out into the street. I don't wish
+to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian, no doubt."
+
+"Ah! only a very little," he answered, smiling. "Have no fear of him."
+
+"But there is Emilio, the cook?"
+
+"Then you have met him!" he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of
+apprehension. "He is an undesirable person, signore."
+
+"So I gather," I answered. "But I desire to speak to you outside--not
+here." And then turning with a smile to the Pole, I apologized for
+taking away his servant for a few minutes. "Recollect, I am his old
+master, I added."
+
+"Of course, m'sieur," answered the Pole, bowing politely. "Speak with
+him where and how long you will. He is entirely at your service."
+
+And when we were outside in Westbourne Grove, Olinto walking by my side
+in wonderment, I asked suddenly:
+
+"Tell me. Have you ever been in Scotland--at Dumfries?"
+
+"Never, signore, in my life. Why?"
+
+"Answer me another question," I said quickly. "You married Armida at the
+Italian Consulate. Where is she now--where is she this morning?"
+
+He turned pale, and I saw a complete change in his countenance.
+
+"Ah, signore!" he responded, "I only wish I could tell."
+
+"It is untrue that she is an invalid," I went on, "or that you live in
+Lambeth. Your address is in Albany Road, Camberwell. You can't deny
+these facts."
+
+"I do not deny them, Signor Commendatore. But how did you learn this?"
+
+"The authorities in Italy know everything," I answered. "Like that of
+all your countrymen, your record is written down at the Commune."
+
+"It is a clean one, at any rate, signore," he declared with some slight
+warmth. "I have a permesso to carry a revolver, which is in itself
+sufficient proof that I am a man of spotless character."
+
+"I cast no reflection whatever upon you, Olinto," I answered. "I have
+merely inquired after your wife, and you do not give me a direct reply."
+
+We had walked to the Royal Oak, and stood talking on the curb outside.
+
+"I give you no reply, because I can't," he said in Italian. "Armida--my
+poor Armida--has left home."
+
+"Why did you tell me such a tale of distress regarding her?"
+
+"As I have already explained, signore, I was not then master of my own
+actions. I was ruled by others. But I saved your life at risk of my own.
+Some day, when it is safe, I will reveal to you everything."
+
+"Let us allow the past to remain," I said. "Where is your wife now?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, looking straight into my face.
+
+"Well, Signor Commendatore, to tell the truth, she has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared!" I echoed. "And have you not made any report to the
+police?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"For reasons known only to myself I did not wish the police to pry into
+my private affairs."
+
+"I know. Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife--eh?
+I recollect quite well that affair--a love affair, was it not?"
+
+"Yes, Signor Commendatore. But I was a youth then--a mere boy."
+
+"Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared," I
+urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset
+him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was
+bursting to tell.
+
+"Well, signore," he said at last in a low tone of confidence, "I don't
+like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told
+you when we last met."
+
+"Go on," I said. "Tell me the truth."
+
+After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined
+to doubt him.
+
+"The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously
+disappeared. Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the
+garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out. She
+apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of
+her."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so
+strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon
+his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated
+to relate what I knew.
+
+"She spoke English, I suppose?"
+
+"She could make herself understood very well," he said with a sigh, and
+I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow. That he was really devoted
+to her, I knew. With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is
+all-consuming--it is either perfect love or genuine hatred. The Tuscan
+character is one of two extremes.
+
+I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered
+his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.
+
+"Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go
+away from home? Perhaps you had some words!"
+
+"Words, signore!" he echoed. "Why, we were the happiest pair in all
+London. No unkind word ever passed between us. There seems absolutely no
+reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of
+farewell."
+
+"But why haven't you told the police?"
+
+"For reasons that I have already stated. I prefer to make inquiries for
+myself."
+
+"And in what have your inquiries resulted?"
+
+"Nothing--absolutely nothing," he said gravely.
+
+"You do not suspect any plot? I recollect that night in Lambeth you
+told me that you had enemies?"
+
+"Ah! so I have, signore--and so have you!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Yes,
+my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them."
+
+"And if entrapped, what then?"
+
+"Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a
+fly," he said. "Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people. I
+only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere,
+and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise. She
+delights in startling me," he added with a laugh.
+
+Poor fellow, I thought, she would never again be able to startle him.
+She had actually fallen a victim just as he dreaded.
+
+"Then you think she must have been called away from home by some urgent
+message?" I suggested.
+
+"By the manner in which she left things, it seemed as though she went
+away hurriedly. There were five sovereigns in a drawer that we had saved
+for the rent, and she took them with her."
+
+I paused again, hesitating whether to tell him the terrible truth. I
+recollected that the body had disappeared, therefore what proof had I of
+my allegation that she had been murdered?
+
+"Tell me, Olinto," I said as we moved forward again in the direction of
+Paddington Station, "have you any knowledge of a man named Leithcourt?"
+
+He started suddenly and looked at me.
+
+"I have heard of him," he answered very lamely.
+
+"And of his daughter--Muriel?"
+
+"And also of her. But I am not acquainted with them--nor, to tell the
+truth, do I wish to be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they are enemies of mine--bitter enemies."
+
+His declaration was strange, for it threw some light upon the tragedy in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+"And of your wife also?"
+
+"I do not know that," he responded. "My enemies are my wife's also, I
+suppose."
+
+"You have not told me the secret of that dastardly attempt upon me when
+we last met," I said in a low voice. "Why not tell me the truth? I
+surely ought to know who my enemies really are, so as to be warned
+against any future plot."
+
+"You shall know some day, signore. I dare not tell you now."
+
+"You said that before," I exclaimed with dissatisfaction. "If you are
+faithful to me, you ought at least to tell me the reason they wished to
+kill me in secret."
+
+"Because they fear you," was his answer.
+
+"Why should they fear me?"
+
+But he shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture with his hands
+indicative of utter ignorance.
+
+"I ask you one question. Answer yes or no. Is the man Leithcourt my
+enemy?"
+
+The young Italian paused, and then answered:
+
+"He is not your friend. I am quite well aware of that."
+
+"And his daughter? She is engaged, I hear."
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Where did you first meet Leithcourt?"
+
+"I have known him several years. When we first met he was poor."
+
+"Suddenly became rich--eh?"
+
+"Bought a fine house in the country; lives mostly at the Carlton when he
+and his wife and daughter are in London--although I believe they now
+have a house somewhere in the West End--and he often makes long cruises
+on his steam-yacht."
+
+"And how did he make his money?"
+
+Again Olinto elevated his shoulders, without replying.
+
+If he would only betray to me the reason he had been induced to entice
+me to that house, I might then be able to form some conclusion regarding
+the tenants of Rannoch and their friends.
+
+Who was the man who, having represented the man now before me, had been
+struck dead by an unerring hand? Was it possible that Armida had been
+called by telegram to meet her husband, and recognizing the fraud
+perpetrated upon her threatened to disclose it and, for that reason,
+shared the same fate as the masquerader?
+
+This was the first theory that occurred to me; one which I believed to
+be the correct one. The motive was a mystery, yet the facts seemed to me
+plain enough.
+
+As the young Italian had refused to give any satisfactory explanation, I
+resolved within myself to wait until the unfortunate woman's body was
+recovered before revealing to him the ghastly truth. Without doubt he
+had some reason in withholding from me the true facts, either because he
+feared that I might become unduly alarmed, or else he himself had been
+deeply implicated in the plot. Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to
+believe in the latter.
+
+He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with
+all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew
+concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal
+that I had only that morning returned from Scotland. Then at last we
+parted, and he retraced his steps to the little restaurant in Westbourne
+Grove, while I entered a hansom and drove to the well-known
+photographer's in New Bond Street, whose name had been upon the torn
+photograph of the young girl in the white piqué blouse and her hair
+fastened with a bow of black ribbon, the picture that I had found on
+board the _Lola_ on that memorable night in the Mediterranean, and a
+duplicate of which I had seen in Muriel's cosy little room up at
+Rannoch.
+
+I recollected that she had told me the name of the original was Elma
+Heath, and that she had been a schoolfellow of hers at Chichester.
+Therefore I inquired of the photographer's lady-clerk whether she could
+supply me with a print of the negative.
+
+For a considerable time she searched in her books for the name, and at
+last discovered it. Then she said:
+
+"I regret, sir, that we can't give you a print, for the customer
+purchased the negative at the time."
+
+"Ah, I'm very sorry for that," I said. "To what address did you send
+it?"
+
+"The customer who ordered it was apparently a foreigner," she said, at
+the same time turning round the ledger so that I could read. And I saw
+that the entry was: "Heath--Miss Elma--3 dozen cabinets and negative.
+Address: Baron Xavier Oberg, Vosnesenski Prospect 48, St. Petersburg,
+Russia."
+
+"Did this gentleman come with the young lady when her portrait was
+taken?" I inquired.
+
+"I can't tell, sir," she replied. "I've only been here a year, and you
+see the date--over two years ago."
+
+"The photographer would know, perhaps?"
+
+"He's a new man, sir. He only came a month ago. In fact, the business
+changed hands a year ago, and none of the previous employees have
+remained."
+
+"Ah! that's unfortunate," I said, greatly disappointed; and having
+copied the address to which the negative and prints had been sent, I
+thanked her and left.
+
+Who, I wondered, was this Baron Oberg, and what relation was he to Elma
+Heath?
+
+The picture of the girl in the white blouse somehow exercised a strange
+attraction for me.
+
+Have you never experienced the fascination of a photograph, inexplicable
+and yet forcible--a kind of magnetism from which you cannot release
+yourself? Perhaps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it
+from its frame on board the _Lola_ and destroyed it that first aroused
+my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room
+at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often
+wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the
+yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.
+
+Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived
+in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I
+resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.
+
+At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend
+Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the
+name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German
+books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name
+did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.
+
+"He may be Russian--Polish most probably," added the captain, a tall,
+fair fellow in gold spectacles, whom I had known when he was third
+secretary of Embassy at Rome. His opinion was that it was not a German
+name, for there was a little place called Oberg, he said, on the railway
+between Lodz and Lowicz.
+
+Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary,
+old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian
+days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open
+waste. I found the house where Olinto lived--a small, smoke-blackened,
+semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with
+a wooden veranda before the first floor windows. The house, according to
+the woman who kept a general shop at the corner, was occupied by two
+families. The "Eye-talians," as she termed them, lived above, while the
+Gibbonses rented the ground floor.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. The foreigners are respectable enough. Always pays me
+ready money for everythink, except the milk. That they pays for weekly."
+
+"I understand that the wife has disappeared. What have you heard about
+that?"
+
+"They do say, sir, that they 'ad some words together the other day, and
+that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe
+all you 'ear, you know."
+
+"Did they often quarrel?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable
+persons for foreigners."
+
+I repassed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy
+Camberwell Road I took an omnibus back to the Hotel Cecil in the Strand
+where I had put up, tired and disappointed.
+
+Next day I ran down to Chichester, and after some difficulty found the
+Cheverton College for Ladies, a big old-fashioned house about
+half-a-mile out of the town on the Drayton Road. The seminary was
+evidently a first-class one, for when I entered I noticed how well
+everything was kept.
+
+To the principal, an elderly lady of a somewhat severe aspect, I said:
+
+"I regret, madam, to trouble you, but I am in search of information you
+can supply. It is with regard to a certain Elma Heath whom you had as
+pupil here, and who left, I believe, about two years ago. Her parents
+lived in Durham."
+
+"I remember her perfectly," was the woman's response as she sat behind
+the big desk, having apparently at first expected that I had a daughter
+to put to school.
+
+"Well," I said, "there has been some little friction in the family, and
+I am making inquiries on behalf of another branch of it--an aunt who
+desires to ascertain the girl's whereabouts."
+
+"Ah, I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you that. The Baron, her uncle,
+came here one day and took her away suddenly--abroad, I think."
+
+"Had she no school-friend to whom she would probably write?"
+
+"There was a girl named Leithcourt--Muriel Leithcourt--who was her
+friend, but who has also left."
+
+"And no one else?" I asked. "Girls often write to each other after
+leaving school, until they get married, and then the correspondence
+usually ceases."
+
+The principal was silent and reflective.
+
+"Well," she said at last, "there was another pupil who was also on
+friendly terms with Elma--a girl named Lydia Moreton. She may have
+written to her. If you really desire to know, sir, I dare say I could
+find her address. She left us about nine months after Elma."
+
+"I should esteem it a great favor if you would give me that young lady's
+address," I said, whereupon she unlocked a drawer in her writing-table
+and took therefrom a thick, leather-bound book which she consulted for a
+few minutes, at last exclaiming:
+
+"Yes, here it is--'Lydia Moreton, daughter of Sir Hamilton Moreton,
+K.C.M.G., Whiston Grange, Doncaster.'" And she scribbled it in pencil
+upon an envelope, and handing it to me, said:
+
+"Elma Heath was, I fear, somewhat neglected by her parents. She remained
+here for five years, and had no holidays like the other girls. Her
+uncle, the Baron, came to see her several times, but on each occasion
+after he had left I found her crying in secret. He was mean and unkind
+to her. Now that I recollect, I remember that Lydia had said she had
+received a letter from her, therefore she might be able to give you some
+information."
+
+And with that I took my leave, thanking her, and returned to London.
+
+Could Lydia Moreton furnish any information? If so, I might find this
+girl whose photograph had aroused the irate jealousy of the mysterious
+unknown.
+
+The ten o'clock Edinburgh express from King's Cross next morning took me
+up to Doncaster, and hiring a musty old fly at the station, I drove
+three miles out of the town on the Rotherham Road, finding Whiston
+Grange to be a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the center of a great
+park, with tall old twisted chimneys, and beautifully-kept gardens.
+
+When I descended at the door and rang, the footman was not aware whether
+Miss Lydia was in. He looked at me somewhat suspiciously, I thought,
+until I gave my card and impressed upon him meaningly that I had come
+from London purposely to see his young mistress upon a very important
+matter.
+
+"Tell her," I said, "that I wish to see her regarding her friend, Miss
+Elma Heath."
+
+"Miss Elma 'Eath," repeated the man. "Very well, sir. Will you walk this
+way?"
+
+And then I followed him across the big old oak-paneled hall, filled with
+trophies of the chase and arms of the civil wars, into a small paneled
+room on the left, the deep-set window with its diamond panes giving out
+upon the old bowling-green and the flower-garden beyond.
+
+Presently the door opened, and a tall dark-haired girl in white entered
+with an enquiring expression upon her face as she halted and bowed to
+me.
+
+"Miss Lydia Moreton, I believe?" I commenced, and as she replied in the
+affirmative I went on: "I have first to apologize for coming to you, but
+Miss Sotheby, the principal of the school at Chichester, referred me to
+you for information as to the present whereabouts of Miss Elma Heath,
+who, I believe, was one of your most intimate friends at school." And I
+added a lie, saying: "I am trying, on behalf of an aunt of hers, to
+discover her."
+
+"Well," responded the girl, "I have had only one or two letters. She's
+in her uncle's hands, I believe, and he won't let her write, poor girl.
+She dreaded leaving us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ah! she would never say. She had some deep-rooted terror of her uncle,
+Baron Oberg, who lived in St. Petersburg, and who came over at long
+intervals to see her. But possibly you know the whole story?"
+
+"I know nothing," I cried eagerly. "You will be furthering her
+interests, as well as doing me a great personal favor, if you will tell
+me what you know."
+
+"It is very little," she answered, leaning back against the edge of the
+table and regarding me seriously. "Poor Elma! Her people treated her
+very badly indeed. They sent her no money, and allowed her no holidays,
+and yet she was the sweetest-tempered and most patient girl in the whole
+school."
+
+"Well--and the story regarding her?"
+
+"It was supposed that her people at Durham did not exist," she
+explained. "Elma had evidently lived a greater part of her life abroad,
+for she could speak French and Italian better than the professor
+himself, and therefore always won the prizes. The class revolted, and
+then she did not compete any more. Yet she never told us of where she
+had lived when a child. She came from Durham, she said--that was all."
+
+"You had a letter from her after the Baron came and took her away?"
+
+"Yes, from London. She said that she had been to several plays and
+concerts, but did not care for life in town. There was too much bustle
+and noise and study of clothes."
+
+"And what other letters did you receive from her?"
+
+"Three or four, I think. They were all from places abroad. One was from
+Vienna, one was from Milan, and one from some place with an
+unpronounceable name in Hungary. The last----"
+
+"Yes, the last?" I gasped eagerly, interrupting her.
+
+"Well, the last I received only a fortnight ago. If you will wait a
+moment I will go and get it. It was so strange that I haven't destroyed
+it." And she went out, and I heard by the frou-frou of her skirts that
+she was ascending the stairs.
+
+After five minutes of breathless anxiety she rejoined me, and handing me
+the letter to read, said:
+
+"It is not in her handwriting--I wonder why?"
+
+The paper was of foreign make, with blue lines ruled in squares. Written
+in a hand that was evidently foreign, for the mistakes in the
+orthography were many, was the following curious communication:
+
+"My Dear Lydia:
+
+"Perhaps you may never get this letter--the last I shall ever be able to
+send you. Indeed, I run great risks in sending it. Ah! you do not know
+the awful disaster that has happened to me, all the terrors and the
+tortures I endure. But no one can assist me, and I am now looking
+forward to the time when it will all be over. Do you recollect our old
+peaceful days in the garden at Chichester? I think of them always,
+always, and compare that sweet peace of the past with my own terrible
+sufferings of to-day. Ah, how I wish I might see you once again; how
+that I might feel your hand upon my brow, and hear your words of hope
+and encouragement! But happiness is now debarred from me, and I am only
+sinking to the grave under this slow torture of body and of soul.
+
+"This will pass through many hands before it reaches the post. If,
+however, it ever does get despatched and you receive it, will you do me
+one last favor--a favor to an unfortunate girl who is friendless and
+helpless, and who will no longer trouble the world? It is this: Take
+this letter to London, and call upon Mr. Martin Woodroffe at 98 Cork
+Street, Piccadilly. Show him my letter, and tell him from me that
+through it all I have kept my promise, and that the secret is still
+safe. He will understand--and also know why I cannot write this with my
+own hand. If he is abroad, keep it until he returns.
+
+"It is all I ask of you, Lydia, and I know that if this reaches you, you
+will not refuse me. You have been my only friend and confidante, but I
+now bid you farewell, for the unknown beckons me, and from the grave I
+cannot write. Again farewell, and for ever.
+
+"Your loving and affectionate friend,
+
+"Elma."
+
+"A very strange letter, is it not?" remarked the girl at my side. "I
+can't make it out. You see there is no address, but the postmark is
+Russian. She is evidently in Russia."
+
+"In Finland," I said, examining the stamp and making out the post town
+to be Abo. "But have you been to London and executed this strange
+commission?"
+
+"No. We are going up next week. I intend to call upon this person named
+Woodroffe."
+
+I made no remark. He was, I knew, abroad, but I was glad at having
+obtained two very important clues: first, the address of the mysterious
+yachtsman, Woodroffe, alias Hornby, and, secondly, ascertaining that the
+young girl I sought was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Abo,
+the Finnish port on the Baltic.
+
+"Poor Elma, you see, speaks in her letter of some secret, Mr. Gregg," my
+companion said. "She says she wishes this Mr. Woodroffe, whoever he is,
+to know that she has kept her promise and has not divulged it. This only
+bears out what I have all along suspected."
+
+"What are your suspicions?"
+
+"Well, from her deep, thoughtful manner, and from certain remarks she at
+times made to me, I believe that Elma is in possession of some great and
+terrible secret--a secret which her uncle, Baron Oberg, is desirous of
+learning. I know she holds him in deadly fear--she is in terror that she
+may inadvertently betray to him the truth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE
+
+
+The strange letter of Elma Heath, combined with what Lydia Moreton had
+told me, aroused within me a determination to investigate the mystery.
+From the moment I had landed from the _Lola_ on that hot, breathless
+night at Leghorn, mystery had crowded upon mystery until it was all
+bewildering.
+
+It was now proved that the sweet-faced girl, the original of the torn
+photograph, held a secret, and that, by her own words, she knew that
+death was approaching. The incomprehensible attempt upon my life, the
+strange actions of Hornby and Chater--who, by the way, seemed to have
+entirely disappeared--the assassination of the man who by masquerading
+as the Italian waiter had met his death, and the murder of Olinto's wife
+were all problems which required solution.
+
+Had it not been for the mystery of it all--and mystery ever arouses the
+human curiosity--I should have given up trying to get at the truth. Yet
+as a man with some leisure, and knowing by that letter of Elma Heath's
+that she was in sore distress, I redoubled my efforts to ascertain the
+reason of it all.
+
+The mystery of the _Lola_ was still a mystery along the Mediterranean.
+At every French and Italian port the yacht's false name and general
+build was written in the police-books, while at Lloyd's the name _Lola_
+was marked down as among the mysterious craft at sea.
+
+Chater was missing, while Hornby was abroad. Perhaps they were both
+cruising again, with their yacht repainted and bearing a fresh name. But
+why? What had been their motive?
+
+Stirred by the complete mystery which now seemed to enshroud the
+unfortunate girl, I set before myself the task of elucidating it.
+Hitherto I had remained passive rather than active, but I now realized
+by that curious letter that at least one woman's life was at stake--that
+Elma Heath was in possession of some secret.
+
+On leaving Leghorn I had given up all hope of tracing the mysterious
+yachtsman, and had left the matter in the hands of the Italian police.
+But, without any effort on my own part, I seemed to have been drawn into
+a veritable network of strange incidents, all of which combined to form
+the most complete and remarkable enigma ever presented in life. Surely
+no man was ever confronted by so many mysteries at one time as I was at
+this moment.
+
+Fortunately I had been careful not to show my hand to anyone, and this
+perhaps gave me a distinct advantage. On my journey back to London, as
+the train swung through Peterborough and out across the rich level lands
+towards Hitchin, I recollected Jack Durnford's words when I had
+mentioned the _Lola_. What, I wondered, did he know?
+
+Next month, in November, he was due back in London after his three
+years' service on the Mediterranean station. Then we should meet in a
+few weeks I hoped. Would he tell me anything when he became aware of all
+I knew? He held some secret knowledge. Was it possible that his secret
+was the same as that held by the unfortunate girl in far-off, dreary
+Finland?
+
+I called at the house in Cork Street indicated by Elma, and learned
+from the old commissionaire who acted as lift-man and porter, that Mr.
+Woodroffe's chambers were closed.
+
+"'E's nearly always away, sir--abroad, I think," was all I could get out
+of the old soldier, who, like his class, was no doubt well paid to keep
+his mouth closed.
+
+For two days I lounged about Westbourne Grove watching Ferrari's
+restaurant. In such a busy, bustling thoroughfare, with so many shop
+windows as excuses for loitering, the task was easy. I saw that Olinto
+came regularly at ten o'clock in the morning, worked hard all day, and
+left at nine o'clock at night, taking an omnibus home from Royal Oak.
+His exterior was calm and unconcerned, unlike that of a man whose
+devoted wife had disappeared.
+
+I would have approached him and explained the ghastly truth, had it not
+been for the fact that the poor woman's body was missing.
+
+Those September days were full of anxiety for me. Alone and unaided I
+was trying to solve one of the greatest of problems, plunged as I was in
+a veritable sea of mystery. I wanted to see Muriel Leithcourt, and to
+question her further regarding Elma Heath. Therefore again I left
+Euston, and, traveling through the night, took my seat at the
+breakfast-table at Greenlaw next morning.
+
+Sir George, who was sitting alone--it not being my aunt's habit to
+appear early--welcomed me, and then in his bluff manner sniffed and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Nice goings on up at Rannoch! Have you heard of them?"
+
+"No. What?" I cried breathlessly, staring at him.
+
+"Well, my suspicions that those Leithcourts were utter outsiders turns
+out to be about correct."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, it's a very funny story, and there are a dozen different
+distorted versions of it," he said. "But from what I can gather the true
+facts are these: About seven o'clock the night before last, as
+Leithcourt and his house-party were dressing for dinner, a telegram
+arrived. Mrs. Leithcourt opened it, and at once went off into hysterics,
+while her husband, in a breathless hurry, slipped off his evening
+clothes again and got into an old blue serge suit, tossed a few things
+into a bag, and then went along to Muriel's room to urge her to prepare
+for secret flight."
+
+"Flight!" I gasped. "What, have they gone?"
+
+"Listen, and I'll tell you. The servants have described the whole affair
+down in the village, so there's no doubt about it. Leithcourt showed
+Muriel the telegram and urged her to fly. At first she refused, but for
+her father's sake was induced to prepare to accompany him. Of course,
+the guests were in ignorance of all this. The brougham was ordered to be
+ready in the stable-yard and not to go round, while Mrs. Leithcourt's
+maid tried to bring the lady back to her senses. Leithcourt himself, it
+seemed, rushed hither and thither, seizing the jewel-cases of his wife
+and daughter and whatever valuables he could place his hand upon, while
+the mother and daughter were putting on their things. As he rushed down
+the main staircase to the library, where his check-book and some ready
+cash were locked in the safe, he met a stranger who had just been
+admitted and shown into the room. Leithcourt closed the door and faced
+him. What afterwards transpired, however, is a mystery, for two hours
+later, after he and the two women had escaped, leaving the house-party
+to their own diversions, the stranger was found locked in a large
+cupboard and insensible. The sensation was a tremendous one. Cowan, the
+doctor, was called, and declared that the stranger had been drugged and
+was suffering from some narcotic. The servant who admitted him declared
+that the man had said he had an appointment with his master, and that no
+card was necessary. He, however, gave the name of Chater."
+
+"Chater!" I cried, starting up. "Are you certain of that name?"
+
+"I only know what Cowan told me," was my uncle's reply. "But do you know
+him?"
+
+"Not at all. Only I've heard that name before," I said. "I knew a man
+out in Italy of the same name. But where is the visitor now?"
+
+"In the hospital at Dumfries. They took him there in preference to
+leaving him alone at Rannoch."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Of course. Everyone has left, now the host and hostess have slipped off
+without saying good-bye. Scandalous affair, isn't it? But, my boy,
+you'll remember that I always said I didn't like those people. There's
+something mysterious about them, I feel certain. That telegram gave them
+warning of the visit of the man Chater, depend upon it, and for some
+reason they're afraid of him. It would be interesting to know what
+transpired between the two men in the library. And these are people
+who've been taken up by everybody--mere adventurers, I should call
+them!" And old Sir George sniffed again at thought of such scandal
+happening in the neighborhood. "If Gilrae must let Rannoch, then why in
+the name of Fortune doesn't he let it to respectable folk and not to the
+first fellow who answers his advertisement in _The Field?_ It's simply
+disgraceful!"
+
+"Certainly, it is a most extraordinary story," I declared. "Leithcourt
+evidently wished to escape from his visitor, and that's why he drugged
+him."
+
+"Why he poisoned him, you mean. Cowan says the fellow is poisoned, but
+that he'll probably recover. He is already conscious, I hear."
+
+I resolved to call on the doctor, who happened to be well known to me,
+and obtain further particulars. Therefore at eleven o'clock I drove into
+Dumfries and entered his consulting-room.
+
+He was a spare, short, fair man, a trifle bald, and when I was shown in
+he welcomed me warmly, speaking with his pronounced Galloway accent.
+
+"Well, it is a very mysterious case, Mr. Gregg," he said, after I had
+told him the object of my visit. "The gentleman is still in the
+hospital, and I have to keep him very quiet. He was poisoned without a
+doubt, and has had a very narrow escape of his life. The police got wind
+of the affair, and Mackenzie called to question him. But he refused to
+make any statement whatever, apparently treating the affair very
+lightly. The police, however, are mystified as to the reason of Mr.
+Leithcourt's sudden flight, and are anxious to get at the bottom of the
+curious affair."
+
+"Naturally. And more especially after the tragedy up in Rannoch Wood a
+short time ago," I said.
+
+"That's just it," said the doctor, removing his pince-nez and rubbing
+them. "Mackenzie seems to suspect some connection between Leithcourt's
+sudden disappearance and that mysterious affair. It seems very evident
+that the telegram was a warning to Leithcourt of the man Chater's
+intention of calling, and that the last-named was shown in just at the
+moment when the fugitive was on the point of leaving."
+
+"Chater." I echoed. "Do you know his Christian name?"
+
+"Hylton Chater. He is apparently a gentleman. Curious that he will tell
+us nothing of the reason he called, and of the scene that occurred
+between them."
+
+Knowing all that I did, I was not surprised. Leithcourt had undoubtedly
+taken him unawares, but knights of industry never betray each other.
+
+My next visit was to Mackenzie, for whom I had to wait nearly an hour,
+as he was absent in another quarter of the town.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Gregg!" he cried gladly, as he came in to find me seated in a
+chair patiently reading the newspaper. "You are the very person I wish
+to see. Have you heard of this strange affair at Rannoch?"
+
+"I have," was my answer. "Has the man in the hospital made any statement
+yet?"
+
+"None. He refuses point-blank," answered the detective. "But my own idea
+is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries of
+the wood."
+
+"The first mystery--that of the man--proves to be a double mystery," I
+said.
+
+"How? Explain it."
+
+"Well, the waiter Olinto Santini is alive and well in London."
+
+"What!" he gasped, starting up. "Then he is not the person you
+identified him to be?"
+
+"No. But he was masquerading as Santini--made up to resemble him, I
+mean, even to the mole upon his face."
+
+"But you identified him positively?"
+
+"When a person is dead it is very easy to mistake countenances. Death
+alters the countenance so very much."
+
+"That's true," he said reflectively. "But if the man we've buried is not
+the Italian, then the mystery is considerably increased. Why was the
+real man's wife here?"
+
+"And where has her body been concealed? That's the question."
+
+"Again a mystery. We have made a thorough search for four days, without
+discovering any trace of it. Quite confidentially, I'm wondering if this
+man Chater knows anything. It is curious, to say the least, that the
+Leithcourts should have fled so hurriedly on this man's appearance. But
+have you actually seen Olinto Santini?"
+
+"Yes, and have spoken with him."
+
+"I sent up to London asking that inquiries should be made at the
+restaurant in Bayswater, but up to the present I have received no
+report."
+
+"I have chatted with Olinto. His wife has mysteriously disappeared, but
+he is in ignorance that she is dead."
+
+"You did not tell him anything?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Ah, you did well. There is widespread conspiracy here, depend upon it,
+Mr. Gregg. It will be an interesting case when we get to the bottom of
+it all. I only wish this fellow Chater would tell us the reason he
+called upon Leithcourt."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Merely that he has no wish to prosecute, and that he has no statement
+to make."
+
+"Can't you compel him to say something?" I asked.
+
+"No, I can't. That's the infernal difficulty of it. If he don't choose
+to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel
+confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood."
+
+And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective's belief.
+
+The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.
+
+The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on
+everyone's tongue in Dumfries. In the smoke-room of the railway hotel
+three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and
+the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the
+strange goings-on up at the Castle.
+
+As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top
+before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the
+situation. I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet
+when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the
+_Lola_, I naturally hesitated. He was allied with Hornby, apparently
+against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby's friend.
+
+What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle
+which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through
+the rain? How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible
+and hiding him in that cupboard? Did he believe that he had killed him?
+
+If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of
+myself. No. I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so
+affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain
+in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge. Therefore I stayed for
+a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care
+that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.
+
+Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that
+tantalizing silence. The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man
+in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful
+murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public
+had no knowledge, for the body was not discovered.
+
+Time after time I searched the wood alone, on the pretense of shooting
+pigeon, but discovered nothing. When not having sport on my uncle's
+property, I joined various parties in the neighborhood, not because
+Scotland at that time attracted me, but because I desired to watch
+events.
+
+Chater, as soon as he recovered, left the hospital and went south--to
+London, I ascertained--leaving the police utterly in the dark and filled
+with suspicion of the fugitives from Rannoch.
+
+I longed to know the whereabouts of Muriel, hoping to gain from her some
+information regarding their visitor who had so nearly escaped with his
+life. That she was aware of the object of his visit was plain from the
+statements of the servants, all of whom had been left without either
+money or orders.
+
+One day I called at the castle, the front entrance of which I found
+closed. Gilrae, the owner, had come up from London, met his factor
+there, and discharged all the late tenant's servants, keeping on only
+three of his own who had been in service there for a number of years.
+Ann Cameron, a housemaid, was one of these, and it was she whom I met
+when entering by the servants' hall.
+
+On questioning her, I found her most willing to describe how she was in
+the corridor outside the young mistress's room when Mr. Leithcourt
+dashed along in breathless haste with the telegram in his hand. She
+heard him cry: "Look at this! Read it, Muriel. We must go. Put on your
+things at once, my dear. Never mind about luggage. Every minute lost is
+of consequence. What!" he cried a moment later. "You won't go? You'll
+stay here--stay here and face them? Good Heavens! girl, are you mad?
+Don't you know what this means? It means that the secret is out--the
+secret is out, you hear! We must fly!"
+
+The woman told me that she distinctly heard Miss Muriel sobbing, while
+her father walked up and down the room speaking rapidly in a low tone.
+Then he came out again and returned to his dressing-room, while Miss
+Muriel presumably changed from her evening-gown into a dark
+traveling-dress.
+
+"Did she say anything to you?" I inquired.
+
+"Only that they were called away suddenly, sir. But," the domestic
+added, "the young lady was very pale and agitated, and we all knew that
+something terrible had happened. Mrs. Leithcourt gave orders that
+nothing was to be told to the guests, who dined alone, believing that
+their host and hostess had gone down to the village to see an old man
+who was dying. That was the story we told them, sir."
+
+"And in the meantime the Leithcourts were in the express going to
+Carlisle?"
+
+"Yes, sir. They say in Dumfries that the police telegraphed after them,
+but they had reached Carlisle and evidently changed there, and so got
+away."
+
+By the administration of a judicious tip I was allowed to go up to Miss
+Muriel's room, an elegantly furnished little chamber in the front of the
+fine old place, with a deep old-fashioned window commanding a
+magnificent view across the broad Nithsdale.
+
+The room had been tidied by the maids, but allowed to remain just as she
+had left it. I advanced to the window, in which was set the large
+dressing-table with its big swing-mirror and silver-topped bottles, and
+on gazing out saw, to my surprise, it was the only window which gave a
+view of that corner of Rannoch Wood where the double tragedy had taken
+place. Indeed, any person standing at the spot would have a clear view
+of that one distant window while out of sight of all the rest. A light
+might be placed there at night as signal, for instance; or by day a
+towel might be hung from the window as though to dry and yet could be
+plainly seen at that distance.
+
+Another object in the room also attracted my attention--a pair of long
+field-glasses. Had she used these to keep watch upon that spot?
+
+I took them up and focused them upon the boundary of the wood, finding
+that I could distinguish everything quite plainly.
+
+"That's where they found the man who was murdered," explained the
+servant, who still stood in the doorway.
+
+"I know," I replied. "I was just trying the glasses." Then I put them
+down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red
+candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon
+the electric table-lamp.
+
+"Miss Muriel was very fond of a red light," explained the young woman;
+and as I held it I wondered if that light had ever been placed upon the
+toilet-table and the blind drawn up--whether it had ever been used as a
+warning of danger?
+
+As I expressed a desire to see the young lady's boudoir, the maid
+Cameron took me down to the luxurious little room where, the first
+moment I entered, one fact struck me as peculiar. The picture of Elma
+Heath was no longer there. The photograph had been taken from its frame,
+and in its place was the portrait of a broad-browed, full-bearded man in
+a foreign military uniform--a picture that, being soiled and faded, had
+evidently been placed there to fill the empty frame.
+
+Whose hand had secured that portrait before the Leithcourt's flight?
+Why, indeed, should I, for the second time, discover the unhappy girl's
+picture missing?
+
+"Has the gentleman who called on the evening of Mr. Leithcourt's
+disappearance been back here again since he left the hospital?" I
+inquired as a sudden idea occurred to me.
+
+"Yes, sir. He called here in a fly on the day he came out, and at his
+request I took him over the castle. He went into the library, and spent
+half-an-hour in pacing across it, taking measurements, and examining
+the big cupboard in which he was found insensible. It was a strange
+affair, sir," added the young woman, "wasn't it?"
+
+"Very," I replied.
+
+"The gentleman might have been in there now had I not gone into the
+library and found a lot of illustrated papers, which I always put in the
+cupboard to keep the place tidy, thrown out on to the floor. I went to
+put them back but discovered the door locked. The key I afterwards found
+in the grate, where Mr. Leithcourt had evidently thrown it, and on
+opening the door imagine the shock I had when I found the visitor lying
+doubled up. I, of course, thought he was dead."
+
+"And when he returned here on his recovery, did he question you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He asked about the Leithcourts, and especially about Miss
+Muriel. I believe he's rather sweet on her, by the way he spoke. And
+really no better or kinder lady never breathed, I'm sure. We're all very
+sorry indeed for her."
+
+"But she had nothing to do with the affair."
+
+"Of course not. But she shares in the scandal and disgrace. You should
+have seen the effect of the news upon the guests when they knew that the
+Leithcourts had gone. It was a regular pandemonium. They ordered the
+best champagne out of the cellars and drank it, the men cleared all the
+cigar-boxes, and the women rummaged in the wardrobes until they seemed
+like a pack of hungry wolves. Everybody went away with their trunks full
+of the Leithcourt's things. They took whatever they could lay their
+hands on, and we, the servants, couldn't stop them. I did remonstrate
+with one lady who was cramming into her trunk two of Miss Muriel's best
+evening dresses, but she told me to mind my own business and leave the
+room. One man I saw go away with four of Mr. Leithcourt's guns, and
+there was a regular squabble in the billiard-room over a set of pearl
+and emerald dress-studs that somebody found in his dressing-room. Crane,
+the valet, says they tossed for them."
+
+"Disgraceful!" I ejaculated. "Then as soon as the host and hostess had
+gone, they simply swept through the rooms and cleared them?"
+
+"Yes, sir. They took away all that was most valuable. They'd have had
+the silver, only Mason had thrown it into the plate-chest, all dirty as
+it was, locked it up and hid the key. The plate was Mr. Gilrae's, you
+know, sir, and Mason was responsible."
+
+"He acted wisely," I said, surprised at the domestic's story. "Why, the
+guests acted like a gang of thieves."
+
+"They were, sir. They rushed all over the house like demons let loose,
+and they even stole some of our things. I lost a silver chain."
+
+"And what did the stranger say when you told him of this?"
+
+"He smiled. It did not seem to surprise him in the least, for after all
+his visit was the cause of the sudden breaking up of the party, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"And did you show him over the whole house?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir," responded the servant. "Curiously enough he had with him
+what seemed to be a large plan of the castle, and as we went from room
+to room he compared it with his plan. He was here for hours, and told me
+he wanted to make a thorough examination of the place and didn't want to
+be disturbed. He also said that he might probably take the place for
+next season, if he liked it. I think, however, he only told me this
+because he thought I would be more patient while he took his
+measurements and made his investigations. He was here from twelve till
+nearly six o'clock, and went through every room, even up to the
+turrets."
+
+"He came into this room, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she responded, with just a slight hesitation, I thought.
+"This was the room where he stayed the longest. There was a photograph
+in that frame over there," she added, indicating the frame that had held
+the picture of Elma Heath, "a portrait of a young lady, which he begged
+me to give him."
+
+"And you gave it to him?" I cried quickly.
+
+"Well--yes, sir. He begged so hard for it, saying that it was the
+portrait of a friend of his."
+
+"And he gave you something handsome for it--eh?"
+
+The young woman, whom I knew could not refuse half-a-sovereign, colored
+slightly and smiled.
+
+"And who put that picture in its place?" I asked.
+
+"I did, sir. I found it upstairs."
+
+"He didn't tell you who the young lady was, I suppose?"
+
+"No, sir. He only said that that was the only photograph that existed,
+and that she was dead."
+
+"Dead!" I gasped, staring at her.
+
+"Yes, sir. That was why he was so anxious for the picture."
+
+Elma Heath dead! Could it be true? That sweet-pictured face haunted me
+as no other face had ever impressed itself upon my memory. It somehow
+seemed to impel me to endeavor to penetrate the mystery, and yet Hylton
+Chater had declared that she was dead! I recollected the remarkable
+letter from Abo, and her own declaration that her end was near. That
+letter was, she said, the last she should write to her friend. Did
+Hylton Chater actually possess knowledge of the girl's death? Had he all
+along been acquainted with her whereabouts? What the young woman told
+me upset all my plans. If Elma Heath were really dead, then she was
+beyond discovery, and the truth would be hidden forever.
+
+"After he had put the photograph in his pocket, the gentleman made a
+most minute search in this room," the domestic went on. "He consulted
+his plan, took several measurements, and then tapped on the paneling all
+along this wall, as though he were searching for some hidden cupboard or
+hiding place. I looked at the plan, and saw a mark in red ink upon it.
+He was trying to discover that spot, and was greatly disappointed at not
+being able to do so. He was in here over an hour, and made a most
+careful search all around."
+
+"And what explanation did he give?"
+
+"He only said, 'If I find what I want, Ann, I shall make you a present
+of a ten-pound note.' That naturally made me anxious."
+
+"He made no other remark about the young lady's death?" I inquired
+anxiously.
+
+"No. Only he sighed, and looked steadily for a long time at the
+photograph. I saw his lips moving, but his words were inaudible."
+
+"You haven't any idea of the reason why he called upon Mr. Leithcourt, I
+suppose?"
+
+"From what he said, I've formed my own conclusions," was her answer.
+
+"And what is your opinion?"
+
+"Well, I feel certain that there is, or was, something concealed in this
+house that he's very anxious to obtain. He came to demand it of Mr.
+Leithcourt, but what happened in the library we don't know. He, however,
+believes that Mr. Leithcourt has not taken it away, and that, whatever
+it may be, it is still hidden here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+I SHOW MY HAND
+
+
+On my return to London next day I made inquiry at the Admiralty and
+learned that the battleship _Bulwark_ was lying at Palermo, therefore I
+telegraphed to Jack Durnford, and late the same afternoon his reply came
+at the Cecil:--
+
+"_Due in London twentieth. Dine with me at club that evening_--Jack."
+
+The twentieth! That meant nearly a month of inactivity. In that time I
+could cross to Abo, make inquiries there, and ascertain, perhaps, if
+Elma Heath were actually dead as Chater had declared.
+
+Two facts struck me as remarkable: Baron Oberg was said to be Polish,
+while the dark-bearded proprietor of the restaurant in Westbourne Grove
+was also of the same nationality. Then I recollected that pretty little
+enameled cross that Mackenzie had found in Rannoch Wood, and it suddenly
+occurred to me that it might possibly be the miniature of one of the
+European orders of chivalry. In the club library at midnight I found a
+copy of Cappelletti's _Storia degli Ordini Cavallereschi_, the standard
+work on the subject, and on searching the illustrations I at length
+discovered a picture of it. It was a Russian order--the coveted Order of
+Saint Anne, bestowed by the Czar only upon persons who have rendered
+eminent services to the State and to the sovereign. One fact was now
+certain, namely, that the owner of that tiny cross, the small replica of
+the fine decoration, must be a person of high official standing.
+
+Next day I spent in making inquiries with a view to discovering the
+house said to be occupied by Leithcourt. As it was not either in the
+Directory or the Blue Book, I concluded that he had perhaps rented it
+furnished, and after many inquiries and considerable difficulties I
+found that such was the fact. He had occupied the house of Lady
+Heathcote, a few doors from Grosvenor Square, for the previous season,
+although he had lived there but very little.
+
+Where the fugitives were in hiding I had no idea. I longed to meet
+Muriel again and tell her what I had discovered, yet it was plain that
+the trio were concealing themselves from Hylton Chater, whom I supposed
+to be now back in London.
+
+The autumn days were dull and rainy, and the streets were muddy and
+unpleasant, as they always are at the fall of the year. Compelled to
+remain inactive, I idled in the club with the recollection of that
+pictured face ever before me--the face of the unfortunate girl who
+wished her last message to be conveyed to Philip Hornby. What, I
+wondered, was her secret? What was really her fate?
+
+This latter question troubled me until I could bear it no longer. I felt
+that it was my duty to go to Finland and endeavor to learn something
+regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me
+declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing
+wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew
+how dull he was when alone. Even his Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer
+from homesickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a
+glass of homely bitter ale.
+
+But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of
+time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and
+how sweet are the recollections of our dear gray old England with her
+green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray,
+grimy cities. You have but one "home," and England Is still your home,
+even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may
+have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year
+through.
+
+Duty--the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
+defenseless woman was a victim--called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
+passport properly viséd and my papers all in order, I one night left
+Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
+weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
+capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
+plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
+Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
+those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.
+
+It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
+knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
+perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
+had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
+landing on the half-deserted quay.
+
+In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
+passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
+forgotten to date the visé which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
+It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon
+the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in
+Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly--
+
+"This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before
+you can proceed."
+
+"But it is not my fault," I protested. "It is the fault of the clerk at
+the Consulate-General."
+
+"You should have examined it before leaving. You must send it to London,
+and return to Stockholm by to-night's boat."
+
+"But this is outrageous!" I cried, as he had already taken the papers of
+a passenger behind me and was looking at them with unconcern.
+
+"Enough!" he exclaimed, glaring at me. "You will return to-night, or if
+you choose to stay you will be arrested for landing without a passport."
+
+"I shall not go back!" I declared defiantly. "Your Consul-General viséd
+my passport, and I claim, under international law, to be allowed to
+proceed without hindrance."
+
+"The steamer leaves at six o'clock," he remarked without looking up. "If
+you are in Abo after that it will be at your own risk."
+
+"I am English, recollect," I said.
+
+"To me it does not matter what or who you are. Your passport, undated,
+is worthless."
+
+"I shall complain to the Ambassador at Petersburg."
+
+"Your Ambassador does not interest me in the least. He is not Ambassador
+here in Finland. There is no Czar here."
+
+"Oh! Who is ruler in this country, pray?"
+
+"His Excellency the Governor-General, an official who has love for
+neither England nor the pigs of English. So recollect that."
+
+"Yes," I said meaningly, "I shall recollect it." And I turned and went
+out of the little wooden office, replacing my passport in my
+pocket-book.
+
+I had already been directed to the hotel, and walked there, but as I
+did so I saw that I was already under the surveillance of the police,
+for two men in plain clothes who were lounging outside the
+passport-office strolled on after me, evidently to watch my movements.
+Truly Finland was under the iron-heel of autocracy.
+
+After taking my rooms, I strolled about the flat, uninteresting town,
+wondering how best to commence my search. If I had but a photograph to
+show people it would give me a great advantage, but I had nothing. I had
+never, indeed, set eyes upon the unfortunate girl.
+
+Six o'clock came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound
+for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost,
+therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in
+company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across from
+Stockholm.
+
+At eight o'clock, however, just as we were idling over dessert, two
+gray-coated police officers entered and arrested me on the serious
+charge of landing without a passport.
+
+I accompanied them to the police-office, where I was ushered into the
+presence of the big, bristly Russian who held the town of Abo in terror,
+the Chief of Police. The officials which Russia sends into Finland are
+selected for their harsh discipline and hide-bound bureaucracy, and this
+human machine in uniform was no exception. Had he been the Minister of
+the Interior himself, he could not have been more self-opinionated.
+
+"Well?" he snapped, looking up at me as I was placed before him. "Your
+name is Gordon Gregg, English, from Stockholm. No passport, and decline
+to leave even though warned--eh?"
+
+"I have a passport," I said firmly, producing it.
+
+He looked at it, and pointing with his finger, said: "It has no date,
+and is therefore worthless."
+
+"The fault is not mine, but that of a Russian official. If you wish it
+to be dated, you may send it to your Consulate-General in London."
+
+"I shall not," he cried, glaring at me angrily. "And for your insult to
+the law, I shall commit you to prison for one month. Perhaps you will
+then learn Russian manners."
+
+"Oh! so you will commit an Englishman to prison for a month, without
+trial--eh? That's very interesting! Perhaps if you attempt such a thing
+as that they may have something to say about it in Petersburg."
+
+"You defy me!"
+
+"Not in the least. I have presented my passport and demand common
+courtesy."
+
+"Your passport is worthless, I tell you!" he cried. "There, that's how
+much it is worth to me!" And snatching it up he tore it in half and
+tossed the pieces of blue paper in my face.
+
+My blood was up at this insult, yet I bit my lips and remained quite
+calm.
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly tell me who you are?" I asked in as quiet a
+voice as I could command.
+
+"With pleasure. I am Michael Boranski, Chief of Police of the Province
+of Abo-Biornebourg."
+
+"Ah! Well, Michael Boranski, I shall trouble you to pick up my passport,
+stick it together again, and apologize to me."
+
+"Apologize! Me apologize!" And the fellow laughed aloud, while the
+police officers on either side of me grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"Refuse? Certainly I do!"
+
+"Very well, then," I said, re-opening my pocket-book and taking out an
+open letter. "Perhaps you will kindly glance at that. It is in Russian,
+so you can read it."
+
+He snatched it from me with ill-grace, but not without curiosity. And
+then, as he read the lines, his face changed and he went paler. Raising
+his head, he stood staring at me open-mouthed in amazement.
+
+"I apologize to your Excellency!" he gasped, blanched to the lips. "I
+most humbly apologize. I--I did not know. You told me nothing!"
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly mend my passport, and give it a proper visé."
+
+In an instant he was up from his chair, and having gathered the torn
+paper from the floor, proceeded to paste it together. On the back he
+endorsed that it had been torn by accident, and then gave it the proper
+visé, affixing the stamps.
+
+"I trust, Excellency," he said, bowing low as he handed it to me, "I
+trust that this affair will not trouble you further. I assure you I had
+no intention of insulting you."
+
+"Yes, you had!" I said. "You insulted me merely because I am English.
+But recollect in future that the man who insults an Englishman generally
+pays for it, and I do not intend to let this pass. There is a higher
+power in Finland than even the Governor-General."
+
+"But, Excellency," whined the fellow who only ten minutes ago had been
+such an insulting bully, "I shall lose my position. I have a wife and
+six children--my wife is delicate, and my pay here is not a large one.
+You will forgive, won't you, Excellency? I have apologized--I most
+humbly apologize."
+
+And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with
+trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:
+
+"MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD, PALACE OF PETERHOF.
+
+"The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom
+it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey
+through our dominion. And we hereby command all Governors of Provinces
+and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and
+privileges and immunities as Our guest."
+
+The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian,
+while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred
+and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from
+the gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific--"Nicholas."
+
+The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the
+invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry
+into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British
+public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them.
+It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in
+Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in
+European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return
+to Italy to recuperate. The document had therefore remained in my
+possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following
+summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked,
+and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the
+Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given
+me that most valuable document.
+
+Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a
+whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest
+of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He
+begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling
+himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded
+me with awe.
+
+"I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires,"
+declared the official. "I will serve your Excellency in any way he may
+command."
+
+His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he
+feared me.
+
+"Well," I said after some reluctance, "there is a little matter in which
+you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my
+decision of complaining to Petersburg."
+
+"And what is that, Excellency?" he gasped eagerly.
+
+"I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma
+Heath," I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper.
+"Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a
+niece of a certain Baron Oberg."
+
+"Baron Oberg!" he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.
+
+"Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is
+somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she
+is, and I will say nothing more about my passport," I added.
+
+"Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?" he said
+reflectively, with the paper in his hand.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
+Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made," was his answer. "When
+I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
+your Excellency's hotel."
+
+And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
+officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.
+
+On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
+Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
+an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
+south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and
+meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every
+hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the
+country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg
+to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian
+bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful
+neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most
+unscrupulous officials it could import.
+
+My fellow-traveler from Stockholm, who represented a firm of
+paper-makers in Hamburg, and who paid an annual visit to Abo and
+Helsingfors, acted as my guide around the town, while I awaited the
+information from the humbled Chief of Police. My German friend pointed
+out to me how, since Russia placed her hand upon Finland, progress had
+been arrested, and certainly plain evidences were on every hand. There
+was growing discontent everywhere, for many of the newspapers had
+recently been suppressed and the remainder were under a severe
+censorship; agriculture had already decreased, and many of the
+cotton-spinning and saw mills were silent and deserted. The exploitation
+of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated
+down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners
+were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression
+everywhere. Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the
+more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken,
+artificially isolated and oppressed Russia. The double-headed eagle was
+everywhere, and the people sat silent and brooding beneath its black
+shadow.
+
+"There will be an uprising here before long," declared the German
+confidentially, as we were taking tea one day on the wooden balcony of
+the hotel where the sea and the low-lying islands stretched out before
+us in the pale yellow of the autumn sundown. "The people will revolt, as
+they did in Poland. The Finnish Government can only appeal to the Czar
+through the Governor-General, and one can easily imagine that their
+suggestions never reach the Emperor. It is said here that the harsher
+and more corrupt the official, the greater honor does he receive from
+Petersburg. But trouble is brewing for Russia," he added. "A very
+serious trouble--depend upon it."
+
+I looked upon the gray dismal scene, the empty port, the silent quay,
+the dark line of gloomy pine forest away beyond the town, the broken
+coast and the wide expanse of water glittering in the northern sunset.
+Yes. The very silence seemed to forbode evil and mystery. Truly what I
+saw of Finland impressed me even more than what I had witnessed in the
+far-off eastern provinces of European Russia.
+
+My object, however, was not to inquire into the internal condition of
+Finland, or of her resentment of her powerful conqueror. I was there to
+find that unfortunate girl who had written so strangely to her old
+school friend and whose portrait had, for some hidden reason, been
+destroyed.
+
+On the morning of the third day after my arrival at Abo, while sitting
+on the hotel veranda reading an old copy of the Paris _Journal_, many
+portions of which had been "blacked out" by the censor, the Chief of
+Police, in his dark green uniform, entered and saluted before me.
+
+"Your Excellency, may I be permitted to speak with you in private?"
+
+"Certainly," I responded, rising and conducting him to my bedroom, where
+I closed the door, invited him to a seat, and myself sat upon the edge
+of the bed.
+
+"I have made various inquiries," he said, "and I think I have found the
+lady your Excellency is seeking. My information, however, must be
+furnished to you in strictest confidence," he added, "because there are
+reasons why I should withhold her whereabouts from you."
+
+"What do you mean?" I inquired. "What reasons?"
+
+"Well--the lady is living in Finland in secret."
+
+"Then she is alive!" I exclaimed quickly. "I thought she was dead."
+
+"To the world she is dead," responded Michael Boranski, stroking his red
+beard. "For that reason the information I give you must be treated as
+confidential."
+
+"Why should she be in hiding? She is guilty of no offense--is she?"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply.
+
+"And this Baron Oberg? You tell me nothing of him," I said with
+dissatisfaction.
+
+"How can I when I know nothing, Excellency?" was his response.
+
+I felt certain that the fellow was not speaking the truth, for I had
+noticed his surprise when I had first uttered the mysterious nobleman's
+name.
+
+"As I have already said, Excellency, I am desirous of atoning for my
+insult, and will serve you in every manner I can. For that reason I had
+sought news of the young English lady--the Mademoiselle Heath."
+
+"But you have all foreigners registered in your books," I said. "The
+search was surely not a difficult one. I know your police methods in
+Russia too well," I laughed.
+
+"No, the lady was not registered," he said. "There was a reason."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have told you, Excellency. She is in hiding."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I regret that much as I desire, I dare not appear to have any
+connection with your quest. But I will direct you. Indeed, I will give
+you instructions to a second person to take you to her."
+
+"Is she in Abo?"
+
+"No. Away in the country. If your Excellency will be down at the end of
+the quay to-morrow at noon you will find a carriage in waiting, and the
+driver will have full instructions how to take you to her and how to
+act. Follow his directions implicitly, for he is a man I can trust."
+
+"To-morrow!" I cried anxiously. "Why not to-day? I am ready to go at any
+moment."
+
+The Chief of Police remained thoughtful for a few moments, then said--
+
+"Well, if I could find the man, you might go to-day. Yet it is a long
+way, and you would not return before to-morrow."
+
+"The roads are safe, I suppose? I don't mind driving in the night."
+
+The official glanced at the clock, and rising exclaimed--
+
+"Very well, I will send for the man. If we find him, then the carriage
+will be at the same spot at the eastern end of the quay in two hours."
+
+"At noon. Very well. I shall keep the appointment."
+
+"And after seeing her, you will of course keep your promise of secrecy
+regarding our little misunderstanding?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I have already given my word," was the response; and the man bowed and
+left, much, I think, to the surprise of the hotel-proprietor and his
+staff. It was an unusual thing for such a high official as the Chief of
+Police to visit one of their guests in person. If he desired to
+interview any of them, he commanded them to attend at his office, or
+they were escorted there by his gray-coated agents.
+
+The day was cold, with a biting wind from the icy north, when after a
+hasty luncheon I put on my overcoat and strolled along the deserted quay
+where I lounged at the further end, watching the approach of a great
+pontoon of pine logs that had apparently floated out of one of the
+rivers and was now being navigated to the port by four men who seemed
+every moment in imminent danger of being washed off the raft into the
+sea as the waves broke over and drenched them. They had, however, lashed
+themselves to their raft, I saw, and now slowly piloted the great
+floating platform towards the quay.
+
+I think I must have waited half an hour, when my attention was suddenly
+attracted by the rattle of wheels over the stones, and turning I saw an
+old closed carriage drawn by three horses abreast, with bells upon the
+harness, approaching me rapidly. When it drew up, the driver, a
+burly-looking, fair-headed Finn in a huge sheepskin overcoat, motioned
+me to enter, urging in broken Russian--
+
+"Quickly, Excellency!--quickly!--you must not be seen!"
+
+And then the instant I was seated, and before I could close the door,
+the horses plunged forward and we were tearing at full gallop out of the
+town.
+
+For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road
+through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had
+already been garnered. There were no villages. All around was a
+houseless land, rolling miles of brown and green, broken and checkered
+by bits of forest and clumps of dark melancholy pines. The road ran ever
+and anon right down to where the cold, green waves broke upon the rocky
+shore. In a few weeks that coast would be ice-bound and snow-covered,
+and then the silence of the God-forsaken country would be complete.
+
+After five miles or so, the driver pulled up and descended to readjust
+his harness, whereupon I got out and asked him in the best Russian I
+could command:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+"To Nystad."
+
+"How far is that?"
+
+"Sixty-eight," was his reply.
+
+I took him to imply kilometres, as being a Finn he would not speak of
+versts.
+
+"The Chief of Police has given you directions?" I asked.
+
+"His high Excellency has told me exactly what to do," was the man's
+answer, as he took out his huge wooden pipe and filled it. "You wish to
+see the young lady?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "to first see her, and I do not know whether it will
+be necessary for me to make myself known to her. Where is she?"
+
+"Beyond Nystad," was his vague answer with a wave of his big fat hand in
+the direction of the dark pine forest that stretched before us. "We
+shall be there about an hour after sundown."
+
+Then I re-entered the stuffy old conveyance that rocked and rolled as we
+dashed away over the uneven forest road, and sat wondering to what
+manner of place I was being conducted.
+
+Elma Heath was in hiding. Why? I recollected her curious letter and
+remembered every word of it. She wished Hornby to know that she had
+never revealed her secret. What secret, I wondered?
+
+I lit an abominable cigar, and tried to smoke, but I was too filled with
+anxiety, too bewildered by the maze of mystery in which I now found
+myself. Two hours later we pulled up before a long log-built post-house
+just beyond a small town in a hollow that faced the sea, and I alighted
+to watch the steaming horses being replaced by a trio of fresh ones. The
+place was Dadendal, I was informed, and the proprietor of the place,
+when I entered and tossed off a liqueur-glass of cognac, pointed out to
+me a row of granite buildings fallen much to decay as the ancient
+convent.
+
+Then, resuming our journey, the short day quickly drew to a close, the
+sun sank yellow and watery over the towering pines through which we went
+mile after mile, a dense, interminable forest wherein the wolves lurked
+in winter, often rendering the road dangerous.
+
+The temperature fell, and it froze again. Through the window in front I
+could see the big Finn driver throwing his arms across his shoulders to
+promote circulation, in the same manner as does the London "cabby."
+
+When night drew on we changed horses again at a small, dirty post-house
+in the forest, at the edge of a lake, and then pushed forward again,
+although it was already long past the hour at which he had said we
+should arrive.
+
+Time passed slowly in the darkness, for we had no light, and the horses
+seemed to find their way by instinct. The rolling of the lumbering old
+vehicle after six hours had rendered me sleepy, I think, for I recollect
+closing my eyes and conjuring up that strange scene on board the
+_Lola_.
+
+Indeed, I suppose I must have slept, for I was awakened by a light
+shining into my face and the driver shaking me by the shoulder. When I
+roused myself and, naturally, inquired the reason, he placed his finger
+mysteriously upon my lips, saying:
+
+"Hush, your high nobility, hush! Come with me. But make no noise. If we
+are discovered, it means death for us--death. Come, give me your hand.
+Slowly. Tread softly. See, here is the boat. I will get in first. We
+shall not be heard upon the water. So."
+
+And the fellow led me, half-dazed, down to the bank of a broad, dark
+river which I could just distinguish--he led me to an unknown bourne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
+
+
+The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat
+he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around
+a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the
+starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a
+distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.
+
+"Where are we going?" I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only
+whispered:
+
+"Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young
+Englishwoman."
+
+So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current,
+steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed
+again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps
+indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of
+a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.
+
+After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake
+where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a
+long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one
+corner--an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small
+windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining
+upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had
+undoubtedly been placed there as signal.
+
+With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow
+of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the
+lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a
+moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers
+until it was wholly consumed.
+
+Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting
+five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark
+tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as
+any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege
+guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had
+probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.
+
+I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping,
+and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and
+half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had
+opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.
+
+My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper,
+and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:
+
+"Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger."
+
+I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the
+narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the
+darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival
+and watching our signal.
+
+Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a
+match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her
+features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray
+wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of
+hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while
+around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized
+that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps,
+with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.
+
+The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character,
+and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken
+figure.
+
+"The sister speaks French?" I hazarded in that language, knowing that in
+most convents throughout Europe French is known.
+
+"Oui, m'sieur," was her answer. "And a leetle Engleesh, too--a ve-ry
+leetle," she smiled.
+
+"You know why I am here?" I said, gratified that at least one person in
+that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.
+
+"Yes, I have already been told," was her answer with a strong accent, as
+we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the
+tower, once perhaps a prison. "But are you not afraid to venture here?"
+she asked.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your
+presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive--so I
+warn you."
+
+"I am prepared to risk that," I said, smiling; at the same time my hand
+instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe.
+"I wish to see Miss Elma Heath."
+
+The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and
+found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.
+
+"Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all
+blame?" she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her
+keen gray eyes. "By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I
+should not have done were it not compulsory."
+
+"Compulsory! How?"
+
+"The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend
+him."
+
+So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order
+the closed door of the convent had been opened.
+
+"Of course not," I answered. "Russian officialdom is all-powerful in
+Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?"
+
+"You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?" she asked in a
+hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.
+
+"I am," I said. "Lead me to her."
+
+"And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise
+me that."
+
+"Ah, Sister!" I cried. "You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I
+come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question
+her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be
+permitted to speak with her?"
+
+"You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman. "I thought you
+were her lover--that you merely wished to see her once again."
+
+"No, I am not her lover," I answered. "Indeed, we have never yet met.
+But I am in search of the truth from her own lips."
+
+"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.
+
+"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I
+intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
+from England."
+
+The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
+impetuosity.
+
+"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in
+her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be
+spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the
+mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
+and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
+forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
+Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----" and she shrugged her shoulders
+without finishing her sentence.
+
+"Baron Oberg--Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.
+
+"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is
+four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
+poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot
+upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous
+of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man
+in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us."
+
+"And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?"
+
+"Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His
+niece--poor young lady!--can that be? Surely not!"
+
+"Why not?" I asked.
+
+But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and
+sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart
+was really softer than I had believed it to be.
+
+"Where does this Baron live?" I asked, surprised that he should occupy
+so high a place in Russian officialdom--the representative of the Czar,
+with powers as great as the Emperor himself.
+
+"At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors."
+
+"And Elma Heath is here--in this grim fortress! Why?"
+
+"Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They
+account for so much, you know."
+
+"That is exactly my opinion," I said. "She has been brought here against
+her will."
+
+"Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five
+months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from
+civilization and see no new face."
+
+"Terrible!" I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that
+seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I
+supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and
+Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place.
+"And have you been here long?" I asked.
+
+"Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary
+life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and
+dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well."
+
+The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had
+half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the
+past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had
+been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a
+distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If
+so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I
+questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.
+
+"Ah, m'sieur," she declared, "they call him 'The Strangler of the
+Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until
+four of them died--and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for
+it--he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in
+prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in
+Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the
+officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered
+Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public
+education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the
+mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are
+filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and
+'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is
+submissive and is Russianized!"
+
+I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to
+time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of
+the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was "The Strangler of
+Finland," the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country
+to a state of ruin and revolt!
+
+"Cannot I see her?" I asked, feeling that we had remained too long
+there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped
+from it the better.
+
+"Yes, come," she said. "But silence! Walk softly," and holding up the
+old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone
+corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages,
+all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we
+crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big
+nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right
+angles, I saw that we were in a kind of _cul de sac,_ before the door of
+which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then,
+motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her,
+and leaving me in the pitch darkness.
+
+I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving
+within. No word was uttered, or if so, it was whispered so low that it
+did not reach me. For nearly five minutes I waited in impatience
+outside that closed door, until again the handle turned and my
+conductress beckoned me in silence within.
+
+I stepped into a small, square chamber, the floor of which was carpeted,
+and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light
+over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of
+sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there
+was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was
+another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment;
+then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown,
+a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever
+seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders,
+and as her hands were clasped before her she looked straight at me in
+surprise as she was led towards me.
+
+She walked but feebly, and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress,
+as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her
+beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such
+fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed
+them to be. I stood before her dumbfounded in admiration.
+
+In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with
+astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required
+of her.
+
+"Miss Elma Heath, I presume?" I exclaimed at last. "May I introduce
+myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan
+by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question--a question that
+concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you."
+
+I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.
+
+Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness.
+No sound escaped her.
+
+I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in
+a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.
+
+She was both deaf and dumb!
+
+She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in
+her splendid eyes.
+
+I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.
+
+"What is this place?" I demanded of the woman in the religious habit,
+when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction.
+"Where am I?"
+
+"This is the Castle of Kajana--the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland,"
+was her answer. "The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and
+hearing."
+
+"Deaf and dumb!" I cried, looking at the beautiful original of that
+destroyed photograph on board the _Lola_. "But she has surely not always
+been so!" I exclaimed.
+
+"No. I think not always," replied the sister quietly. "But you said you
+intended to question her, and did I not tell you that to learn the truth
+was impossible?"
+
+"But she can write responses to my questions?" I argued.
+
+"Alas! no," was the old woman's whispered reply. "Her mind is affected.
+She is, unfortunately, a hopeless lunatic."
+
+I looked straight into those sad, wide-open, yet unflinching brown eyes
+utterly confounded.
+
+Those white wrists held in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the
+inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that
+letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands
+were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had
+spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was
+slowly being driven to suicide? She had kept her secret, and she wished
+the man Hornby--the man who was to marry Muriel Leithcourt--to know.
+
+The room in which we stood was evidently an apartment set apart for her
+use, for beyond was the tiny bedchamber; yet the small, high-up window
+was closely barred, and the cold bareness of the prison was sufficient
+indeed to cause anyone confined there to prefer death to captivity.
+
+Again I spoke to her slowly and kindly, but there was no response. That
+she was absolutely dumb was only too apparent. Yet surely she had not
+always been so! I had gone in search of her because the beauty of her
+portrait had magnetized me, and I had now found her to be even more
+lovely than her picture, yet, alas! suffering from an affliction that
+rendered her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth
+staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes
+upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the
+countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so full of blank
+unutterable despair.
+
+She placed her clasped hands to her mouth and made signs by shaking her
+head that she could neither understand nor respond. I therefore took my
+wallet from my pocket and wrote upon a piece of paper in a large hand
+the words: "_I come from Lydia Moreton. My name is Gordon Gregg_."
+
+When her eager gaze fell upon the words she became instantly filled with
+excitement, and nodded quickly. Then holding her steel-clasped wrists
+towards me she looked wistfully at me, as though imploring me to release
+her from the awful bondage in that silent tomb.
+
+Though the woman who had led me there endeavored to prevent it, I
+handed her the pencil, and placed the paper on the table for her to
+write.
+
+The nun tried to snatch it up, but I held her arm gently and forcibly,
+saying in French:
+
+"No. I wish to see if she is really insane. You will at least allow me
+this satisfaction."
+
+And while we were in altercation, Elma, with the pencil in her fingers,
+tried to write, but by reason of her hands being bound so closely was
+unable. At length, however, after several attempts, she succeeded in
+printing in uneven capitals the response:
+
+"I know you. You were on the yacht. I thought they killed you."
+
+The thin-faced old woman saw her response--a reply that was surely
+rational enough--and her brows contracted with displeasure.
+
+"Why are you here?" I wrote, not allowing the sister to get sight of my
+question.
+
+In response, she wrote painfully and laboriously:
+
+"I am condemned for a crime I did not commit. Take me from here, or I
+shall kill myself."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the old woman. "You see, poor girl, she believes herself
+innocent! They all do."
+
+"But why is she here?" I demanded fiercely.
+
+"I do not know, m'sieur. It is not my duty to inquire the history of
+their crimes. When they are ill I nurse them; that is all."
+
+"And who is the commandant of this fortress?"
+
+"Colonel Smirnoff. If he knew that I had admitted you, you would never
+leave this place alive. This is the Schusselburg of Finland--the place
+of imprisonment for those who have conspired against the State."
+
+"The prison of political conspirators, eh?"
+
+"Alas, m'sieur, yes! The place in which some of the poor creatures are
+tortured in order to obtain confessions and information with as much
+cruelty as in the black days of the Inquisition. These walls are thick,
+and their cries are not heard from the oubliettes below the lake."
+
+I had long ago heard of the horrors of Schusselburg. Indeed who has not
+heard of them who has traveled in Russia? The very mention of the modern
+Bastille on Lake Ladoga, where no prisoner has ever been known to come
+forth alive, is sufficient to cause any Russian to turn pale. And I was
+in the Schusselburg of Finland!
+
+I turned over the sheet of paper and wrote the question--
+
+"Did Baron Oberg send you here?"
+
+In response, she printed the words--
+
+"I believe so. I was arrested in Helsingfors. Tell Lydia where I am."
+
+"Do you know Muriel Leithcourt?" I inquired by the same means, whereupon
+she replied that they were at school together.
+
+"Did you see me on board the _Lola_?" I wrote.
+
+"Yes. But I could not warn you, although I had overheard their
+intentions. They took me ashore when you had gone, to Siena. After three
+days I found myself deaf and dumb--I was made so."
+
+Her allegation startled me. She had been purposely afflicted!
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"A doctor, I suppose. They put me under chloroform."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"People who said they were my friends."
+
+I turned to the woman in the religious habit, and cried--
+
+"Do you see what she has written? She has been maimed by some friends
+who intended that the secret she holds should be kept. They feared to
+kill her, so they bribed a doctor to deliberately operate upon her so
+that she could neither speak nor hear. And now they are driving her to
+suicide!"
+
+"M'sieur, I am astounded!" declared the nun. "I have always believed
+that she was not in her right mind, yet assuredly she seems to be as
+sane as I am, only willfully mutilated by some pretended friend who
+determined that no further word should pass her lips."
+
+"A shameful mutilation has been committed upon this poor defenseless
+girl!" I cried in anger. "And I will make it my duty to discover and
+punish the perpetrators of it."
+
+"Ah, m'sieur. Do not act rashly, I pray of you," the woman said
+seriously, placing her hand upon my arm. "Recollect you are in
+Finland--where the Baron Oberg is all-powerful."
+
+"I do not fear the Baron Oberg," I exclaimed. "If necessary, I will
+appeal to the Czar himself. Mademoiselle is kept here for the reason
+that she is in possession of some secret. She must be released--I will
+take the responsibility."
+
+"But you must not try to release her from here. It would mean death to
+you both. The Castle of Kajana tells no secrets of those who die within
+its walls, or of those cast headlong into its waters and forgotten."
+
+Again I turned to Elma, who stood in anxious wonder of the subject of
+our conversation, and had suddenly taken the old nun's hand and kissed
+it affectionately, perhaps in order to show me that she trusted her.
+
+Then upon the paper I wrote--
+
+"Is the Baron Oberg your uncle?"
+
+She shook her head in the negative, showing that the dreaded
+Governor-General of Finland had only acted a part towards her in which
+she had been compelled to concur.
+
+"Who is Philip Hornby?" I inquired, writing rapidly.
+
+"My friend--at least, I believe so."
+
+Friend! And I had all along believed him to be an adventurer and an
+enemy!
+
+"Why did he go to Leghorn?" I asked.
+
+"For a secret purpose. There was a plot to kill you, only I managed to
+thwart them," were the words she printed with much labor.
+
+"Then I owe my life to you," I wrote. "And in return I will do my utmost
+to rescue you from here, if you do not fear to place yourself in my
+hands."
+
+And to this she replied--
+
+"I shall be thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I
+believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day.
+Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But,"
+she wrote, "I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined here
+on a life sentence."
+
+"But you are English, and if you have had no trial I can complain to our
+Ambassador."
+
+"No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England
+when I was a girl."
+
+That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own
+country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that
+allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high
+official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of
+appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.
+
+Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!
+
+A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A
+thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her,
+but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood
+there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me,
+notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was,
+perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered
+at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.
+
+Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that
+Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with
+bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both
+hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should
+be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in
+insanity.
+
+"I have decided," I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had
+conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the
+prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the
+calm attitude of the religious.
+
+"You will not act with rashness?" she implored in quick apprehension.
+"Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own."
+
+"Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!" I answered, looking
+straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath
+a spell. "They have drawn her into their power because she had no means
+of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector."
+
+"How?"
+
+"The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with
+me."
+
+"But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!" cried the old woman in a hoarse
+voice. "If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both
+night and day they would shoot you both."
+
+"I will risk it," I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny
+bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle
+bed.
+
+Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had
+verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to
+accompany me.
+
+The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.
+
+"Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to
+the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here,
+for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will
+not dare to accept such responsibility."
+
+"Come," I said to Elma, although, alas! she could not hear my voice.
+"Let us at least make a dash for freedom."
+
+She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be
+conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and
+making no noise.
+
+I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring
+to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone
+corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been
+first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt
+the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her
+faith in me as her deliverer.
+
+I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake
+how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable
+forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt
+the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I
+not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met
+that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though
+fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low
+corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the
+lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses
+awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or
+raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw
+that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my
+side.
+
+Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that
+unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the
+uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep
+voice cried out of the darkness in Russian--
+
+"Halt! or I fire!"
+
+And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded
+carbine.
+
+A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes
+shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder
+within six feet of us.
+
+The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.
+
+My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the
+hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous
+Governor-General--fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very
+cleverly prepared for me.
+
+I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save
+the guards had ever been known to emerge--the Bastille of "The Strangler
+of Finland!"
+
+I saw I was lost.
+
+The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.
+
+"Speak!" cried the fellow. "Who are you?"
+
+At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's
+hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it,
+but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his
+gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close
+with him was my only chance.
+
+Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn
+driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl
+whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a
+single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow,
+she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to
+wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying
+to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old
+trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and
+nearly fell.
+
+An oath escaped him, yet in that moment Elma succeeded in twisting the
+gun from his sinewy hands, which I now held with a strength begotten of
+a knowledge of my imminent peril. My whole future, as well as hers,
+depended upon my success in that desperate encounter. He was huge and
+powerful, with a strength far exceeding my own, yet I had been reckoned
+a good wrestler at Uppingham, and now my knowledge of that most ancient
+form of combat held me in good stead.
+
+The man shouted for help, his deep, hoarse voice sounding along the
+stone corridors. If heard by his comrades-in-arms, then the alarm would
+at once be given.
+
+We struggled desperately, swaying to and fro, he trying to throw me,
+while I, at every turn, practiced upon him the tricks learned in my
+youth. It seemed an even match, however, for he kept his feet by sheer
+brute force, and his muscles seemed hard and unbending as steel.
+
+Suddenly, however, as we were striving so vigorously and desperately,
+the English girl slipped past us with the carbine in her hand, and with
+a quick movement dragged open the heavy door that gave exit to the
+lake.
+
+At that instant I unfortunately made a false move, and his hand closed
+upon my throat like a band of steel. I fought and struggled to loose
+myself, exerting every muscle, but alas! he gained the advantage. I
+heard a splash, and saw that Elma no longer held the sentry's weapon in
+her hands, having thrown it into the water.
+
+Then at the same moment I heard a voice outside cry in a low tone:
+"Courage, Excellency! Courage! I will come and help you."
+
+It was the faithful Finn, who had been awaiting me in the deep shadow,
+and with a few strokes pulled his boat up to the narrow rickety ledge
+outside the door.
+
+"Take the lady!" I succeeded in gasping in Russian. "Never mind me," and
+I saw to my satisfaction that he guided Elma to step into the boat,
+which at that moment drifted past the little platform.
+
+I struggled valiantly, but against such a man of brute strength I was
+powerless. He held my throat, causing me excruciating pain, and each
+moment I felt my chance of victory grow smaller. My strength was
+failing. While I held his arms at his sides, I could keep him secure
+without much effort, but now with his fingers pressing in my windpipe I
+could not breathe.
+
+I was slowly being strangled.
+
+To be vanquished meant imprisonment there, perhaps even death. Victory
+meant Elma's life, as well as my own. Mine was therefore a fight for
+life. A sudden idea flashed across my mind, and I continued to struggle,
+at the same time gradually forcing my enemy backward towards the door.
+He shouted for help, but was unheard. He cursed and swore and shouted
+until, with a sudden and almost superhuman effort, I tripped him,
+bringing his head into such violent contact with the stone lintel of the
+door that the sound could surely be heard a considerable distance. For a
+moment he was stunned, and in that brief second I released his grip from
+my throat and hurled him backwards beyond the door.
+
+There was the sound of the crashing of wood as the rotten platform gave
+way, a loud splash, and next instant the dark waters closed over the
+big, bearded fellow who would have snatched Elma Heath from me, and have
+held me prisoner in that castle of terrors. He sank like a stone, for
+although I stood watching for him to rise, I could only distinguish the
+woodwork floating away with the current.
+
+In a moment, however, even as I stood there in horror at my deed of
+self-defense, the place suddenly resounded with shouts of alarm, and in
+the tower above me the great old rusty bell began to swing, ringing its
+brazen note across the broad expanse of waters.
+
+The fair-bearded Finn again shot the boat across to where I stood,
+crying--
+
+"Jump, Excellency! For your life, jump! The guards will be upon us!"
+
+Behind me in the passage I saw a light and the glitter of arms. A shot
+rang out, and a bullet whizzed past me, but I stood unharmed. Then I
+jumped, and nearly upset the boat, but taking an oar I began to row for
+life, and as we drew away from those grim, black walls the fire belched
+forth from three rifles.
+
+"Row!" I shrieked, turning to see if my fair companion had been hit.
+
+"Keep cool, Excellency," urged the Finn. "See, right away there in the
+shadow. We might trick them, for the patrol-boat will be at the head of
+the river waiting to cut us off."
+
+Again the guards fired upon us, but in the darkness their aim was
+faulty. Lights appeared in the high windows of the castle, and we could
+see that the greatest commotion had been caused by the escape of the
+prisoner. The men at the door in the tower were shouting to the
+patrol-boats, which were nowhere to be seen, calling them to row us down
+and capture us, but by plying our oars rapidly we shot straight across
+the lake until we got under the deep shadow of the opposite shore, and
+then crept gradually along in the direction we had come.
+
+"If we meet the boats, Excellency, we must run ashore and take to the
+woods," explained the Finn. "It is our only chance."
+
+Scarcely had he spoken when out in the center of the lake we could just
+distinguish a long boat with three rowers going swiftly towards the
+entrance to the river, which we so desired to gain.
+
+"Look!" cried our guide, backing water, and bringing the boat to a
+standstill. "They are in search of us! If we are discovered they will
+fire. It is their orders. No boat is allowed upon this lake."
+
+Elma sat watching our pursuers, but still calm and silent. She seemed to
+intrust herself entirely to me.
+
+The guards were rowing rapidly, the oars sounding in the rowlocks,
+evidently in the belief that we had made for the river. But the
+Finlander had apparently foreseen this, and for that reason we were
+lying safe from observation in the deep shadow of an overhanging tree.
+
+A gray mist was slowly rising from the water, and the Finn, noticing it,
+hoped that it might favor us. In Finland in late autumn the mists are
+often as thick as our proverbial London fogs, only whiter, denser, and
+more frosty.
+
+"If we disembark we shall be compelled to make a detour of fully four
+days in the forest, in order to pass the marshes," he pointed out in a
+low whisper. "But if we can enter the river we can go ashore anywhere
+and get by foot to some place where the lady can lie in hiding."
+
+"What do you advise? We are entirely in your hands. The Chief of Police
+told me he could trust you."
+
+"I think it will be best to risk it," he said in Russian after a brief
+pause. "We will tie up the boat, and I will go along the bank and see
+what the guards are doing. You will remain here, and I shall not be
+seen. The rushes and undergrowth are higher further along. But if there
+is danger while I am absent get out and go straight westward until you
+find the marsh, then keep along its banks due south," and drawing up the
+boat to the bank the shrewd, big-boned fellow disappeared into the dark
+undergrowth.
+
+There were no signs yet of the break of day. Indeed, the stars were now
+hidden, and the great plane of water was every moment growing more
+indistinct as we both sat in silence. My ears were strained to catch the
+dipping of an oar or a voice, but beyond the lapping of the water
+beneath the boat there was no other sound. I took the hand of the
+fair-faced girl at my side and pressed it. In return she pressed mine.
+
+It was the only means by which we could exchange confidences. She whom I
+had sought through all those months sat at my side, yet powerless to
+utter one single word.
+
+Still holding her hands in both my own I gripped them to show her that I
+intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as
+though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history?
+What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which
+had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and
+afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up
+before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very
+seriously, or such drastic means would never be employed to secure her
+silence.
+
+Suddenly I heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and next moment a low
+voice spoke which I recognized as that of our friend, the Finn.
+
+"There is danger, Excellency--a grave danger!" he said in a low half
+whisper. "Three boats are in search of us."
+
+And scarcely had he uttered those words when there was the flash of a
+rifle from the haze, a loud report, and again a bullet whizzed past just
+behind my head. In an instant the truth became apparent, for I saw the
+dark shadow of a boat rapidly rowed, bearing full upon us. The shot had
+been fired as a signal that we had been sighted, and were pursued. Other
+shots rang out, mingled with the wild exultant shouts of the guards as
+they bore down full upon us, and then I knew that, notwithstanding our
+escape, we were now lost. They were too close upon us to admit of
+eluding them. The peril we had dreaded had fallen. The Finn's presence
+on the bank had evidently been detected by a boat drawn up at the shore,
+and he had been followed to where we had lain in what we had so
+foolishly believed to be a safe hiding-place. Nought else was to be done
+but to face the inevitable. Three times the red fire of a rifle belched
+angrily in our faces, and yet, by good fortune, neither of us was
+struck. Yet we knew too well that the intention of our pursuers was to
+kill us.
+
+"Quick, Excellency! Fly! while there is yet time!" gasped the Finn,
+grasping my hand and half dragging me from the boat, while, I, in turn,
+placed Elma upon the bank.
+
+"_Hoida!_ This way! Swiftly!" cried our guide, and the three of us,
+heedless of the consequences, plunged forward into the impenetrable
+darkness, just as our fierce pursuers came alongside where we had only a
+moment ago been seated. They shouted wildly as they sprang to land after
+us, but our guide, who had been born and bred in these forests, knew
+well how to travel in a semi-circle, and how to conceal himself. It was
+a race for freedom--nay, for very life.
+
+So dark that we could see before us hardly a foot, we were compelled to
+place our hands in front of us to avoid collision with the big tree
+trunks, while ever and anon we found ourselves entangled in the mass of
+dead creepers and vegetable parasites that formed the dense undergrowth.
+Around us on every side we heard the shouts and curses of our pursuers,
+while above the rest we heard an authoritative voice, evidently that of
+a sergeant of the guard, cry--
+
+"Shoot the man, but spare the woman! The Colonel wants her back. Don't
+let her escape! We shall be well rewarded. So keep on, comrades! _Mene
+edemmäski!_"
+
+But the trembling girl beside me heard nothing, and perhaps indeed it
+was best that she could not hear. My only fear was that our pursuers, of
+whom there now seemed to be a dozen, had extended, with the intention of
+encircling us. They, no doubt, knew every inch of that giant forest with
+its numerous bogs and marshes, and if they could not discover us would
+no doubt drive us into one or other of the bogs, where escape was
+impossible.
+
+Our gallant guide, on the other hand, seemed to utterly disregard the
+danger and kept on, every now and then stretching out his hand and
+helping along the afflicted girl we had rescued from that living tomb.
+Headlong we went in a straight line, until suddenly we began to feel
+our feet sinking into the soft ground, and then the Finlander turned to
+the left, at right angles, and we found ourselves in a denser
+undergrowth, where in the darkness our hands and faces became badly
+scratched.
+
+Another gun was fired as signal, echoing through the wood, but the sound
+came from the opposite direction to that we were traveling; therefore we
+hoped that we had eluded those whose earnest desire it was to capture us
+for the reward. Suddenly, however, a second gun, an answering signal,
+was fired from straight before us, and that revealed the truth. We were
+actually between the two parties, and they were closing in upon us! They
+had already driven us to the edge of the bog. The Finlander recognized
+our peril as quickly as I did, and halted.
+
+"Let us turn straight back," he urged breathlessly. "We may yet elude
+them."
+
+And then we again turned off at right angles, traveling as quickly as we
+were able back towards the lake shore. It was an exciting chase in the
+darkness, for we knew not whither we were going, nor into what pitfall
+or ravine or treacherous marsh we might fall. Once we saw afar through
+the trees the light of a lantern held by a guard, and already the
+sweet-faced girl beside me seemed tired and terribly fatigued. But we
+hurried on and on, striving to make no noise, and yet the crackling of
+wood beneath our feet seemed to us to sound like the noise of thunder.
+
+At last, breathless, we halted to listen. We were already in sight of
+the gray mist where lay the silent lake that held so many secrets. There
+was not a sound. The guards had gone straight on, believing they had
+driven us into that deadly bog wherein, if we had entered, we must have
+been slowly sucked down and engulfed. They were surrounding it, no
+doubt, feeling certain of their prey.
+
+But we crept along the water's edge, until in the gray light we could
+distinguish two empty boats--that of the guards and our own. We were
+again at the spot where we had disembarked.
+
+"Let us row to the head of the lake," suggested the Finn. "We may then
+land and escape them." And a moment later we were all three in the
+guards' boat, rowing with all our might under the deep shadow of the
+bank northward, in the opposite direction to the town of Nystad.
+
+We kept a sharp look-out for any other boat, but saw none. The signals
+ashore had attracted all the guards to that spot to join in the search,
+and now, having doubled back and again embarked, we were every moment
+increasing the distance between ourselves and our pursuers. I think we
+must have rowed several miles, for ere we landed again, upon a low, flat
+and barren shore, the first gray streak of day was showing in the east.
+
+Elma noticed it, and kept her great brown eyes fixed upon it
+thoughtfully. It was the dawn for her--the dawn of a new life. Our eyes
+met; she smiled at me, and then gazed again eastward, full of silent
+meaning.
+
+Having landed, we drew the boat up and concealed it in the undergrowth
+so that the guards, on searching, should not know the direction we had
+taken, and then we went straight on northward across the low-lying
+lands, to where the forest showed dark against the morning gray. The
+mist had now somewhat cleared, but the air was keen and frosty.
+
+This wood, we found, was of tall high pines, where walking was not
+difficult, a wide wilderness of trees which, hour after hour, we
+traversed in the vain endeavor to find the rough path which our guide
+told us led for a hundred miles from Alavo down to Tammerfors, the
+manufacturing center of the country. But to discover a path in a forest
+forty miles wide is a matter of considerable difficulty, and for hours
+we wandered on and on, but alas! always in vain.
+
+Faint and hungry, yet we still kept courage. Fortunately we found a
+little spring, and all three of us drank eagerly with our hands. But of
+food we had nothing, save a small piece of hard rye bread which the Finn
+had in his pocket, the remains of his evening meal; and this we gave to
+Elma, who, half famished, ate it quickly. We knew quite well that it
+would be an easy matter to die of starvation in that great trackless
+forest, therefore we kept on undaunted, while the yellow autumn sun
+struggled through the dark pines, glinting on the straight gray trunks
+and reflecting a golden light in that dead unbroken silence.
+
+How many miles we trudged I have no idea. It was a consolation to know
+that we now had no pursuers, yet what fate lay before us we knew not. If
+we could only find that forest-road we might come across some
+wood-cutter's hut, where we could obtain rough food of some sort, yet
+our guide, used as he was to those enormous woods of central Finland,
+was utterly out of his bearings, and no mark of civilization attracted
+his quick, experienced eye. The light above gradually faded, and over a
+sharp stone Elma stumbled and ripped her shoe.
+
+I looked at my watch, and found that it was already five o'clock. In an
+hour it would be dark, the beginning of the long northern night. Elma,
+who was weary and footsore, asked by signs to be permitted to lay down
+and rest. Therefore we gathered a bed of dried leaves for her, and she
+lay down, and while we watched she was soon asleep. The Finn, who
+declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and
+placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.
+
+While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined
+features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss
+upon that soft inviting cheek. Yet I had no right to do so--no right to
+take such an advantage.
+
+The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused
+me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and
+notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals,
+we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.
+
+Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write,
+therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner
+of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath
+the spell of her beauty. All the little acts of homage I was able to
+perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep
+luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.
+
+The mist had not cleared, for it was soon after dawn when we again moved
+along, hungry, chill, and yet hopeful. At a spring we obtained some
+water, and then, in silent procession, pressed forward in search of the
+rough track of the woodcutters.
+
+Elma's torn shoe gave her considerable trouble, and noticing her
+limping, I induced her to sit down while I took it off, hoping to be
+able to mend it, but, having unlaced it, I saw that upon her stocking
+was a large patch of congealed blood, where her foot itself had also
+been cut. I managed to beat the nails of the shoe with a stone, so that
+its sole should not be lost, and she readjusted it, allowing me to lace
+it up for her and smiling the while.
+
+Forward we trudged, ever forward, across that enormous forest where the
+myriad treetrunks presented the same dismal scene everywhere, a forest
+untrodden save by wild, half-savage lumbermen. Throughout that dull
+gray day we marched onward, faint with hunger, yet suffering but little
+pain, for the first pangs were now past, and were succeeded by slight
+light-headedness. My only fear was that we should be compelled to spend
+another night without shelter, and what its effect might be upon the
+delicately-reared girl whose hand I held tenderly in mine. Surely my
+position was a strange one. Her terrible affliction seemed to cause her
+to be entirely dependent upon me.
+
+Suddenly, just as the yellow sunlight overhead had begun to fade, the
+flat-faced Finn, whose name he had told me was Felix Estlander, cried
+joyfully--
+
+"_Polushaite!_ Look, Excellency! Ah! The road at last!"
+
+And as we glanced before us we saw that his quick, well-trained eyes had
+detected away in the twilight, at some distance, a path traversing our
+vista among the gray-green tree-trunks. Then, hurrying along, we found
+ourselves upon a track, on which we turned to the right--a track, rough
+and deeply-rutted by the felled trunks that were dragged along it to the
+nearest river.
+
+Elma made a gesture of renewed hope, and all three of us redoubled our
+pace, expecting every moment to come upon some log hut, the owner of
+which would surely give us hospitality for the night. But darkness came
+on quickly, and yet we still pushed forward. Poor Elma was limping, and
+I knew that her injured foot was paining her, even though she could tell
+me nothing.
+
+At last, however, after walking for nearly four hours in the almost
+impenetrable forest gloom, always fearing lest we might miss the path,
+our hearts suddenly beat quickly by seeing before us a light shining in
+a window, and five minutes later Felix was knocking at the door, and
+asking in Finnish the occupant to give hospitality to a lady lost in
+the forest.
+
+We heard a low growl like a muttered imprecation within, and when the
+door opened there stood upon the threshold a tall, bearded, muscular old
+fellow in a dirty red shirt, with a big revolver shining in his hand. A
+quick glance at us satisfied him that we were not thieves, and he
+invited us in while Felix explained that we had landed from the lake,
+and our boat having drifted away we had been compelled to take to the
+woods. The man heard the Finn's picturesque story, and then said
+something to me which Felix translated into Russian.
+
+"Your Excellency is welcome to all the poor fare he has. He gives up his
+bed in the room yonder to the lady, so that she may rest. He is honored
+by your Excellency's presence."
+
+And while he was making this explanation the herculean wood-cutter in
+the red shirt stirred the red embers whereon a big pot was simmering,
+and sending forth an appetizing odor, and in five minutes we were all
+three sitting down to a stew of capercailzie, with a foaming light beer
+as a fitting beverage. We finished the dish with such lightning rapidity
+that our host boiled us a number of eggs, which, I fear, denuded his
+larder.
+
+The place was a poor one of two low rooms, built of rough log-pines,
+with double windows for the winter and a high brick stove. Cleanliness
+was not exactly its characteristic, nevertheless we all passed a very
+comfortable hour, and received a warm welcome from the lonely old fellow
+who passed his life so far beyond European civilization, and whose
+house, he told us, was often snowed up and cut off from all the world
+for three or four months at a time.
+
+After we had finished our meal, I asked the sturdy old fellow for a
+pencil, but the nearest thing he possessed was a stick of thick
+charcoal, and with that it was surely difficult to communicate with our
+fair companion. Therefore she rose, gave me her hand, bowed smilingly,
+and then passed into the inner room and closed the door.
+
+The old wood-cutter gave us some coarse tobacco, and after smoking and
+chatting for an hour we threw ourselves wearily upon the wooden benches
+and slept soundly.
+
+Suddenly, however, at early dawn, we were startled by a loud banging at
+the door, the clattering of hoofs, and authoritative shouts in Russian.
+The old wood-cutter sprang up, and looking through a chink in the heavy
+shutters turned to us with blanched face, whispering breathlessly--
+
+"The police! What can they want of me?"
+
+"Open!" shouted the horsemen outside. "Open in the name of his Majesty!"
+
+Felix and I sprang up facing each other.
+
+"We are entrapped!"
+
+In an instant our guide Felix made a dash for the door of the inner room
+where Elma had retired, but next second he reappeared, gasping in
+Russian--
+
+"Excellency! Why, the door is open! The lady has gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I cried, dismayed, rushing into the little room, where I found
+the truckle couch empty, and the door leading outside wide open. She had
+actually disappeared!
+
+The police again battered at the opposite door, threatening loudly to
+break it in if it were not opened at once, whereupon the old wood-cutter
+drew the bolt and admitted them. Two big, hulking fellows in heavy
+riding-coats and swords strode in, while two others remained mounted
+outside, holding the horses.
+
+"Your names?" demanded one of the fellows, glancing at us as we stood
+together in expectation.
+
+Our host told them his name, and asked why they wished to enter.
+
+"We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana," was the
+reply. "Have you seen any woman here?"
+
+"No," responded the wood-cutter. "We never see any woman out in these
+woods."
+
+The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make
+certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked,
+"Who are you?"
+
+"That is my own affair," I answered.
+
+The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She
+seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some
+warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore
+she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.
+
+"Your identity is my affair," declared the man with the fair, bristly
+beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.
+
+"Who is your chief?" I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.
+
+"Melnikoff, at Helsingfors."
+
+"Then this is not in the district of Abo?"
+
+"No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?"
+
+"Gordon Gregg, British subject," I replied.
+
+"And you are the drosky-driver from Abo," remarked the fellow, turning
+to Felix. "Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at
+Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the
+Czar, I arrest you!"
+
+The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave
+peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron
+Oberg, the Strangler of Finland. Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing
+that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.
+
+"And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?" I inquired as
+coolly as I could.
+
+"For aiding a prisoner to escape."
+
+"Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and,
+secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly
+willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo."
+
+"It is outside my district," growled the fellow, but I saw that his
+hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.
+
+"I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make
+all the explanation necessary. Until we have an interview with him, I
+refuse to give any information concerning myself," I said.
+
+"But you have a passport?"
+
+I drew it from my pocket, saying--
+
+"It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you."
+
+The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.
+
+"Where is the woman?" he demanded. "Tell me."
+
+"I don't know," was my reply.
+
+"Perhaps you will tell me," he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with
+a sinister expression upon his face. "Remember, these fugitives are
+found in your house, and you are liable to arrest."
+
+"I don't know--indeed I don't!" protested the old fellow, trembling
+beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police,
+and held them in dread.
+
+"Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!" he smiled. "Well, perhaps your
+memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also
+arrested."
+
+"But, your Excellency, I--"
+
+"Enough!" blared the bristly officer. "You have given shelter to
+conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?"
+
+"But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!" the poor old man
+protested. "His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot."
+
+"We shall see afterwards," he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of
+police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully,
+an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They
+upset everything and pried everywhere.
+
+"You may find papers or letters," said the officer. "Search thoroughly."
+And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards
+in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.
+
+A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly
+refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted
+on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by
+what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the
+Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom,
+I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared
+that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of
+the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be
+actively making a house-to-house search.
+
+But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her
+own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and
+dastardly plot. That gray dress of hers might, I recollected, betray her
+if she dared to venture near any town, while her affliction would, of
+itself, be plain evidence of identification. All I hoped was that she
+had gone and hidden herself in the forest somewhere in the vicinity to
+wait until the danger of recapture had passed.
+
+For nearly half an hour I argued with the police officer whose intention
+it was to take me under arrest to Helsingfors. Once there, however, I
+knew too well that my liberty would be probably gone for ever. Whatever
+was the Baron's motive in holding the poor girl a prisoner, it would
+also be his motive to silence me. I knew too much for his liking.
+
+"I refuse to go to Helsingfors," I said defiantly. "I am a British
+subject, and demand to be taken back to the port where my passport was
+viséd." This argument I repeated time after time, until at length I
+succeeded in convincing him that I really had a right to be taken to
+Abo, and to seek the aid of the British Vice-Consul if necessary.
+
+For as long as possible I succeeded in delaying our departure, but at
+length, just as the yellow sun began to struggle through the gray
+clouds, we were all three compelled to depart in sorrowful procession.
+
+What, we wondered, had really happened to Elma? It was evident that she
+had not fallen into the hands of the police; nevertheless, the fact that
+the door of the inner room was open caused them to look upon the
+statement of the wood-cutter with distinct suspicion and disbelief.
+
+Our captors seemed quite well aware of all the circumstances of our
+escape from Kajana, and were consequently filled with chagrin that Elma,
+the person they so much desired to recapture, had slipped through their
+fingers. While the police rode, we were compelled to walk before them,
+and after trudging ten miles or so through the forest we came across
+another small posse of police, who were apparently in search of us, for
+they expressed delight when they saw us under arrest.
+
+"Where is the woman?" inquired one officer of the other.
+
+"Still at liberty," replied the man who held us as prisoners. "In hiding
+twenty versts back, I think."
+
+"Ah, we shall find her before long," he said confidently. "Within twelve
+hours we shall have searched the whole forest. She cannot escape us."
+
+Our captors explained who we were, and then we were pushed forward
+again, skirting a great wide lake called the Nasjarvi, along the wooded
+shore of which we walked the whole day long until, at sundown, we came
+to a picturesque little log-built town facing the water, called
+Filppula. Here we obtained a hasty meal, and afterwards took the train
+down to Abo, where we arrived next morning, after a very uncomfortable
+and sleepless journey.
+
+At nine o'clock I stood in the big bare office of Michael Boranski,
+where only a few days before we had had such a heated argument. As soon
+as the Chief of Police entered, he recognized me under arrest, and
+dismissed my guards with a wave of the hand--all save the officer who
+had brought me there. The Finnish driver and the old wood-cutter were in
+another room, therefore I stood alone with the police-officer of
+Helsingfors and the Chief of Police at Abo. The latter listened to the
+officer's story of my arrest without saying a word.
+
+"The prisoner, your Excellency, desired to be brought here to you before
+being taken to Helsingfors. He said you would be aware of the facts."
+
+"And so I am," remarked Boranski, with a smile. "There is no conspiracy.
+You must at once release this gentleman and the other two prisoners."
+
+"But, Excellency, the Governor-General has issued orders for the
+prisoner's arrest and deportation to Helsingfors."
+
+"That may be. But I am Chief of Police in Abo, and I release him."
+
+The officer looked at me in such blank astonishment that I could not
+resist smiling.
+
+"I am well aware of the reason of this Englishman's visit to the north,"
+added Boranski. "More need not be said. Has the lady been arrested?"
+
+"No, your Excellency. Every effort is being made to find her. Colonel
+Smirnoff has already been relieved of his post as Governor of Kajana,
+and many of the guards are under arrest for complicity in the plot to
+allow the woman to escape."
+
+"Ah, yes. I see from the despatches that a reward is offered for her
+recapture."
+
+"The Governor-General is determined that she shall not escape," remarked
+the other.
+
+"She is probably hidden in the forest, somewhere or other."
+
+"Of course. They are making a thorough search over every verst of it. If
+she is there, she will most certainly be found."
+
+"No doubt," remarked Boranski, leaning back in his padded chair and
+looking at me meaningly across the littered table. "And now I wish to
+speak to this Englishman privately, so please leave us. Also inform the
+other two prisoners that they are at liberty."
+
+"But your Excellency does this upon his own responsibility," he said
+anxiously. "Remember that I brought them to you under arrest."
+
+"And I release them entirely at my own discretion," he said. "As Chief
+of Police of this province, I am permitted to use my jurisdiction, and I
+exercise it in this matter. You are liberty to report that at
+Helsingfors, if you so desire, but I should suggest that you say nothing
+unless absolutely obliged--you understand?"
+
+The manner in which Boranski spoke apparently decided my captor, for
+after a moment's hesitation he said, saluting:
+
+"If that is really your wish, then I will obey." And he left.
+
+"Excellency!" exclaimed the Chief of Police, rising quickly and walking
+towards me as soon as the door was closed, and we were alone, "you have
+had a very narrow escape--very. I did my best to assist you. I succeeded
+in bribing the water-guards at Kajana in order that you might secure the
+lady's release. But it seems that just at the very moment when you were
+about to get away one of the guards turned informer and roused the
+governor of the castle, with the result that you all three nearly lost
+your lives. The whole matter has been reported to me officially, and,"
+he added with a grim smile, "my men are now searching everywhere for
+you."
+
+"But why is Baron Oberg so extremely anxious to recapture Miss Heath?" I
+asked earnestly.
+
+"I have no idea," was his reply. "The secret orders from Helsingfors to
+me are to arrest her at all hazards--alive or dead."
+
+"Which means that the Baron would not regret if she was dead," I
+remarked, in response to which he nodded in the affirmative.
+
+I told him of the faithful services of Felix, the Finlander, whereupon
+he said simply:
+
+"I told you that you might trust him implicitly."
+
+"But now that you have shown yourself my friend," I said, "you will
+assist Miss Heath to escape this man, who desires to hold her prisoner
+in that awful place. They are driving her mad."
+
+"I will do my best," he answered, but shaking his head dubiously. "But
+you must recollect that Baron Oberg is Governor-General of Finland,
+with all the powers of the Czar himself."
+
+"And if Elma Heath again falls into his unscrupulous hands, she will
+die," I declared.
+
+"Ah!" he sighed, looking me straight in the face, "I fear that what you
+say is only too true. She evidently holds some secret which he fears she
+will reveal. He wishes to rearrest her in order--well--" he added in a
+low tone, "in order to close her lips. It would not be the first time
+that persons have been silenced in secret at Kajana. Many fatal
+accidents take place in that fortress, you know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"THE STRANGLER"
+
+
+Where was Elma? What was the cause of her inexplicable disappearance
+into the gloomy forest while we had slept?
+
+I returned to the hotel where I had stayed on my arrival, a comfortable
+place called the Phoenix, and lunched there alone. Both Felix, the Finn,
+and my host, the wood-cutter, had received their _douceurs_ and left,
+but to the last-named I had given instructions to return home at once
+and report by telegraph any news of my lost one.
+
+A thousand conflicting thoughts arose within me as I sat in that crowded
+_salle-à-manger_ filled with a gobbling crowd of the commercial men of
+Abo. I had, I recognized, now to deal with the most powerful man in that
+country, and I suffered a distinct disadvantage by being in ignorance of
+the reason he held that sweet English girl a prisoner. The tragedy of
+the dastardly manner in which she had been willfully maimed caused my
+blood to boil within me. I had never believed that in this civilized
+twentieth century such things could be.
+
+Michael Boranski had given his pledge to assist me, yet he had most
+plainly explained to me his fears. The Baron was intent upon again
+getting Elma into his power. Was it at his orders, I wondered, that the
+sweet-faced girl had been deprived of speech and hearing? Had she fallen
+an innocent victim to his infamous scheming?
+
+About me men were eating strange dishes and talking in Finnish, while
+others were smoking and drinking their vodka; but I was in no mood for
+observation. My only thought was of she who was now lost to me.
+
+Why had she disappeared without warning I was at loss to imagine, yet I
+could only surmise that her flight had been compulsory. Some women
+possess a mysterious sense of intuition, a curious and indescribable
+faculty of knowing when evil threatens them, that presents a strange and
+puzzling problem to our scientists. It is unaccountable, and yet many
+women possess it in a very marked degree. Was it, therefore, possible
+that Elma had awakened, and being warned of her peril had fled without
+arousing us? The suggestion was possible, but I feared improbable.
+
+Another very curious feature in the affair was the sudden manner in
+which Michael Boranski had exerted his power and influence in order to
+render me that service. He had actually bribed the guards of Kajana; he
+had instructed the faithful Felix, he had provided our boat, and he had
+ordered the nun to open the water-gate to me. Why?
+
+There was, I felt convinced, some hidden motive in all that sudden and
+marked friendliness. That he really hated the English I had seen plainly
+when we had first met, and I had only compelled him to serve me by
+presenting the order signed by the Emperor, which made me his guest
+within the Russian dominions. Even that document did not account for the
+length he had gone to secure the release of the woman I now loved in
+secret. The more I thought it over, the more anxious did I become. I
+could discern no motive for his friendliness, and, truth to tell, I
+always distrust those who are too friendly. What straight and decided
+line of action should I take? Carefully I went over all the strange
+events that had happened in England, and while anxious to obtain some
+solution of the amazing problem, yet I could not bring myself to leave
+Finland, and allow Elma to fall into the clutches of that high official
+who so persistently sought her end. No. I would go to him and face him.
+I was anxious to see what manner of man was "The Strangler of Finland."
+Therefore, that same evening I left Abo, and traveled by rail up to the
+junction Toijala, whence, after a wait of six hours, I resumed by slow
+journey to Helsingfors. I put up at Kamp's, an elegant hotel on the long
+esplanade overlooking the port, and found the town, with its handsome
+streets and spacious squares, to be a much finer place than I had
+believed. When I inquired of the French director of my hotel for the
+residence of his Excellency, the Governor-General, he regarded me with
+some surprise, saying:
+
+"The Baron lives up at the Palace, m'sieur--that great building opposite
+the Salutong. The driver of your drosky will point it out to you."
+
+"Is his Excellency in Helsingfors at the present moment?" I asked.
+
+"The Baron never leaves the Palace, m'sieur," responded the man. "This
+is a strange country, you know," he added, with a grin. "It is said that
+his Excellency is in hourly fear of assassination."
+
+"Perhaps not without cause," I remarked in a low voice, at which he
+elevated his shoulders and smiled.
+
+At noon I descended from a drosky before a long, gray, massive building,
+over the big doorway of which was a large escutcheon bearing the Russian
+arms emblazoned in gold, and on entering where a sentry stood on either
+side, a colossal concierge in livery of bright blue and gold came
+forward to meet me, asking in Russian:
+
+"Whom do you wish to see?"
+
+"His Excellency, the Governor-General."
+
+"Have you an appointment?"
+
+"No."
+
+"His Excellency sees no one without an appointment," the man told me
+somewhat gruffly.
+
+"I am not here on public business, but upon a private matter," I
+explained. "Perhaps I may see his Excellency's secretary?"
+
+"If you wish, but I repeat that his Excellency sees no one without a
+previous appointment."
+
+I knew this quite well, for the "Strangler of Finland," fearful of
+assassination, was as unapproachable as the Czar himself. Following the
+directions of the concierge, however, I crossed a great bare courtyard,
+and, ascending a wide stone staircase, was confronted by a servant, who,
+on hearing my inquiry took me into a waiting-room, and left with my card
+to Colonel Luganski, whom he informed me was the Baron's private
+secretary.
+
+After ten minutes or so the man returned, saying:
+
+"The Colonel will see you if you will please step this way," and
+following him he conducted me into the richly furnished private
+apartments of the Palace, across a great hall filled with fine
+paintings, and then up a long thickly-carpeted passage to a small,
+elegant room, where a tall bald-headed man in military uniform stood
+awaiting me.
+
+"Your name is M'sieur Gregg," he exclaimed in very good French, "and I
+understand you desire audience of his Excellency, the Governor-General.
+I regret, however, that he never gives audience to strangers."
+
+"The matter upon which I desire to see his Excellency is of a purely
+private and confidential nature," I said, for used as I was to the ways
+of foreign officialdom, I spoke with the same firm courtesy as himself.
+
+"I am very sorry, m'sieur, but I fear it will be necessary in that case
+for you to write to his Excellency, and mark your letter 'personal.' It
+will then go into the Governor-General's own hands."
+
+"What I have to say cannot be committed to writing," was my reply. "I
+must see Baron Oberg upon a matter which affects him personally, and
+which admits of no delay."
+
+He glanced at me quickly, and then in a low voice inquired:
+
+"Is it in regard to a--well, a conspiracy?"
+
+His question instantly suggested to me a ruse, and I replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Then you can place the facts before me without the slightest
+hesitation," he said, going to the door and slipping the bolt into its
+socket. "Anything spoken into my ear is as though it were spoken into
+that of his Excellency himself."
+
+"I much regret, M'sieur the Colonel, that I must see the Baron in
+person."
+
+"Has the plot assassination as its object--or revolt?" he asked
+pointedly.
+
+"That I will explain to the Baron only."
+
+"But I tell you he will not see you. We have so many persons here with
+secret information concerning Finnish conspiracies against our Russian
+rule. Why, if his Excellency saw everyone who desired to see him, he
+would be compelled to give audience the whole twenty-four hours round."
+
+At a glance I saw that this elegant Colonel, who seemed to take the
+greatest pride over his exquisitely kept person and his spotless
+uniform, did not intend to allow me the satisfaction of an audience of
+that most hated official of the Czar. The latter was in fear of the
+dagger, the pistol, or the bomb, and consequently hedged himself in by
+persons of the Colonel's type--courteous, diplomatic, but utterly
+unbending. After some further argument, I said at last in a firm tone:
+
+"I wish to impress upon you the extreme importance of the information I
+have to impart, and can only repeat that it is a matter concerning his
+Excellency privately. Will you therefore do me the favor to take my name
+to him?"
+
+"His Excellency refuses to be troubled with the names of strangers," was
+his cold reply, as he turned over my card in his hand.
+
+"But if I write upon it the nature of my business, and enclose it in an
+envelope, will you then take it to him?" I suggested.
+
+He hesitated for a short time, twisting his mustache, and then replied
+with great reluctance:
+
+"Well, if you are so determined, you may write your business upon your
+card."
+
+I therefore took out one, and on the back wrote in French the words
+which I knew must have the effect of obtaining an audience for me:
+
+    "_To give information regarding Miss Elma Heath_."
+
+This I enclosed in the envelope he handed to me, when, ringing a bell,
+he handed it to the footman who appeared, with orders to take it to his
+Excellency and await a reply. The response came in a few minutes.
+
+"His Excellency will give audience to the English m'sieur."
+
+Then I rose and followed the footman through several wide corridors
+filled with palms and flowers, which formed a kind of winter-garden,
+until we crossed a red-carpeted ante-room, where two statuesque sentries
+stood on guard, and the man conducting me rapped at the great polished
+mahogany doors of the room beyond.
+
+A voice responded, the door was opened, and I found myself in a high,
+beautifully-painted room, with long windows hung with pastel-blue silk
+with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall
+a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle
+embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the
+center of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin,
+wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lapel of
+which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne. His
+hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position
+that when I entered I could not at first see his face against the
+strong, gray light behind.
+
+But when the footman had bowed and retired and we were alone, he turned
+slightly, and I then saw that his bony face, with high cheek-bones,
+slight gray side-whiskers, hard mouth and black eyes set closely
+together, was one that bore the mark of evil upon it--the keen, sinister
+countenance of one who could act without any compunction and without
+regret. Truly one would not be surprised at any cruel, dastardly action
+of a man with such a face--the face of an oppressor.
+
+"Well?" he snapped in French in a high-pitched voice. "You want to see
+me concerning that mad English girl? What picturesque lies do you intend
+to tell me concerning her?"
+
+"I have no intention of telling any untruths concerning her," was my
+quick response, as I faced him unflinchingly. "She has told me
+sufficient to--"
+
+"She has told you something! Ah! I guessed as much. I expected this!"
+And I saw that his thin, crafty face went pale, while his eyes glanced
+evilly upon me. He believed that she had revealed to me her secret. He
+placed his hand upon the back of a chair wherein was concealed an
+electric button, and next instant a little stout man in shabby black
+appeared as though by magic through a secret door hidden in the dark
+paneling of the audience chamber--the man who was his personal guard
+against the plots for his assassination.
+
+His Excellency spoke, and the words he uttered staggered me. I stood
+aghast.
+
+"Seize that man!" he cried, pointing to me. "He is armed! He has just
+threatened to kill me! He is the man against whom we were recently
+warned--the Englishman!"
+
+"Ah!" I cried, standing before the thin-faced official of the Czar, the
+unscrupulous man who had crushed Finland beneath the iron heel of
+Russia, and who, by his lying allegation, now held me in his power. "I
+see your object, Baron Oberg! You intend to arrest me as a conspirator!"
+
+"Search the fellow. He has a revolver there in his hip-pocket," declared
+the Governor-General, and in an instant the short, ferret-eyed little
+man had run his hands down me and felt my weapon.
+
+I drew it forth and handed it to him, saying:
+
+"You are quite welcome to it if you fear that I am here with any
+sinister motive."
+
+"He obtained admission by a clever ruse," the Baron explained to the
+police agent. "And then he threatened me."
+
+"It's untrue," I protested hotly. "I have merely called to see you
+regarding the young English lady, Elma Heath--the unfortunate lady whom
+you consigned to the fortress of Kajana."
+
+"The mad woman, you mean!" he laughed.
+
+"She is not mad," I cried, "but as sane as you yourself. It is you who
+intended that the horrors of the castle should drive her insane, and
+thus your secret should be kept!"
+
+"What do you suggest?" he demanded, stepping a few paces towards me.
+
+"I mean, Xavier Oberg, that you would kill Elma Heath if you dared to
+do so," I answered plainly, as I faced him unflinchingly.
+
+"You see?" he laughed, turning to the stout man at my side. "The fellow
+is insane. He does not know what he is talking about. Ah, my dear
+Malkoff, I've had a narrow escape! He came here intending to shoot me."
+
+"I did not," I protested. "I am here to demand satisfaction on behalf of
+Miss Heath."
+
+"Oh!--well, if the lady cares to come here herself, I will give her the
+satisfaction she desires," was his crafty reply.
+
+"The lady has escaped you, and it is therefore hardly likely she will
+willingly return to Helsingfors," I said.
+
+"It was you who succeeded, by throwing the guard into the water, in
+abducting her from the castle," he remarked. "But," he added sneeringly,
+with a sinister smile, "I presume your gallantry was prompted by
+affection--eh?"
+
+"That is my own affair."
+
+"A deaf and dumb woman is surely not a very cheerful companion!"
+
+"And who caused her that affliction?" I cried hotly. "When she was at
+Chichester she possessed speech and hearing as other girls. Indeed, she
+was not afflicted when on board the _Lola_ in Leghorn harbor only a few
+months ago. Perhaps you recollect the narrow escape the yacht had on the
+Meloria sands?"
+
+His eyes met mine, and I saw by his drawn face and narrow brows that my
+words were causing him the utmost consternation. My object was to make
+him believe that I knew more than I really did--to hold him in fear, in
+fact.
+
+"Perhaps the man whom some know as Hornby, or Woodroffe, could tell an
+interesting story," I went on. "He will, no doubt, when he meets Elma
+Heath, and finds the terrible affliction of which she has been the
+victim."
+
+His thin, bony countenance was bloodless, his mouth twitched and his
+gray brows contracted quickly.
+
+"I haven't the least idea what you mean, my dear sir," he stammered.
+"All that you say is entirely enigmatical to me. What have I to do with
+this mad Englishwoman's affairs?"
+
+"Send out this man," I said, pointing to the detective Malkoff, who had
+appeared from behind the paneling of the audience-chamber. "Send him
+out, and I will tell you."
+
+But the representative of the Czar, always as much in dread of
+assassination as his imperial master, refused. I saw that what I had
+said had upset him, and that he was not at all clear as to how much or
+how little of the true facts I knew.
+
+The connection between the little miniature cross of the Order of St.
+Anne and that red and yellow ribbon in his button-hole struck me
+forcibly at that moment, and I said:
+
+"I have no desire to make any statements before a second person. I came
+here to see you privately, and in private will I speak. I have certain
+information that will, I feel confident, be of the utmost interest to
+you--concerning another woman, Armida Santini."
+
+His lips were pressed together, and I noticed how he started when I
+uttered the name of that woman whom I had found dead in Rannoch Wood,
+and whose body had so mysteriously disappeared.
+
+"And what on earth can the woman concern me?" he asked, with a brave
+attempt to remain cool, still speaking in French.
+
+"Only that you knew her," was my brief reply. Then, with my eyes still
+fixed upon his, I asked: "Will you not now request this gentleman to
+retire?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, and then with a wave of his hand dismissed the
+man he had summoned to his aid. A moment later the "Strangler's"
+personal protector had disappeared through that secret door in the
+paneling by which he had entered.
+
+"Well?" asked the Baron, turning quickly to me again, his dark, evil
+eyes trying to fathom my intentions.
+
+"Well?" I asked. "And what, pray, can you profit by denouncing me as an
+assassin? Remember, Baron, that your secret is mine," I said in a clear
+voice full of meaning.
+
+"And your intention is blackmail--eh?" he snapped, walking to the window
+and back again. "How much do you want?"
+
+"My intention is nothing of the kind. My object is to avenge the
+outrageous injury to Elma Heath."
+
+"Of course. That is only natural, m'sieur, if you have fallen in love
+with her," he said. "But are not your intentions somewhat ill-advised
+considering her position as a criminal lunatic?"
+
+"She is neither," I protested quickly.
+
+"Very well. You know better than myself," he laughed. "The offense for
+which she was condemned to confinement in a fortress was the attempted
+assassination of Madame Vakuroff, wife of the General commanding the
+Uleaborg Military Division."
+
+"Assassination!" I cried. "Have you actually sent her to prison as a
+murderess?"
+
+"I have not. The Criminal Court of Abo did so," he said dryly. "The
+offense has since been proved to have been the outcome of a political
+conspiracy, and the Minister of the Interior in Petersburg last week
+signed an order for the prisoner's transportation to the island of
+Saghalien."
+
+"Ah!" I remarked with set teeth. "Because you fear lest she shall write
+down your secret."
+
+"You are insulting! You evidently do not know what you are saying," he
+exclaimed resentfully.
+
+"I know what I am saying quite well. You have requested her removal to
+Saghalien in order that the truth shall be never known. But Baron
+Oberg," I added with mock politeness, "you may do as you will, you may
+send Elma Heath to her grave, you may hold me prisoner if you dare, but
+there are still witnesses of your crime that will rise against you."
+
+In an instant he went ghastly pale, and I knew that my blind shot had
+struck its mark. The man before me was guilty of some crime, but what it
+was only Elma herself could tell. That he had had her arrested for an
+attempted political assassination only showed how ingeniously and
+craftily the heartless ruler of that ruined country had laid his plans.
+He feared Elma, and therefore had conspired to have her sent out to that
+dismal penal island in the far-off Pacific.
+
+"You do not fear arrest, m'sieur?" he asked, as though with some
+surprise.
+
+"Not in the least--at least, not arrest by you. You may be the
+representative of the Emperor in Finland, but even here there is justice
+for the innocent."
+
+A sinister smile played around the thin, gray lips of the man whose very
+name was hated through the great empire of the Czar, and was synonymous
+of oppression, injustice, and heartless tyranny.
+
+"All I can repeat," he said, "is that if you bring the young
+Englishwoman here I shall be quite prepared to hear her appeal." And he
+laughed harshly.
+
+"You ask that because you know it is impossible," I said, whereat he
+again laughed in my face--a laugh which made me wonder whether Elma had
+not already fallen into his hands. The uncertainty of her fate held me
+in terrible suspense.
+
+"I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that I have not the
+slightest interest whatsoever in the person in question," he said
+coldly. "You seem to have formed some romantic attachment towards this
+young woman who attempted to poison Madame Vakuroff, and to have
+succeeded in rescuing her from Kajana. You afterwards disregard the fact
+that you are liable to a long term of imprisonment yourself, and
+actually have the audacity to seek audience of me and make all sorts of
+hints and suggestions that I have held the woman a prisoner for my own
+ends!"
+
+"Not only do I repeat that, Baron Oberg," I said quickly. "But I also
+allege that it was at your instigation that in Siena an operation was
+performed upon the unfortunate girl which deprived her of speech and
+hearing."
+
+"At my instigation?"
+
+"Yes, at yours!"
+
+He laughed again, but uneasily, a forced laugh, and leaned against the
+edge of the big writing-table near the window.
+
+"Well, what next?" he inquired, pretending to be interested in my
+allegations. "What do you want of me?"
+
+"I desire you to give the Mademoiselle Heath her complete freedom," I
+said.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All--for the present."
+
+"But her future is not in my hands. The Minister in Petersburg has
+decreed her removal to Saghalien as a person dangerous to the State."
+
+"Which means that she will be ill-treated--knouted to death, perhaps."
+
+"We do not use the knout in the Russian prisons nowadays," he said
+briefly. "His Majesty has decreed its abolition."
+
+"But you adopt torture in Kajana and Schusselburg instead."
+
+"My time is too limited to discuss our penal system, m'sieur," he
+exclaimed impatiently, while I could well see that he was anxious to
+escape before I made any further charges against him. I had already
+shown him that Elma had spoken, and he feared that she had told the
+truth. While this would embitter him against her and cause him to seek
+to silence her at all hazards, it was of course in my own interests that
+he should fear any revelations that I might make.
+
+"You have posed in England as the uncle of Elma Heath, and yet you here
+hold her prisoner. For what reason?" I demanded.
+
+"She is held prisoner by the State--for conspiracy against Russian
+rule--not by herself personally."
+
+"Who enticed her here? Why you, yourself. Who conspired to throw the
+guilt of this attempted murder of the general's wife upon her? You--you,
+the man whom they call 'The Strangler of Finland'! But I will avenge the
+cruel and abominable affliction you have placed upon her. Her
+secret--your secret, Baron Oberg--shall be published to the world. You
+are her enemy--and therefore mine!"
+
+"Very well," he growled between his teeth, advancing towards me
+threateningly, his fists clenched in his rage. "Recollect, m'sieur, that
+you have insulted me. Recollect that I am Governor-General of Finland."
+
+"If you were Czar himself, I should not hesitate to denounce you as the
+tyrant and mutilator of a poor defenseless woman."
+
+"And to whom, pray, will you tell this romantic story of yours?" he
+laughed hoarsely. "To your prison walls below the lake at Kajana? Yes,
+M'sieur Gregg, you will go there, and once within the fortress you shall
+never again see the light of day. You threaten me--the Governor-General
+of Finland!" he laughed in a strange, high-pitched key as he threw
+himself into a chair and scribbled something rapidly upon paper,
+appending his signature in his small crabbed handwriting.
+
+"I do not threaten," I said in open defiance, "I shall act."
+
+"And so shall I," he said with an evil grin upon his bony face as he
+blotted what he had written and took it up, adding: "In the darkness
+and silence of your living tomb, you can tell whatever strange stories
+you like concerning me. They are used to idiots where you are going," he
+added grimly.
+
+"Oh! And where am I going?"
+
+"Back to Kanaja. This order consigns you to confinement there as a
+dangerous political conspirator, as one who has threatened me--it
+consigns you to the cells below the lake--for life!"
+
+I laughed aloud, and my hand sought my wallet wherein was that
+all-powerful document--the order of the Emperor which gave me, as an
+imperial guest, immunity from arrest. I would produce it as my
+trump-card.
+
+Next second, however, I held my breath, and I think I must have turned
+pale. My pocket was empty! My wallet had been stolen! Entirely and
+helplessly I had fallen into the hands of the tyrant of the Czar.
+
+His own personal interest would be to consign me to a living tomb in
+that grim fortress of Kajana, the horrors of which were unspeakable. I
+had seen enough during my inspection of the Russian prisons as a
+journalist to know that there, in strangled Finland, I should not be
+treated with the same consideration or humanity as in Petersburg or
+Warsaw. The Governor-General consigned me to Kajana as a "political,"
+which was synonymous with a sentence of death in those damp, dark
+_oubliettes_ beneath the water-dungeons every whit as awful as those of
+the Paris Bastile.
+
+We faced each other, and I looked straight into his gray, bony face, and
+answered in a tone of defiance:
+
+"You are Governor-General, it is true, but you will, I think, reflect
+before you consign me, an Englishman, to prison without trial. I know
+full well that the English are hated by Russia, yet I assure you that in
+London we entertain no love for your nation or its methods."
+
+"Yes," he laughed, "you are quite right. Russia has no use for an effete
+ally such as England is."
+
+"Effete or powerful, my country is still able to present an ultimatum
+when diplomacy requires it," I said. "Therefore I have no fear. Send me
+to prison, and I tell you that the responsibility rests upon yourself."
+And folding my arms I kept my eyes intently upon his, so that he should
+not see that I wavered.
+
+"As for the responsibility, I certainly do not fear that, m'sieur," he
+said.
+
+"But the exposure that will result--are you prepared to face that?" I
+asked. "Perhaps you are not aware that others beside myself--one other,
+indeed, who is a diplomatist--is aware of my journey here? If I do not
+return, your Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Petersburg will be pressed
+for a reason."
+
+"Which they will not give."
+
+"Then if they do not, the truth will be out," I said laughing harshly,
+for I saw how determined he had become to hold me prisoner. "Come, call
+up your myrmidon and send me to Kajana. It will be the first step
+towards your own downfall."
+
+"We shall see," he growled.
+
+"Ah! you surely do not think that I, after ten years' service in the
+British diplomatic service, would dare to come to Finland upon this
+quest--would dare to face the rotten and corrupt officialdom which
+Russia has placed within this country--without first taking some
+adequate precaution? No, Baron. Therefore I defy you, and I leave
+Helsingfors to-night."
+
+"You will not. You are under arrest."
+
+I laughed heartily and snapped my fingers, saying:
+
+"Before you give me over to your police, first telegraph to your
+Minister of Finance, Monsieur de Witte, and inquire of him who and what
+I am."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"You have merely to send my name and description to the Minister and ask
+for a reply," I said. "He will give you instructions--or, if you so
+desire, ask his Majesty yourself."
+
+"And why, pray, does his Majesty concern himself about you?" he asked,
+at once puzzled.
+
+"You will learn later, after I am confined in Kajana and your secret is
+known in Petersburg."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," I said, "I mean that I have taken all the necessary steps to
+be forearmed against you. The day I am incarcerated by your order, the
+whole truth will be known. I shall not be the sufferer--but you will."
+
+My words, purposely enigmatical, misled him. He saw the drift of my
+argument, and being of course unaware of how much I knew, he was still
+in fear of me. My only uncertainty was of the actual fate of poor Elma.
+My wallet had been stolen--with a purpose, without a doubt--for the
+thief had deprived me of that most important of all documents, the open
+sesame to every closed door, the ukase of the Czar.
+
+"You defy me!" he said hoarsely, turning back to the window with the
+written order for my imprisonment as a political still in his hand. "But
+we shall see."
+
+"You rule Finland," I said in a hard tone, "but you have no power over
+Gordon Gregg."
+
+"I have power, and intend to exert it."
+
+"For your own ruin," I remarked with a self-confident smile. "You may
+give your torturers orders to kill me--orders that a fatal accident
+shall occur within the fortress--but I tell you frankly that my death
+will neither erase nor conceal your own offenses. There are others, away
+in England, who are aware of them, and who will, in order to avenge my
+death, speak the truth. Remember that although Elma Heath has been
+deprived of both hearing and of speech, she can still write down the
+true facts in black and white. The Czar may be your patron, and you his
+favorite, but his Majesty has no tolerance of officials who are guilty
+of what you are guilty of. You talk of arresting me!" I added with a
+smile. "Why, you ought rather to go on your knees and beg my silence."
+
+He went white with rage at my cutting sarcasm. He literally boiled over,
+for he saw that I was quite cool and had no fear of him or of the
+terrible punishment to which he intended to consign me. Besides which,
+he was filled with wonder regarding the exact amount of information
+which Elma had imparted to me.
+
+"There are certain persons," I went on, "to whom it would be of intense
+interest to know the true reason why the steam-yacht _Lola_ put into
+Leghorn; why I was entertained on board her; why the safe in the
+British Consulate was rifled, and why the unfortunate girl, kept a
+prisoner on board, was taken on shore just before the hurried sailing of
+the vessel. And there are other mysteries which the English police are
+trying to solve, namely, the reason Armida Santini and a man disguised
+as her husband died in Scotland at the hand of an assassin. But surely I
+need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the
+truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward."
+
+"For whom?" he asked, opening his eyes.
+
+"For you. Come, Baron," I said, "can we not yet speak frankly?"
+
+But he was silent for a moment, a fact which was in itself proof that my
+pointed argument had caused him to reconsider his intention of sending
+me under escort back to that castle of terror.
+
+If my journey there was in order to meet my love, I would not have
+cared. It was the ignorance of her whereabouts or of her fate that held
+me in such deep, all-consuming anxiety. Each hour that passed increased
+my fond and tender affection for her. And yet what irony of
+circumstance! She had been cruelly snatched from me at the very moment
+that freedom had been ours.
+
+I think it was well that I assumed that air of defiance with the man who
+had ground Finland beneath his heel. He was unused to it. No one dared
+to go against his will, or to utter taunt or threat to him. He was
+paramount, with all the powers of an emperor--the power, indeed, of life
+and death. Therefore he was not in the habit of being either thwarted or
+criticised, and I could see that my words had aroused within him a
+boiling tumult of resentment and of rage. I told him nothing of the loss
+of my wallet or of the precious document that it had contained. My
+defiance was merely upon principle.
+
+"Arrest me if you like. Denounce me by means of any lie that arises to
+your lips, but remember that the truth is known beyond the confines of
+the Russian Empire, and for that reason traces will be sought of me and
+full explanation demanded. I have taken precaution, Xavier Oberg," I
+added, "therefore do your worst. I repeat again that I defy you!"
+
+He paced the big room, his thin claw-like hands still clenched, his
+yellow teeth grinding, his dark, deep-set eyes fixed straight before
+him. If he had dared, he would have struck me down at his feet. But he
+did not dare. I saw too plainly that even though my wallet was gone I
+still held the trump-card--that he feared me.
+
+The mention I had made of the Minister of Finance, however, seemed to
+cause him considerable hesitation. That high official had the ear of the
+Emperor, and if I were a friend there might be inquiries. As I stood
+before him leaning against a small buhl table, I watched all the complex
+workings of his mind, and tried to read the mysterious motive which had
+caused him to consign poor Elma to Kajana.
+
+He was a proud bully, possessing neither pity nor remorse, an average
+specimen of the high Russian official, a hide-bound bureaucrat, a slave
+to etiquette and possessing a veneer of polish. But beneath it all I saw
+that he was a coward in deadly fear of assassination--a coward who
+dreaded lest some secret should be revealed. That concealed door in the
+paneling with the armed guard lurking behind was sufficiently plain
+evidence that he was not the fearless Governor-General that was
+popularly supposed. He, "The Strangler of Finland," had crushed the
+gallant nation into submission, ruining their commerce, sapping the
+country by impressing its youth into the Russian army, forbidding the
+use of the Finnish language, and taxing the people until the factories
+had been compelled to close down while the peasantry starved. And now,
+on the verge of revolt, there had arisen a band of patriots who resented
+ruin, and who had already warned his Majesty by letter that if Baron
+Oberg were not removed from his post he would die.
+
+These and other thoughts ran through my mind in the silence that
+followed our heated argument, for I saw well that he was in actual fear
+of me. I had led him to believe that I knew everything, and that his
+future was in my hands, while he, on his part, was anxious to hold me
+prisoner, and yet dared not do so.
+
+My wallet had probably been stolen by some lurking police-spy, for
+Russian agents abound everywhere in Finland, reporting conspiracies that
+do not exist and denouncing the innocent as "politicals."
+
+The Baron had halted, and was looking through one of the great windows
+down upon the courtyard below where the sentries were pacing. The palace
+was for him a gilded prison, for he dared not go out for a drive in one
+or other of the parks or for a blow on the water across to Hogholmen or
+Dagero, being compelled to remain there for months without showing
+himself publicly. People in Abo had told me that when he did go out into
+the streets of Helsingfors it was at night, and he usually disguised
+himself in the uniform of a private soldier of the guard, thus escaping
+recognition by those who, driven to desperation by injustice, sought his
+life.
+
+A long silence had fallen between us, and it now occurred to me to take
+advantage of his hesitation. Therefore I said in a firm voice, in
+French--
+
+"I think, Baron, our interview is at an end, is it not? Therefore I wish
+you good-day."
+
+He turned upon me suddenly with an evil flash in his dark eyes, and a
+snarling imprecation in Russian upon his lips. His hand still held the
+order committing me to the fortress.
+
+"But before I leave you will destroy that document. It may fall into
+other hands, you know," and I walked towards him with quick
+determination.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind!" he snapped.
+
+Without further word I snatched the paper from his thin white fingers
+and tore it up before his face. His countenance went livid. I do not
+think I have ever seen a man's face assume such an expression of
+fiendish vindictiveness. It was as though at that instant hell had been
+let loose within his heart.
+
+But I turned upon my heel and went out, passing the sentries in the
+ante-room, along the flower-filled corridors and across the courtyard to
+the main entrance where the gorgeous concierge saluted me as I stepped
+forth into the square.
+
+I had escaped by means of my own diplomacy and firmness. The Czar's
+representative--the man who ruled that country--feared me, and for that
+reason did not hold me prisoner. Yet when I recalled that evil look of
+revenge on my departure, I could not help certain feelings of grave
+apprehension arising within me.
+
+Returning to my hotel, I smoked a cigar in my room and pondered. Where
+was Elma? was the chief question which arose within my mind. By
+remaining in Helsingfors I could achieve nothing further, now that I had
+made the acquaintance of the oppressor, whereas if I returned to Abo I
+might perchance be able to obtain some clue to my love's whereabouts. I
+call her my love because I both pitied and loved the poor afflicted girl
+who was so helpless and defenseless.
+
+Therefore I took the midnight train back to Abo, arriving at the hotel
+next morning. After an hour's rest I set out anxiously in search of
+Felix, the drosky-driver. I found him in his log-built house in the
+Ludno quarter, and when he asked me in I saw, from his face, that he had
+news to impart.
+
+"Well?" I inquired. "And what of the lady? Has she been found?"
+
+"Ah! your Excellency. It is a pity you were not here yesterday," he said
+with a sigh.
+
+"Why? Tell me quickly. What has happened?"
+
+"I have been assisting the police as spy, Excellency, as I often do, and
+I have seen her."
+
+"Seen her! Where?" I cried in quick anxiety.
+
+"Here, in Abo. She arrived yesterday morning from Tammerfors accompanied
+by an Englishman. She had changed her dress, and was all in black. They
+lunched together at the Restaurant du Nord opposite the landing stage,
+and an hour later left by steamer for Petersburg."
+
+"An Englishman!" I cried. "Did you not inform the Chief of Police,
+Boranski?"
+
+"Yes, your Excellency. But he said that their passports being in order
+it was better to allow the lady to proceed. To delay her might mean her
+rearrest in Finland," he added.
+
+"Then their passports were viséd here on embarking?" I exclaimed. "What
+was the name upon that of the Englishman?"
+
+"I have it here written down, Excellency. I cannot pronounce your
+difficult English names." And he produced a scrap of dirty paper whereon
+was written in a Russian hand the name--
+
+"Martin Woodroffe."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+
+I went to the railway station, and from the time-table gathered that if
+I left Abo by rail at noon I could be in Petersburg an hour before noon
+on the morrow, or about four hours before the arrival of the steamer by
+which the silent girl and her companion were passengers. This I decided
+upon doing, but before leaving I paid a visit to my friend, Boranski,
+who, to my surprise and delight, handed me my wallet with the Czar's
+letter intact, saying that it had been found upon a German thief who had
+been arrested at the harbor on the previous night. The fellow had, no
+doubt, stolen it from my pocket believing I carried my paper money in
+the flap.
+
+"The affair of the English lady is a most extraordinary one," remarked
+the Chief of Police, toying with his pen as he sat at his big table.
+"She seems to have met this Englishman up at Tammerfors, or at some
+place further north, yet it is curious that her passport should be in
+order even though she fled so precipitately from Kajana. There is a
+mystery connected with her disappearance from the wood-cutter's hut that
+I confess I cannot fathom."
+
+"Neither can I," I said. "I know the man who is with her, and cannot
+help fearing that he is her bitterest enemy--that he is acting in
+concert with the Baron."
+
+"Then why is he taking her to the capital--beyond the jurisdiction of
+the Governor-General?"
+
+"I am going straight to Petersburg to ascertain," I said. "I have only
+come to thank you for your kindness in this matter. Truth to tell, I
+have been somewhat surprised that you should have interested yourself on
+my behalf," I added, looking straight at the uniformed official.
+
+"It was not on yours, but on hers," he answered, somewhat enigmatically.
+"I know something of the affair, but it was my duty as a man to help the
+poor girl to escape from that terrible place. She has, I know, been
+unjustly condemned for the attempted assassination of the wife of a
+General--condemned with a purpose, of course. Such a thing is not
+unusual in Finland."
+
+"Abominable!" I cried. "Oberg is a veritable fiend."
+
+But the man only shrugged his shoulders, saying--
+
+"The orders of his Excellency the Governor-General have to be obeyed,
+whatever they are. We often regret, but we dare not refuse to carry them
+out."
+
+"Russian rule is a disgrace to our modern civilization," I declared
+hotly. "I have every sympathy with those who are fighting for freedom."
+
+"Ah, you are not alone in that," he sighed, speaking in a low whisper,
+and glancing around. "His Majesty would order reforms and ameliorate the
+condition of his people, if only it were possible. But he, like his
+officials, are powerless. Here we speak of the great uprising with bated
+breath, but we, alas! know that it must come one day--very soon--and
+Finland will be the first to endeavor to break her bonds--and the Baron
+Oberg the first to fall."
+
+For nearly an hour I sat with him, surprised to find how, although his
+exterior was so harsh and uncouth, yet his heart really bled for the
+poor starving people he was so constantly forced to oppress.
+
+"I have ruined this town of Abo," he declared, quite frankly. "To my
+own knowledge five hundred innocent persons have gone to prison, and
+another two hundred have been exiled to Siberia. Yet what I have done is
+only at direct orders from Helsingfors--orders that are stern, pitiless
+and unjust. Men have been torn from their families and sent to the
+mines, women have been arrested for no offense and shipped off to
+Saghalien, and mere children have been cast into prison on charges of
+political conspiracy with their elders--in order to Russify the
+province! Only," he added anxiously, "I trust you will never repeat what
+I tell you. You have asked me why I assisted the English Mademoiselle to
+escape from Kajana, and I have explained the reason."
+
+We ate a hearty meal in company at the _Sampalinna_, a restaurant built
+like a Swiss châlet, and at noon I entered the train on the first stage
+of my slow, tedious journey through the great silent forests and along
+the shores of the lakes of Southern Finland, by way of Tavestehus and
+Viborg, to Petersburg.
+
+I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of
+wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended
+the steep gradients. I had not even a newspaper with which to while away
+the time, only my own apprehensive thoughts of whither my helpless love
+was being conducted.
+
+
+Surely to no man was there ever presented such a complicated problem as
+that which I was now trying so vigorously to solve. I loved Elma Heath.
+The more I reflected, the deeper did her sweet countenance and tender
+grace impress themselves upon my heart. I loved her, therefore I was
+striving to overtake her.
+
+The steamer, I learned, would call at Hango and Helsingfors. Would they,
+I wonder, disembark at either of those places? Was the man whom I had
+known as Hornby, the owner of the _Lola_, taking her to place her again
+in the fiendish hands of Xavier Oberg? The very thought of it caused me
+to hold my breath.
+
+Daylight came at last, cold and gray, over those dreary interminable
+marshes where game, especially snipe, seemed abundant, and at a small
+station at the head of a lake called Davidstadt I took my morning glass
+of tea; then we resumed our journey down to Viborg, where a short,
+thick-set Russian of the commercial class, but something of a dandy,
+entered my compartment, and we left express for Petersburg.
+
+We had passed by a small station called Galitsina, near which were many
+villas occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, and were
+traveling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveler,
+having asked permission to smoke, commenced to chat affably. He seemed a
+pleasant fellow, and told me that he was a wool merchant, and that he
+had been having a pleasant vacation trout fishing in the Vuoski above
+the falls of the Imatra, where the pools between the rapids abound with
+fish.
+
+He had told me that on account of the shore being so full of weeds and
+the clearness of the water, fishing from the banks was almost an
+impossibility, and how they had to accustom themselves to troll from a
+boat so small as to only accommodate the rower and the fisherman.
+
+Then he remarked suddenly--
+
+"You are English, I presume--possibly from Helsingfors?"
+
+"No," I answered. "From Abo. I crossed from Stockholm, and am going to
+Petersburg."
+
+"And I also. I live in Petersburg," he added. "We may perhaps meet one
+day. Do you know the capital?"
+
+I explained that I had visited it once before, and had done the usual
+round of sight-seeing. His manner was brisk and to the point, as became
+a man of business, but when we stopped at Bele-Ostrof, on the opposite
+side of the small winding river that separates Finland from Russia
+proper, the Customs officer who came to examine our baggage exchanged a
+curious meaning look with him.
+
+My fellow-traveler believed that I had not observed, yet, keenly on the
+alert as I now was, I was shrewd to detect the least sign or look, and I
+at once resolved to tell the fellow nothing further of my own affairs.
+He was, no doubt, a spy of "The Strangler's," who had followed me all
+the way from Abo, and had only entered my carriage for the final stage
+of the journey.
+
+This revelation caused me some uneasiness, for even though I was able to
+evade the man on arrival in Petersburg, he could no doubt quickly obtain
+news of my whereabouts from the police to whom my passport must be sent.
+I pretended to doze, and lay back with my eyes half-closed watching him.
+When he found me disinclined to talk further, he took up the paper he
+had bought and became engrossed in it, while I, on my part, endeavored
+to form some plan by which to mislead and escape his vigilance.
+
+The fellow meant mischief--that I knew. If Elma was flying in secret and
+he watched me, he would know that she was in Petersburg. At all hazards,
+for my love's sake as well as for mine, I saw that I must escape him.
+The ingeniousness and cleverness of Oberg's spies was proverbial
+throughout Finland, therefore he might not be alone, or in any case, on
+arrival in Petersburg would obtain assistance in keeping observation
+upon me. I knew that the Baron desired my death, and that therefore I
+could not be too wary of pitfalls. That fatal chair so cunningly
+prepared for me in Lambeth was still vividly within my memory.
+
+As we passed Lanskaya, and ran through the outer suburbs of Petersburg,
+my fellow-traveler became inquisitive as to where I was going, but I was
+somewhat unresponsive, and busied myself with my bag until we entered
+the great echoing terminus whence I could see the Neva gleaming in the
+pale sunlight and the city beyond. The fellow made no attempt to follow
+me--he was too clever a secret agent for that. He merely wished me
+"_sdravstvuite_" raised his hat politely and disappeared.
+
+A porter carried my bag out of the station, and I drove across the
+bridge to the large hotel where I had stopped before, the Europe, on the
+corner of the Nevski Prospect and the Michael Street. There I engaged a
+front room looking down into the broad Nevski, had a wash, and then
+watched at the window for the appearance of the spy. I had already a
+good four hours before the steamer from Abo was due, and I intended to
+satisfy myself whether or not I was being followed.
+
+Within twenty minutes the fellow lounged along on the opposite side of
+the road, just as I had expected. He had changed his clothes, and
+presented such a different appearance that at first sight I failed to
+recognize him. He knew that I had driven there, and intended to follow
+me if I came forth. My position was one of extreme difficulty, for if I
+went down to the quay he would most certainly follow me.
+
+Having watched his movements for ten minutes or so I descended to the
+big _salle-à-manger_ and there ate my luncheon, chatting to the French
+waiter the while. I sat purposely in an alcove, so as to be away from
+the other people lunching there, and in order that I might be able to
+talk with the waiter without being overheard.
+
+Just as I had finished my meal, and he was handing me my bill, I bent
+towards him and asked--
+
+"Do you want to earn twenty roubles?"
+
+"Well, m'sieur," he answered, looking at me with some surprise. "They
+would be acceptable. I am a married man."
+
+"Well, I want to escape from this place without being observed. There is
+a disagreeable little matter regarding a lady, and I fear a fracas with
+a man who is awaiting me outside in the Nevski." Then, seeing that he
+hesitated, I assured him that I had committed no crime, and that I
+should return for my baggage that evening.
+
+"You could pass through the kitchen and out by the servants' entrance,"
+he said, after a moment's reflection. "If m'sieur so desires, I will
+conduct him out. The exit is in a back street which leads on to the
+Catherine Canal."
+
+"Excellent!" I said. "Let us go. Of course you will say nothing?"
+
+"Not a word, m'sieur," and he gathered up the notes plus twenty roubles
+with which I paid my bill, and taking my hat I followed him to the end
+of the _salle-à-manger_ behind a high wooden screen, across the huge
+kitchen, and then through a long stone corridor at the end of which sat
+a gruff old doorkeeper. My guide spoke a word to him, and then the door
+opened and I found myself in a narrow back slum with the canal beyond.
+
+My first visit was to a clothier's, where I purchased and put on a new
+light overcoat and then to a hatter's for a hat of different shape to
+that I was wearing. I carried the hat back to a quiet alley which I had
+noticed, and quickly exchanged the one I was wearing for it, leaving my
+old hat in a corner. Then I entered a _café_ in order to while away the
+hours until the vessel from Finland was due.
+
+At four o'clock I was out upon the quay, straining my eyes seaward for
+any sign of smoke, but could see nothing. The sun was sinking, and the
+broad expanse of water westward danced like liquid gold. The light died
+out slowly, the cold gray of evening crept on. A chill wind sprang up
+and swept the quay, causing me to shiver. I asked of a dock laborer
+whether the steamer was usually late, whereupon he told me that it was
+often five or six hours behind time, depending upon the delay at
+Helsingfors.
+
+Twilight deepened into night, and the rain fell heavily, yet I still
+paced the wet flags in patience, my eyes ever seaward for the light of
+the vessel which I hoped bore my love. My presence there aroused some
+speculation among the loungers, I think; nevertheless, I waited in
+deepest anxiety whether, after all, Elma and Hornby had not disembarked
+at Helsingfors.
+
+Soon after ten o'clock a light shone afar off, and the movement of the
+police and porters on the quay told me that it was the vessel. Then
+after a further anxious quarter of an hour it came, amid great shouting
+and mutual imprecations, slowly alongside the quay, and the passengers
+at last began to disembark in the pelting rain.
+
+One after another they walked up the gangway, filing into the
+passport-office and on into the Custom House, people of all sorts and
+all grades--Swedes, Germans, Finns, and Russians--until suddenly I
+caught sight of two figures--one a man in a big tweed traveling-coat and
+a golf-cap, and the other the slight figure of a woman in a long dark
+cloak and a woolen tam-o'-shanter. The electric rays fell upon them as
+they came up the wet gangway together, and there once again I saw the
+sweet face of the silent woman whom I had grown to love with such
+fervent desperation. The man behind her was the same who had
+entertained me on board the _Lola_--the man who was said to be the
+lover of the fugitive Muriel Leithcourt.
+
+Without betraying my presence I watched them pass through the
+passport-office and Custom House, and then, overhearing the address
+which Martin Woodroffe gave the _isvoshtchik_, I stood aside, wet to the
+skin, and saw them drive away.
+
+At eleven o'clock on the following day I found myself installed in the
+Hotel de Paris, a comfortable hostelry in the Little Morskaya, having
+succeeded in evading the vigilance of the spy who had so cleverly
+followed me from Abo, and in getting my suit-case round from the Hotel
+Europe.
+
+I was beneath the same roof as Elma, although she was in ignorance of my
+presence. Anxious to communicate with her without Woodroffe's knowledge,
+I was now awaiting my opportunity. He had, it appeared, taken for her a
+pleasant front room with sitting-room adjoining on the first floor,
+while he himself occupied a room on the third floor. The apartments he
+had engaged for her were the most expensive in the hotel, and as far as
+I could gather from the French waiter whom I judiciously tipped, he
+appeared to treat her with every consideration and kindness.
+
+"Ah, poor young lady!" the man exclaimed as he stood in my room
+answering my questions, "What an affliction! She writes down all her
+orders--for she can utter no word."
+
+"Has the Englishman received any visitors?" I asked.
+
+"One man--a Russian--an official of police, I think."
+
+"If he receives anyone else, let me know," I said. "And I want you to
+give Mademoiselle a letter from me in secret."
+
+"Bien, m'sieur."
+
+I turned to the little writing-table and scribbled a few hasty lines to
+my love, announcing my presence, and asking her to grant me an interview
+in secret as soon as Woodroffe was absent. I also warned her of the
+search for her instigated by the Baron, and urged her to send me a line
+in reply.
+
+The note was delivered into her hand, but although I waited in suspense
+nearly all day she sent no reply. While Woodroffe was in the hotel I
+dared not show myself lest he should recognize me, therefore I was
+compelled to sham indisposition and to eat my meals alone in my room.
+
+Both the means by which she had met Martin Woodroffe and the motive were
+equally an enigma. By that letter she had written to her schoolfellow it
+was apparent that she had some secret of his, for had she not wished to
+send him a message of reassurance that she had divulged nothing? This
+would seem that they were close friends; yet, on the other hand,
+something seemed to tell me that he was acting falsely, and was really
+an ally of the Baron's.
+
+Why had he brought her to Petersburg? If he had desired to rescue her he
+would have taken her in the opposite direction--to Stockholm, where she
+would be free--whereas he took her, an escaped prisoner, into the very
+midst of peril. It was true that her passport was in order, yet I
+remembered that an order had been issued for her transportation to
+Saghalien, and now once arrested she must be lost to me for ever. This
+thought filled me with fierce anxiety. She was in Petersburg, that city
+where police spies swarm, and where every fresh arrival is noted and his
+antecedents inquired into. No attempt had been made to disguise who she
+was, therefore before long the police would undoubtedly come and arrest
+her as the escaped criminal from Kajana.
+
+For several hours I sat at my window watching the life and movement
+down in the street below, my mind full of wonder and dark forebodings.
+Was Martin Woodroffe playing her false?
+
+Just after half-past six o'clock the waiter entered, and handing me a
+note on a salver, said--
+
+"Mademoiselle has, I believe, only this moment been able to write in
+secret."
+
+I tore it open and read as follows:--
+
+DEAR FRIEND.--_I am so surprised. I thought you were still in Abo.
+Woodroffe has an appointment at eight o'clock on the other side of the
+city, therefore come to me at 8.15. I must see you, and at once. I am in
+peril_.--ELMA HEATH.
+
+My love was in peril! It was just as I had feared. I thanked Providence
+that I had been sent to help her and extricate her from that awful fate
+to which "The Strangler of Finland" had consigned her.
+
+At the hour she named, after the waiter had come to me and announced the
+Englishman's departure, I descended to her sitting-room and entered
+without rapping, for if I had rapped she could not, alas! have heard.
+
+The apartment was spacious and comfortable, thickly carpeted, with heavy
+furniture and gilding. Before the long window were drawn curtains of
+dark green plush, and on one side was the high stove of white porcelain
+with shining brass bands, while from her low lounge-chair a slim wan
+figure sprang up quickly and came forward to greet me, holding out both
+her hands and smiling happily.
+
+I took her hands in mine and held them tightly in silence for some
+moments, as I looked earnestly into those wonderfully brilliant eyes of
+hers. She turned away laughing, a slight flush rising to her cheeks in
+her confusion. Then she led me to a chair, and motioned me to be
+seated.
+
+Ours was a silent meeting, but her gestures and the expression of her
+eyes were surely more eloquent than mere words. I knew well what
+pleasure that re-encounter caused her--equal pleasure with that it gave
+to me.
+
+Until that moment I had never really loved. I had admired and flirted
+with women. What man has not? Indeed, I had admired Muriel Leithcourt.
+But never until now had I experienced in my heart the real flame of true
+burning affection. The sweetness of her expression, the tender caress of
+those soft, tapering hands, the deep mysterious look in those
+magnificent eyes, and the incomparable grace of all her movements,
+combined to render her the most perfect woman I had ever met--perfect in
+all, alas! save speech and hearing, of which, with such dastard
+wantonness, she had been deprived.
+
+She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her
+hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret. Then
+turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote
+something with a gold pencil and handed to me. It read--
+
+"Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed
+you from England. He is my enemy. You must take me from here and hide
+me. They intend to send me into exile. Have you ever been in Petersburg
+before? Do you know anyone here?"
+
+Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote--
+
+"I will do my best, dear friend. I have been once in Petersburg. But is
+it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?"
+
+"Impossible at present," she wrote. "We should both be arrested at the
+frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I
+believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that
+he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he
+learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and
+discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter's
+hut. Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were
+asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window. At first I was
+alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend. He told me that the
+police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I
+fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here. At
+that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get
+me out of the Baron's clutches and wring from me my secret. If I
+confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the
+mines."
+
+"Does your secret concern him?" I asked in writing.
+
+"Yes," she wrote in response. "It would be equally in his interests as
+well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity
+effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore
+with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril."
+
+"Trust in me," I scribbled quickly. "I will act upon any suggestion you
+make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you
+until this danger is past?"
+
+"There is one friend--a true friend. Will you take a note to her?" she
+wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.
+
+Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the
+contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat
+watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching
+her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and
+unblemished in her youthful womanhood.
+
+I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: "Madame Olga
+Stassulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff." I knew
+that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the
+Little Neva.
+
+"Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I
+will prepare to be ready when you return," she wrote. "If Olga is not at
+home, ask to see the Red Priest--in Russian, '_Krasny-pastor_.' Return
+quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost."
+
+I assured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later
+I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the canal and across
+the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.
+
+The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let
+out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large brass plate
+bearing the name, "Olga Stassulevitch: modes." I pressed the electric
+button, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the
+door.
+
+"Madame is not at home," was his brief reply to my inquiry.
+
+"Then I will see the Red Priest," I said in a lower tone. "I come from
+Elma Heath." Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into
+the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the gas was
+not lighted. But striking a match he led me up the broad staircase and
+into a small, cosy, well-furnished room on the second floor, evidently
+the sitting-room of some studious person, judging from the books and
+critical reviews lying about.
+
+For a few minutes I waited there, until the door reopened, and there
+entered a man of medium height, with a shock of long snow-white hair
+and almost patriarchal beard, whose dark eyes that age had dimmed
+flashed out at me with a look of curious inquiry, and whose movements
+were those of a person not quite at his ease.
+
+"I have called on behalf of Mademoiselle Elma Heath, to give this letter
+to Madame Stassulevitch, or if she is absent to place it in the hands of
+the Red Priest," I explained in my best Russian.
+
+"Very well, sir," the old man responded in quite good English. "I am the
+person you seek," and taking the letter he opened it and read it
+through.
+
+I saw by the expression on his furrowed face that its contents caused
+him the utmost consternation. His countenance, already pale, blanched to
+the lips, while in his eyes there shot a fire of quick apprehension. The
+thin, almost transparent hand holding the letter trembled visibly.
+
+"You know Mademoiselle--eh?" he asked in a hoarse, strained voice as he
+turned to me. "You will help her to escape?"
+
+"I will risk my own life in order to save hers," I declared.
+
+"And your devotion to her is prompted by what?" he inquired
+suspiciously.
+
+I was silent for a moment. Then I confessed the truth.
+
+"My affection."
+
+"Ah!" he sighed deeply. "Poor young lady! She, who has enemies on every
+hand, sadly needs a friend. But can we trust you--have you no fear?"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of being implicated in the coming revolution in Russia? Remember I am
+the Red Priest. Have you never heard of me? My name is Otto Kampf."
+
+Otto Kampf!
+
+I stood before him open-mouthed. Who in Russia had not heard of that
+mysterious unknown person who had directed a hundred conspiracies
+against the Imperial Autocrat, and yet the identity of whom the police
+had always failed to discover. It was believed that Kampf had once been
+professor of chemistry at Moscow University, and that he had invented
+that most terrible and destructive explosive used by the revolutionists.
+The ingredients of the powerful compound and the mode of firing it was
+the secret of the Nihilists alone--and Otto Kampf, the mysterious
+leader, whose personality was unknown even to the conspirators
+themselves, directed those constant attempts which held the Emperor and
+his Government in such hourly terror.
+
+Rewards without number had been offered by the Ministry of the Interior
+for the betrayal and arrest of the unseen man whose power in Russia,
+permeating every class, was greater than that of the Emperor himself--at
+whose word one day the people would rise in a body and destroy their
+oppressors.
+
+The Emperor, the Ministers, the police, and the bureaucrats knew this,
+yet they were powerless--they knew that the mysterious professor who had
+disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been
+seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would
+stagger and crush the Empire from end to end--yet of his whereabouts
+they were in utter ignorance.
+
+"You are surprised," the old man laughed, noticing my amazement. "Well,
+you are not one of us, yet I need not impress upon you the absolute
+necessity, for Mademoiselle's sake, to preserve the secret of my
+existence. It is because you are not a member of 'The Will of the
+People,' that you have never heard of 'The Red Priest'--red because I
+wrote my ultimatum to the Czar in the blood of one of his victims
+knouted in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and priest because I preach
+the gospel of freedom and justice."
+
+"I shall say nothing," I said, gazing at the strangely striking figure
+before me--the unknown man who directed the great upheaval that was to
+revolutionize Russia. "My only desire is to save Mademoiselle Heath."
+
+"And you are prepared to do so at risk of your own liberty--your own
+life? Ah! you said you love her. Would not this be a test of your
+affection?"
+
+"I am prepared for any test, as long as she escapes the trap which her
+enemies have set for her. I succeeded in saving her from Kajana, and I
+intend to save her now."
+
+"Was it you who actually entered Kajana and snatched her from that
+tomb!" he exclaimed, and he took my hand enthusiastically, adding--"I
+have no further need to doubt you." And turning to the table he wrote an
+address upon a slip of paper, saying, "Take Mademoiselle there. She will
+find a safe place of concealment. But go quickly, for every moment
+places you both in more deadly peril. Hide yourself there also."
+
+I thanked him and left at once, but as I stepped out of the house and
+re-entered the drosky I saw close by, lurking in the shadow, the spy of
+"The Strangler of Finland," who had traveled with me from Abo.
+
+Our eyes met, and he recognized me, notwithstanding my light overcoat
+and new hat.
+
+Then, with heart-sinking, the ghastly truth flashed upon me. All had
+been in vain. Elma was lost to me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
+
+
+Instantly the danger was apparent, and instead of driving back to the
+hotel, I called out to the man to take me to the Moscow railway station,
+in order to put the spy off the scent. I knew he would follow me, but as
+he was on foot, with no drosky in sight, I should be able to reach the
+station before he could, and there elude him.
+
+Over the stones we rattled, leaving the lurking agent standing in the
+deep shadow, but on turning back I saw him dash across the road to a
+by-street, where, in all probability, he had a conveyance in waiting.
+
+Then, after we had crossed the Neva, I countermanded my order to the
+man, saying--
+
+"Don't go right up to the station. Turn into the Liteinoi Prospect to
+the left, and put me down there. Drive quickly, and I'll pay double
+fare."
+
+He whipped his horses, and we turned into that maze of dark, ill-lit,
+narrow streets that lies between the Vosnesenski and the Nevski, turning
+and winding until we emerged at last into the main thoroughfare again,
+and then at last we turned into the street I had indicated--a wide road
+of handsome buildings where I knew I was certain to be able to instantly
+get another drosky. I flung the man his money, alighted, and two minutes
+later was driving on towards the Alexander Bridge, traveling in a circle
+back to the hotel. Time after time I glanced behind, but saw nothing of
+the Baron's spy, who had evidently gone to the station with all speed,
+expecting that I was leaving the capital.
+
+I found Elma in her room, ready dressed to go out, wearing a long
+traveling-cloak, and in her hand was a small dressing-case. She was pale
+and full of anxiety until I showed her the slip of paper which Otto
+Kampf had given me with the address written upon it, and then together
+we hurried forth.
+
+The house to which we drove was, we discovered, a large one facing the
+Fontanka Canal, one of the best quarters of the town, and on descending
+I asked the liveried _dvornick_ for Madame Zurloff, the name which the
+"Red Priest" had written.
+
+"You mean the Princess Zurloff," remarked the man through his red beard.
+"Whom shall I say desires to see her?"
+
+"Take that," I said, handing to him the piece of paper which, beside the
+address, bore a curious cipher-mark like three triangles joined.
+
+He closed the door, leaving us in the wide carpeted hall, the statuary
+in which showed us that it was a richly-furnished place, and when a few
+minutes later he returned, he conducted us upstairs to a fine gilded
+salon, where an elderly gray-haired lady in black stood gravely to
+receive us.
+
+"Allow me to present Mademoiselle Elma Heath, Princess," I said,
+speaking in French and bowing, and afterwards telling her my own name.
+
+Our hostess welcomed my love in a graceful speech, but I said--
+
+"Mademoiselle unfortunately suffers a terrible affliction. She is deaf
+and dumb."
+
+"Ah, how very, very sad!" she exclaimed sympathetically. "Poor girl!
+poor girl!" and she placed her hand tenderly upon Elma's shoulder and
+looked into her eyes. Then, turning to me, she said: "So the Red Priest
+has sent you both to me! You are in danger of arrest, I suppose--you
+wish me to conceal you here?"
+
+"I would only ask sanctuary for Mademoiselle," was my reply. "For
+myself, I have no fear. I am English, and therefore not a member of the
+Party."
+
+"The Mademoiselle fears arrest?"
+
+"There is an order signed for her banishment to Saghalein," I said. "She
+was imprisoned at Kajana, the fortress away in Finland, but I succeeded
+in liberating her."
+
+"She has actually been in Kajana!" gasped the Princess. "Ah! we have all
+heard sufficient of the horrors of that place. And you liberated her!
+Why, she is the only person who has ever escaped from that living tomb
+to which Oberg sends his victims."
+
+"I believe so, Princess."
+
+"And may I take it, m'sieur, that the reason you risked your life for
+her is because you love her? Pardon me for suggesting this."
+
+"You have guessed correctly," I answered. Then, knowing that Elma could
+not hear, I added: "I love her, but we are not lovers. I have not told
+her of my affection. Hers is a long and strange story, and she will
+perhaps tell you something of it in writing."
+
+"Well," exclaimed the gray-haired lady smiling, leading my love across
+the luxurious room, the atmosphere of which was filled with the scent of
+flowers, and taking off her cloak with her own hands, "you are safe
+here, my poor child. If spies have not followed you, then you shall
+remain my guest as long as you desire."
+
+"I am sure it is very good of you, Princess," I said gratefully. "Miss
+Heath is the victim of a vile and dastardly conspiracy. When I tell you
+that she has been afflicted as she is by her enemies--that an operation
+was performed upon her in Italy while she was unconscious--you will
+readily see in what deadly peril she is."
+
+"What!" she cried. "Have her enemies actually done this? Horrible!"
+
+"She will perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her--a
+mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian
+subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself
+is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy."
+
+"Ah! the Strangler!" she exclaimed with a quick flash in her dark eyes.
+"But his end is near. The Movement is active in Helsingfors. At any
+moment now we may strike our blow for freedom."
+
+She was an enthusiastic revolutionist, I could see, unsuspected,
+however, by the police on account of her high position in Petersburg
+society. It was she who, as I afterwards discovered, had furnished the
+large sums of money to Kampf for the continuation of the revolutionary
+propaganda, and indeed secretly devoted the greater part of her revenues
+from her vast estates in Samara and Kazan to the Nihilist cause. Her
+husband, himself an enthusiast of freedom, although of the high
+nobility, had been killed by a fall from his horse six years before, and
+since that time she had retired from society and lived there quietly,
+making the revolutionary movement her sole occupation. The authorities
+believed that her retirement was due to the painful loss she had
+sustained, and had no suspicion that it was her money that enabled the
+mysterious "Red Priest" to slowly but surely complete the plot for the
+general uprising.
+
+She compelled me to remove my coat, and tea was served by a Tartar
+footman, whose family she explained had been serfs of the Zurloffs for
+three centuries, and then Elma exchanged confidences with her by means
+of paper and pencil.
+
+"Who is this man Martin Woodroffe, of whom she speaks?" asked the
+Princess presently, turning to me.
+
+"I have met him twice--only twice," I replied, "and under strange
+circumstances." Then, continuing, I told her something concerning the
+incidents of the yacht _Lola_.
+
+"He may be in love with her, and desires to force her into marriage,"
+she suggested, expressing amazement at the curious narrative I had
+related.
+
+"I think not, for several reasons. One is because I know she holds some
+secret concerning him, and another because he is engaged to an English
+girl named Muriel Leithcourt."
+
+"Leithcourt? Leithcourt?" repeated the Princess, knitting her brows with
+a puzzled air. "Do you happen to know her father's name?"
+
+"Philip Leithcourt."
+
+"And has he actually been living in Scotland?"
+
+"Yes," I answered in quick anxiety. "He rented a shoot called Rannoch,
+near Dumfries. A mysterious incident occurred on his estate--a double
+murder, or murder and suicide; which is not quite clear--but shortly
+afterwards there appeared one evening at the house a man named Chater,
+Hylton Chater, and the whole family at once fled and disappeared."
+
+Princess Zurloff sat with her lips pressed close together, looking
+straight at the silent girl before her. Elma had removed her hat and
+cloak, and now sat in a deep easy chair of yellow silk, with the
+lamplight shining on her chestnut hair, settled and calm as though
+already thoroughly at home. I smiled to myself as I thought of the
+chagrin of Woodroffe when he returned to find his victim missing.
+
+"Your Highness evidently knows the Leithcourts," I hazarded, after a
+brief silence.
+
+"I have heard of them," was her unsatisfactory reply. "I go to England
+sometimes. When the Prince was alive, we were often at Claridge's for
+the season. The Prince was for five years military _attaché_ at the
+Embassy under de Staal, you know. What I know of the Leithcourts is not
+to their credit. But you tell me that there was a mysterious incident
+before their flight. Explain it to me."
+
+At that moment the long white doors of the handsome salon were thrown
+open by the faithful Tartar servitor, and there entered a man whose hair
+fell over the collar of his heavy overcoat, but whom, in an instant, I
+recognized as Otto Kampf.
+
+Both Elma and I sprang to our feet, while advancing to the Princess he
+bent and gallantly kissed the hand she held forth to him. Then he shook
+hands with Elma, and acknowledging my own greetings, took off his coat
+and threw it upon a chair with the air of an accustomed visitor.
+
+"I come, Princess, in order to explain to you," he said. "Mademoiselle
+fears rearrest, and the only house in Petersburg that the police never
+suspect is this. Therefore I send her to you, knowing that with your
+generosity you will help her in her distress."
+
+"It is all arranged," was her Highness's response. "She will remain
+here, poor girl, until it is safe for her to get out of Russia." Then,
+after some further conversation, and after my well-beloved had made
+signs of heartfelt gratitude to the man known from end to end of the
+Russian empire as "The Red Priest," the Princess turned to me, saying:
+
+"I would much like to know what occurred before the Leithcourts left
+Scotland."
+
+"The Leithcourts!" exclaimed Kampf in utter surprise. "Do you know the
+Leithcourts--and the English officer Durnford?"
+
+I looked into his eyes in abject amazement. What connection could Jack
+Durnford, of the Marines, have with the adventurer Philip Leithcourt?
+I, however, recollected Jack's word, when I had described the visit of
+the _Lola_ to Leghorn, and further I recollected that very shortly he
+would be back in London from his term of Mediterranean service.
+
+"Well," I said after a pause, "I happen to know Captain Durnford very
+well, but I had no idea that he was friendly with Leithcourt."
+
+The Red Priest smiled, stroking his white beard.
+
+"Explain to her Highness what she desires to know, and I will tell you."
+
+My eyes met Elma's, and I saw how intensely eager and interested she
+was, watching the movement of my lips and trying to make out what words
+I uttered.
+
+"Well," I said, "a mysterious tragedy occurred on the edge of a wood
+near the house rented by Leithcourt--a tragedy which has puzzled the
+police to this day. An Italian named Santini and his wife were found
+murdered."
+
+"Santini!" gasped Kampf, starting up. "But surely he is not dead?"
+
+"No. That's the curious part of the affair. The man who was killed was a
+man disguised to represent the Italian, while the woman was actually the
+waiter's wife herself. I happen to know the man Santini well, for both
+he and his wife were for some years in my employ."
+
+The Princess and the director of the Russian revolutionary movement
+exchanged quick glances. It was as though her Highness implored Kampf to
+reveal to me the truth, while he, on his part, was averse to doing so.
+
+"And upon whom does suspicion rest?" asked her Highness.
+
+"As far as I can make out, the police have no clue whatever, except one.
+At the spot was found a tiny miniature cross of one of the Russian
+orders of chivalry--the Cross of Saint Anne."
+
+"There is no suspicion upon Leithcourt?" she asked with some undue
+anxiety I thought.
+
+"No."
+
+"Did he entertain any guests at the shooting-box?"
+
+"A good many."
+
+"No foreigners among them?"
+
+"I never met any. They seemed all people from London--a smart set for
+the most part."
+
+"Then why did the Leithcourts disappear so suddenly?"
+
+"Because of the appearance of the man Chater," I replied. "It is evident
+that they feared him, for they took every precaution against being
+followed. In fact, they fled leaving a big party of friends in the
+house. The man Woodroffe, now at the Hotel de Paris, is a friend of
+Leithcourt as well as of Chater."
+
+"He was not a guest of Leithcourt when this man representing Santini was
+assassinated?" asked Kampf, again stroking his beard.
+
+"No. As soon as Woodroffe recognized me as a visitor he left--for
+Hamburg."
+
+"He was afraid to face you because of the ransacking of the British
+Consul's safe at Leghorn," remarked the Princess, who, at the same
+moment, took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then,
+turning to me, she said: "What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg,
+throws a new light upon certain incidents that had hitherto puzzled us.
+The mystery of it all is a great and inscrutable one--the mystery of
+this poor unfortunate girl, greatest of all. But both of us will
+endeavor to help you to elucidate it; we will help poor Elma to crush
+her enemies--these cowardly villains who had maimed her."
+
+"Ah, Princess!" I cried. "If you will only help and protect her, you
+will be doing an act of mercy to a defenseless woman. I love her--I
+admit it. I have done my utmost: I have striven to solve the dark
+mystery, but up to the present I have been unsuccessful, and have only
+remained, even till to-day, the victim of circumstance."
+
+"Let her stay with me," the kindly woman answered, smiling tenderly upon
+my love. "She will be safe here, and in the meantime we will endeavor to
+discover the real and actual truth."
+
+And in response I took the Princess's hand and pressed it fervently.
+Although that striking, white-headed man and the rather stiff, formal
+woman in black were the leaders of the great and all-powerful movement
+in Russia known through the civilized world as "The Terror," yet they
+were nevertheless our friends. They had pledged themselves to help us
+thwart our enemies.
+
+I scribbled a few hasty words upon paper and handed it to Elma. And for
+answer she smiled contentedly, looking into my eyes with an expression
+of trust, devotion and love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+JUST OFF THE STRAND
+
+
+A week had gone by. The Nord Express had brought me posthaste across
+Europe from Petersburg to Calais, and I was again in London. I had left
+Elma in the care of the Princess Zurloff, whom I knew would conceal her
+from the horde of police-agents now in search of her.
+
+The mystery had so increased until now it had become absolutely
+bewildering. The more I had tried to probe it, the more inexplicable had
+I found it. My brain was awhirl as I sat in the _wagon-lit_ rushing
+across those wide, never-ending plains that lie between the Russian
+capital and Berlin and the green valleys between the Rhine-lands and the
+sea. The maze of mystery rendered me utterly incapable of grasping one
+solid tangible fact, so closely interwoven was each incident of the
+strange life-drama in which, through mere chance, I was now playing a
+leading part. I was aware of one fact only, that I loved Elma with all
+my soul, even though I knew not whom she really was--or her strange life
+story. Her sweet face, with those soft, brown eyes, so tender and
+intense, stood out ever before me, sleeping or waking. Each moment as
+the express rushed south increased the distance between us, yet was I
+not on my way back to England with a clear and distinct purpose? I
+snatched at any clue, however small, with desperate eagerness, as a
+drowning man clutches at a straw.
+
+The spy from Abo had seen me on the railway platform on my departure
+from Petersburg. He had overheard me buy a ticket for London, and
+previous to stepping into the train I had smiled at him in glad triumph.
+My journey was too long a one for him to follow, and I knew that I had
+at last outwitted him. He had expected to see Elma with me, no doubt,
+and his disappointment was plainly marked. But of Woodroffe I had
+neither seen nor heard anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a cold but dry November night in London, and I sat dining with
+Jack Durnford at a small table in the big, well-lit room of the Junior
+United Service Club. Easy-going and merry as of old, my friend was
+bubbling over with good spirits, delighted to be back again in town
+after three years sailing up and down the Mediterranean, from Gib. to
+Smyrna, maneuvering always, yet with never a chance of a fight. His
+well-shaven face bore the mark of the southern suns, and the backs of
+his hands were tanned by the heat and the sea. He was, indeed, as smart
+an officer as any at the Junior, for the Marines are proverbial for
+their neatness, and his men on board the _Bulwark_ had received many a
+pleasing compliment from the Admiral.
+
+"Glad to be back!" he exclaimed, as he helped himself to a "peg." "I
+should rather think so, old chap. You know how awfully wearying the life
+becomes out there. Lots going on down at Palermo, Malta, Monte Carlo, or
+over at Algiers, and yet we can never get a chance of it. We're always
+in sight of the gay places, and never land. I don't blame the youngsters
+for getting off from Leghorn for two days over here in town when they
+can. Three years is a bigger slice out of a fellow's life than anyone
+would suppose. But, by the way, I saw Hutcheson the other day. We put
+into Spezia, and he came out to see the Admiral--got despatches for
+him, I think. He seems as gay as ever. He lunched at mess, and said how
+sorry he was you'd deserted Leghorn."
+
+"I haven't exactly deserted it," I said. "But I really don't love it
+like he does."
+
+"No. A year or two of the Mediterranean blue is quite sufficient to last
+any fellow his lifetime. I shouldn't live in Leghorn if I had my choice.
+I'd prefer somewhere up in the mountains, beyond Pisa, or outside
+Florence, where you can have a good time in winter."
+
+Then a silence fell between us, and I sat eating on until the end of the
+meal, wondering how to broach the question I so desired to put to him.
+
+"I shall try if I can get on recruiting service at home for a bit," he
+said presently. "There's an appointment up in Glasgow vacant, and I
+shall try for it. It'll be better, at any rate, than China or the
+Pacific."
+
+I was just about to turn the conversation to the visit of the mysterious
+_Lola_ to Leghorn, when two men he knew entered the dining-room, and,
+recognizing him, came across to give him a welcome home. One of the
+newcomers was Major Bartlett, whom I at once recollected as having been
+a guest of Leithcourt's up at Rannoch, and the other a younger man whom
+Durnford introduced to me as Captain Hanbury.
+
+"Oh, Major!" I cried, rising and grasping his hand. "I haven't seen you
+since Scotland, and the extraordinary ending to your house-party."
+
+"No," he laughed. "It was an amazing affair, wasn't it? After the
+Leithcourts left it was like pandemonium let loose; the guests collared
+everything they could lay their hands upon! It's a wonder to me the
+disgraceful affair didn't get into the papers."
+
+"But where's Leithcourt now?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Haven't the ghost of an idea," replied the Major, standing astride with
+his hands in his pockets. "Young Paget of ours told me the other day
+that he saw Muriel driving in the Terminus Road at Eastbourne, but she
+didn't notice him. They were a queerish lot, those Leithcourts," he
+added.
+
+"Hulloa! What are you saying about the Leithcourts, Charley?" exclaimed
+Durnford, turning quickly from Hanbury. "I know some people of that
+name--Philip Leithcourt, who has a daughter named Muriel."
+
+"Well, they sound much the same. But if you know them, my dear old chap,
+I really don't envy you your friends," declared the Major with a laugh.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, Gregg will tell you," he said. "He knows, perhaps, more than I
+do. But," he added, "they may not, of course, be the same people."
+
+"I first met them yachting over at Algiers," Jack said. "And then again
+at Malta, where they seemed to have quite a lot of friends. They had a
+steam-yacht, the _Iris_, and were often up and down the Mediterranean."
+
+"Must be the same people," declared the Major. "Leithcourt spoke once or
+twice of his yacht, but we all put it down as a non-existent vessel,
+because he was always drawing the long bow about his adventures."
+
+"And how did you first come to know him?" I asked of the Major eagerly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Somebody brought him to mess, and we struck up an
+acquaintance across the table. He seemed a good chap, and when he asked
+me to shoot I accepted. On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing
+struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was
+asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town. He called
+himself Martin Woodroffe up there--although I'd known him at the old
+Corinthian Club as Dick Archer. He was believed then to be one of a
+clever gang of international thieves."
+
+"When I first met him he gave me the name of Hornby," I said. "It was in
+Leghorn, where he was on board a yacht called the _Lola_, of which he
+represented himself as owner."
+
+"He left Rannoch very suddenly," remarked Bartlett. "We understood that
+he was engaged to marry Muriel. If so, I'm sorry for her, poor girl."
+
+"What!" cried Durnford, starting up. "That man to marry Muriel
+Leithcourt?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Why?"
+
+But his countenance had turned pale, and he gave no answer to my
+question.
+
+"If these same Leithcourts are really friends of yours, Durnford, old
+fellow, I'm sorry I've said anything against them," the Major exclaimed
+in an apologetic tone. "Only the end of my visit was so abrupt and so
+extraordinary, and the company such a mixed one, that--well, to tell you
+the truth, the people are a mysterious lot altogether."
+
+"Perhaps our Leithcourts are not the same as those Jack knows," I
+remarked, in order to escape from a rather difficult situation;
+whereupon Durnford, as though eager to conceal his surprise, said with a
+forced laugh, "Oh! probably not," and reseated himself at table. Then
+the Major quickly changed the topic of conversation, and afterwards he
+and his friend passed along to their table and sat down to eat.
+
+I could not help noticing that Jack Durnford was upset at what he had
+learnt, yet I hesitated just then to put any question to him. I resolved
+to approach the subject later, so as to allow him time to question me
+if he wished to do so.
+
+After smoking an hour we went across to the Empire, where we spent the
+evening in the grand circle, meeting many men we knew and having a
+rather pleasant time among old acquaintances. If a man who had lived the
+club life of London returns from abroad, he can always run across
+someone he knows in the circle of the Empire about ten o'clock at night.
+Jack was, however, not his old self that he had been before dinner. His
+brow was now heavy and thoughtful, and he appeared deeply immersed in
+some intricate problem, for his eyes were fixed vacantly when
+opportunity was afforded him to think, and he appeared to desire to
+avoid his friends rather than to greet them.
+
+After the theater I induced him to come round to the Cecil, and in the
+wicker chair in the big portico before the entrance we sat to smoke our
+final cigars. It is a favorite spot of mine when in London, for at
+afternoon, when the string band plays and the Americans and other
+cosmopolitans drink tea, there is a continual coming and going, a little
+panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely
+interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the
+shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to
+speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of
+London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than
+perhaps at any other spot. All grades pass before you, from the pushful
+American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud
+Indian Rajah with his turbaned suite; from the variety actress to the
+daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing
+Europe.
+
+"You've been a bit down in the mouth to-night, Jack," I said presently,
+after we had been watching the cabs coming up, depositing the
+home-coming revelers from the Savoy or the Carlton.
+
+"Yes," he sighed. "And surely I have enough to cause me--after what I've
+heard from Bartlett."
+
+"What! Did the facts he told us convey any bad news to you?" I inquired
+with pretended ignorance.
+
+"Yes," he said hoarsely, after a brief pause. Then he added: "Bartlett
+said you could tell me what happened up in Scotland, where Leithcourt
+had shooting. Tell me everything," he added with the air of a man in
+whom all hope is dead.
+
+"Well," I began, "the Leithcourts took Rannoch Castle, close to my
+uncle's place, near Dumfries. I got to know them, of course, and often
+shot with his party. One day, however, I was amazed to notice in one of
+the rooms the photograph of a lady, the exact counterpart of that
+picture which, I recollect, I told you when in Leghorn I had found torn
+up on board the _Lola_. You recollect what I narrated about my strange
+adventure, don't you?"
+
+"I remember every word," was his answer. "Go on. What did you do?"
+
+"Nothing. I held my tongue. But when I discovered that the fellow who
+called himself Woodroffe--the man who had represented himself as the
+owner of the _Lola_, and who, no doubt, had had a hand in breaking open
+Hutcheson's safe in the Consulate--was engaged to Muriel, I became full
+of suspicion."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Woodroffe, after meeting me, disappeared--went to Hamburg, they said,
+on business. Then other things occurred. A man and woman were found
+murdered up in the wood about a mile and a half from the castle. The man
+was made up to represent my man Olinto--I believe you've seen him in
+Leghorn?"
+
+"What! They've killed Olinto?" he gasped, starting from his chair.
+
+"No. The fellow was made up very much like him. But his wife Armida was
+killed."
+
+"They killed the woman, and believed they had also killed her husband,
+eh?" he said bitterly through his teeth, and I saw that his strong hands
+grasped the arms of his chair firmly. "And Martin Woodroffe is engaged
+to Muriel Leithcourt. Are you certain of this?"
+
+"Yes; quite certain."
+
+"And is there no suspicion as to who is the assassin of the woman
+Santini and this mysterious man who posed as her husband?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+For some time Jack Durnford smoked in silence, and I could just
+distinguish his white, hard face in the faint light, for it was now
+late, and the big electric lamps had been turned out and we were in
+semi-darkness.
+
+"That fellow shall never marry Muriel," he declared in a fierce, hoarse
+voice. "What you have just told me reveals the truth. Did you meet
+Chater?"
+
+"He appeared suddenly at Rannoch, and the Leithcourts fled precipitately
+and have not since been heard of."
+
+"Ah, no wonder!" he remarked with a dry laugh. "No wonder! But look
+here, Gordon, I'm not going to stand by and let that scoundrel Woodroffe
+marry Muriel."
+
+"You love her, perhaps?" I hazarded.
+
+"Yes, I do love her," he admitted. "And, by heaven!" he cried, "I will
+tell the truth and crush the whole of their ingenious plot. Have you met
+Elma Heath?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said in quick anxiety.
+
+"Then listen," he said in a low, earnest voice. "Listen, and I'll tell
+you something.
+
+"There is a greater mystery surrounding that yacht, the _Lola_, than you
+have ever imagined, my dear old chap," declared Jack Durnford, looking
+me straight in the face. "When you told me about it on the quarter-deck
+that day outside Leghorn, I was half a mind to tell you what I knew.
+Only one fact prevented me--my disinclination to reveal my own secrets.
+I loved Muriel Leithcourt, yet, afloat as I was, I could never see
+her--I could not obtain from her own lips the explanation I desired. Yet
+I would not prejudge her--no, and I won't now!" he added with a fierce
+resolution.
+
+"I love her," he went on, "and she reciprocates my love. Ours is a
+secret engagement made in Malta two years ago, and yet you tell me that
+she has pledged herself to that fellow Woodroffe--the man known here in
+London as Dick Archer. I can't believe it--I really can't, old fellow.
+She could never write to me as she has done, urging patience and secrecy
+until my return."
+
+"Unless, of course, she desired to gain time," I suggested.
+
+But my friend was silent; his brows were deep knit.
+
+"Woodroffe is at the present moment in Petersburg," I said. "I've just
+come back from there."
+
+"In St. Petersburg!" he gasped, surprised. "Then he is with that
+villainous official, Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland."
+
+"No; Oberg is living shut up in his palace at Helsingfors, fearing to go
+out lest he shall be assassinated," was my answer.
+
+"And Elma? What has become of her?"
+
+"She is in hiding in Petersburg, awaiting such time as I can get her
+safely out of Russia," and then, continuing, I explained how she had
+been maimed and rendered deaf and dumb.
+
+"What!" he cried fiercely. "Have they actually done that to the poor
+girl? Then they feared that she should reveal the nature of their plot,
+for she had seen and heard."
+
+"Seen and heard what?"
+
+"Be patient; we will elucidate this mystery, and the motive of this
+terrible infliction upon her. Muriel wrote to me saying that poor Elma,
+her friend, had disappeared, and she feared that some evil had also
+happened to her. So Oberg had sent her to his fortress--his own private
+Bastille--the place to which, on pretended charges of conspiracy against
+Russia, he sends those who thwart him to a living tomb."
+
+"I have seen him, and I have defied him," I said.
+
+"You have! Man alive! be careful. He's not a fellow who sticks at
+trifles," said Jack warningly.
+
+"I don't fear," I replied. "Elma's enemies are also mine."
+
+"Then I take it, old fellow, that notwithstanding her affliction, you
+are actually in love with her?"
+
+"I intend to rescue, and to marry her," I answered quite frankly.
+
+"But first we must tear aside this veil of mystery and ascertain all the
+facts concerning her," he said. "At present I only know one or two very
+vague details. The baron is certainly not her uncle, as he represents
+himself to be, but it seems certain that she is the daughter of
+Anglo-Russian parents, and was born in Russia and brought to England
+when a child."
+
+"But from whom do you expect I can obtain the true facts concerning her,
+and the reason of the baron's desire to keep her silent?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, twisting his mustache thoughtfully. "That's just the
+question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive
+of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow
+Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot,
+whatever it may be, I feel convinced. She may be the victim of that
+blackleg Woodroffe, who, as Bartlett has told you, is one of the most
+expert swindlers in London, and who has already done two terms of penal
+servitude."
+
+"But what was the motive in breaking open the Consul's safe, if not to
+obtain the Foreign Office or Admiralty ciphers? Perhaps they wanted to
+steal them and sell them to a foreign government?"
+
+"No; that was not their object. I've thought over it many, many times
+since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a
+fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows
+his ciphers to remain behind. When he leaves his post he always deposits
+those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his
+Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port. They'd surely
+ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet. The affair was a
+risky one, and Dick Archer is known as a man of many precautions."
+
+"But he is on extremely friendly terms with Elma. It was he who
+succeeded in finding her in Finland, and taking her beyond Oberg's
+sphere of influence to Petersburg."
+
+"Then it is certainly only an affected friendship, with some sinister
+motive underlying it."
+
+"She wrote a letter from her island prison to an old schoolfellow named
+Lydia Moreton, asking her to see Woodroffe at his rooms in Cork Street,
+and tell him that through all she was suffering she had kept her promise
+to him, and that the secret was still safe."
+
+"Exactly. And now the fellow fears that as you are so actively searching
+out the truth, she may yield to your demands and explain. He therefore
+intends to silence her."
+
+"What! to kill her, you mean?" I gasped, in quick apprehension.
+
+"Well, he might do so, in order to save himself, you see," Jack replied,
+adding: "He certainly would have no compunction if he thought that it
+would not be brought home to him. Only he, no doubt, fears you, because
+you have found her, and are in love with her."
+
+I admitted the force of his argument, but recollected that my dear one
+was safe in concealment, and that the Princess was our friend, even
+though I, as an Englishman, had no sympathy with the doctrine of the
+bomb and the knife.
+
+I tried to get from him all that he knew concerning Elma, but he seemed,
+for some curious reason, disinclined to tell. All I could gather was
+that Leithcourt was in league with Chater and Woodroffe, and that Muriel
+had acted as an entirely innocent agent. What the conspiracy was, or
+what was its motive, I could not discern. I was as far off the solution
+of the problem as ever.
+
+"We must first find Muriel," he declared, when I pressed him to tell me
+everything he knew. "There are facts you have told me which negative my
+own theories, and only from her can we obtain the real truth."
+
+"But surely you know where she is? She writes to you," I said.
+
+"The last letter, which I received at Gib. ten days ago, was from the
+Hotel Bristol, at Botzen, in the Tyrol, yet Bartlett says she has been
+seen down at Eastbourne."
+
+"But you have an address where you always write to her, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, a secret one. I have written and made an appointment, but she has
+not kept it. She has been prevented, of course. She may be with her
+parents, and unable to come to London."
+
+"You did not know that they had fled, and were in hiding?"
+
+"Of course not. What I've heard to-night is news to me--amazing news."
+
+"And does it not convey to you the truth?"
+
+"It does--a ghastly truth concerning Elma Heath," he answered in a low
+voice, as though speaking to himself.
+
+"Tell me. What? I'm dying, Jack, to know everything concerning her. Who
+is that fellow Oberg?"
+
+"Her enemy. She, by mere accident, learned his secret and Woodroffe's,
+and they now both live in deadly fear of her."
+
+"And for that reason she was taken to Siena, where some villainous
+Italian doctor was bribed to render her deaf and dumb."
+
+He nodded in the affirmative.
+
+"But Chater?"
+
+"I know very little concerning him. He may have conspired with them, or
+he may be innocent. It seems as though he were antagonistic to their
+schemes, if Leithcourt and his family really fled from him."
+
+"And yet he was on board the _Lola_. Indeed, he may have helped to
+commit the burglary at the Consulate," I said.
+
+"Quite likely," he answered. "But our first object must be to rediscover
+Muriel. Paget says she is in Eastbourne. If she is there, we shall
+easily find her. They publish visitors' lists in the papers, don't they,
+like they do at Hastings?" Then he added: "Visitors' lists are most
+annoying when you find your name printed in them when you are supposed
+officially to be somewhere else. I was had once like that by the
+Bournemouth papers, when I was supposed to be on duty over at
+Queenstown. I narrowly escaped a terrible wigging."
+
+"Shall we go to Eastbourne?" I suggested eagerly. "I'll go there with
+you in the morning."
+
+"Or would it not be best to send an urgent wire to the address where I
+always write? She would then reply here, no doubt. If she's in
+Eastbourne, there may be reasons why she cannot come up to town. If her
+people are in hiding, of course she won't come. But she'll make an
+appointment with me, no doubt."
+
+"Very well. Send a wire," I said. "And make it urgent. It will then be
+forwarded. But as regards Olinto? Would you like to see him? He might
+tell you more than he has told me."
+
+"No; by no means. He must not know that I have returned to London,"
+declared my friend quickly. "You had better not see him--you
+understand."
+
+"Then his interests are--well, not exactly our own?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But why don't you tell me more about Elma?" I urged, for I was eager to
+learn all he knew. "Come, do tell me!" I implored.
+
+"I've told you practically everything, my dear old fellow," was his
+response. "The revelation of the true facts of the affair can be made
+only by Muriel. I tell you, we must find her."
+
+"Yes, we must--at all hazards," I said. "Let's go across to the
+telegraph office opposite Charing Cross. It's open always." And we rose
+and walked out along the Strand, now nearly deserted, and despatched an
+urgent message to Muriel at an address in Hurlingham Road, Fulham.
+
+Afterwards we stood outside on the curb, still talking, I loth to part
+from him, when there passed by in the shadow two men in dark overcoats,
+who crossed the road behind us to the front of Charing Cross station,
+and then continued on towards Trafalgar Square.
+
+As the light of the street lamp fell upon them, I thought I recognized
+the face of one as that of a person I had seen before, yet I was not at
+all certain, and my failure to remember whom the passer-by resembled
+prevented me from saying anything further to Jack than:
+
+"A fellow I know has just gone by, I think."
+
+"We seem to be meeting hosts of friends to-night," he laughed. "After
+all, old chap, it does one good to come back to our dear, dirty old town
+again. We abuse it when we are here, and talk of the life in Paris, and
+Vienna, and Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so
+dear to us, for it is 'home.' But there!" he laughed, "I'm actually
+growing romantic. Ah! if we could only find Muriel! But we must
+to-morrow. Ta-ta! I shall go around to the club and sleep, for I haven't
+fixed on any diggings yet. Come in at ten to-morrow, and we will decide
+upon some plan. One thing is plainly certain; Elma must at once be got
+out of Russia. She's in deadly peril of her life there."
+
+"Yes," I said. "And you will help me?"
+
+"With all my heart, old fellow," answered my friend, warmly grasping my
+hand, and then we parted, he strolling along towards the National
+Gallery on his way back to the "Junior," while I returned to the _Cecil_
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MARKED MEN
+
+
+"Captain Durnford?" I inquired of the hall-porter of the club next
+morning.
+
+"Not here, sir."
+
+"But he slept here last night," I remarked. "I have an appointment with
+him."
+
+The man consulted the big book before him, and answered:
+
+"Captain Durnford went out at 9:27 last night, sir, but has not
+returned."
+
+Strange, I thought, but although I waited in the club nearly an hour, he
+did not put in an appearance. I called again at noon, and he had not
+come in, and again at two o'clock, but he had not even then made his
+appearance. Then I began to be anxious. I returned to the hotel,
+resolved to wait for a few hours longer. He might have altered his mind
+and gone to Eastbourne in search of Muriel; yet, had he done so, he
+would surely have telegraphed to me.
+
+About four o'clock, as I was passing through the big hall of the hotel,
+I heard a voice behind me utter a greeting in Italian, and turning in
+surprise, found Olinto, dressed in his best suit of black, standing hat
+in hand.
+
+In an instant I recollected what Jack had told me, and regarded him with
+some suspicion.
+
+"Signor Commendatore," he said in a low voice, as though fearing to be
+overheard, "may I be permitted to speak in private with you?"
+
+"Certainly," I said, and I took him in the lift up to my room.
+
+"I have come to warn you, signore," he said, when I had given him a
+seat. "Your enemies mean harm to you."
+
+"And who are they, pray?" I asked, biting my lips. "The same, I suppose,
+who prepared that ingenious trap in Lambeth?"
+
+"I am not here to reveal to you who they are, signore, only to warn you
+to have a care of yourself," was the Italian's reply.
+
+"Look here, Olinto!" I exclaimed determinedly, "I've had enough of this
+confounded mystery. Tell me the truth regarding the assassination of
+your poor wife up in Scotland."
+
+"Ah, signore!" he answered sadly in a changed voice, "I do not know. It
+was a plot. Someone represented me--but he was killed also. They
+believed they had struck me down," he added, with a bitter laugh. "Poor
+Armida's body was found concealed behind a rock on the opposite side of
+the wood. I saw it--ah!" he cried shuddering.
+
+"Then you are ignorant of the identity of your wife's assassin?"
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"Tell me one thing," I said. "Did Armida possess any trinket in the form
+of a little enameled cross--like a miniature cross of cavaliere?"
+
+"Yes; I gave it to her. I found it on the floor at the Mansion House,
+where I was engaged as odd waiter for a banquet. I know I ought to have
+given it up to the Lord Mayor's servants, but it was such a pretty
+little thing that I was tempted to keep it. It probably had fallen from
+the coat of one of the diplomatists dining there."
+
+I was silent. The faint suspicion that Oberg had been at that spot was
+now entirely removed. The only clue I had was satisfactorily accounted
+for.
+
+"Why do you ask, Signor Commendatore?" he added.
+
+"Because the cross was found at the spot, and was believed to have been
+dropped by the assassin," I said.
+
+The police had, it seemed, succeeded in discovering the unfortunate
+woman after all, and had found that she was his wife.
+
+"You know a man named Leithcourt?" I asked a few moments later. "Now,
+tell the truth. In this affair, Olinto, our interests are mutual, are
+they not?"
+
+He nodded, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"And you know also a man named Archer--who is sometimes known as Hornby,
+or Woodroffe--as well as a friend of his called Chater."
+
+"Si, signore," he said. "I have met them all--to my regret."
+
+"And have you ever met a Russian--a certain Baron Oberg--and his niece,
+Elma Heath?"
+
+"His niece? She isn't his niece."
+
+"Then who is she?" I demanded.
+
+"How do I know? I have seen her once or twice. But she's dead, isn't
+she? She knew the secret of those men, and they intended to kill her. I
+tried to prevent them taking her away on the yacht, and I would have
+gone to the police--only I dare not."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, because my own hands were not quite clean," he answered after a
+pause, his eyes fixed upon mine the while. "I knew they intended to
+silence her, but I was powerless to save her, poor young lady. They took
+her on board Leithcourt's yacht, the _Iris_, and they sailed for the
+Mediterranean, I believe."
+
+"Then the name and appearance of the yacht was altered on the voyage,
+and it became the _Lola_," I said.
+
+"No doubt," he smiled. "The _Iris_ was a steamer of many names, and had,
+I believe, been painted nearly all the colors of the rainbow at various
+times. It was a mysterious vessel, but she exists no more. They scuttled
+her somewhere up in the Baltic, I've heard."
+
+"And who is this Oberg?" I inquired, urging him to reveal to me all he
+knew concerning him.
+
+"He stands in great fear of the poor young lady, I believe, for it was
+at his instigation that Leithcourt and his friends took her on that
+fatal yachting cruise."
+
+"And what was your connection with them?"
+
+"Well, I was Leithcourt's servant," was his reply. "I was steward on the
+_Iris_ for a year, until I suppose they thought that I began to see too
+much, and then I was placed in a position ashore."
+
+"And what did you see?"
+
+"More than I care to tell, signore. If they were arrested I should be
+arrested, too, you see."
+
+"But I mean to solve this mystery, Olinto," I said fiercely, for I was
+in no trifling mood. "I'll fathom it if it costs me my life."
+
+"If the signore solves it himself, then I cannot be charged with
+revealing the truth," was the man's diplomatic reply. "But I fear that
+they are far too wary."
+
+"Armida has lost her life. Surely that is sufficient incentive for you
+to bring them all to justice?"
+
+"Of course. But if the law falls upon them, it will also fall upon me."
+
+I explained the terrible affliction to which my love had been subjected
+by those heartless brutes, whereupon he cried enthusiastically:
+
+"Then she is not dead! She can tell us everything!"
+
+"But cannot you tell us?"
+
+"No; not all. The secret she knows has never been revealed. They feared
+she might be incautious, and for that reason Oberg made the villainous
+suggestion of the yachting trip. She was to be drowned--accidentally, of
+course."
+
+"She is in St. Petersburg now. I left her a week ago."
+
+"In Russia! Ah, signore, for her sake, don't allow the young lady to
+remain there. The Baron is all-powerful. He does what he wishes in
+Russia, and the more merciless he is to the people he governs, the
+greater rewards he receives from the Czar. I have never been in Russia,
+but surely it must be a strange country, signore!"
+
+"Well," I said, sitting upon the edge of the bed and looking at him.
+"Are you prepared to denounce them if I bring the Signorina Heath here,
+to England?"
+
+"But what is the use, if we have no clear proof?" was his evasive reply.
+I could see plainly that he feared being himself implicated in some
+extraordinary plot, the exact nature of which he so steadfastly refused
+to reveal to me.
+
+We talked on for fully half an hour, and from his conversation I
+gathered that he was well acquainted with Elma.
+
+"Ah, signore, she was such a pleasant and kind-hearted young lady. I
+always felt very sorry for her. She was in deadly fear of them."
+
+"Because they were thieves?" I hazarded.
+
+"Ah, worse!"
+
+"But why did they induce you to entice me to that house in Lambeth? Why
+did they so evidently desire that I should be killed?"
+
+"By accident," he interrupted, correcting me. "Always by accident," and
+he smiled grimly.
+
+"Surely you know their secret motive?" I remarked.
+
+"At the time I did not," he declared. "I acted on their instructions,
+being compelled to, for they hold my future in their hands. Therefore I
+could not disobey. You knew too much, therefore you were marked down for
+death--just as you are now."
+
+"And who is it who is now seeking my life?" I inquired gravely. "I only
+returned from Russia yesterday."
+
+"Your movements are well known," answered the young Italian. "You cannot
+be too careful. Woodroffe has been in Russia with you, has he not?"
+
+I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:
+
+"I thought so, but was not quite sure."
+
+"And Chater?" I inquired; "where is he?"
+
+"In London."
+
+"And the Leithcourts?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of ignorance, adding: "The
+Signorina Muriel returned to London from Eastbourne this morning."
+
+"Where can I find her?" I inquired eagerly. "It is of the utmost
+importance that I should see her."
+
+"She is with a relation, a cousin, I think, at Bassett Road, Notting
+Hill. The house is called 'Holmwood.'"
+
+"You have seen her?"
+
+"No. I heard she had returned."
+
+"And her father is still in hiding from Chater?"
+
+"He is still in hiding, but Chater is his best friend."
+
+"That is curious," I remarked, recollecting the hurried departure from
+Rannoch. "They've made it up, I suppose?"
+
+"They never quarreled, to my knowledge."
+
+"Then why did Leithcourt leave Scotland so hurriedly on Chater's
+arrival? You know all about the affair, of course?"
+
+He nodded, saying with a grim smile, "Yes; I know. The party up there
+must have been a very interesting one. If the police could have made a
+raid on the place they would have found among the guests certain persons
+long 'wanted.' But the arrival of Chater and the flight of Leithcourt
+had an ulterior object. Chater had never been Leithcourt's enemy."
+
+"But I can't understand that," I said. "Why should Leithcourt have
+attacked Chater, rendered him unconscious, and shut him up in the
+cupboard in the library?"
+
+"Was it Leithcourt who did that?" he asked dubiously. "I think not. It
+was another of the guests who was Chater's bitterest enemy. But Philip
+Leithcourt took advantage of the fracas in order to make believe that he
+had fled because of Chater's arrival. Ah!" he added, "you haven't any
+idea of their ruses. They are amazing!"
+
+"So it seems," I said, nevertheless only half convinced that the Italian
+was telling me the truth. If it was really, as he had said, that the
+arrival of Chater and the flight was merely a "blind," then the mystery
+was again deepened.
+
+"Then who was the man who attacked Chater?" I asked.
+
+"Only Chater himself knows. It was one of the guests, that is quite
+evident."
+
+"And you say that the flight had been prearranged?" I remarked.
+
+"Yes, with a distinct motive," he said; then, after a pause, he added,
+with a strange, earnest look in his dark eyes, "Pardon me, Signor
+Commendatore, if I presume to suggest something, will you not?"
+
+"Certainly. What do you suggest?"
+
+"That you should remain here, in this hotel, and not venture out."
+
+"For fear of something unfortunate happening to me!" I laughed. "I'm
+really not afraid, Olinto," I added. "You know I carry this," and I drew
+out my revolver from my hip-pocket.
+
+"I know, signore," he said anxiously. "But you might not be afforded
+opportunity for using it. When they lay a trap they bait it well."
+
+"I know. They're a set of the most ingenious scoundrels in London, it is
+very evident. Yet I don't fear them in the least," I declared. "I must
+rescue the Signorina Heath."
+
+"But, signore, have a care for yourself," cried the Italian, laying his
+hand upon my arm. "You are a marked man. Ah! do I not know," he
+exclaimed breathlessly. "If you go out you may run right into--well, the
+fatal accident."
+
+"Never fear, Olinto," I said reassuringly. "I shall keep my eyes well
+open. Here, in London, one's life is safer than anywhere else in the
+world, perhaps--certainly safer than in some places I could name in your
+own country, eh?" at which he grinned.
+
+The next moment he grew serious again, and said:
+
+"I only warn the signore that if he goes out it is at his own peril."
+
+"Then let it be so," I laughed, feeling self-confident that no one could
+lead me into any trap. I was neither a foreigner nor a country cousin. I
+knew London too well. He was silent and shook his head; then, after
+telling me that he was still at the same restaurant in Westbourne Grove,
+he took his departure, warning me once more not to go forth.
+
+Half an hour later, disregarding his words, I strode out into the
+Strand, and again walked round to the "Junior." The short wintry day had
+ended, the gas-lamps were lit, and the darkness of night was gradually
+creeping on.
+
+Jack had not been to the club, and I began now to grow thoroughly
+uneasy. He had parted from me at the corner of the Strand with only a
+five minutes' walk before him, and yet he had apparently disappeared. My
+first impulse was to drive to Notting Hill to inquire of Muriel if she
+had news of him, but somehow the Italian's warning words made me wonder
+if he had met with foul play.
+
+I suddenly recollected those two men who had passed by as we had talked,
+and how that the features of one had seemed strangely familiar.
+Therefore I took a cab to the police-station down at Whitehall, and made
+inquiry of the inspector on duty in the big bare office with its flaring
+gas-jets in wire globes. He heard me to the end, then turning back the
+book of "occurrences" before him, glanced through the ruled entries.
+
+"I should think this is the gentleman, sir," he said. And he read to me
+the entry as follows:
+
+"P.C. 462A reports that at 2.07 a.m., while on duty outside the National
+Gallery, he heard a revolver shot, followed by a man's cry. He ran to
+the corner of Suffolk Street, where he found a gentleman lying upon the
+pavement suffering from a serious shot-wound in the chest and quite
+unconscious. He obtained the assistance of P.C.'s 218A and 343A, and the
+gentleman, who was not identified, was taken to the Charing Cross
+Hospital, where the house-surgeon expressed a doubt whether he could
+live. Neither P.C.'s recollect having noticed any suspicious-looking
+person in the vicinity.
+                         "JOHN PERCIVAL, _Inspector_."
+
+I waited for no more, but rushed round to the hospital in the cab, and
+was, five minutes later, taken along the ward, where I identified poor
+Jack lying in bed, white-faced and unconscious.
+
+"The doctor was here a quarter of an hour ago," whispered the sister.
+"And he fears he is sinking."
+
+"He has uttered no words?" I asked anxiously. "Made no statement?"
+
+"None. He has never regained consciousness, and I fear, sir, he never
+will. It is a case of deliberate murder, the police told me early this
+morning."
+
+I clenched my fists and swore a fierce revenge for that dastardly act.
+And as I stood beside the narrow bed, I realized that what Olinto had
+said regarding my own peril was the actual truth. I was a marked man.
+Was I never to penetrate that inscrutable and ever-increasing mystery?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"
+
+
+Throughout the long night I called many times at the hospital, but the
+reply was always the same. Jack had not regained consciousness, and the
+doctor regarded his case as hopeless.
+
+In the morning I drove in hot haste to Bassett Road, Notting Hill, and
+at the address Olinto had given me found Muriel. When she entered the
+room with folding doors into which I had been shown, I saw that she was
+pale and apprehensive, for we had not met since her flight, and she was,
+no doubt, at a loss for an explanation. But I did not press her for one.
+I merely told her that the Italian Santini had given me her address and
+that I came as bearer of unfortunate news.
+
+"What is it?" she gasped quickly.
+
+"It concerns Captain Durnford," I replied. "He has been injured in the
+street, and is in Charing Cross Hospital."
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "I see. You do not explain the truth. By your face I
+can tell there is something more. He's dead! Tell me the worst."
+
+"No, Miss Leithcourt," I said gravely, "not dead, but the doctors fear
+that he may not recover. His wound is dangerous. He has been shot by
+some unknown person."
+
+"Shot!" she echoed, bursting into tears. "Then they have followed him,
+after all! They have deceived me, and now, as they intend to take him
+from me, I will myself protect him. You, Mr. Gregg, have been in peril
+of your life, that I know, but Jack's enemies are yours, and they shall
+not go unpunished. May I see him?"
+
+"I fear not, but we will ask at the hospital." And after the exchange of
+some further explanations, we took a hansom back to Charing Cross.
+
+At first the sister refused to allow Muriel to see the patient, but she
+implored so earnestly that at last she consented, and the distressed
+girl in the black coat and hat crept on tiptoe to the bedside.
+
+"He was conscious for a quarter of an hour or so," whispered the nurse
+who sat there, "He asked after some lady named Muriel."
+
+The girl at my side burst into low sobbing.
+
+"Tell him," she said, "that Muriel is here--that she has seen him, and
+is waiting for him to recover."
+
+We were not allowed to linger there, and on leaving the hospital I took
+her back again to Notting Hill, promising to keep her well informed of
+Jack's condition. He had returned to consciousness, therefore there was
+now a faint hope for his recovery.
+
+Day succeeded day, and although I was not allowed to visit my friend, I
+was told that he was very slowly progressing. I idled at the Hotel Cecil
+longing daily for news of Elma. Only once did a letter come from her, a
+brief, well-written note from which it appeared that she was quite well
+and happy, although she longed to be able to go out. The Princess was
+very kind indeed to her, and, she added, was making secret arrangements
+for her escape across the Russian frontier into Germany.
+
+I knew what that meant. Use was to be made of certain Russian officials
+who were secretly allied with the Revolutionists in order to secure her
+safe conduct beyond the power of that order of exile of the tyrant de
+Plehve. I wrote to her under cover to the Princess, but there had been
+no time yet for a reply.
+
+I saw Muriel many times, but never once did she refer to Rannoch or
+their sudden departure. Her only thought was of the man she loved.
+
+"I always believed that you were engaged to Mr. Woodroffe," I said one
+day, when I called to tell her of Jack's latest bulletin.
+
+"It is true that he asked me to marry him," she responded. "But there
+were reasons why I did not accept."
+
+"Reasons connected with his past, eh?"
+
+She smiled, and then said:
+
+"Ah, Mr. Gregg, it is all a strange and very tragic story. I must see
+Jack. When do you think they will allow me to go to him?"
+
+I explained that the doctor feared to cause the patient any undue
+excitement, but that in two or three days there was hope of her being
+allowed to visit him. Several times the police made inquiry of me, but I
+could tell them nothing. I could not for the life of me recollect where
+I had before seen the face of that man who had passed in the darkness.
+
+One afternoon, ten days after the attempt upon Jack, I was allowed to
+sit by his bedside and question him.
+
+"Ah, Gordon, old fellow!" he said faintly, "I've had a narrow escape--by
+Jove! After I left you I walked quickly on towards the club, when, all
+of a sudden, two scoundrels sprang out of Suffolk Street, and one of
+them fired a revolver full at me. Then I knew no more."
+
+"But who were the men? Did you recognize them?"
+
+"No, not at all. That's the worst of it."
+
+"But Muriel knows who they were!" I said.
+
+"Ah, yes! Bring her here, won't you?" the poor fellow implored, "I'm
+dying to see her once again."
+
+Then I told him how she had looked upon him while unconscious, and how I
+had taken the daily bulletin to her. For an hour I talked with him,
+urging him to get well soon, so that we could unite in probing the
+mystery, and bringing to justice those responsible for the dastardly
+act.
+
+"Muriel knows, and if she loves you she will no doubt assist us," I
+said.
+
+"Oh, she does love me, Gordon, I know that," said the prostrate man,
+smiling contentedly, and when I left I promised to bring her there on
+the morrow.
+
+This I did, but having conducted her to the bed at the end of the ward I
+discreetly withdrew. What she said to him I am not, of course, aware.
+All I know is that an hour later when I returned I found them the
+happiest pair possible to conceive, and I clearly saw that Jack's trust
+in her was not ill-placed.
+
+But of Elma? No further word had come from her, and I began to grow
+uneasy. The days went on. I wrote twice, but no reply was forthcoming.
+At last I could bear the suspense no longer, and began to contemplate
+returning to Russia.
+
+Jack, when at last discharged from the hospital, came across to the
+Cecil and lived with me in preference to the "Junior." He was very weak
+at first, and I looked after him, while every day Muriel came and ate
+with us, brightening our lives by her smart and merry chatter. She knew
+that I loved Elma and was also aware of the exciting events in Russia,
+Jack having told her of them during their long drives in hansoms when he
+went out with her to take the air.
+
+One day I received a brief note from the Princess in Petersburg, urging
+me to remain patient and saying Elma was quite safe and well. There
+were reasons, however, why she was unable to write, she added. What were
+they, I wondered? Yet I could only wait until I received word to travel
+back to Russia and fetch her home. The Princess had promised to arrange
+everything.
+
+December came, and we still remained on at the hotel. Once Olinto had
+written me repeating his warning, but I did not heed it. I somehow
+distrusted the fellow.
+
+Jack, now thoroughly recovered, called almost daily at Bassett Road, and
+would often bring Muriel to the Cecil to tea or to luncheon. Often I
+inquired the whereabouts of her father and of Hylton Chater, but she
+declared herself in entire ignorance, and believed they were abroad.
+
+One afternoon, shortly before Christmas, as we were idling in the
+American bar of the hotel, my friend told me that Muriel had invited us
+to tea at her cousin's that afternoon, and accordingly we went there in
+company.
+
+The drawing-room into which we were ushered was familiar to me as the
+apartment wherein I had told Muriel of the attempt upon her lover's
+life.
+
+As we sat together Muriel, a smart figure in a pale blue gown, poured
+tea for us and chatted more merrily, I thought, than ever before. She
+seemed quick and nervous and yet full of happiness, as she should indeed
+have been, for Jack Durnford was one of the best fellows in the world,
+and his restoration to health little short of miraculous.
+
+"Gordon," he said to me with a sudden seriousness when tea had ended and
+we had placed down our cups. "I want to tell you something--something
+I've been longing always to tell you, and now I have got dear Muriel's
+consent. I want to tell you about her father and his friends."
+
+"And about Elma, too?" I said in quick eagerness. "Yes, tell me
+everything."
+
+"No, not everything, for I don't know it myself. But what I know I will
+explain as briefly as I can, and leave you to form your own conclusions.
+It is," he went on, "a strange--most amazing story. When I myself became
+first cognizant of the mystery I was on board the flagship the _Renown_,
+under Admiral Sir John Fisher. We were lying in Malta when there arrived
+the English yacht _Iris_, owned by Mr. Philip Leithcourt, and among
+those on board cruising for pleasure were Mr. Martin Woodroffe, Mr.
+Hylton Chater, and the owner's wife and daughter Muriel.
+
+"Muriel and I met first at a tennis-party, and afterwards frequently at
+various houses in Malta, for anyone who goes there and entertains is
+soon entertained in return. A mutual attachment sprang up between Muriel
+and myself," he said, placing his hand tenderly upon hers and smiling,
+"and we often met in secret and took long walks, until quite suddenly
+Leithcourt said that it was necessary to sail for Smyrna to pick up some
+friends who had been traveling in Palestine. The night they sailed a
+great consternation was caused on the island by the news that the safe
+in the Admiral Superintendent's office had been opened by expert
+safe-breakers, and certain most important secret documents stolen."
+
+"Well?" I asked, much interested.
+
+"Again, two months later, when the villa of the Prince of Montevachi, at
+Palmero, was broken into and the whole of the famous jewels of the
+Princess stolen, it was a very strange fact that the _Iris_ was at the
+moment in that port. But it was not until the third occasion, when the
+yacht was at Villefranche, and our squadron being at Toulon I got four
+days' leave to go along the Riviera, that my suspicions were aroused,
+for at the very hour when I was dining at the London House at Nice with
+Muriel and a schoolfellow of hers, Elma Heath--who was spending the
+winter there with a lady who was Baron Oberg's cousin--that a great
+robbery was committed in one of the big hotels up at Cimiez, the wife of
+an American millionaire losing jewels valued at thirty thousand pounds.
+Then the robberies, coincident with the visit of the yacht, aroused my
+strong suspicion. I remarked the nature of those documents stolen from
+Malta, and recognized that they could only be of service to a foreign
+government. Then came the Leghorn incident of which you told me. The
+yacht's name had been changed to the _Lola_, and she had been repainted.
+I made searching inquiry, and found that on the evening she was
+purposely run aground in order to strike up a friendship at the
+Consulate, a Russian gunboat was lying in the vicinity. The Consul's
+safe was rifled, and the scheme certainly was to transfer anything
+obtained from it to the Russian gunboat."
+
+"But what was in the safe?" I asked.
+
+"Fortunately nothing. But you see they knew that our squadron was due in
+Leghorn, and that some extremely important despatches were on the way to
+the Admiral--secret orders based upon the decision of the British
+Cabinet as to the vexed question of Russian ships passing the
+Dardanelles--they expected that they would be lodged in the safe until
+the arrival of the squadron, as they always are. They were, however,
+bitterly disappointed because the despatches had not arrived."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Well, the only Russian who appeared to have any connection with them
+was Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland, whose habit it was to
+spend part of the winter in the Mediterranean. From Elma Heath's
+conversation at dinner that evening at Nice I gathered that she and her
+uncle had been guests on the _Iris_ on several occasions, although I
+must say that Muriel was extremely reticent regarding all that concerned
+the yacht."
+
+"Of course," she said quickly. "Now that I have told you the truth,
+Jack, don't you think it was only natural?"
+
+"Most certainly, dear," he answered, still holding her hand. "Yours was
+not a secret that you could very well tell to me until you could
+thoroughly trust me, especially as your father had been implicated in
+the theft of those documents from Malta. The truth is," he said, turning
+to me, "Philip Leithcourt has all along been the catspaw of Baron Oberg.
+A few years ago he was a well-known money-lender in the city, and in
+that capacity met the Baron, who, being in disgrace, required a loan. He
+was also in the habit of having certain shady transactions with that
+daring gang of continental thieves of whom Dick Archer and Hylton Chater
+were leaders. For this reason he purchased a yacht for their use, so
+that they might not only use it for the purpose of storing the stolen
+goods, but for the purpose of sailing from place to place under the
+guise of wealthy Englishmen traveling for pleasure. Upon that vessel,
+indeed, was stored thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of jewels
+and objects of value, the proceeds of many great robberies in England,
+France and Belgium. Sometimes they traveled for the purpose of disposing
+of the jewels in various inland towns where the gems, having been recut,
+were not recognized, while at other times, Chater and Archer, assisted
+by Mackintosh, the captain, and Olinto Santini, the steward, sailed for
+a port, landed, committed a robbery, and then sailed away again, quite
+unsuspected, as rich Englishmen."
+
+"And the crew?" I asked, after a pause.
+
+"They were, of course, well paid, and were kept in ignorance of what
+the supposed owner and his friends did ashore."
+
+"But Oberg's connection with it?" I asked, surprised at those
+revelations.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Muriel. "The ingenuity of that crafty villain is
+fiendish. Before he got into the Czar's favor he owed my father a large
+sum, and then sought how to evade repayment. By means of his spies he
+discovered the real purpose of the cruises of the _Iris_--for I was
+often taken on board with a maid in order to allay any suspicion that
+might arise if only men were cruising. Then he not only compelled my
+father to cancel the debt, but he impressed the vessel and those who
+owned and navigated it into the secret service of Russia. A dozen times
+did we make attempts to obtain secret papers from Italian, French and
+English dockyards, but only once in the case of Malta and once at Toulon
+did we succeed. Ah! Mr. Gregg," she added, "you do not know all the
+anxiety I suffered, how at every hour we were in danger of betrayal or
+capture, and of the hundred narrow escapes we have had of Custom House
+officers rummaging the yacht for contraband. You will no doubt recollect
+the sensation caused by the theft of the jewels of the Princess
+Wilhelmine of Schaumbourg-Lippe from the lady's-maid in the rapide
+between Cannes and Les Arcs, the robbery from the Marseilles branch of
+the Crédit Lyonnais, and the great haul of plate from the château of
+Bardon, the Paris millionaire, close to Arcachon."
+
+"Yes," I said, for they were all robberies of which I had read in the
+newspapers a couple of years before.
+
+"Well," she said, "they were all committed by Archer or Woodroffe and
+his gang--with accomplices ashore, of course--and never once did it seem
+that any suspicion fell upon us. While the police were frantically
+searching hither and thither, we used to weigh anchor and calmly steam
+away with our booty on board. We had with us an old Dutch lapidary, and
+one of the cabins was fitted as a workshop, where he altered the
+appearance of the stones, and prepared them ready for sale, while the
+gold was melted in a crucible and put ashore to be sent to agents in
+Hamburg."
+
+"But that night in Leghorn?" I said. "What happened to poor Elma?"
+
+"I do not know," was Muriel's reply. "We were both on board together,
+and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that
+evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against
+your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the
+proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on
+board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some
+conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in
+great fear the whole time lest they might injure you. Yet it seemed,
+after all, as though their idea was the same as always, to worm
+themselves into your confidence. The instant, however, you went ashore,
+Chater, Woodroffe--whom you called Hornby--and Mackintosh, the
+captain--who, by the way, was an old ticket-of-leave man--went ashore,
+and, of course, broke into the Consulate. Then, as soon as they
+returned, Elma came to my cabin, awoke me, and said that the Baron was
+taking her ashore, and that they were to travel overland back to London.
+She was ready dressed to go, therefore I kissed her, and promising to
+meet her soon, we parted. That was the last I saw of her. What happened
+to her afterwards only she alone can tell us."
+
+"But she is not the Baron's niece?" I said.
+
+"No. There is some mystery," declared Muriel. "She holds some secret
+which he fears she may divulge. But of what nature, I am in ignorance."
+
+"Then you say that your father has never taken any active part in the
+robberies?" I remarked.
+
+"No. He commenced by lending money, and amassed a considerable fortune.
+Then avarice seized him, as it does so many men, and coming into contact
+with Archer and his friends, he saw that the idea of the yacht was a
+safe and profitable one. Therefore he purchased the vessel, and ran it
+at the disposition of the thieves, and subsequently under compulsion in
+the secret service of Russia, as I have already described to you. The
+profits were colossal. In one year my father's share was eighty thousand
+pounds."
+
+"And where is your father now?" I asked.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed sadly, her face pale and haggard.
+
+"I have heard that the vessel was scuttled somewhere in the Baltic."
+
+"That is true. Oberg's purpose having been served, he demanded half the
+property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval
+authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail
+my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was
+frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma,
+defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors,
+telegraphed to the admiral of the Russian fleet in the Baltic. The crew
+from the _Iris_ were at once landed at Riga, and only Mackintosh and my
+father put to sea again. Ah! my father was desperate, for he knew the
+merciless character of that man whose victim he had been for so long.
+They watched a Russian cruiser bearing down upon them, when, just as it
+drew near, they got off in a boat and blew up the yacht, which sank in
+three minutes with its ill-obtained wealth on board."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+She was silent, and I saw tears standing in her eyes.
+
+"There was a tragedy," Jack explained in a low, hoarse voice. "He and
+the captain did not, unfortunately, get sufficiently far from the yacht
+when they blew her up, and they went down with her."
+
+And I looked in silence at Muriel, who stood with her head bent and her
+white face covered with her hands.
+
+Almost at the same moment there was a low tap at the door, and the
+servant-maid announced:
+
+"Mr. Santini, miss."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Jack quickly, as Olinto entered the room. "Then you had
+my note! We have asked you here to reveal to us this dastardly plot
+which seemed to have been formed against Mr. Gregg and myself. As you
+know, I've had a narrow escape."
+
+"I know, signore. And the Signor Commendatore is also threatened."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"By those who killed my poor wife, and who intended also to silence me,"
+was his answer.
+
+"The same who compelled you take me to that house where the fatal chair
+was prepared, eh?"
+
+"It was Archer, who, fearing that you came to London in search of them,
+devised that devilish contrivance," he said in his broken English. Then
+continuing, he went on fiercely: "Now that I have discovered why my poor
+Armida was killed, I will tell the truth, and not spare them. Since you
+left Scotland, signore, I have been up in Dumfries, and have discovered
+several facts which prove that for some reason known only to himself,
+Leithcourt, while at Rannoch, wrote to both Armida and myself
+separately, making an appointment to see us at the same time at that
+spot on the edge of the wood, as he had some secret commission to
+entrust to us. The letter addressed to me apparently fell into someone
+else's hands--probably one of the secret agents of Baron Oberg, who were
+always watching Leithcourt's doings, and he, anxious to learn what was
+intended, made himself up to look like me, and kept the appointment in
+my place. Armida, having received the letter unknown to me, went up to
+Scotland, and was also there at the appointed time. What actually
+transpired can only be surmised, yet it seems that Leithcourt was in the
+habit of going up to that spot and loitering there in the evening in
+order to meet Chater in secret, as the latter was in hiding in a small
+hotel in Dumfries. Therefore those who formed the plot must have
+endeavored to throw suspicion upon Leithcourt. It is plain, however, as
+both myself and Armida knew the gang, it was to their interest to get
+rid of us, because the suspicions of the police had at last become
+aroused. Poor Armida was therefore deliberately enticed there to her
+death, while the inquisitive man whom the assassin took to be myself was
+also struck down."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Not by Chater, for he was in London on that night."
+
+"Then by Woodroffe?" Durnford said.
+
+"Without a doubt. It was all most cleverly thought out. It was to his
+advantage alone to close our lips, because in that same fatal chair in
+Lambeth old Jacob Moser, the Jew bullion-broker of Hatton Garden, met
+his death--a most dastardly crime, with which none of his friends were
+associated, and of which we alone held knowledge. He therefore wrote to
+us as though from Leithcourt, calling us up to Rannoch, in order to
+strike the blows in the darkness," he added in his peculiar Italian
+manner. "Besides, he feared we would tell the signore the truth."
+
+"You have not told the police?"
+
+"I dare not, signore. Surely the less the police know about this matter
+the better, otherwise the Signorina Leithcourt must suffer for her
+father's avarice and evil-doing."
+
+"Yes," cried Jack anxiously. "That's right, Olinto. The police must know
+nothing. The reprisals we must make ourselves. But who was it who shot
+me in Suffolk Street?"
+
+"The same man, Martin Woodroffe."
+
+"Then the assassin is back from Russia?"
+
+"He followed closely behind the Signor Commendatore. Markoff, a clever
+secret agent of Baron Oberg's, came with him."
+
+Then for the first time I recollected that the man I had recognized in
+the Strand was a fellow I had seen lounging in the ante-room of the
+palace of the Governor-General of Finland. The pair, fearing that I
+should reveal what I knew, were undoubtedly in London to take my life in
+secret. Now that Leithcourt was dead, Woodroffe had united forces with
+Oberg, and intended to silence me because they feared that Elma, besides
+escaping them, had also revealed her secret.
+
+"I trust that the Signorina Leithcourt has explained the story of the
+yacht and its crew," Olinto remarked. "And has also shown you how I was
+implicated. You will therefore discern the reason why I have hitherto
+feared to give you any explanation."
+
+"Yes," I said, "Miss Leithcourt has told me a great deal, but not
+everything. I cannot yet gather for what reason she and her father fled
+from Rannoch."
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Muriel quickly. "My father suspected
+Woodroffe of being the assassin in Rannoch Wood, for he knew that he had
+broken away from the original compact, and had now allied himself with
+Oberg. Yet it was also my father's object to appear in fear of them,
+because he was only awaiting an opportunity to lay plans for poor Elma's
+rescue from Finland. Therefore one evening Woodroffe called, and my
+father encountered him in the avenue, and admitted him with his own
+latchkey by one of the side doors of the castle, afterwards taking him
+up to the study. He knew that he had come to try and make terms for
+Oberg, therefore he saw that he must fly at once to Newcastle, where the
+_Iris_ was lying, get on board, and sail away.
+
+"With some excuse he left him in the study, and then warned my mother
+and myself to prepare to leave. But while we were packing, it appeared
+that Chater, who had followed, was shown into the study by the butler,
+or rather he entered there himself, being well acquainted with the
+house. Thus the two men, now bitter enemies, met. A fierce quarrel must
+have ensued, and Chater was poisoned and concealed, Woodroffe, of
+course, believing he had killed him. My father entered the study again,
+and seeing only Woodroffe there, did not know what had occurred. Some
+words probably arose, when my father again turned and left. Then we fled
+to Carlisle and on to Newcastle, and next morning were on board the
+yacht out in the North Sea, afterwards landing at Rotterdam. Those," she
+added, "are briefly the facts, as my poor father related them to me."
+
+"And what of poor Elma--and of her secret? When, I wonder, shall I see
+her?" I cried in despair.
+
+"You will see her now, signore," answered Olinto. "A servant of the
+Princess Zurloff brought her to London this afternoon, and I have just
+conveyed her from the station. She is in the next room, in ignorance,
+however, that you are here."
+
+And without another word I fled forward joyfully, and threw open the
+folding-doors which separated me from my silent love.
+
+Silent, yes! But she could, nevertheless, tell her story--surely the
+strangest that any woman has ever lived to tell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY
+
+
+Before me stood my love, a slim, tragic, rather wan figure in a heavy
+dark traveling-coat and felt toque, her sweet lips parted and a look of
+bewildered amazement upon her countenance as I burst in so suddenly upon
+her.
+
+In silence I grasped her tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in
+silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark
+eyes--those eyes that spoke although she was mute--met mine, and in them
+was a look that I had never seen there before--a look which as plainly
+as any words told me that my wild fevered passion was reciprocated.
+
+She gazed beyond into the room where the others had assembled, and then
+looked at me inquiringly, whereupon I led her forward to where they
+were, and Muriel fell upon her and kissed her with tears streaming from
+her eyes.
+
+"I prepared this surprise for you, Mr. Gregg," Muriel said, laughing
+through her tears of joy. "Olinto learnt that she was on her way to
+London, and I sent him to meet her. The Princess has managed
+magnificently, has she not?"
+
+"Yes. Thank God she is free!" I exclaimed. "But we must induce her to
+tell us everything."
+
+Muriel was already helping my love out of her heavy Russian coat, a
+costly garment lined with sable, and when, after greeting Jack and
+Olinto, she was comfortably seated, I took some notepaper from the
+little writing-table by the window and scribbled in pencil the words:
+
+"I need not write how delighted I am that you are safe--that the
+Almighty has heard my prayers for you. Jack and Muriel have told me all
+about Leithcourt and his scoundrelly associates. I know, too, dear--for
+I may call you that, may I not?--how terribly you must have suffered in
+silence through it all. Leithcourt is dead. He sank the yacht with all
+the stolen property on board, but by accident was himself engulfed."
+
+Bending and watching intently as I wrote, she drew back in horror and
+surprise at the words. Then I added: "We are all four determined that
+the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
+you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love--I am bold enough
+to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
+caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
+your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
+unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
+tell us everything--all that you know--without fear, for now that we are
+united no harm can assail us."
+
+She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
+first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
+her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
+extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
+to us the absolute truth.
+
+Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
+chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
+though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
+her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.
+
+Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write,
+she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.
+
+All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her,
+but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started,
+however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence
+for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the
+pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become
+seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw
+we were in real, dead earnest.
+
+I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
+across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
+speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly,
+peerless above all others.
+
+With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
+in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
+written to me.
+
+In breathless eagerness I read as follows:
+
+"Is it true, dear love--for I call you so in return--that you were
+impelled towards me by the mysterious hand that directs all things? You
+came in search of me, and you risked your life for mine at Kajana,
+therefore you have a right to know the truth. You, as my champion, and
+the Princess as my friend, have contrived to effect my freedom. Were it
+not for you, I should ere this have been on my way to Saghalien, to the
+tomb to which Oberg had so ingeniously contrived to consign me. Ah! you
+do not know--you never can know--all that I have suffered ever since I
+was a girl."
+
+Here the statement broke off, and recommenced as follows:
+
+"In order that you should understand the truth, I had better begin at
+the beginning. My father was an English merchant in Petersburg, and my
+mother, Vera Bessanoff, who, before her marriage with my father, was
+celebrated at Court for her beauty, and was one of the maids-of-honor to
+the Czarina. She was the only daughter of Count Paul Bessanoff,
+ex-Governor of Kharkoff, and before marrying my father she had, with her
+mother, been a well-known figure in society. Immediately after her
+marriage her father died, leaving her in possession of an ample fortune,
+which, with my father's own wealth, placed them among the richest and
+most influential in Petersburg.
+
+"Among my father's most intimate friends was Baron Xavier Oberg--who, at
+that time, held a very subordinate position in the Ministry of the
+Interior--and from my earliest recollections I can remember him coming
+frequently to our house and being invited to the brilliant
+entertainments which my mother gave. When I was thirteen, however, my
+father died of a chill contracted while boar-hunting on his estate in
+Kiev, and within a few months a further disaster happened to us. One
+night, while I was sitting alone reading aloud to my mother, two
+strangers were announced, and on being shown in they arrested my dear
+mother on a charge of complicity in a revolutionary plot against the
+Czar which had been discovered at Peterhof. I stood defiant and
+indignant, for my mother was certainly no Nihilist, yet they said that
+the bomb had been introduced into the palace by the Countess Anna
+Shiproff, one of the ladies-in-waiting, who was an intimate friend of my
+mother's and often used to visit her. They alleged that the conspiracy
+had been hatched in our house, color being lent to that theory by the
+fact that a year before a well-known Russian with whom my father had had
+many business dealings had been proved to be the author of the plot by
+which the Czar's train was blown up near Lividia. They tore my mother
+away from me and placed her in that gray prison-van, the sight of which
+in the streets of Petersburg strikes terror into the heart of every
+Russian, for a person once in that rumbling vehicle is, as you know,
+lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed
+in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted, for I
+recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the
+gray dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth came back to me. My
+mother was gone from me for ever!
+
+"In sheer desperation I went to the Ministry of the Interior and sought
+an interview with the Baron, who, when I told him of the disaster,
+appeared greatly concerned, and went at once to the Police Department to
+make inquiry. Next day, however, he came to me with the news that the
+charge against my mother had been proved by a statement of the woman
+Shiproff herself, and that she had already started on her long journey
+to Siberia--she had been exiled to one of those dreaded Arctic
+settlements beyond Yakutsk, a place where it is almost eternal winter,
+and where the conditions of life are such that half the convicts are
+insane. The Baron, however, declared that, as my father's friend, it was
+his duty to act as guardian to me, and that as my father had been
+English I ought to be put to an English school. Therefore, with his
+self-assumed title of uncle, he took me to Chichester. For years I
+remained there, until one day he came suddenly and fetched me away,
+taking me over to Helsingfors--for the Czar had now appointed him
+Governor-General to Finland. There, for the first time, he introduced me
+to his son Michael, a pimply-faced lieutenant of cavalry, and said in a
+most decisive manner that I must marry him. I naturally refused to marry
+a man of whom I knew so little, whereupon, finding me obdurate, he
+quickly altered his tactics and became kindness itself, saying that as I
+was young he would allow me a year in which to make up my mind.
+
+"A week later, while living in the palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a
+conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to
+me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself
+who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had
+made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the
+reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father,
+came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in
+order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in
+the hands of that unscrupulous pair, and I recognized, too, sufficient
+of the Baron's methods as 'The Strangler of Finland,' to show me what
+kind of character he was beneath that calm, eminently respectable
+black-coated exterior. After deliberately sending my poor mother to
+Siberia, he had assumed the role of my guardian in order that he might,
+when I came of age, obtain control of my inheritance, the idea no doubt
+being that I should marry Michael, and then, after the necessary legal
+formalities, I should, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, share the
+same fate as my mother had done."
+
+"The infernal scoundrel!" I ejaculated, when I read her words, while
+from Jack, who had been looking over my shoulder, escaped a fierce and
+forcible vow of vengeance.
+
+"The Baron took me with him to Petersburg when he went on official
+business, and we remained there nearly a month," the narrative went on.
+"While there I received a secret message from 'The Red Priest,' the
+unseen and unknown power of Nihilism, who has for so many years baffled
+the police. I went to see him, and he revealed to me how Oberg had
+contrived to have my mother banished upon a false charge. He warned me
+against the man who had pretended to be my father's friend, and also
+told me that he had known my father intimately, and that if I got into
+any further difficulty I was to communicate with him and he would assist
+me. Oberg took me back to Helsingfors a few months later, and in summer
+we went to England. He was a marvelously clever diplomatist. His tactics
+he could change at will. When I was at school he was rough and brutal in
+his manner towards me, as he was to all; but now he seemed to be
+endeavoring to inspire my confidence by treating me with kindly regard
+and pleasant affability.
+
+"In London, at Claridge's, we met my old schoolfellow Muriel and her
+father--a friend of Oberg's--and in response to their invitation went
+for a cruise on their yacht, the _Iris_, from Southampton. Our party was
+a very pleasant one, and included Woodroffe and Chater, while our cruise
+across the Bay of Biscay and along the Portuguese coast proved most
+delightful. One night, while we were lying outside Lisbon, Woodroffe and
+Chater, together with Olinto, went ashore, and when they returned in the
+early hours of the morning they awoke me by crossing the deck above my
+head. Then I heard someone outside my cabin-door working as though with
+a screwdriver, unscrewing a screw from the woodwork. This aroused my
+interest, and next day I made a minute examination of the paneling,
+where, in one part, I found two small brass screws that had evidently
+been recently removed. Therefore I succeeded in getting hold of a
+screwdriver from the carpenter's shop, and next night, when everyone was
+asleep, I crept out and unscrewed the panel, when to my surprise I saw
+that the secret cavity behind was filled with beautiful jewelry, diamond
+collars, tiaras, necklets, fine pearls, emeralds and turquoises, all
+_thrown_ in indiscriminately.
+
+"I replaced the panel and kept careful watch. At Marseilles, where we
+called, more jewelry and a heavy bagful of plate was brought aboard and
+secreted behind another panel. Then I knew that the men were thieves.
+
+"But surely," continued the strange story my mute love had written, "I
+need not describe all that occurred upon that eventful voyage, except to
+tell you of one very curious incident which occurred. I had spoken
+confidentially with Muriel regarding my suspicions of the men who were
+our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on
+board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced
+that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some
+unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that
+since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and
+that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however,
+never suspected the truth until I pointed it out to her. Well, one hot
+summer's night we were lying off Naples, and as it was a grand festa
+ashore and there was to be a gala performance at the theater, Leithcourt
+took a box and the whole party were rowed ashore. The crew were also
+given shore-leave for the evening, but as the great heat had upset me I
+declined to accompany the theater-party, and remained on board with one
+sailor named Wilson to constitute the watch. We had anchored about half
+a mile from land, and earlier in the evening the Baron had gone ashore
+to send telegrams to Russia, and had not returned.
+
+"About ten o'clock I went below to try and sleep, but I had a slight
+attack of fever, and was unable. Therefore I redressed and sat with the
+light still out, gazing across the starlit bay. Presently from my
+port-hole I saw a shore-boat approaching, and recognized in it the Baron
+with a well-dressed stranger. They both came on board, and the boatman,
+having been paid, pulled back to the shore. Then the Baron and his
+friend--a dark, middle-aged, full-bearded man, evidently a person of
+refinement--went below to the saloon, and after a few moments called to
+the man Wilson who was on the watch, and gave him a glass of whisky and
+water, which he took up on deck to drink at his leisure.
+
+"The unusual character of my fellow-guests on board that craft was such
+that my suspicion was constantly on the alert, therefore curiosity
+tempted me to creep along and peep in at the crack of the door standing
+ajar. A closer view revealed the fact that the stranger was a high
+Russian official to whom I had once been introduced at the Government
+Palace at Helsingfors, the Privy-Councillor and Senator Paul Polovstoff.
+They were smoking together, and were discussing in Russian the means by
+which he, Polovstoff, had arranged to obtain plans of some new British
+fortifications at Gibraltar. From what he said, it seemed that some
+Russian woman, married to an Englishman, a captain in the garrison, had
+been impressed into the secret service against her will, but that she
+had, in order to save herself, promised to obtain the photographs and
+plans that were required. I heard the Englishman's name, and I resolved
+to take some steps to inform him in secret of the intentions of the
+Russian agent.
+
+"Presently the two men took fresh cigars, ascended on deck, and cast
+themselves in the long cane chairs amidships. Still all curiosity to
+hear further details on the ingenious piece of espionage against my own
+nation, I took off my shoes and crept up to a spot where I could crouch
+concealed and overhear their conversation, for the Italian night was
+calm and still. They talked mainly about affairs in Finland, and with
+some of Oberg's expressions of opinion Polovstoff ventured to differ.
+This aroused the Baron's anger, and I knew from the cold sarcasm of his
+remarks, and the peculiarly hard tone of his voice, that he was more
+incensed than he outwardly showed himself to be. He rose and stood with
+his back to the bulwarks facing his friend, who still sat leaning back
+in his deck-chair insisting upon his own views. He was quite calm, and
+not in the least perturbed by the evil glint in the Baron's eye. Perhaps
+he did not know him so well as I did. He did not know what that look
+meant. Suddenly, while the Privy-Councillor lay back in his chair
+pulling thoughtfully at his cigar, there was a bright, blood-red flash,
+a dull report, and a man's short agonized cry. Startled, I leaned around
+the corner of the deck-house, when, to my abject horror, I saw under the
+electric rays the Czar's Privy-Councillor lying sideways in his chair
+with part of his face blown away. Then the hideous truth in an instant
+became apparent. The cigar which Oberg had pressed upon him down in the
+saloon had exploded, and the small missile concealed inside the
+diabolical contrivance had passed upwards into his brain. For a moment I
+stood utterly stupefied, yet as I looked I saw the Baron, in a paroxysm
+of rage, shake his fist in the dead man's face, and cry with a fearful
+imprecation: 'You hound! You have plotted to replace me in the Czar's
+favor. You intended to become Governor-General of Finland! You knew
+certain facts which you intended to put before his Majesty, knowing
+that the revelations would result in my disgrace and downfall. But, you
+infernal cur, you did not know that those who attempt to thwart Xavier
+Oberg either die by accident or go for life to Kajana or the mines!' And
+he spurned the body with his foot and laughed to himself as he gloated
+over his dastardly crime.
+
+"I watched his rage, unable to utter a single word. I saw him, after he
+had searched the dead man's pockets, raise the inert body with its awful
+featureless face and drag it to the bulwarks. Then I rushed forward and
+faced him.
+
+"In an instant he sprang at me, and I screamed. But no aid came. The man
+Wilson was sleeping soundly in the bows, for the whisky he had given him
+had been doctored," went on the narrative. "Upon his face was a fierce,
+murderous look such as I had never seen before. 'You!' he screamed, his
+dark eyes starting from their sockets as he realized that I had been a
+witness of his cowardly crime. 'You have spied upon me, girl!' he
+hissed, 'and you shall die also!' I sank upon my knees imploring him to
+spare me, but he only laughed at my entreaty. 'See!' he cried, 'as you
+saw how he enjoyed his cigar, you may as well see this!' And with an
+effort he raised the dead body in his arms, poised it for a moment on
+the vessel's side, and then, with a hoarse laugh of triumph, heaved it
+into the sea. There was a splash, and then we were alone. 'And you!' he
+cried in a fierce voice--'you who have spied upon me--you will follow!
+The water there will close your chattering mouth!' I shrieked, begged,
+and implored, but his trembling hands were upon my throat. First he
+dragged me to my feet, then he threw me upon my knees, and at last, with
+that grim brutality which characterizes him, he directed me to go and
+get a mop and bucket from the forecastle and remove the dark red stains
+from the chair and deck. This he actually forced me to do, gloating over
+my horror as I removed for him the traces of his cowardly crime. Then,
+with his hand upon my shoulder, he said, 'Girl! Recollect that you keep
+to-night's work secret. If not, you shall die a death more painful than
+that dog has died--one in which you shall experience all the tortures of
+the damned. Recollect, not a single word--or death! Now, go to your
+cabin, and never pry into my affairs again.'
+
+"I went back to my cabin as I was bid, and sat speechless in abject
+horror. The fiendish actions of the man who was my guardian frightened
+me. And yet I was utterly helpless. What could I do? Who in holy Russia
+would hear me? Oberg was a power in the Empire; the Czar himself trusted
+him. If I spoke, who would believe me; who would heed the words of a
+defenseless girl whom he would at once declare to be hysterical? Thus I
+waited alone in the darkness, watching the lights of the port gleaming
+across the placid waters until nearly one o'clock, when the gay party
+returned, and the Baron greeted them merrily as though nothing had
+happened. But my heart was frozen within me by the recollection of the
+awful crime that had been committed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why! Now I remember!" cried Muriel, amazed. "I remember that night
+quite well, how white you were when you came to my cabin and asked to be
+allowed to sleep in my spare berth. You would tell me nothing, and only
+said you were ill. None of us had any idea that such a terrible tragedy
+had been enacted. But of course the Baron had arranged it all, for it
+was at his instigation, I recollect, that the crew had been given
+shore-leave. Mackintosh suggested that only half the crew should go,
+but he declared that if Wilson alone were left it would be sufficient."
+
+"I, too, recollect the affair quite well," Jack declared, tugging at his
+mustache, utterly amazed at my love's strange story. It was a plain
+statement of hard, astounding facts, and she now stood clinging to me,
+looking eagerly into my eyes, reading every thought that passed through
+my mind. "A great sensation was caused when the body was discovered. The
+squadron was lying off Naples about a week after the _Iris_ had left,
+and while we were there the body was washed up near Sorrento. At first
+but little notice was taken of it, but by the marks on the dead man's
+linen it was discovered that he was Polovstoff, one of the highest
+Russian officials who had, it was said, been warned on several occasions
+by the Nihilists. It was, therefore, concluded that his death had been
+due to Nihilist vengeance."
+
+Elma pointed to the paper, and made a sign that I was to read on. This I
+did, and the statement ran as follows:
+
+"The real reason why the Baron spared my life was because, if I died, my
+fortune would pass to a distant cousin living at Durham. Yet his manner
+towards me was now most polite and pleasant--a change that I felt boded
+no good. He intended to obtain my money by marrying me to his son
+Michael, whose evil reputation as a gambler was well known in
+Petersburg. We traveled back to Finland in the autumn, and in the winter
+he took me to stay with his sister in Nice. Yet almost daily he referred
+to that tragedy at Naples, and threatened me with death if ever I
+uttered a single word, or even admitted that I had ever seen the man who
+was his rival and his victim."
+
+"Last June," commenced another paragraph, "we were in Helsingfors, when
+one day the Baron called me suddenly and told me to prepare for a
+journey. We were to cross to Stockholm and thence to Hull, where the
+_Iris_ was awaiting us, for Mr. Leithcourt and Muriel had invited us for
+a summer cruise to the Greek Islands. We boarded the yacht much against
+my will, yet I was powerless, and dare not allege the facts that I had
+already established concerning our fellow-guests. Muriel and I, it
+seems, were taken merely in order to blind the shore-guards and Customs
+officials as to the real nature of the vessel, which when safely out of
+the Channel, was repainted and renamed the _Lola_, until her exterior
+presented quite a different appearance from the _Iris_.
+
+"The port of Leghorn was our first place of call, and for some reason we
+ran purposely upon a sandbank and were towed off by Italian
+torpedo-boats. Next evening you came on board and dined, Muriel and
+myself having strict orders not to show ourselves. We, however, watched
+you, and I saw you pick up my photograph which I had that day torn up.
+Then immediately after you had left, Woodroffe, Chater and Mackintosh
+went ashore and were away a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
+Just before they returned the Baron rapped at the door of my cabin
+saying that he must go ashore, and telling me to dress and accompany
+him. He would never allow me the luxury of a maid, fearing, I suppose,
+that she might learn too much. In obedience I rose and dressed, and when
+I went forth he told me to get my traveling-cloak and dressing-bag,
+adding that he was compelled to go north, as to continue the cruise
+would occupy too much time. He was due back at his official duties, he
+said. As soon as I had finished packing, the three men returned to the
+vessel, all of them looking dark-faced and disappointed. Woodroffe
+whispered some words to the Baron, after which I went to Muriel's cabin
+and wished her good-bye, and we went ashore, taking the train first to
+Colle Salvetti, thence to Pisa, and afterwards to the beautiful old city
+of Siena, which I had so longed to see. One of my teeth gave me pain,
+and the Baron, after a couple of days at the Hotel de Sienne, took me to
+a queer-looking little old Italian--a dentist who, he said, enjoyed an
+excellent reputation. I was quick to notice that the two men had met
+before, and as I sat in the chair and gas was given to me I saw them
+exchange meaning glances. In a few moments I became insensible, but when
+I awoke an hour later I was astounded to feel a curious soreness in my
+ears. My tongue, too, seemed paralyzed, and in a few moments the awful
+truth dawned upon me. I had been rendered deaf and dumb!
+
+"The Baron pretended to be greatly concerned about me," it went on, "but
+I quickly realized that I had been the victim of a foul and dastardly
+plot, and that he had conceived it, fearing lest I might speak the truth
+concerning the Privy-Councillor Polovstoff, for of exposure he lived in
+constant fear. To encompass my end would be against his own interests,
+as he would lose my fortune, so he had silenced me lest I should reveal
+the terrible truth concerning both him and his associates. He was not
+rich, and I have reason to believe that from time to time he gave
+information as to persons who possessed valuable jewels, and thus shared
+in the plunder obtained by those on the yacht.
+
+"From Italy we traveled on to Berlin, thence to Petersburg, and back to
+dreary Helsingfors, journeying as quickly as we could, yet never
+allowing me opportunity of being with strangers. Both my ears and tongue
+were very painful, but I said nothing. He was surely a fiend in a black
+coat, and my only thought now was how to escape him. From the moment
+when that so-called dentist had ruined my hearing and deprived me of
+power of speech, he kept me aloof from everyone. The fear that I should
+reveal everything had apparently grown to haunt him, and he had
+conceived that terrible mode of silencing my lips. But the true depth of
+his villainy was not yet apparent until I was back in Finland.
+
+"On the night of our arrival he called in his son, who had traveled with
+us from Petersburg, and in writing again demanded that I should marry
+him. I wrote my reply--a firm refusal. He struck the table angrily with
+his fist and wrote saying that I should either marry his son or die.
+Then next day, while walking alone out beyond the town of Helsingfors,
+as I often used to do, I was arrested upon the false charge of an
+attempt upon the life of Madame Vakuroff and transported, without trial,
+to the terrible fortress of Kajana, some of the horrors of which you
+have yourself experienced. The charge against me was necessary before I
+could be incarcerated there, but once within, it was the scheme of the
+Governor-General to obtain my consent to the marriage by threats and by
+the constant terrors of the place. He even went so far as to obtain a
+ministerial order for my banishment to Saghalien and brought it to me to
+Kajana, declaring that if in one month I did not consent he should allow
+me to be sent to exile. While I was in Kajana he knew that his secret
+was safe, therefore by every means in his power he urged me to consent
+to the odious union.
+
+"All the rest is known to you--how Providence directed you to me as my
+deliverer, and how Woodroffe followed you in secret, and pretending to
+be my friend took me with him to Petersburg. He had learnt of my fortune
+from the Baron, and intended to marry me himself. But now that all is
+over it appears to me like some terrible dream. I never believed that so
+much iniquity existed in the world, or that men could fight a
+defenseless woman with such double-dealing and cruel ingenuity. Ah! the
+tortures I endured in Kajana are beyond human conception. Yet surely
+Oberg and Woodroffe will obtain their well-merited deserts--if not in
+this world, then in the world to come. Are we not taught by Holy Writ to
+forgive our enemies? Therefore, let us forgive."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There my silent love's strange story ended. A bald, straightforward
+narrative that held us all for some moments absolutely speechless--one
+of the strangest and most startling stories ever revealed.
+
+She watched every expression of my countenance, and then, when I had
+finished reading and placed my arm tenderly about her slim waist, she
+raised her beautiful face to mine to receive the passionate kiss I
+imprinted upon those soft, full lips.
+
+"This, of course, makes everything plain," exclaimed Jack. "Polovstoff
+was a very liberal-minded and upright official who was greatly in the
+favor of the Czar, and a serious rival to Oberg, whose drastic and
+merciless methods in Finland were not exactly approved by the Emperor.
+The Baron was well aware of this, and by ingeniously enticing him on
+board the _Iris_ he succeeded by handing that small bomb concealed in a
+cigar--a Nihilist contrivance that had probably been seized by his
+police in Finland--in freeing himself from the rival who was destined to
+occupy his post."
+
+"Yes," I said with a sigh. "The mystery is cleared up, it is true, yet
+my poor Elma is still the victim." And I kissed my love passionately
+again and again upon the lips.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Nearly two years have now gone by.
+
+There have been changes in holy Russia--many great and amazing changes
+consequent upon war and its disasters. Russia is no longer the great
+power that she once was supposed to be. Many events that have startled
+the world have occurred since that day when I first enfolded my silent
+love within my arms. One of them is known to you all.
+
+You read in the newspapers, without a doubt, how the Baron Xavier Oberg,
+the persecutor of Finland, the enemy of education, the relentless foe of
+the defenseless, the man who ordered women to be knouted to death in
+Kajana, the heartless official whom the Finns called "The Strangler,"
+was blown to pieces by a bomb thrown beneath his carriage as he drove to
+the railway station at Helsingfors on his way to have audience with the
+Emperor.
+
+The secret truth was that the "Red Priest" decreed that Oberg should
+die, and the plot was swiftly put into execution, and although five
+hundred arrests were made the police are unaware to this day of the
+identity of the person who directed it, or of who threw the fatal
+missile. From pillar to post the revolutionists have been hunted by the
+bloodhounds of police, yet the "Red Priest" still lives on quietly in
+Petersburg, and the Princess Zurloff, still unsuspected, devotes the
+greater part of her enormous income to the cause of freedom.
+
+Of Jack and Muriel I need only say they were married about three months
+after Elma's return from Russia, and at the present time they are
+living on the outskirts of Glasgow, where Jack has secured the shore
+appointment which he so long coveted.
+
+By some means--exactly how is not quite certain--the police discovered
+that Dick Archer, alias Woodroffe, alias Hornby, was concerned in the
+clever robbery of a dressing-bag, containing the Dowager Lady
+Lancashire's jewels, from her footman on Euston platform, and after a
+long search they found him hiding at an hotel in Liverpool. When,
+however, they went to arrest him, he laughed in the faces of the
+detectives, placed something swiftly in his mouth and swallowed it
+before they could prevent him--then ten minutes later he fell dead. He
+knew what terrible revelations must be made if we gave evidence against
+him, and he therefore preferred death by his own hand to that following
+a judicial sentence.
+
+Chater, although one of the most expert jewel thieves in Europe, had
+never been actually guilty of any graver offense, and when we heard that
+he was in San Francisco, where he had opened a small bar and was trying
+to live honestly, we resolved to allow him to remain there. Indeed, Jack
+wrote to him about nine months ago warning him never to set foot on
+English soil again on pain of arrest.
+
+Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road,
+Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well.
+
+And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell
+you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic--that is all I
+can say.
+
+My proposal of marriage was made to Elma a very few days after she wrote
+down her startling and romantic story, and a year ago at a little
+village church in Hertfordshire we became man and wife, there being
+present at our wedding Madame Heath, my bride's mother, to whom, by my
+exertions in official quarters in Petersburg, the Czar's clemency was
+extended, and she was released from that far-off Arctic prison to which
+she had been sent with such cruel injustice.
+
+Two of the greatest London specialists have continually treated my dear
+wife, and under them she has already recovered her speech--so far,
+indeed, that she can now whisper in a low, soft voice. But they tell me
+they are hopeful that ere long her voice will become stronger, and
+speech practically restored. Already, too, she can begin to hear.
+
+After all the storms and perils of the past, our lives are now indeed
+full of a calm, sweet peace. In our own comfortable little house, with
+its trellised porch covered with roses and honeysuckle, that faces the
+blue Channel at St. Margaret's Bay, beyond Dover, we lead a life of
+mutual trust and boundless love. We are supremely content--the happiest
+pair in all the world, we think.
+
+Often as we sit together at evening, gazing out upon the great ships
+passing darkly away into the mysterious afterglow, our hands clasp
+mutually in a silence more eloquent than words, and as we gaze into each
+other's eyes there occurs to us the Divine injunction: "WHOM GOD HATH
+JOINED, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+    "text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of THE CZAR'S SPY, by WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+    <!--
+    * {  font-family: Times;}
+    Body { font-size: 14pt;
+           margin-left: 10%;
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+    H1 { text-align: center;
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Czar's Spy, by William Le Queux
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Czar's Spy
+       The Mystery of a Silent Love
+
+Author: William Le Queux
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10102]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CZAR'S SPY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Susan Woodring and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table border="2" cellpadding="15" cellspacing="5" align="center" width="380">
+<tr>
+
+	<td>
+	<h3 class="tbl">THE</h3>
+	<h1>CZAR'S SPY</h1>
+	<h2 class="tbl"><i>The Mystery of a Silent Love</i></h2>
+	</td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+	<td>
+	<center><i>By</i></center>
+	<h5 class="tbl">CHEVALIER</h5>
+	<h2 class="tbl">WILLIAM LE QUEUX</h2>
+	<center><i>Author of &quot;The Closed Book,&quot; Etc.</i></center>
+	</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>CHAPTER</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">I.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">II.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">III.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">THE HOUSE &quot;OVER THE WATER&quot;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">IV.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">V.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">VI.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">VII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CONTAINS A SURPRISE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">VIII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">IX.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">X.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">I SHOW MY HAND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XI.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">&quot;THE STRANGLER&quot;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XIII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XIV.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XV.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">JUST OFF THE STRAND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XVI.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">MARKED MEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XVII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">THE TRUTH ABOUT THE &quot;LOLA&quot;</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tblc">XVIII.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td><a href="#CONCLUSION">CONCLUSION</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE</h3><br>
+
+
+<p>&quot;There was a mysterious affair last night, signore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;Anything that interests us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, signore,&quot; replied the tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking
+with a strong accent. &quot;An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria
+about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought
+the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which
+managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the
+Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make
+away with the vessel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To lose her, you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The faithful Francesco, whose English had mostly been acquired from
+sea-faring men, and was not the choicest vocabulary, nodded, and, true
+Tuscan that he was, placed his finger upon his closed lips, indicative
+of silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sounds curious,&quot; I remarked. &quot;Since the Consul went away on leave
+things seem to have been humming&mdash;two stabbing affrays, eight drunken
+seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being
+cast away&mdash;a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people
+complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They
+should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and they'd soon alter their
+opinion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they would, signore,&quot; responded the thin-faced old fellow with a
+grin, as he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Francesco Carducci was a
+well-known character in Leghorn; interpreter to the Consulate, and
+keeper of a sailor's home, an honest, good-hearted, easy-going fellow,
+who for twenty years had occupied the same position under half a dozen
+different Consuls. At that moment, however, there came from the outer
+office a long-drawn moan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa, what's that?&quot; I enquired, startled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only a mad stoker off the <i>Oleander</i>, signore. The captain has brought
+him for you to see. They want to send him back to his friends at
+Newcastle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! a case of madness!&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;Better get Doctor Ridolfi to see
+him. I'm not an expert on mental diseases.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My old friend Frank Hutcheson, His Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at
+the port of Leghorn, was away on leave in England, his duties being
+relegated to young Bertram Cavendish, the pro-Consul. The latter,
+however, had gone down with a bad touch of malaria which he had picked
+up in the deadly Maremma, and I, as the only other Englishman in
+Leghorn, had been asked by the Consul-General in Florence to act as
+pro-Consul until Hutcheson's return.</p>
+
+<p>It was in mid-July, and the weather was blazing in the glaring
+sun-blanched Mediterranean town. If you know Leghorn, you probably know
+the Consulate with its black and yellow escutcheon outside, a large,
+handsome suite of huge, airy offices facing the cathedral, and
+overlooking the principal piazza, which is as big as Trafalgar Square,
+and much more picturesque. The legend painted upon the door, &quot;Office
+hours, 10 to 3,&quot; and the green persiennes closed against the scorching
+sun give one the idea of an easy appointment, but such is certainly not
+the case, for a Consul's life at a port of discharge must necessarily
+be a very active one, and his duties never-ending.</p>
+
+<p>Carducci had left me to the correspondence for half an hour or so, and I
+confess I was in no mood to write replies in that stifling heat,
+therefore I sat at the Consul's big table, smoking a cigarette and
+stretched lazily in my friend's chair, resolving to escape to the cool
+of England as soon as he returned in the following week. Italy is all
+very well for nine months in the year, but Leghorn is no place for the
+Englishman in mid-July. My thoughts were wandering toward the English
+lakes, and a bit of grouse-shooting with my uncle up in Scotland, when
+the faithful Francesco re-entered, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've sent the captain and his madman away till this afternoon, signore.
+But there is an English signore waiting to see you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know him. He will give no name, but wants to see the Signor
+Console.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, show him in,&quot; I said lazily, and a few moments later a tall,
+smartly-dressed, middle-aged Englishman, in a navy serge yachting suit,
+entered, and bowing, enquired whether I was the British Consul.</p>
+
+<p>When he had seated himself I explained my position, whereupon he said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I couldn't make much out of your clerk. He speaks so brokenly, and I
+don't know a word of Italian. But perhaps I ought to first introduce
+myself. My name is Philip Hornby,&quot; and he handed me a card bearing the
+name with the addresses &quot;Woodcroft Park, Somerset ------ Brook's.&quot; Then he
+added: &quot;I am cruising on board my yacht, the <i>Lola</i>, and last night we
+unfortunately went aground on the Meloria. I have a new captain whom I
+engaged a few months ago, and he seems an arrant fool. Very fortunately
+for us a fishing-boat saw our plight and gave the alarm at port. The
+Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats and a tug, and after about three
+hours they managed to get us off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are now in harbor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. But the reason I've called is to ask you to do me a favor and
+write me a letter of thanks in Italian to the Admiral, and one to the
+Captain of the Port&mdash;polite letters that I can copy and send to them.
+You know the kind of thing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; I replied, the more interested in him on account of the
+curious suspicion that the port authorities seemed to entertain. He was
+evidently a gentleman, and after I had been with him ten minutes I
+scouted the idea that he had endeavored to cast away the <i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I took down a couple of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two
+letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when
+addressing Italian officialdom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fortunately, I left my wife in England, or she would have been terribly
+frightened,&quot; he remarked presently. &quot;There was a nasty wind blowing all
+night, and the fool of a captain seemed to add to our peril by every
+order he gave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are alone, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a friend with me,&quot; was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how many of the crew are there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sixteen, all told.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;English, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not all. I find French and Italians are more sober than English, and
+better behaved in port.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I examined him critically as he sat facing me, and the mere fact of his
+desire to send thanks to the authorities convinced me that he was a
+well-bred gentleman. He was about forty-five, with a merry round,
+good-natured face, red with the southern sun, blue eyes, and a short
+fair beard. His countenance was essentially that of a man devoted to
+open-air sport, for it was slightly furrowed and weather-beaten as a
+true yachtsman's should be. His speech was refined and cultivated, and
+as we chatted he gave me the impression that as an enthusiastic lover of
+the sea, he had cruised the Mediterranean many times from Gibraltar up
+to Smyrna. He had, however, never before put into Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>After we had arranged that his captain should come to me in the
+afternoon and make a formal report of the accident, we went out together
+across the white sunny piazza to Nasi's, the well-known pastry-cook's,
+where it is the habit of the Livornese to take their ante-luncheon
+vermouth.</p>
+
+<p>The more I saw of Hornby, the more I liked him. He was chatty and witty,
+and treated his accident as a huge joke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall be here quite a week, I suppose,&quot; he said as we were taking
+our vermouth. &quot;We're on our way down to the Greek Islands, as my friend
+Chater wants to see them. The engineer says there's something strained
+that we must get mended. But, by the way,&quot; he added, &quot;why don't you dine
+with us on board to-night? Do. We can give you a few English things that
+may be a change to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This invitation I gladly accepted for two reasons. One was because the
+suspicions of the Captain of the Port had aroused my curiosity, and the
+other was because I had, honestly speaking, taken a great fancy to
+Hornby.</p>
+
+<p>The captain of the <i>Lola</i>, a short, thickset Scotsman from Dundee, with
+a barely healed cicatrice across his left cheek, called at the Consulate
+at two o'clock and made his report, which appeared to me to be a very
+lame one. He struck me as being unworthy his certificate, for he was
+evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The
+owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly
+he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact,
+run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was
+running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he
+was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a very
+perilous position.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very fortunate it wasn't more serious, sir,&quot; he added, after telling me
+his story, which I wrote at his dictation for the ultimate benefit of
+the Board of Trade.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't you send up signals of distress?&quot; I Inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir&mdash;never thought of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you knew that you might be lost?&quot; I remarked with recurring
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>The canny Scot, whose name was Mackintosh, hesitated a few moments, then
+answered&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, you see the fishing-boat had sighted us, and we saw her
+turning back to port to fetch help.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His excuse was a neat one. Probably it was his neglect to make signals
+of distress that had aroused the suspicions of the Captain of the Port.
+From first to last the story of the master of the <i>Lola</i> was, I
+considered, a very unsatisfactory one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long have you been in Mr. Hornby's service?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Six months, sir,&quot; was the man's reply. &quot;Before he engaged me, I was
+with the Wilsons, of Hull, running up the Baltic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As master?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've held my master's certificate these fifteen years, sir. I was with
+the Bibbys before the Wilsons, and before that with the General Steam.
+I did eight years in the Mediterranean with them, when I was chief
+mate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you've never been into Leghorn before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I dismissed the captain with a distinct impression that he had not told
+me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal
+appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I
+wished he would bring them to me on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible that an attempt had actually been made to cast away the
+yacht, and that it had been frustrated by the master of the felucca, who
+had sighted the vessel aground? There certainly seemed some mystery
+surrounding the circumstances, and my interest in the yacht and its
+owner deepened each hour. How, I wondered, had the captain received that
+very ugly wound across the cheek? I was half-inclined to inquire of him,
+but on reflection decided that it was best to betray no undue curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory,
+bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands
+of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant
+horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within
+the inner harbor, I found the <i>Lola</i>, one of the most magnificent
+private vessels I had ever seen. Her dimensions surprised me. She was
+painted dead white, with shining brass everywhere. At the stern hung
+limply the British flag, while at the masthead the ensign of the Royal
+Yacht Squadron. The yellow funnel emitted no smoke, and as she lay
+calmly in the sunset a crowd of dock-loungers and crimps leaned upon the
+parapet discussing her merits and wondering who could be the rich
+Englishman who could afford to travel in a small liner of his own&mdash;for
+her size surprised even those Italian dock-hands, used as they were to
+seeing every kind of craft enter the busy port.</p>
+
+<p>On stepping on deck Hornby, who like myself wore a clean suit of white
+linen as the most sensible dinner-garb in a hot climate, came forward to
+greet me, and took me along to the stern where, lying in a long wicker
+deck-chair beneath the awning, was a tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven man
+of about forty, also dressed in cool white linen. His keen face gave one
+the impression that he was a barrister.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My friend, Hylton Chater&mdash;Mr. Gordon Gregg,&quot; he said, introducing us,
+and then when, as we shook hands, the clean-shaven man exclaimed,
+smiling pleasantly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gregg. You are not a stranger by
+any means to Hornby or myself. Indeed, we've got a couple of your books
+on board. But I had no idea you lived out here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Ardenza,&quot; I said. &quot;Three miles along the sea-shore. To-morrow I hope
+you'll both come and dine with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Delighted, I'm sure,&quot; declared Hornby. &quot;To eat ashore is quite a treat
+when one has been boxed up on board for some time. So we'll accept,
+won't we, Hylton?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; replied the other; and then we began chatting about the
+peril of the previous night, Hornby telling me how he had copied the two
+letters of thanks in Italian and sent them to their respective
+addresses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Phil blasphemed like a Levant skipper when he copied those Italian
+words!&quot; laughed Chater. &quot;He had made three copies of each letter before
+he could get all the lingo in accordance with your copy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been the whole afternoon at them&mdash;confound them!&quot; declared the
+owner of the <i>Lola</i> with a laugh. &quot;But, of course, I didn't want to make
+a lot of errors in spelling. These Italians are so very punctilious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you certainly did the right thing to thank the Admiral,&quot; I said.
+&quot;It's very unusual for him to send out torpedo-boats to help a vessel in
+distress. That is generally left to the harbor tug.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I feel that it was most kind of him. That's why I took all the
+trouble to write. I don't understand a word of Italian, neither does
+Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have Italians on board?&quot; I remarked. &quot;The two sailors who rowed
+me out are Genoese, from their accent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hornby and Chater exchanged glances&mdash;glances of distinct uneasiness, I
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Then the owner of the <i>Lola</i> said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, they are useful for making arrangements and buying things in
+Italian ports. We have a Spaniard, a Greek, and a Syrian, all of whom
+act as interpreters in different places.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And make a handsome thing in the way of secret commissions, I suppose?&quot;
+I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. But to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant,&quot;
+declared the man with the fair beard. &quot;In Greece and the Levant they are
+more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want
+squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and discovering mares'
+nests.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you have any trouble here?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They didn't visit us,&quot; he said with a smile, and at the same time he
+rubbed his thumb and finger together, the action of feeling paper money.</p>
+
+<p>This increased my surprise, for I happened to know that the Leghorn
+Customs officers were not at all given to the acceptance of bribes. They
+were too well watched by their superiors. If the yacht had really
+escaped a search, then it was a most unusual thing. Besides, what motive
+could Hornby have in eluding the Customs visit? They would, of course,
+seal up his wines and liquors, but even if they did, they would leave
+him out sufficient for the consumption of himself and his friends.</p>
+
+<p>No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to
+avoid the visit of the <i>dogana</i>. If he really had paid, he must have
+paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly
+appointed craft?</p>
+
+<p>Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted
+saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone
+with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some
+artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles
+peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale
+blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely
+wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.</p>
+
+<p>Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him,
+chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked
+dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine of a
+brand which only a millionaire could keep in his cellar, while our host,
+apparently a most abstemious man, took only a glass of iced Cinciano
+water.</p>
+
+<p>The two smart stewards served in a manner which showed them to be well
+trained to their duties, and as the evening light filtering through the
+pale blue silk curtains over the open port-holes slowly faded, we
+gossiped on as men will gossip over an unusually good dinner.</p>
+
+<p>From his remarks I discerned that, contrary to my first impression,
+Hylton Chater was an experienced yachtsman. He owned a craft called the
+<i>Alicia</i>, and was a member of the Cork Yacht Club. He lived in London,
+he told me, but gave me no information as to his profession. It might be
+the law, as I had surmised.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've seen our ass of a captain, Mr. Gregg?&quot; he remarked presently.
+&quot;What do you think of him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said rather hesitatingly, &quot;to tell the truth, I don't think
+very much of his seamanship&mdash;nor will the Board of Trade when his report
+reaches them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed Hornby, &quot;I was a fool to engage him. From the very first
+I mistrusted him, only my wife somehow took a fancy to the fellow, and,
+as you know, if you want peace you must always please the women. In this
+case, however, her choice almost cost me the vessel, and perhaps our
+lives into the bargain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You knew nothing of him previously?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he engaged the crew?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are they all fresh hands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All except the cook and the two stewards.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. I did not like Mackintosh. Indeed, I entertained a
+distinct suspicion of both master and crew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The captain seems to have had a nasty cut across the cheek,&quot; I
+remarked, whereupon my two companions again exchanged quick,
+apprehensive glances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He fell down the other day,&quot; explained Chater, with a rather sickly
+smile, I thought. &quot;His face caught the edge of an iron stair in the
+engine-room, and caused a nasty gash.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I smiled within myself, for I knew too well that the ugly wound in the
+captain's face had never been inflicted by falling on the edge of a
+stair. But I remained silent, being content that they should endeavor
+to mislead me.</p>
+
+<p>After dessert had been served we rose, and in the summer twilight, when
+all the ports were opened, Hornby took me over the vessel. Everywhere
+was abundant luxury&mdash;a veritable floating palace. To each of the cabins
+of the owner and his guests a bathroom was attached with sea-water or
+fresh water as desired, while the ladies' saloon, the boudoir, the
+library, and the smoking-room were furnished richly with exquisite
+taste. As he was conducting me from his own cabin to the boudoir we
+passed a door that had been blown open by the wind, and which he
+hastened to close, not, however, before I had time to glance within. To
+my surprise I discovered that it was an armory crammed with rifles,
+revolvers and ammunition.</p>
+
+<p>It had not been intended that I should see that interior, and the reason
+why the Customs officers had been bribed was now apparent.</p>
+
+<p>I passed on without remark, making believe that I had not discerned
+anything unusual, and we entered the boudoir, Chater having gone back to
+the saloon to obtain cigars.</p>
+
+<p>The dainty little chamber was upholstered in carnation-pink silk with
+furniture of inlaid rosewood, and bore everywhere the trace of having
+been arranged by a woman's hand, although no lady passenger was on
+board.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we had entered, and I was admiring the dainty nest of luxury,
+Chater shouted to his host asking for the keys of the cigar cupboard,
+and Hornby, excusing himself, turned back along the gangway to hand them
+to his friend, thus leaving me alone for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>I stood glancing around, and as I did so my eyes fell upon a quantity of
+photographs, framed and unframed, that were scattered about&mdash;evidently
+portraits of Hornby's friends. Upon a small side table, however, stood a
+heavy oxidized silver frame, but empty, while lying on the floor beneath
+a couch was the photograph it had contained, which had apparently been
+taken hastily out, torn first in half and then in half again, and cast
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity prompted me to stoop, pick up the four pieces and place them
+together, when I found them to form the cabinet portrait of a
+sweet-looking and extremely pretty English girl of eighteen or nineteen,
+with a bright, smiling expression, and wearing a fresh morning blouse of
+white piqu&eacute;. Her hair was dressed low and fastened with a bow of black
+ribbon, while the brooch at her throat was in the form of a heart edged
+with pearls. Whether it was her sweet expression, or whether the curious
+look in her eyes had attracted my attention and riveted the face upon my
+memory, I know not. Perhaps it was the mystery of why it should have
+been so hastily torn from its frame and destroyed that held my
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though it had been torn up surreptitiously by someone who
+had been sitting on that couch, and who had had no opportunity of
+casting the fragments away through the port-hole into the water.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the back of the torn photograph, and saw that it had been
+taken by a well-known and fashionable firm in New Bond Street.</p>
+
+<p>About the expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot
+describe&mdash;a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both
+attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were
+indelibly impressed upon my memory.</p>
+
+<p>Next second, however, hearing Hornby's returning footsteps, I flung the
+fragments hastily beneath the couch where I had discovered them.</p>
+
+<p>Why, I wondered, had the picture been destroyed&mdash;and by whom?</p>
+
+<p>The face of the empty frame had been purposely turned towards the
+panelling, therefore when he entered he did not notice that the picture
+had been destroyed; but after a brief pause, explaining that that cosy
+little place was his wife's particular nook, he conducted me on through
+the ladies' saloon and afterwards on deck, where we flung ourselves into
+the long chairs, took our coffee and certosina, that liqueur essentially
+Tuscan, and smoked on as the moon rose and the lights of the harbor
+began to twinkle in the steely night.</p>
+
+<p>As I sat talking, my thoughts ran back to that torn photograph. To me it
+seemed as though some previous visitor that day had sat upon the couch,
+destroyed the picture, and cast it where I had found it. But for what
+reason? Who was the merry-faced girl whose picture had aroused such
+jealousy or revenge?</p>
+
+<p>I purposely led the conversation to Hornby's family, and learned from
+him that he had no children.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll get the repairs to your engines done at Orlando's, I suppose?&quot; I
+remarked, naming the great shipbuilding firm of Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I've already given the order. They are contracted to be finished
+by next Thursday, and then we shall be off to Zante and Chio.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For what reason, I wondered, recollecting that formidable armory on
+board. Already I had seen quite sufficient to convince me that the
+<i>Lola</i>, although outwardly a pleasure yacht, was built of steel, armored
+in its most vulnerable parts, and capable of resisting a very sharp
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>The hours passed, and beneath the brilliant moon we smoked long into the
+night, for after the blazing sunshine of that Tuscan town the cool
+sea-wind at night is very refreshing. From where we sat we commanded a
+view of the whole of the sea-front of Leghorn and Ardenza, with its
+bright open-air caf&eacute;-concerts and restaurants in full swing&mdash;all the
+life and gayety of that popular watering-place.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, when Hornby had risen to call a steward and left me alone
+with Hylton Chater, the latter whispered to me in confidence&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you find my friend Hornby a little bit strange in his manner, Mr.
+Gregg, you must take no notice. To tell the truth, he is a man who has
+become suddenly wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and I fear
+it has had an effect upon his brain. He does very queer things at
+times.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at my companion in surprise. He was either telling the truth,
+or else he was endeavoring to allay my suspicions by an extremely clever
+ruse. Now I had already decided that Philip Hornby was no eccentric, but
+a particularly level-headed and practical man. Therefore I instantly
+arrived at the conclusion that the clean-shaven fellow who looked so
+much like a London barrister had some distinct and ulterior purpose in
+arousing within my mind suspicion of his host's sanity.</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight when, having bade the strange pair adieu, I was put
+ashore by the two sailors who had rowed me out and drove home along the
+sea-front, puzzled and perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, on my arrival at the Consulate, old Francesco, who had
+entered only a moment before, met me with blanched face, gasping&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There have been thieves here in the night, signore! The Signor
+Console's safe has been opened!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The safe!&quot; I cried, dashing into Hutcheson's private room, and finding
+to my dismay the big safe, wherein the seals, ciphers and other
+confidential documents were kept, standing open, and the contents in
+disorder, as though a hasty search had been made among them.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible that the thieves had been after the Admiralty and
+Foreign Office ciphers, copies of which the Chancelleries of certain
+European Powers were ever endeavoring to obtain? I smiled within myself
+when I realized how bitterly disappointed the burglars must have been,
+for a British Consul when he goes on leave to England always takes his
+ciphers with him, and deposits them at the Foreign Office for
+safekeeping. Hutcheson had, of course, taken his, according to the
+regulations.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough, however, the door of the Consulate and the safe had
+been opened with the keys which my friend had left in my charge. Indeed,
+the small bunch still remained in the safe door.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant the recollection flashed across my mind that I had felt
+the keys in my pocket while at dinner on board the <i>Lola</i>. Had I lost
+them on my homeward drive, or had my pocket been picked?</p>
+
+<p>Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations
+upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his
+master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers
+in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend to the caller.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments he returned, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The English yacht left suddenly last night, signore, and the Captain of
+the Port has sent to inquire whether you know to what port she is
+bound.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Left!&quot; I gasped in amazement &quot;Why, I thought her engines were
+disabled!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour later I was sitting in the private office of the
+shrewd, gray-haired functionary who had sent this messenger to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know, Signor Commendatore,&quot; he said, &quot;some mystery surrounds
+that vessel. She is not the <i>Lola</i>, for yesterday we telegraphed to
+Lloyd's, in London, and this morning I received a reply that no such
+yacht appears on their register, and that the name is unknown. The
+police have also telegraphed to your English police inquiring about the
+owner, Signor Hornby, with a like result. There is no such place as
+Woodcroft Park, in Somerset, and no member of Brook's Club of the name
+of Hornby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat staring at the official, too amazed to utter a word. Certainly
+they had not allowed the grass to grow beneath their feet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unfortunately the telegraphic replies from England are only to hand
+this morning,&quot; he went on, &quot;because just before two o'clock this morning
+the harbor police, whom I specially ordered to watch the vessel, saw a
+boat come to the wharf containing a man and woman. The pair were put
+ashore, and walked away into the town, the woman seeming to walk with
+considerable difficulty. The boat returned, and an hour after, to the
+complete surprise of the two detectives, steam was suddenly got up and
+the yacht turned and went straight out to sea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leaving the man and the woman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leaving them, of course. They are probably still in the town. The
+police are now searching for traces of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But could not you have detained the vessel?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, had I but known I could have forbidden her departure. But as
+her owner had presented himself at the Consulate, and was recognized as
+a respectable person, I felt that I could not interfere without some
+tangible information&mdash;and that, alas! has come too late. The vessel is
+a swift one, and has already seven hours start of us. I've asked the
+Admiral to send out a couple of torpedo-boats after her, but,
+unfortunately, this is impossible, as the flotilla is sailing in an hour
+to attend the naval review at Spezia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him how the Consul's safe had been opened during the night, and
+he sat listening with wide-open eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You dined with them last night,&quot; he said at last. &quot;They may have
+surreptitiously stolen your keys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They may,&quot; was my answer. &quot;Probably they did. But with what motive?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Captain of the Port elevated his shoulders, exhibited his palms, and
+declared&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The whole affair from beginning to end is a complete and profound
+mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>That day was an active one in Questura, or police office, of Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>Detectives called, examined the safe, and sagely declared it to be
+burglar-proof, had not the thieves possessed the key. The Foreign Office
+knew that, for they supply all the safes to the Consulates abroad, in
+order that the precious ciphers shall be kept from the prying eyes of
+foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it
+was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much
+relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing
+Street.</p>
+
+<p>His conjecture was the same as my own, namely, that the reason of
+Hornby's call upon me was to ascertain the situation of the Consulate
+and the whereabouts of the safe, which, by the way, stood in a corner of
+the Consul's private room. Captain Mackintosh, too, had taken his
+bearings, and probably while I sat at dinner on board the <i>Lola</i> my keys
+had been stolen and passed on to the scarred Scotsman, who had promptly
+gone ashore and ransacked the place while I had remained with his master
+smoking and unsuspicious.</p>
+
+<p>But what was the motive? Why had they ransacked all those confidential
+papers?</p>
+
+<p>My own idea was that they were not in search of the ciphers at all, but
+either wanted some blank form or other, or else they desired to make use
+of the Consular seal. The latter, however, still remained on the floor
+near the safe, as though it had rolled out and been left unheeded. As
+far as Francesco and I could ascertain, nothing whatever had been taken.
+Therefore, we re-arranged the papers, re-locked the safe and resolved
+not to telegraph to Hutcheson and unduly disturb him, as in a few days
+he would return from England, and there would be time enough then to
+explain the remarkable story.</p>
+
+<p>One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
+station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
+lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which
+left at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They
+were foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as
+though they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed,
+however, that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in
+question. To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the
+Maremma, passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to
+any of the great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious
+pair who had come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had
+merely taken tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle
+Salvetti, the junction with that long main line which connects Genoa
+with Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the <i>Lola</i> and
+first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
+alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
+first man who came aboard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were English!&quot; remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
+sea, grinning knowingly. &quot;And the English, when they drink their cognac,
+know not what they do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?&quot; I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reward!&quot; echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. &quot;Not a soldo!
+The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed that
+they were trying to make away with the vessel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The description of the <i>Lola</i>, its owner, his guest, and the captain
+were circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a
+request that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really
+one of mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across
+to some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
+vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
+that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any of
+the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
+first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
+tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
+evaded their watchers and got clean away.</p>
+
+<p>Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
+the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
+circumstances had prevented this and the <i>Lola</i> had consequently
+escaped.</p>
+
+<p>For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
+and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris on
+to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
+extraordinary story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident,&quot; he responded, holding up
+the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which contained
+his jealously-guarded ciphers. &quot;By Jove!&quot; he laughed, &quot;how disappointed
+they must have been!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It may be so,&quot; I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
+&quot;But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
+that you possess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can my papers concern them?&quot; exclaimed the jovial, round-faced
+Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper trading up and
+down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the most cultured and
+popular men in the British Consular Service. &quot;I don't keep bank notes in
+that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't roll in gold as our
+public at home appears to think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
+them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
+Englishmen abroad, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
+registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
+papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon, depend
+upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it so as
+to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and sail
+merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave you a
+jolly good dinner and got nothing in return.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They might very easily have carried me off too,&quot; I declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had
+the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she sailed,
+and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder who they were?
+Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were alone, and yet there
+was evidently a lady and a gentleman on board. I guessed there was a
+woman there, from the way the boudoir and ladies' saloon were arranged,
+and certainly no man's hand decorated a dinner table as that was
+decorated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. That's decidedly funny,&quot; remarked the Consul thoughtfully. &quot;They
+went to Colle Salvetti, you say? They changed there, of course.
+Expresses call there, one going north and the other south, within a
+quarter of an hour after the train arrives from Leghorn. They showed a
+lot of ingenuity, otherwise they'd have gone direct to Pisa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ingenuity! I should think so! The whole affair was most cleverly
+planned. Hornby would have deceived even you, my dear old chap. He had
+the air of the perfect gentleman, and a glance over the yacht convinced
+me that he was a wealthy man traveling for pleasure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You said something about an armory.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, there were Maxims stowed away in one of the cabins. They aroused
+my suspicions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They would not have aroused mine,&quot; replied my friend. &quot;Yachts carry
+arms for protection in many cases, especially if they are going to
+cruise along uncivilized coasts where they must land for water or
+provisions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told him of the torn photograph, which caused him some deep
+reflection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder why the picture had been torn up. Had there been a row on
+board&mdash;a quarrel or something?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It had been destroyed surreptitiously, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pity you didn't pocket the fragments. We could perhaps have discovered
+from the photographer the identity of the original.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I sighed regretfully. &quot;I never thought of that. I recollect the
+name of the firm, however.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall have to report to London the whole occurrence, as British
+subjects are under suspicion,&quot; Hutcheson said. &quot;We'll see whether
+Scotland Yard knows anything about Hornby or Chater. Most probably they
+do. Not long ago a description of men on board a yacht was circulated
+from London as being a pair of well-known burglars who were cruising
+about in a vessel crammed with booty which they dared not get rid of.
+They are, however, not the same as our friends on the <i>Lola</i>, for both
+men wanted were arrested in New Orleans about eight months ago, without
+their yacht, for they confessed that they had deliberately sunk it on
+one of the islands in the South Pacific.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then these fellows might be another pair of London burglars!&quot; I
+exclaimed eagerly, as the startling theory occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They might be. But, of course, we can't form any opinion until we hear
+what Scotland Yard has to say. I'll write a full report in the morning
+if you will give me minute descriptions of the men, as well as of the
+captain, Mackintosh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I handed over my charge of the Consulate to Frank, and then
+assisted him to go through the papers in the safe which had been
+examined by the thieves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The ruffians seem to have thoroughly overhauled everything,&quot; remarked
+the Consul in dismay when he saw the disordered state of his papers.
+&quot;They seem to have read every one deliberately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which shows that had they been in search for the cipher-books they
+would only have looked for them alone,&quot; I remarked decisively. &quot;What on
+earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports
+and things?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goodness only knows,&quot; replied my friend. Then, calling Cavendish, a
+tall, fair young man, who had now recovered from his touch of fever and
+had returned to the Consulate, he commenced to check the number of those
+adhesive stamps, rather larger than ordinary postage-stamps, used in
+the Consular service for the registration of fees received by the
+Foreign Office. The values were from sixpence to one pound, and they
+were kept in a portfolio.</p>
+
+<p>After a long calculation the Consul suddenly raised his face to me and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then six ten shilling ones have been taken!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why? There must be some motive!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are of no use to anyone except to Consuls,&quot; he explained. &quot;Perhaps
+they were wanted to affix to some false certificate. See,&quot; he added,
+opening the portfolio, &quot;there were six stamps here, and all are gone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they would have to be obliterated by the Consular stamp,&quot; remarked
+Cavendish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! of course,&quot; exclaimed Hutcheson, taking out the brass seal from the
+safe and examining it minutely. &quot;By Jove!&quot; he cried a second later,
+&quot;it's been used! They've stamped some document with it. Look! They've
+used the wrong ink-pad! Can't you see that there's violet upon it, while
+we always use the black pad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I took it in my hand, and there, sure enough, I saw traces of violet ink
+upon it&mdash;the ink of the pad for the date-stamp upon the Consul's table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then some document has been stamped and sealed!&quot; I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. And my signature forged to it, no doubt. They've fabricated some
+certificate or other which, bearing the stamp, seal and signature of the
+Consulate, will be accepted as a legal document. I wonder what it is?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I said. &quot;I wonder!&quot; And the three of us looked at each other in
+sheer bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The reason the papers are all upset is because they were evidently in
+search of some blank form or other, which they hoped to find,&quot; remarked
+my friend. &quot;As you say, the whole affair was most carefully and
+ingeniously planned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the great sunlit piazza together and entered the Questura,
+that sun-blanched old palace with its long cool loggia where the sentry
+paces day and night. The Chief of Police, whom we saw, had no further
+information. The mysterious yacht had not put in at any Italian port.
+From him, however, we learned the name of the detective who had seen the
+two strangers leave Leghorn by the early morning train, and an hour
+afterwards the police-officer, a black-eyed man short of stature, but of
+an intelligent type, sat in the Consulate replying to our questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As far as I could make out, signore,&quot; he said, &quot;the man was an
+Englishman, wearing a soft black felt hat and a suit of dark blue serge.
+He had hair just turning gray, a small dark mustache and rather high
+cheek-bones. In his hand he carried a small bag of tan leather of that
+square English shape. He seemed in no hurry, for he was calmly smoking a
+cigarette as he went across to the ticket office.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And his companion?&quot; asked the Consul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She was in black. Rather tall and slim. Her hair was fair, I noticed,
+but she wore a black veil which concealed her features.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was she young or old?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young&mdash;from her figure,&quot; replied the police agent. &quot;As she passed me
+her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in
+them&mdash;the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next day the town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the
+Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the
+Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the
+night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had
+come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had
+maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic
+battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats,
+despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the
+coast.</p>
+
+<p>In the bright morning sunlight the sight was both picturesque and
+imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the
+great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all
+the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters
+was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the
+overwhelming force which upheld Britain's right in that oft-disputed
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of thousand British sailors were ashore on leave, their white
+caps conspicuous in the streets everywhere as they walked orderly in
+threes and fours to inspect the town. In the square outside the
+Consulate a squad from the flagship were setting up a temporary
+band-stand, where the ship's band was to play when evening fell, while
+Hutcheson, perspiring in his uniform, drove with the Admiral to make the
+calls of courtesy upon the authorities which international etiquette
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Myself, I had taken a boat out to the <i>Bulwark</i>, the great battleship
+flying the Admiral's flag, and was sitting on deck with my old friend
+Captain Jack Durnford, of the Royal Marines. Each year when the fleet
+put into Leghorn we were inseparable, for in long years past, at
+Portsmouth, we had been close friends, and now he was able to pay me
+annual visits at my Italian home.</p>
+
+<p>He was on duty that morning, therefore could not get ashore till after
+luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll dine with you, of course, to-night, old chap,&quot; he said. &quot;And you
+must tell me all the news. We're in here for six days, and I was half a
+mind to run home. Two of our chaps got leave from the Admiral and left
+at three this morning for London&mdash;four days in the train and two in
+town! Gone to see their sweethearts, I suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The British naval officer in the Mediterranean delights to dash across
+Europe for a day at home if he can get leave and funds will allow. It is
+generally reckoned that such a trip costs about two pounds an hour while
+in London. And yet when a man is away from his <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> or wife for
+three whole years, his anxiety to get back, even for a brief day, is
+easily understood. The youngsters, however, go for mere
+caprice&mdash;whenever they can obtain leave. This is not often, for the
+Admiral has very fixed views upon the matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your time's soon up, isn't it?&quot; I remarked, as I lolled back in the
+easy deck-chair, and gazed away at the white port and its background of
+purple Apennines.</p>
+
+<p>The dark, good-looking fellow in his smart summer uniform leaned over
+the bulwark, and said, with a slight sigh, I thought&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. This is my last trip to Leghorn, I think. I go back in November,
+and I really shan't be sorry. Three years is a long time to be away from
+home. You go next week, you say? Lucky devil to be your own master! I
+only wish I were. Year after year on this deck grows confoundedly
+wearisome, I can tell you, my dear fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Durnford was a man who had written much on naval affairs, and was
+accepted as an expert on several branches of the service. The Admiralty
+do not encourage officers to write, but in Durnford's case it was
+recognized that of naval topics he possessed a knowledge that was of
+use, and, therefore, he was allowed to write books and to contribute
+critical articles to the service magazines. He had studied the relative
+strengths of foreign navies, and by keeping his eyes always open he had,
+on many occasions, been able to give valuable information to our naval
+<i>attach&eacute;s</i> at the Embassies. More than once, however, his trenchant
+criticism of the action of the naval lords had brought upon his head
+rebukes from head-quarters; nevertheless, so universally was his talent
+as a naval expert recognized, that to write had never been forbidden him
+as it had been to certain others.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How's Hutcheson?&quot; he asked a moment later, turning and facing me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fit as a fiddle. Just back from his month's leave at home. His wife is
+still up in Scotland, however. She can't stand Leghorn in summer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No wonder. It's a perfect furnace when the weather begins to stoke up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I go as soon as you've sailed. I only stayed because I promised to act
+for Frank,&quot; I said. &quot;And, by Jove! a funny thing occurred while I was in
+charge&mdash;a real first-class mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A mystery&mdash;tell me,&quot; he exclaimed, suddenly interested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, a yacht&mdash;a pirate yacht, I believe it was&mdash;called here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A pirate! What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, she was English. Listen, and I'll tell you the whole affair.
+It'll be something fresh to tell at mess, for I know how you chaps get
+played out of conversation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By Jove, yes! Things slump when we get no mail. But go on&mdash;I'm
+listening,&quot; he added, as an orderly came up, saluted, and handed him a
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;let's cross to the other side. I don't want the sentry
+to overhear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As you like&mdash;but why such mystery?&quot; he asked as we walked together to
+the other side of the spick-and-span quarter-deck of the gigantic
+battleship.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll understand when I tell you the story.&quot; And then, standing
+together beneath the awning, I related to my friend the whole of the
+curious circumstances, just as I have recorded them in the foregoing
+pages.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Confoundedly funny!&quot; he remarked with his dark eyes fixed upon mine. &quot;A
+mystery, by Jove, it is! What name did the yacht bear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>Lola</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; he gasped, suddenly turning pale. &quot;The <i>Lola</i>? Are you quite
+sure it was the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;<i>L-O-L-A</i>?&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Absolutely certain,&quot; I replied. &quot;But why do you ask? Do you happen to
+know anything about the craft?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me!&quot; he stammered, and I could see that he had involuntarily betrayed
+the truth, yet for some reason he wished to conceal his knowledge from
+me. &quot;Me! How should I know anything about such a craft? They were
+thieves on board evidently&mdash;perhaps pirates, as you say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the name <i>Lola</i> is familiar to you, Jack! I'm sure it is, by your
+manner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment, and I could see what a strenuous effort he was
+making to avoid betraying knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's&mdash;well&mdash;&quot; he said hesitatingly, with a rather sickly smile. &quot;It's a
+girl's name&mdash;a girl I once knew. The name brings back to me certain
+memories.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pleasant ones&mdash;I hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Bitter ones&mdash;very bitter ones,&quot; he said in a hard tone, striding
+across the deck and back again, and I saw in his eyes a strange look,
+half of anger, half of deep regret.</p>
+
+<p>Was he telling the truth, I wondered? Some tragic romance or other
+concerning a woman had, I knew, overshadowed his life in the years
+before we had become acquainted. But the real facts he had never
+revealed to me. He had never before referred to the bitterness of the
+past, although I knew full well that his heart was in secret filled by
+some overwhelming sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly he was as merry as the other fellows who officered that huge
+floating fortress; on board he was a typical smart marine, and on shore
+he danced and played tennis and flirted just as vigorously as did the
+others. But a heavy heart beat beneath his uniform.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to where I stood I saw that his face had changed: it
+had become drawn and haggard. He bore the appearance of a man who had
+been struck a blow that had staggered him, crushing out all life and
+hope.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the matter, Jack?&quot; I asked. &quot;Come! Tell me&mdash;what ails you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing, my dear old chap,&quot; he answered hoarsely. &quot;Really nothing&mdash;only
+a touch of the blues just for a moment,&quot; he added, trying hard to smile.
+&quot;It'll pass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I've just told you about that yacht has upset you. You can't deny
+it&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He started. His mouth was, I saw, hard set. He knew something concerning
+that mysterious craft, but would not tell me.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of a bugle came from the further end of the ship, and
+immediately men were scampering along the deck beneath as some order or
+other was being obeyed with that precision that characterizes the &quot;handy
+man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you silent?&quot; I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon my friend the
+officer. &quot;I have told you what I know, and I want to discover the
+motive of the visit of those men, and the reason they opened Hutcheson's
+safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I tell you?&quot; he asked in a strained, unnatural voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe you know something concerning them. Come, tell me the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I admit that I have certain grave suspicions,&quot; he said at last,
+standing astride with his hands behind his back, his sword trailing on
+the white deck. &quot;You say that the yacht was called the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;painted
+gray with a black funnel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, dead white, with a yellow funnel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Of course,&quot; he remarked, as though to himself. &quot;They would repaint
+and alter her appearance. But the dining saloon. Was there a long carved
+oak buffet with a big, heavy cornice with three gilt dolphins in the
+center&mdash;and were there not dolphins in gilt on the backs of the
+chairs&mdash;an armorial device?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I cried. &quot;You are right. I remember them! You've surely been on
+board her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there is a ladies' saloon and a small boudoir in pink beyond, while
+the smoking-room is entirely of marble for the heat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly&mdash;the same yacht, no doubt! But what do you know of her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The captain, who gave his name to you as Mackintosh, is an undersized
+American of a rather low-down type?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I took him for a Scotsman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because he put on a Scotch accent,&quot; he laughed. &quot;He's a man who can
+speak a dozen languages brokenly, and pass for an Italian, a German, a
+Frenchman, as he wishes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the&mdash;the man who gave his name as Philip Hornby?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Durnford's mouth closed with a snap. He drew a long breath, his eyes
+grew fierce, and he bit his lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! I see he is not exactly your friend,&quot; I said meaningly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are right, Gordon&mdash;he is not my friend,&quot; was his slow, meaning
+response.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why not be outspoken and tell me all you know concerning him?
+Frank Hutcheson is anxious to clear up the mystery because they've
+tampered with the Consular seals and things. Besides, it would be put
+down to his credit if he solved the affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, to tell you the truth, I'm mystified myself. I can't yet discern
+their motive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But at any rate you know the men,&quot; I argued. &quot;You can at least tell us
+who they really are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, still disinclined, for some hidden reason, to reveal
+the truth to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You saw no woman on board?&quot; he asked suddenly, looking straight into my
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Hornby told me that he and Chater were alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet an hour after you left a man and a woman came ashore and
+disappeared! Ah! If we only had a description of that woman it would
+reveal much to us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She was young and dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious
+fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor
+veil, so that he could not clearly discern her features.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And her companion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Middle-aged, prematurely gray, with a small dark mustache.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jack Durnford sighed and stroked his chin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Just as I thought,&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;And they were actually here, in
+this port, a week ago! What a bitter irony of fate!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand you,&quot; I said. &quot;You are so mysterious, and yet you
+will tell me nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The police, fools that they are, have allowed them to escape, and they
+will never be caught now. Ah! you don't know them as I do! They are the
+cleverest pair in all Europe. And they have the audacity to call their
+craft the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;the <i>Lola</i>, of all names!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But as you know who and what the fellows are, you ought, I think, in
+common justice to Hutcheson, to tell us something,&quot; I complained. &quot;If
+they are adventurers, they ought to be traced.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What can I do&mdash;a prisoner here on board?&quot; he argued bitterly. &quot;How can
+I act?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave it all to me. I'm free to travel after them, and find out the
+truth if only you will tell me what you know concerning them,&quot; I said
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gordon, let me be frank and open with you, my dear old fellow. I would
+tell you everything&mdash;everything&mdash;if I dared. But I cannot&mdash;you
+understand!&quot; And his final words seemed to choke him.</p>
+
+<p>I stood before him, open-mouthed in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You really mean&mdash;well, that you are in fear of them&mdash;eh?&quot; I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded slowly in the affirmative, adding: &quot;To tell you the truth
+would be to bring upon myself a swift, relentless vengeance that would
+overwhelm and crush me. Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know&mdash;you cannot
+dream&mdash;what brought those desperate men into this port. I can guess&mdash;I
+can guess only too well&mdash;but I can only tell you that if you ever do
+discover the terrible truth&mdash;which I fear is unlikely&mdash;you will solve
+one of the strangest and most remarkable mysteries of modern times.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does the mystery concern?&quot; I asked, in breathless eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It concerns a woman.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HOUSE &quot;OVER THE WATER&quot;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
+is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
+Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
+heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.</p>
+
+<p>One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
+year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
+people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
+continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
+for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
+month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.</p>
+
+<p>London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
+dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
+it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
+seaside.</p>
+
+<p>I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
+north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
+found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
+Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
+just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
+fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
+merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
+rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
+in linen.</p>
+
+<p>I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
+friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
+voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&mdash;why, actually, my padrone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
+neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
+had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
+better himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Olinto!&quot; I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. &quot;You&mdash;in London&mdash;eh?
+Well, and how are you getting on?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most excellently, signore,&quot; he answered in broken English, smiling.
+&quot;But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
+fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are you working?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the Restaurant Milano, in Oxford Street&mdash;only a small place, but we
+gain discreetly, so I must not complain. I live over in Lambeth, and am
+on my way home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I heard you married after you left me. Is that true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, signore. I married Armida, who was in your service when I first
+entered it. You remember her? Ah, well!&quot; he added, sighing. &quot;Poor thing!
+I regret to say she is very ill indeed. She cannot stand your English
+climate. The doctor says she will die if she remains here. Yet what can
+I do? If we go back to Italy we shall only starve.&quot; And I saw that he
+was in deep distress, and that mention of his ailing wife had aroused
+within him bitter thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto Santini walked back at my side in the direction of Trafalgar
+Square, answering the questions I put to him. He had been a good,
+hard-working servant, and I was glad to see him again. When he left me
+he had gone as steward on one of the Anchor Line boats between Naples
+and New York, and that was the last I had heard of him until I found him
+there in London, a waiter at a second-rate restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>When I tried to slip some silver into his hand he refused to take it,
+and with a merry laugh said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder if you would be offended, signore, if I told you of something
+for which I had been longing and longing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the signore smokes our Tuscan cigars. I wonder if by chance you
+have one? We cannot get them in London, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I felt in my pocket, laughing, and discovered that I had a couple of
+those long thin penny cigars which I always smoke in Italy, and which
+are so dear to the Tuscan palate. These I handed him, and he took them
+with delight as the greatest delicacy I could have offered him. Poor
+fellow! As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that
+reminded him of his own beloved country.</p>
+
+<p>When we halted before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some
+further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking
+housemaid whom he had married.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he responded in a voice choked with emotion, dropping
+into Italian. &quot;It is the one great sorrow of my life. I work hard from
+early morning until late at night, but what is the use when I see my
+poor wife gradually fading away before my very eyes? The doctor says
+that she cannot possibly live through the next winter. Ah! how delighted
+the poor girl would be if she could see the padrone once again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I felt sorry for him. Armida had been a good servant, and had served me
+well for nearly three years. Old Rosina, my housekeeper, had often
+regretted that she had been compelled to leave to attend to her aged
+mother. The latter, he told me, had died, and afterwards he had married
+her. There is more romance and tragedy in the lives of the poor Italians
+in London than London ever suspects. We are too apt to regard the
+Italian as a bloodthirsty person given to the unlawful use of the knife,
+whereas, as a whole, the Italian colony in London is a hard-working,
+thrifty, and law-abiding one, very different, indeed, to those colonies
+of aliens from Northern Europe, who are so continually bringing filth,
+disease, and immorality into the East End, and are a useless incubus in
+an already over-populated city.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke so wistfully that his wife might see me once more that, having
+nothing very particular to do that evening, and feeling a deep sympathy
+for the poor fellow in his trouble, I resolved to accompany him to his
+house and see whether I could not, in some slight manner, render him a
+little help.</p>
+
+<p>He thanked me profusely when I consented to go with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signor padrone!&quot; he said gratefully, &quot;she will be so delighted. It
+is so very good of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We hailed a hansom and drove across Westminster Bridge to the address he
+gave&mdash;a gloomy back street off the York Road, one of those narrow, grimy
+thoroughfares into which the sun never shines. Ah, how often do the poor
+Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our
+dismal, sordid streets! Dirt and squalor do not affect them; it is the
+damp and cold and lack of sunshine that so very soon proves fatal.</p>
+
+<p>A low-looking, evil-faced fellow opened the door to us and growled
+acquaintance with Olinto, who, striking a match, ascended the worn,
+carpetless stairs before me, apologizing for passing before me, and
+saying in Italian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We live at the top, signore, because it is cheaper and the air is
+better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite right,&quot; I said. &quot;Quite right. Go on.&quot; And I thought I heard my
+cab driving away.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gloomy, forbidding, unlighted place into which I would
+certainly have hesitated to enter had not my companion been my trusted
+servant. I instinctively disliked the look of the fellow who had opened
+the door. He was one of those hulking loafers of the peculiarly Lambeth
+type. Yet the alien poor, I recollected, cannot choose where they shall
+reside.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to my expectations, the sitting-room we entered on the top
+floor was quite comfortably furnished, clean and respectable, even
+though traces of poverty were apparent. A cheap lamp was burning upon
+the table, but the apartment was unoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto, in surprise, passed into the adjoining room, returning a moment
+later, exclaiming&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armida must have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the
+people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are
+very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a
+chair, signore.&quot; And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted
+it with his handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>I allowed him to go and fetch her, rather surprised that she should be
+well enough to get about after all he had told me concerning her
+illness. Yet consumption does not keep people in bed until its final
+stages.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood there, gazing round the room, I could not well distinguish
+its furthermost corners, for the lamp bore a shade of green paste-board,
+which threw a zone of light upon the table, and left the remainder of
+the room in darkness. When, however, my eyes grew accustomed to the dim
+light, I discerned that the place was dusty and somewhat disordered. The
+sofa was, I saw, a folding iron bedstead with greasy old cushions, while
+the carpet was threadbare and full of holes. When I drew the old rep
+curtains to look out of the window, I found that the shutters were
+closed, which I thought unusual for a room so high up as that was.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto returned in a few moments, saying that his wife had evidently
+gone to do some shopping in the Lower-Marsh, for it is the habit of the
+denizens of that locality to go &quot;marketing&quot; in the evening among the
+costermongers' stalls that line so many of the thoroughfares. Perishable
+commodities, the overplus of the markets and shops, are cheaper at night
+than in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope you are not pressed for time, signore?&quot; he said apologetically.
+&quot;But, of course, the poor girl does not know the surprise awaiting her.
+She will surely not be long.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I'll wait,&quot; I said, and flung myself back into the chair he had
+brought forward for me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have nothing to offer you, signer padrone,&quot; he said, with a laugh. &quot;I
+did not expect a visitor, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, Olinto. I've only just had dinner. But tell me how you have
+fared since you left me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he laughed bitterly. &quot;I had many ups and downs before I found
+myself here in London. The sea did not suit me&mdash;neither did the work.
+They put me in the emigrants' quarters, and consequently I could gain
+nothing. The other stewards were Neapolitans, therefore, because I was a
+Tuscan, they relegated me to the worst post. Ah, signore, you don't know
+what it is to serve those emigrants! I made two trips, then returned and
+married Armida. I called on you, but Tito said you were in London. At
+first I got work at a caf&eacute; in Viareggio, but when the season ended, and
+I was thrown out of employment, I managed to work my way from Genoa to
+London. My first place was scullion in a restaurant in Tottenham Court
+Road, and then I became waiter in the beer-hall at the Monico, and
+managed to save sufficient to send Armida the money to join me here.
+Afterwards I went to the Milano, and I hope to get into one of the big
+hotels very soon&mdash;or perhaps the grill-room at the Carlton. I have a
+friend who is there, and they make lots of money&mdash;four or five pounds
+every week in tips, they say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll see what I can do for you,&quot; I said. &quot;I know several hotel-managers
+who might have a vacancy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he cried, filled with gratification. &quot;If you only would!
+A word from you would secure me a good position. I can work, that you
+know&mdash;and I do work. I will work&mdash;for her sake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have promised you,&quot; I said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how can I sufficiently thank you?&quot; he cried, standing before me,
+while in his eyes I thought I detected a strange wild look, such as I
+had never seen there before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You served me well, Olinto,&quot; I replied, &quot;and when I discover real
+sterling honesty I endeavor to appreciate it. There is, alas! very
+little of it in this world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said in a hoarse voice, his manner suddenly changing. &quot;You
+have to-night shown me, signore, that you are my friend, and I will, in
+return, show you that I am yours.&quot; And suddenly grasping both my hands,
+he pulled me from the chair in which I was sitting, at the same time
+asking in a low intense whisper: &quot;Do you always carry a revolver here in
+England, as you do in Italy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered in surprise at his action and his question. &quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because there is danger here,&quot; he answered in the same low earnest
+tone. &quot;Get your weapon ready. You may want it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand,&quot; I said, feeling my handy Colt in my back pocket to
+make sure it was there.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forget what I have said&mdash;all&mdash;all that I have told you to-night, sir,&quot;
+he said. &quot;I have not explained the whole truth. You are in peril&mdash;in
+deadly peril!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How?&quot; I exclaimed breathlessly, surprised at his extraordinary change
+of manner and his evident apprehension lest something should befall me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait, and you shall see,&quot; he whispered. &quot;But first tell me, signore,
+that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly
+affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the hands of your
+enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My enemies! Who are they?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are unknown, and for the present must remain so. But if you doubt
+your peril, watch&mdash;&quot; and taking the rusty fire-tongs from the grate he
+carefully placed them on end in front of the deep old armchair in which
+I had sat, and then allowed them to fall against the edge of the seat,
+springing quickly back as he did so.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant a bright blue flash shot through the place, and the irons
+fell aside, fused and twisted out of all recognition.</p>
+
+<p>I stood aghast, utterly unable for the moment to sufficiently realize
+how narrowly I had escaped death.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look! See here, behind!&quot; cried the Italian, directing my attention to
+the back legs of the chair, where, on bending with the lamp, I saw, to
+my surprise, that two wires were connected, and ran along the floor and
+out of the window, while concealed beneath the ragged carpet, in front
+of the chair, was a thin plate of steel, whereon my feet had rested.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had so ingeniously enticed me to that gloomy house of death
+had connected up the overhead electric light main with that
+innocent-looking chair, and from some unseen point had been able to
+switch on a current of sufficient voltage to kill fifty men.</p>
+
+<p>I stood stock-still, not daring to move lest I might come into contact
+with some hidden wire, the slightest touch of which must bring instant
+death upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your enemies prepared this terrible trap for you,&quot; declared the man who
+was once my trusted servant. &quot;When I entered into the affair I was not
+aware that it was to be fatal. They gave me no inkling of their
+dastardly intention. But there is no time to admit of explanations now,
+signore,&quot; he added breathlessly, in a low desperate voice. &quot;Say that you
+will not prejudge me,&quot; he pleaded earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not prejudge you until I've heard your explanation,&quot; I said. &quot;I
+certainly owe my life to you to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
+use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me,&quot; I cried in desperation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Dio!</i> Go! Go!&quot; he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. &quot;Fly,
+or we shall both die&mdash;both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
+dashing after you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
+he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
+though I had escaped him.</p>
+
+<p>A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
+fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
+instant later found myself out in the street.</p>
+
+<p>It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
+life&mdash;surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
+wondered, did it mean?</p>
+
+<p>Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
+Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
+policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
+Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
+No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
+Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
+ever heard of the &quot;Milano.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Even Olinto had played me false!</p>
+
+<p>I was filled with chagrin, for I had trusted him as honest, upright, and
+industrious; and was puzzled to know the reason he had deceived me, and
+why he had enticed me to the very brink of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>He had told me that he himself had fallen into the trap laid by my
+enemies, and yet he had steadfastly refused to tell me who they were!
+The whole thing was utterly inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>I drove over to Lambeth and wandered through the maze of mean streets
+off the York Road, yet for the life of me I could not decide into which
+house I had been taken. There were a dozen which seemed to me that they
+might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with
+my life.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow
+gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from
+the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He
+was the envoy of my unknown enemies, who had so ingeniously and so
+relentlessly plotted my destruction.</p>
+
+<p>That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is
+an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the
+pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile. But the unseen
+enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive
+reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets &quot;over the
+water,&quot; as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main
+arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.</p>
+
+<p>My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly
+plot to kill me. With what motive?</p>
+
+<p>I wondered as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto
+Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had
+given my word not to prejudge him until he revealed to me the truth. Yet
+I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.</p>
+
+<p>When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always
+much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and
+every action of a friend covers the ruse of a suspected enemy.</p>
+
+<p>That day I did my business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not
+knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life
+were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go
+innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every
+possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of
+London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the
+old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could be out of town had left for
+the country or the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The only trace I found of the Italian was that he was registered at the
+office of the International Society of Hotel Servants, in Shaftesbury
+Avenue, as being employed at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery, but on inquiry
+there I found he had left more than a year before, and none of his
+fellow-waiters knew his whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>Thus being defeated in every inquiry, and my business at last concluded
+in London, I went up to Dumfries on a duty visit which I paid annually
+to my uncle, Sir George Little. Having known Dumfries since my earliest
+boyhood, and having spent some years of my youth there, I had many
+friends in the vicinity, for Sir George and my aunt were very popular in
+the county and moved in the best set.</p>
+
+<p>Each time I returned from abroad I was always a welcome guest at
+Greenlaw, as their place outside the city of Burns was called, and this
+occasion proved no exception, for the country houses of Dumfries are
+always gay in August in prospect of the shooting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some new people have taken Rannoch Castle. Rather nice they seem,&quot;
+remarked my aunt as we were sitting together at luncheon the day after
+my arrival. &quot;Their name is Leithcourt, and they've asked me to drive you
+over there to tennis this afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not much of a player, you know, aunt. In Italy we don't believe in
+athletics. But if it's out of politeness, of course, I'll go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; she said. &quot;Then I'll order the victoria for three.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are several nice girls there, Gordon,&quot; remarked my uncle
+mischievously. &quot;You have a good time, so don't think you are going to be
+bored.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No fear of that,&quot; was my answer. And at three o'clock Sir George, his
+wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands
+high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of
+the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long
+ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was
+sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if
+somewhat impecunious owner.</p>
+
+<p>We could see its great round towers, standing grim and gray on the
+hillside commanding the whole of the valley, long before we approached
+it, and when we drove into the grounds we found a gay party in summer
+toilettes assembled on the ancient bowling-green, now transformed into a
+modern tennis-lawn.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Leithcourt and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed
+man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I
+joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were
+entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality was on a scale
+quite in keeping with the fine old place they rented.</p>
+
+<p>Tea was served on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired
+of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright,
+dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and
+flannel tennis skirt.</p>
+
+<p>I was apologizing for my terribly bad play, explaining that I had no
+practice out in Italy, whereupon she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know Italy slightly. I was in Florence and Naples with mother last
+season.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then we began to discuss pictures and sculptures and the sights of
+Italy generally. I discerned from her remarks that she had traveled
+widely; indeed, she told me that both her father and mother were never
+happier than when moving from place to place in search of variety and
+distraction. We had entered the huge paneled hall of the Castle, and had
+passed up the quaint old stone staircase to the long banqueting hall
+with its paneled oak ceiling, which in these modern days had been
+transformed into a bright, pleasant drawing-room, from the windows of
+which was presented a marvelous view over the lovely Nithsdale and
+across to the heather-clad hills beyond.</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant lounging there in the cool old room after the hot
+sunshine outside, and as I gazed around the place I noted how much more
+luxurious and tasteful it now was to what it had been in the days when I
+had visited its owner several years before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are awfully glad to be up here,&quot; my pretty companion was saying. &quot;We
+had such a busy season in London.&quot; And then she went on to describe the
+Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I
+had read in my English paper beside the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>She attracted me on account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen
+sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter.
+Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with
+Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there
+were others present, in order that our companions should understand.
+Therefore her gossip interested me, and as the golden sunset flooded the
+handsome old room I sat listening to her, inwardly admiring her innate
+grace and handsome countenance.</p>
+
+<p>I had no idea who or what her father was&mdash;whether a wealthy
+manufacturer, like so many who take expensive shoots and give big
+entertainments in order to edge their way into Society by its back door,
+or whether he was a gentleman of means and of good family. I rather
+guessed the latter, from his gentlemanly bearing and polished manner.
+His appearance, tall and erect, was that of a retired officer, and his
+clean-cut face was one of marked distinction.</p>
+
+<p>I was telling my pretty companion something of my own life, how, because
+I loved Italy so well, I lived in Tuscany in preference to living in
+England, and how each year I came home for a month or two to visit my
+relations and to keep in touch with things.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was once in Leghorn for a few hours. We were yachting in the
+Mediterranean. I love the sea&mdash;and yachting is such awfully good fun, if
+you only get decent weather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The mention of yachting brought back to my mind the visit of the <i>Lola</i>
+and its mysterious sequel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father has a yacht, then?&quot; I remarked, with as little concern as I
+could.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. The <i>Iris</i>. My uncle is cruising on her up the Norwegian Fiords.
+For us it is a change to be here, because we are so often afloat. We
+went across to New York in her last year and had a most delightful
+time&mdash;except for one bad squall which made us all a little bit nervous.
+But Moyes is such an excellent captain that I never fear. The crew are
+all North Sea fishermen&mdash;father will engage nobody else. I don't blame
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you must have made many long voyages, and seen many odd corners of
+the world, Miss Leithcourt?&quot; I remarked, my interest in her increasing,
+for she seemed so extremely intelligent and well-informed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes. We've been to Mexico, and to Panama, besides Morocco, Egypt,
+and the West Coast of Africa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you've actually landed at Leghorn!&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but we didn't stay there more than an hour&mdash;to send a telegram, I
+think it was. Father said there was nothing to see there. He and I went
+ashore, and I must say I was rather disappointed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are quite right. The town itself is ugly and uninteresting. But the
+outskirts&mdash;San Jacopo, Ardenza and Antigniano are all delightful. It was
+unfortunate that you did not see them. Was it long ago when you put in
+there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not very long. I really don't recollect the exact date,&quot; was her reply.
+&quot;We were on our way home from Alexandria.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you ever, in any of the ports you've been, seen a yacht called the
+<i>Lola</i>?&quot; I asked eagerly, for it occurred to me that perhaps she might
+be able to give me information.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>Lola</i>!&quot; she gasped, and instantly her face changed. A flush
+overspread her cheeks, succeeded next moment by a death-like pallor.
+&quot;The <i>Lola</i>!&quot; she repeated in a strange, hoarse voice, at the same time
+endeavoring strenuously not to exhibit any apprehension. &quot;No. I have
+never heard of any such a vessel. Is she a steam-yacht? Who's her
+owner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I regarded her in amazement and suspicion, for I saw that mention of the
+name had aroused within her some serious misgiving. That look in her
+dark eyes as they fixed themselves upon me was one of distinct and
+unspeakable terror.</p>
+
+<p>What could she possibly know concerning the mysterious craft?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know the owner's name,&quot; I said, still affecting not to have
+noticed her alarm and apprehension. &quot;The vessel ran aground at the
+Meloria, a dangerous shoal outside Leghorn, and through the stupidity of
+her captain was very nearly lost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes?&quot; she gasped, in a half-whisper, bending to me eagerly, unable to
+sufficiently conceal the terrible anxiety consuming her. &quot;And you&mdash;did
+you go aboard her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; was the only word I uttered.</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell between us, and as my eyes fixed themselves upon her, I
+saw that from her handsome mobile countenance all the light and life had
+suddenly gone out, and I knew that she was in secret possession of the
+key to that remarkable enigma that so puzzled me.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden the door opened, and a voice cried gayly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I've been looking everywhere for you, Muriel. Why are you hidden
+here? Aren't you coming?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We both turned, and as she did so a low cry of blank dismay
+involuntarily escaped her.</p>
+
+<p>Next instant I sprang to my feet. The reason of her cry was apparent,
+for there, in the full light of the golden sunset streaming through the
+long open windows, stood a broad-shouldered, fair-bearded man in tennis
+flannels and a Panama hat&mdash;the fugitive I knew as Philip Hornby!</p>
+
+<p>I faced him, speechless.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Neither of us spoke. Equally surprised at the unexpected encounter, we
+stood facing each other dumbfounded.</p>
+
+<p>Hornby started quickly as soon as his eyes fell upon me, and his face
+became blanched to the lips, while Muriel Leithcourt, quick to notice
+the sudden change in him, rose and introduced us in as calm a voice as
+she could command.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think you are acquainted,&quot; she said to me with a smile. &quot;This
+is Mr. Martin Woodroffe&mdash;Mr. Gordon Gregg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bowed to him in sudden resolve to remain silent in pretense that I
+doubted whether the man before me was actually my host of the <i>Lola</i>. I
+intended to act as though I was not sufficiently convinced to openly
+express my doubt. Therefore we bowed, exchanging greetings as strangers,
+while, carefully watching, I saw how greatly the minds of both were
+relieved. They shot meaning glances at each other, and then, as though
+reassured that I was mystified and uncertain, the man who called himself
+Woodroffe explained to my companion------</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been over to Newton Stewart with Fred all day, and only got back a
+quarter of an hour ago. Aren't you playing any more to-day?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think not,&quot; was her reply. &quot;We've been out there the whole afternoon,
+and I'm rather tired. But they're still on the lawn. You can surely get
+a game with someone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you don't play, I shan't. I returned to keep the promise I made
+this morning,&quot; he laughed, standing before the big open fireplace,
+holding his tennis racquet behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>I examined his countenance, and was more than ever convinced that he was
+actually the man who gave me the name of Hornby and the false address in
+Somerset. The pair seemed to be on familiar terms, and I wondered
+whether they were engaged. In any case, the man seemed quite at home
+there.</p>
+
+<p>As he chatted with the daughter of the house, he cast a quick, covert
+glance at me, and then darted a meaning look at her&mdash;a look of renewed
+confidence, as though he felt that he had successfully averted any
+suspicions I might have held.</p>
+
+<p>We talked of the prospects of the grouse and the salmon, and from his
+remarks he seemed to be as keen at sport as he had once made out himself
+to be at yachting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My friend Leithcourt is awfully fortunate in getting such a splendid
+old place as this. On every hand I hear glowing accounts of the number
+of birds. The place has been well preserved in the past, and there's
+plenty of good cover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;Gilrae, the owner, is a keen sportsman, and before he
+became so hard up he spent a lot of money on the estate, which, I
+believe, has always been considered one of the very best in the
+southwest. There's salmon, they say, down in the Glen yonder&mdash;but I've
+never tried for any.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly there is. I've seen several. I hope to try one of these days.
+The Glen is deep and shady&mdash;an ideal place for fish. The only
+disappointment here, as far as I can make out, is the very few head of
+black-game.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but every year they are getting rarer and rarer in this part of
+Scotland. A really fine black-cock is quite an event nowadays,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>While we were talking, or rather while I was carefully watching the
+rapid working of his mind, Leithcourt himself entered and joined us. He
+had been playing tennis, and had come in to rest and cool.</p>
+
+<p>Host and guest were evidently on the most intimate terms. Leithcourt
+addressed him as &quot;Martin,&quot; and began to relate a quarrel which his
+head-gamekeeper had had that day with one of the small farmers on the
+estate regarding the killing of some rabbits. And while they were
+talking Muriel suggested that we should stroll down to the tennis-courts
+again, an invitation which, much as I regretted leaving the two men, I
+was bound to accept.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though she wished purposely to take me away from that man's
+presence, fearing that by remaining there longer my suspicions might
+become confirmed. She was acting in conjunction with the man whom I had
+known as Hornby.</p>
+
+<p>There were still a good many people watching the game, for it was
+pleasant in those old-world gardens in the sunset hour. The dried-up
+moat was now transformed into a garden filled with rhododendrons and
+bright azaleas, while the high ancient beech-hedges, the quaint old
+sundial with its motto: &quot;Each time ye shadowe turneth ys one daye nearer
+unto dethe,&quot; and the old stone balustrades gray with lichen, all spoke
+mutely of those glorious days when the fierce horsemen of the Lairds of
+Rannoch were feared across the Border, and when many a prisoner of the
+Black Douglas had pined and died in those narrow stone chambers in the
+grim north tower that still stood high above.</p>
+
+<p>Among the party strolling and lounging there prior to departure were
+quite a number of people I knew, people who had shooting-boxes in the
+vicinity and were my uncle's friends. In Scotland there is always a
+hearty hospitality among the sporting folk, and the laws of caste are
+far less rigorous than they are in England.</p>
+
+<p>I was standing chatting with two ladies who were about to take leave of
+their hostess, when Leithcourt returned, but alone. Hornby had not
+accompanied him. Was it because he feared to again meet me?</p>
+
+<p>In order to ascertain something regarding the man who had so
+mysteriously fled from Leghorn, I managed by the exercise of a little
+diplomacy to sit on the lawn with a young married woman named Tennant,
+wife of a cavalry captain, who was one of the house-party. After a
+little time I succeeded in turning the conversation to her fellow
+guests, and more particularly to the man I knew as Hornby.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Mr. Woodroffe is most amusing,&quot; declared the bright little woman.
+&quot;He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is
+usually the life and soul of our party.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, &quot;I like what little I have seen of him. He's a very good
+fellow, I should say. I've heard that he's engaged to Muriel,&quot; I
+hazarded. &quot;Is that true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. They've been engaged nearly a year, but he's been abroad
+until quite lately. He is rather close about his own affairs, and never
+talks about his travels and adventures, although one day Mr. Leithcourt
+declared that his hairbreadth escapes would make a most exciting book if
+ever written.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leithcourt and he are evidently most intimate friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, quite inseparable!&quot; she laughed. &quot;And the other man who is always
+with them is that short, stout, red-faced old fellow standing over there
+with the lady in pale blue, Sir Ughtred Gardner. Mr. Woodroffe has
+nicknamed him 'Sir Putrid.'&quot; And we both laughed. &quot;Of course, don't say
+I said so,&quot; she whispered. &quot;They don't call him that to his face, but
+it's so easy to make a mistake in his name when he's not within hearing.
+We women don't care for him, so the nickname just fits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she gossiped on, telling me much that I desired to know regarding
+the new tenant of Rannoch and his friends, and more especially of that
+man who had first introduced himself to me in the Consulate at Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with
+the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the
+Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make
+out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man
+who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning
+him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of
+evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril.
+Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The
+mystery grew deeper day by day, and was inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>During the week that followed I sought to learn all I could regarding
+the new people at the castle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They are taken up everywhere,&quot; declared my aunt when I questioned her.
+&quot;Of course, we knew very little of them, except that they had a shoot up
+near Fort William two years ago, and that they have a town house in
+Green Street. They are evidently rather smart folks. Don't you think
+so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Judging from their house-party, yes,&quot; I responded. &quot;They are about as
+gay a crowd as one could find north of Carlisle just at present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly. There are some well-known people among them, too,&quot; said my
+aunt. &quot;I've asked them over to-morrow afternoon, and they've accepted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent!&quot; I exclaimed, for I wanted an opportunity for another chat
+with the dark-eyed girl who was engaged to the man whose alias was
+Hornby. I particularly desired to ascertain the reason of her fear when
+I had mentioned the <i>Lola</i>, and whether she possessed any knowledge of
+Hylton Chater.</p>
+
+<p>The opportunity came to me in due course, for next afternoon the Rannoch
+party drove over in two large brakes, and with other people from the
+neighborhood and a band from Dumfries, my aunt's grounds presented a gay
+and animated scene. There was the usual tennis and croquet, while some
+of the men enjoyed a little putting on the excellent course my uncle, a
+golf enthusiast, had recently laid down.</p>
+
+<p>As I expected, Woodroffe did not accompany the party. Mrs. Leithcourt, a
+slightly fussy little woman, apologized for his absence, explaining that
+he had been recalled to London suddenly a few days before, but was
+returning to Rannoch again at the end of the week.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We couldn't afford to lose him,&quot; she declared to my aunt. &quot;He is so
+awfully humorous&mdash;his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar
+each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned away and strolled with Muriel, pleading an excuse to show her
+my uncle's beautiful grounds, not a whit less picturesque than those of
+the castle, and perhaps rather better kept.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I only heard yesterday of your engagement, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I remarked
+presently when we were alone. &quot;Allow me to offer my best
+congratulations. When you introduced me to Mr. Woodroffe the other day I
+had no idea that he was to be your husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of
+suspicion. Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a
+blank, hard voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant
+things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And when is the happy event to take place?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The date is not exactly fixed&mdash;early next year, I believe,&quot; and I
+thought she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?&quot; I suggested,
+my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed
+remark. But she controlled herself perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I love the sea,&quot; she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. He received a wire, and had to leave immediately. It was an awful
+bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey
+yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he'll be back here again, won't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I really don't know. It seems quite uncertain. I had a letter this
+morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business,
+instead of coming up to us again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could
+not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from
+Scotland because of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the
+yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any
+undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the
+puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking
+ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her
+answers.</p>
+
+<p>As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly
+impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her
+parents. Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and
+terrible secret which she feared might be revealed. There was a distant
+look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in
+some constant and ever-present dread. Of course she told me nothing of
+her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and
+her bearing a curious apathy&mdash;a want of the real enthusiasm of
+affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it
+therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a
+matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the
+mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their
+daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and
+intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's
+happiness more often than the public ever dream. Tragedy is, alas!
+written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the
+fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the
+paragraph beneath. Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own
+free choice in the matter of a husband is, alas! nowadays the exception,
+for parents who want to &quot;get on&quot; up the social scale have found that
+pretty daughters are a marketable commodity, and many a man has been
+placed &quot;on his legs,&quot; both financially and socially, by his son-in-law.
+Hence the marriage of convenience is fast becoming common, while in the
+same ratio the divorce petitions are unfortunately on the increase.</p>
+
+<p>I read tragedy in the dark luminous eyes of Muriel Leithcourt. I knew
+that her young heart was over-burdened by some secret sorrow or guilty
+knowledge that she would reveal to me if she dared. Her own words told
+me that she was perplexed; that she longed to confide and seek advice
+of someone, yet by reason of some hidden and untoward circumstance her
+lips were sealed.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to question her further regarding Woodroffe, of what profession
+he followed and of his past.</p>
+
+<p>But she evidently suspected me, for I had unfortunately mentioned the
+<i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me
+nothing&mdash;absolutely nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended,
+indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the
+Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred
+people and very hospitable.</p>
+
+<p>We exchanged a good many visits and dinners, and while my uncle several
+times invited Leithcourt and his friends to his shoot with <i>al fresco</i>
+luncheon, which the ladies joined, the tenant of Rannoch always invited
+us back in return.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I gained many opportunities of talking with Muriel, and of watching
+her closely. I had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and on
+account of that it seemed that she was in no way averse to my
+companionship. She could handle a rook-rifle as well as any woman, and
+was really a very fair shot. Therefore we often found ourselves alone
+tramping across the wide open moorland, or along those delightful glens
+of the Nithsdale, glorious in the autumn tints of their luxurious
+foliage.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, on the other hand, seemed to view me with considerable
+suspicion, and I could easily discern that I was only asked to Rannoch
+because it was impossible to invite my uncle without including myself.</p>
+
+<p>Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever
+endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him
+alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our
+strange encounter in Leghorn?</p>
+
+<p>His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him
+surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have
+done. He was a man of gloomy mood, and often he would leave his guests
+and take walks alone, musing and brooding. On several occasions I
+followed him in secret, and found to my surprise that although he made
+long detours in various directions, yet he always arrived at the same
+spot at the same hour&mdash;five o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The place where he halted was on the edge of a dark wood on the brow of
+a hill about three miles from Rannoch&mdash;a good place to get woodpigeon,
+as they came to roost. It was fully two miles across the hills from the
+high road to Moniaive, and from the break the gray wall where he was in
+the habit of sitting to rest and smoke, there stretched the beautiful
+panorama of Loch Urr and the heatherclad hills beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Leithcourt never went direct to the place, but always so timed his walks
+that he arrived just at five, and remained there smoking cigarettes
+until half-past, as though awaiting the arrival of some person he
+expected. Once or twice his guests suggested shooting pigeons at
+sundown, but he always had some excuse for opposing the proposal, and
+thus the party, unsuspecting the reason, were kept away from that
+particular lonely spot.</p>
+
+<p>In my youth I had sat many a quiet hour there in the darkening gloom and
+shot many a pigeon, therefore I knew the wood well, and was able to
+watch the tenant of Rannoch from points where he least suspected the
+presence of another.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when I was alone with Muriel, I mentioned her father's capacity
+for walking alone, whereupon she said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, he was always fond of walking. He used to take me with him
+when we first came here, but he always went so far that I refused to go
+any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She never once mentioned Woodroffe. I allowed her plenty of opportunity
+for doing so, chaffing her about her forthcoming marriage in order that
+she might again refer to him. But never did his name pass her lips. I
+understood that he had gone abroad&mdash;that was all.</p>
+
+<p>Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night
+when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown
+enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life
+had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day
+succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery
+surrounded me on every hand.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, by one curious fact alone it was increased a hundredfold.</p>
+
+<p>Late one afternoon, when I had been out shooting all day with the
+Rannoch party, I drove back to the castle in the Perth-cart with three
+other men, and found the ladies assembled in the great hall with tea
+ready. A welcome log-fire was blazing in the huge old grate, for in
+October it is chilly and damp in Scotland and a fire is pleasant at
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel was seated upon the high padded fender&mdash;like those one has at
+clubs&mdash;which always formed a cosy spot for the ladies, especially after
+dinner. When I entered, she rose quickly and handed me my cup,
+exclaiming as she looked at me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mr. Gregg! what a state you are in!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I was after snipe, and slipped into a bog,&quot; I laughed. &quot;But it
+was early this morning, and the mud has dried.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come with me, and I'll get you a brush,&quot; she urged. And I followed her
+through the long corridors and upstairs to a small sitting-room which
+was her own little sanctum, where she worked and read&mdash;a cosy little
+place with two queer old windows in the colossal wall, and a floor of
+polished oak, and great black beams above. When the owner had occupied
+the house that room had been disused, but it had, I found, been now
+completely transformed, and was a most tasteful little nest of luxury
+with its bright chintzes, its Turkey rugs and its cheerful fire on the
+old stone hearth.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed when I expressed admiration of her little den, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe it was the armory in the old days. But it makes quite a comfy
+little boudoir. I can lock myself in and be quite quiet when the party
+are too noisy,&quot; she added merrily.</p>
+
+<p>But as my eyes wandered around they suddenly fell upon an object which
+caused me to start with profound wonder&mdash;a cabinet photograph in a frame
+of crimson leather.</p>
+
+<p>The picture was that of a young girl&mdash;a duplicate of the portrait I had
+found torn across and flung aside on board the <i>Lola</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The merry eyes laughed out at me as I stood staring at it in sheer
+bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a pretty girl!&quot; I exclaimed quickly, concealing my surprise. &quot;Who
+is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My companion was silent a moment, her dark eyes meeting mine with a
+strange look of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she laughed, &quot;everyone admires her. She was a schoolfellow of
+mine&mdash;Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Heath!&quot; I echoed. &quot;Where was she at school with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Chichester.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Long ago?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A little over two years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's very beautiful!&quot; I declared, taking up the photograph and
+discovering that it bore the name of the same well-known photographer in
+New Bond Street as that I had found on the carpet of the <i>Lola</i> in the
+Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. She's really prettier than her photograph. It hardly does her
+justice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where is she now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Gregg?&quot; laughed the handsome girl.
+&quot;Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I answered
+with mock severity. &quot;I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a
+flirt, could she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I will give you your due,&quot; she declared. &quot;You never do flirt. That
+is why I like you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks for your candor, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only,&quot; she added, &quot;you seem smitten with Elma's charms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think she's extremely pretty,&quot; I remarked, with the photograph still
+in my hand. &quot;Do you ever see her now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never,&quot; she replied. &quot;Since the day I left school we have never met.
+She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after
+I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I
+have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a
+doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, retained knowledge of
+the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I
+might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was
+somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.</p>
+
+<p>What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single
+instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the
+picture which had created such a deep impression upon me should be
+preserved in her own little boudoir as a souvenir of a devoted
+school-friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have heard absolutely nothing as to her present position or
+whereabouts&mdash;whether she is married, for instance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she cried mischievously. &quot;You betray yourself by your own words.
+You have fallen in love with her, I really believe, Mr. Gregg. If she
+knew, she'd be most gratified&mdash;or at least, she ought to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At which I smiled, preferring that she should adopt that theory in
+preference to any other.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke frankly, as a pure honest girl would speak. She was not
+jealous, but she nevertheless resented&mdash;as women do resent such
+things&mdash;that I should fall in love with a friend's photograph.</p>
+
+<p>There was a mystery surrounding that torn picture; of that I was
+absolutely certain. The remembrance of that memorable evening when I had
+dined on board the <i>Lola</i> arose vividly before me. Why had the girl's
+portrait been so ruthlessly destroyed and the frame turned with its face
+to the wall? There was some reason&mdash;some distinct and serious motive in
+it. Had Muriel told me the truth, I wondered, or was she merely seeking
+to shield the suspected man who was her lover?</p>
+
+<p>Hour by hour the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more
+inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the
+London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no
+house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of
+Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the
+castle, I found that they were really persons unknown in society. They
+were merely of that class of witty, well-dressed parasites who always
+cling on to the wealthy and make believe that they are smart and of the
+<i>grande monde</i>. Rannoch was an expensive place to keep up, with all that
+big retinue of servants and gamekeepers, and with those nightly dinners
+cooked by a French <i>chef</i>; yet Leithcourt seemed to possess a long
+pocket and smiled upon those parasites, officers of doubtful commission
+and younger sprigs of the pseudo-aristocracy who surrounded him, while
+his wife, keen-eyed and of superb bearing, was punctilious concerning
+all points of etiquette, and at the same time indefatigable that her
+mixed set of guests should enjoy a really good time.</p>
+
+<p>But I was not the only person who could not make them out. My uncle was
+the first to open my eyes regarding the true character of certain of the
+men staying at Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think, Gordon, that one or two of those fellows with Leithcourt are
+rank outsiders,&quot; he said confidentially to me one night after we had had
+a hard day's shooting, and were playing a hundred up at billiards before
+retiring. &quot;One man, who arrived yesterday, I know too well. He was
+struck off the list at Boodle's three years ago for card-sharping&mdash;that
+thin-faced, fair-mustached man named Cadby. I suppose Leithcourt doesn't
+know it, or he wouldn't have him up here among respectable folk.&quot; And my
+uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half
+inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed
+beyond the pale of good society.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better not say anything about it,&quot; I urged. &quot;It's Leithcourt's own
+affair, uncle&mdash;not ours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be
+allowed to ask us to meet such fellows. It's coming it a little too
+thick, Gordon. We men can stand the women of the party, but the
+men&mdash;well, I tell you candidly, I shan't accept his invites to shoot
+again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, uncle,&quot; I protested. &quot;Probably it's owing to ignorance. You'll
+be able, a little later on, to give him valuable tips. He's a good
+fellow, and only wants experience in Scotland to get along all right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. But I don't like it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a
+fair game,&quot; declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. &quot;I'm
+not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my
+house&mdash;and I tell you that plainly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Next day I shot with the Carmichaels of Crossburn, and about four
+o'clock, after a good day, took leave of the party in the Black Glen,
+and started off alone to walk home, a distance of about six miles. It
+was already growing dusk, and would be quite dark, I knew, before I
+reached my uncle's house. My most direct way was to follow the river for
+about two miles and then strike straight across the large dense wood,
+and afterwards over a wide moor full of treacherous bogs and pitfalls
+for the unwary.</p>
+
+<p>My gun over my shoulder, I had walked on for about three-quarters of an
+hour, and had nearly traversed the wood, at that hour so dark that I had
+considerable difficulty in finding my way, when&mdash;of a sudden&mdash;I fancied
+I distinguished voices.</p>
+
+<p>I halted. Yes. Men were talking in low tones of confidence, and in that
+calm stillness of evening they appeared nearer to me than they actually
+were.</p>
+
+<p>I listened, trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out
+nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself,
+for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs
+cracking as they forced their way through them.</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, while standing there not daring to breathe lest I should
+betray my presence, a strange sound fell upon my eager ears.</p>
+
+<p>Next moment I realized that I was at that place where Leithcourt so
+persistently kept his disappointed tryst, having approached it from
+within the wood.</p>
+
+<p>The sound alarmed me, and yet it was neither an explosion of fire-arms
+nor a startling cry for help.</p>
+
+<p>One word reached me in the darkness&mdash;one single word of bitter and
+withering reproach.</p>
+
+<p>Heedless of the risk I ran and the peril to which I exposed myself, I
+dashed forward with a resolve to penetrate the mystery, until I came to
+the gap in the rough stone wall where Leithcourt's habit was to halt
+each day at sundown.</p>
+
+<p>There, in the falling darkness, the sight that met my eyes at the spot
+held me rigid, appalled, stupefied.</p>
+
+<p>In that instant I realized the truth&mdash;a truth that was surely the
+strangest ever revealed to any man.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>As I dashed forward to the gap in the boundary wall of the wood, I
+nearly stumbled over a form lying across the narrow path.</p>
+
+<p>So dark was it beneath the trees that at first I could not plainly make
+out what it was until I bent and my hands touched the garments of a
+woman. Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the
+cloak was a thick woolen one.</p>
+
+<p>Was she dead, I wondered? That cry&mdash;that single word of
+reproach&mdash;sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been
+struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words.</p>
+
+<p>I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
+Yet just at that moment my strained ears caught a sound&mdash;the sound of
+someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
+demanded who was there.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
+ceased.</p>
+
+<p>As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
+about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
+however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
+well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
+feet was a woman. But whom?</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
+matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
+receding&mdash;escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
+of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
+thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
+stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.</p>
+
+<p>I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
+so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
+wall of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
+was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
+runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
+land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
+blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
+in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.</p>
+
+<p>Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
+the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
+the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
+behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
+two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
+it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
+or other of the two glens&mdash;which I could not decide.</p>
+
+<p>I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
+to act.</p>
+
+<p>Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?</p>
+
+<p>That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
+boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
+excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
+and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
+castle where the guests, ready dressed, were assembling prior to
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>I was welcomed warmly, as I was always by the men of the party, who
+seeing my muddy plight at once offered me a glass of the sportsman's
+drink in Scotland, and while I was adding soda to it Leithcourt himself
+joined his guests, ready dressed in his dinner jacket, having just
+descended from his room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa, Gregg!&quot; he exclaimed heartily, holding out his hand. &quot;Had a
+long day of it, evidently. Good sport with Carmichael&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very fair,&quot; I said. &quot;I remained longer with him than I ought to have
+done, and have got belated on my way home, so looked in for a
+refresher.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite right,&quot; he laughed merrily. &quot;You're always welcome, you know. I'd
+have been annoyed if I knew you had passed without coming in.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And Muriel, a pretty figure in a low-cut gown of turquoise chiffon,
+standing behind her father, smiled secretly at me. I smiled at her in
+return, but it was a strange smile, I fear, for with the knowledge of
+that additional mystery within me&mdash;the mystery of the woman lying
+unconscious or perhaps dead, up in the wood&mdash;held me stupefied.</p>
+
+<p>I had suspected Leithcourt because of his constant trysts at that spot,
+but I had at least proved that my suspicions were entirely without
+foundation. He could not have got home and dressed in the time, for I
+had taken the nearest route to the castle while the fugitive would be
+compelled to make a wide detour.</p>
+
+<p>I only remained a few minutes, then went forth into the darkness again,
+utterly undecided how to act. My first impulse was to return to the
+woman's aid, for she might not be dead after all.</p>
+
+<p>And yet when I recollected that hoarse cry that rang out in the
+darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this
+latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You
+will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there
+suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had so
+ingeniously escaped.</p>
+
+<p>If the victim were dead, what aid could I render? A knife had, I
+believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started
+off after the fugitive. The only doubt in my own mind was whether the
+unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my
+disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave
+it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards
+transpired.</p>
+
+<p>I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
+before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
+Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
+always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
+present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
+and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
+would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
+Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
+knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
+chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
+secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
+very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
+visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
+ignorance of what had transpired.</p>
+
+<p>But who was the woman? Was she young or old?</p>
+
+<p>A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
+that I might examine her features.</p>
+
+<p>One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
+lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
+that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
+from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
+truth?</p>
+
+<p>I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
+certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
+might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
+was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's the gun, I suppose,&quot; I remarked. &quot;I've been carrying it all day,
+and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear,&quot; my uncle
+remarked. &quot;Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They did, but he'd got another engagement&mdash;over at Kenmure Castle, I
+think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
+acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
+hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
+myself?</p>
+
+<p>I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
+the distant gloom, the black line of wood loomed up against the stormy
+sky. The stars were no longer shining and the rain clouds had gathered.
+I stood with my face turned to the dark indistinct spot that held the
+secret, lost in wonderment.</p>
+
+<p>At last I closed the window and turned in, but no sleep came to my
+eyes, so full was my mind of the startling events of those past few
+months and of that gruesome discovery I had made.</p>
+
+<p>Had the fugitive actually recognized me? Probably my voice when I had
+called out had betrayed me. Hour after hour I lay puzzling, trying to
+arrive at some solution of that intricate problem which now presented
+itself. Muriel could tell me what I wished to know. Of that I was
+certain. Yet she dared not speak. Some inexpressible terror held her
+dumb&mdash;she was affianced to the man Martin Woodroffe.</p>
+
+<p>Again I rose, lit the gas, and tried to read a novel. But I could not
+concentrate my thoughts, which were ever wandering to that strange
+mystery of the wood. At six I shaved, descended, and went out with the
+dogs for a short walk; but on returning I heard of nothing unusual, and
+was compelled to remain inactive until near mid-day.</p>
+
+<p>I was crossing the stable-yard where I had gone to order the carriage
+for my aunt, when an English groom, suddenly emerging from the
+harness-room, touched his cap, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you 'eard, sir, of the awful affair up yonder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of what?&quot; I asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, sir, there seems to have been a murder last night up in Rannoch
+Wood,&quot; said the man quickly. &quot;Holden, the gardener, has just come back
+from that village and says that Mr. Leithcourt's under-gamekeeper as he
+was going home at five this morning came upon a dead body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dead body!&quot; I exclaimed, feigning great surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir&mdash;a youngish man. He'd been stabbed to the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir&mdash;so Holden says.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Call Holden. I'd like to know all he's heard,&quot; I said. And presently,
+when the gardener emerged from the grape-house, I sought of him all the
+particulars he had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know very much, sir,&quot; was the man's reply. &quot;I went into the inn
+for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking
+about it. A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood. The
+gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but
+from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a
+stranger in this district.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The body was that of a man, then?&quot; I asked, trying to conceal my utter
+bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes&mdash;about thirty, they say. The police have taken him to the mortuary
+at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot,
+they say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman&mdash;that I could swear.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.</p>
+
+<p>When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to
+be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I
+thought, with considerable suspicion. My request was an unusual one.
+Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found
+myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death. From a small dingy window
+above the light fell upon an object lying upon a large slab of gray
+stone and covered with a soiled sheet.</p>
+
+<p>The sight was ghastly and gruesome; the body lay there awaiting the
+official inquiry into the cause of death. The silence of the tomb was
+unbroken, save for the heavy tread of the policeman, who having removed
+his helmet in the presence of the dead, lifted the end of the sheet,
+revealing to me a white, hard-set face, with closed eyes and dropped
+jaw.</p>
+
+<p>I started back as my eyes fell upon the dead countenance. I was entirely
+unprepared for such a revelation. The truth staggered me.</p>
+
+<p>The victim was the man who had acted as my friend&mdash;the Italian waiter,
+Olinto.</p>
+
+<p>I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to
+realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death
+distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in
+identifying him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You recognize him, sir?&quot; remarked the officer. &quot;Who is he? Our people
+are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't
+succeeded in establishing his identity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that
+man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge
+must of necessity reflect upon me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will see your inspector,&quot; I answered with as much calmness as I could
+muster. &quot;Where has the poor fellow been wounded?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Through the heart,&quot; responded the constable, as turning the sheet
+further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the
+victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the weapon,&quot; he added, taking from a shelf close by a long,
+thin poignard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old
+Florentine <i>misericordia</i>, a long thin, triangular blade, a quarter of
+an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a
+hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and
+poignards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles
+produced a wound that caused internal hemorrhage and which never
+healed&mdash;hence the name given to it by the Florentines.</p>
+
+<p>It was still blood-stained, but as I took the deadly thing in my hand I
+saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen
+of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a
+weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate the heart.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the person struck down was a woman, and not a man!</p>
+
+<p>A wound from a <i>misericordia</i> always proves fatal, because the shape of
+the blade cuts the flesh into little flaps which, on withdrawing the
+knife, close up and prevent the blood from issuing forth. At the same
+time, however, no power can make them heal again. A blow from such a
+weapon is as surely fatal as the poisoned poignard of the Borgia or the
+Medici.</p>
+
+<p>I handed the stiletto back to the man without comment. My resolve was to
+say as little as possible, for I had no desire to figure publicly at the
+inquiry, and consequently negative all my own efforts to solve the
+mystery of the Leithcourts and of Martin Woodroffe.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to where the figure was lying so ghastly and motionless, and
+looked again for the last time upon the dead face of the man who had
+served me so well, and yet who had enticed me so nearly to my death. In
+the latter incident there was a deep mystery. He had relented at the
+last moment, just in time to save me from my secret enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be that my enemies were his? Had he fallen a victim by the same
+hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me?</p>
+
+<p>Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in
+order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was
+Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to
+meet someone in secret?</p>
+
+<p>As I glanced down at the cold, inanimate countenance upon which mystery
+was written, I became seized by regret. He had been a faithful and
+honest servant, and even though he had enticed me to that fatal house in
+Lambeth, yet I recollected his words, how he had done so under
+compulsion. I remembered, too, how he had implored me not to prejudge
+him before I became aware of the full facts.</p>
+
+<p>With my own hand I re-covered the face with the sheet, and inwardly
+resolved to avenge the dastardly crime.</p>
+
+<p>I regretted that I was compelled to reveal the dead man's name to the
+police, yet I saw that to make some statement was now inevitable, and
+therefore I accompanied the constable to the inspector's office some
+distance across the town.</p>
+
+<p>Having been introduced to the big, fair-haired man in a rough tweed
+suit, who was apparently directing the inquiries into the affair, he
+took me eagerly into a small back room and began to question me. I was,
+however, wary not to commit myself to anything further than the
+identification of the body.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fact is,&quot; I said confidentially, &quot;you must omit me from the
+witnesses at the inquest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot; asked the detective suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because if it were known that I have identified him, all chance of
+getting at the truth will at once vanish,&quot; I answered. &quot;I have come here
+to tell you in strictest confidence who the poor fellow really is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you know something of the affair?&quot; he said, with a strong Highland
+accent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know nothing,&quot; I declared. &quot;Nothing except his name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;H'm. And you say he's a foreigner&mdash;an Italian&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was in my service in Leghorn for several years, and on leaving me he
+came to London and obtained an engagement as waiter in a restaurant. His
+father lived in Leghorn; he was doorkeeper at the Prefecture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why was he here, in Scotland?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I tell?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know something of the affair. I mean that you suspect somebody, or
+you would have no objection to giving evidence at the inquiry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no suspicions. To me the affair is just as much of an enigma as
+to you,&quot; I hastened at once to explain. &quot;My only fear is that if the
+assassin knew that I had identified him he would take care not to betray
+himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You therefore think he will betray himself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the fact that the man was attacked with an Italian stiletto, it
+would seem that his assailant was a fellow-countryman,&quot; suggested the
+detective.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The evidence certainly points to that,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't happen to be aware of anyone&mdash;any foreigner, I mean&mdash;who was,
+or might be his enemy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I responded in the negative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah,&quot; he went on, &quot;these foreigners are always fighting among themselves
+and using knives. I did ten years' service in Edinburgh and made lots of
+arrests for stabbing affrays. Italians, like Greeks, are a dangerous lot
+when their blood is up.&quot; Then he added: &quot;Personally, it seems to me that
+the murdered man was enticed from London to that spot and coolly done
+away with&mdash;from some motive of revenge, most probably.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most probably,&quot; I said. &quot;A vendetta, perhaps. I live in Italy, and
+therefore know the Italians well,&quot; I added.</p>
+
+<p>I had given him my card, and told him with whom I was staying.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where were you yesterday, sir?&quot; he inquired presently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was shooting&mdash;on the other side of the Nithsdale,&quot; I answered, and
+then went on to explain my movements, without, however, mentioning my
+visit to Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And although you know the murdered man so intimately, you have no
+suspicion of anyone in this district who was acquainted with him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know no one who knew him. When he left my service he had never been
+in England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say he was engaged in service in London?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, at a restaurant in Oxford Street, I believe. I met him
+accidentally in Pall Mall one evening, and he told me so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know the name of the restaurant?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He did tell me, but unfortunately I have forgotten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The detective drew a deep breath of regret.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Someone who waited for him on the edge of that wood stepped out and
+killed him&mdash;that's evident,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without a doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And my belief is that it was an Italian. There were two foreigners who
+slept at a common lodging-house two nights ago and went on tramp towards
+Glasgow. We have telegraphed after them, and hope we shall find them.
+Scotsmen or Englishmen never use a knife of that pattern.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With his latter remark I entirely coincided. In my own mind that was the
+strongest argument in favor of Leithcourt's innocence. That the tenant
+of Rannoch had kept that secret tryst in daily patience I knew from my
+own observations, yet to me it scarcely seemed feasible that he would
+use a weapon so peculiarly Italian and yet so terribly deadly.</p>
+
+<p>And then when I reflected further, recollecting that the body I had
+discovered was that of a woman and not a man, I stood staggered and
+bewildered by the utterly inexplicable enigma.</p>
+
+<p>I promised the burly detective that in exchange for his secrecy
+regarding my statement that I would assist him in every manner possible
+in the solution of the problem.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The real name of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld,&quot; I
+urged. &quot;It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only
+by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his
+name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know that
+I have identified him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said with some hesitation, &quot;while I am believed to be in
+ignorance we shall have opportunity for obtaining the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you do really suspect?&quot; he said, again looking at me with those
+cold, blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know not whom to suspect,&quot; I declared. &quot;It is a mystery why the man
+who was once my faithful servant should be enticed to that wood and
+stabbed to the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no one in the vicinity who knew him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not to my knowledge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We might obtain his address in London through his father in Leghorn,&quot;
+suggested the officer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will write to-day if you so desire,&quot; I said readily. &quot;Indeed, I will
+get my friend the British Consul to go round and see the old man and
+telegraph the address if he obtains it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Capital!&quot; he declared. &quot;If you will do us this favor we shall be
+greatly indebted to you. It is fortunate that we have established the
+victim's identity&mdash;otherwise we might be entirely in the dark. A
+murdered foreigner is always more or less of a mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, then and there, I took a sheet of paper and wrote to my old
+friend Hutcheson at Leghorn, asking him to make immediate inquiry of
+Olinto's father as to his son's address in London.</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing to the police of that strange adventure of mine over in
+Lambeth, or of how the man now dead had saved my life. That his enemies
+were my own he had most distinctly told me, therefore I felt some
+apprehension that I myself was not safe. Yet in my hip pocket I always
+carried my revolver&mdash;just as I did in Italy&mdash;and I rather prided myself
+on my ability to shoot straight.</p>
+
+<p>We sat for a long time discussing the strange affair. In order to betray
+no eagerness to get away, I offered the big Highlander a cigar from my
+case, and we smoked together. The inquiry would be held on the morrow,
+he told me, but as far as the public was concerned the body would remain
+as that of some person &quot;unknown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you had better not come to my uncle's house, or send anyone,&quot; I
+said. &quot;If you desire to see me, send me a line and I will meet you here
+in Dumfries. It will be safer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The officer looked at me with those keen eyes of his, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really, Mr. Gregg, I can't quite make you out, I confess. You seem to
+be apprehensive of your own safety. Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Italians are a very curious people,&quot; I responded quickly. &quot;Their
+vendetta extends widely sometimes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have reason to believe that the enemy of this poor fellow
+Santini may be your enemy also?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One never knows whom one offends when living in Italy,&quot; I laughed, as
+lightly as I could, endeavoring to allay his suspicion. &quot;He may have
+fallen beneath the assassin's knife by giving quite a small and possibly
+innocent offense to somebody. Italian methods are not English, you
+know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By Jove, sir, and I'm jolly glad they're not!&quot; he said. &quot;I shouldn't
+think a police officer's life is a very safe one among all those secret
+murder societies I've read about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! what you read about them is often very much exaggerated,&quot; I assured
+him. &quot;It is the vendetta which is such a stain upon the character of the
+modern Italian; and depend upon it this affair in Rannoch Wood is the
+outcome of some revenge or other&mdash;probably over a love affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you will assist us, sir?&quot; he urged. &quot;You know the Italian language,
+which will be of great advantage; besides, the victim was your servant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be discreet,&quot; I said. &quot;And in return I will do my very utmost to assist
+you in hunting down the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And thus we made our compact. Half-an-hour after I was driving in the
+dog-cart through the pouring rain up the hill out of gray old Dumfries
+to my uncle's house.</p>
+
+<p>As I descended from the cart and gave it over to a groom, old Davis, the
+butler, came forward, saying in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's Miss Leithcourt waiting to see you, Mr. Gordon. She's in the
+morning-room, and been there an hour. She asked me not to tell anyone
+else she's here, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then my aunt has not seen her?&quot; I exclaimed, scenting mystery in this
+unexpected visit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir. She wishes to see you alone, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I walked across the big hall and along the corridor to the room the old
+man had indicated.</p>
+
+<p>And as I opened the door and Muriel Leithcourt in plain black rose to
+meet me, I plainly saw from her white, haggard countenance that
+something had happened&mdash;that she had been forced by circumstances to
+come to me in strictest confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Was she, I wondered, about to reveal to me the truth?</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Gregg,&quot; exclaimed the girl with agitation, as she put forth her
+black-gloved hand, &quot;I&mdash;I suppose you know&mdash;you've heard all about the
+discovery to-day up at the wood? I need not tell you anything about it&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Miss Leithcourt, I only wish you would tell me about it,&quot; I said
+gravely, inviting her to a chair and seating myself. &quot;I've heard some
+extraordinary story about a man being found dead, but I've been in
+Dumfries nearly all day. Who is the man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! that we don't know,&quot; she replied, pale-faced and anxious. Her
+attitude was as though she wished to confide in me and yet still
+hesitated to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've been waiting for me quite a long time, Davis tells me. I regret
+that you should have done this. If you had left word that you wished to
+see me, I would have come over to you at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I wanted to see you alone&mdash;that's the reason I am here. They must
+not know at home that I've been over here, so I purposely asked the man
+not to announce me to your aunt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You want to see me privately,&quot; I said in a low, earnest voice. &quot;Why? Is
+there any service I can render you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. A very great one,&quot; she responded with quick eagerness,
+&quot;I&mdash;well&mdash;the fact is, I have summoned courage to come to you and beg
+of you to help me. I am in great distress&mdash;and I have not a single
+friend whom I can trust&mdash;in whom I can confide.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall esteem it the highest honor if you will trust me,&quot; I said in
+deep earnestness. &quot;I can only assure you that I will remain loyal to
+your interests and to yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! I believe you will, Mr. Gregg!&quot; she declared with enthusiasm, her
+large, dark eyes turned upon me&mdash;the eyes of a woman in sheer and bitter
+despair. Her face was perfect, one of the most handsome I had ever gazed
+upon. The more I saw of her the greater was the fascination she held
+over me.</p>
+
+<p>A silence fell between us as she sat with her gloved hands lying idly in
+her lap. Her lips moved nervously, but no sound came from them, so
+agitated was she, so eager to tell me something; and yet at the same
+time reluctant to take me into her confidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I asked at last in a low voice. &quot;I am quite ready to render you
+any service, if you will only command me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! But I fear what I require will strike you as so unusual&mdash;you will
+hesitate to act when I explain what service I require of you,&quot; she said
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot tell you until I hear your wishes,&quot; I said, smiling, and yet
+puzzled at her attitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It concerns the terrible discovery made up in Rannoch Wood,&quot; she said
+in a hoarse, nervous voice at last. &quot;That unknown man was
+murdered&mdash;stabbed to the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she said, scarcely above a whisper, &quot;I have suspicions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of the murdered man's identity?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Of the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at her sharply and saw the intense look in her dark, wide-open
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You believe you know who dealt the blow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a suspicion&mdash;that is all. Only I want you to help me, if you
+will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most certainly,&quot; I responded. &quot;But if you believe you know the assassin
+you probably know something of the victim?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only that he looked like a foreigner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have seen him?&quot; I exclaimed, much surprised.</p>
+
+<p>My remark caused her to hold her breath for an instant. Then she
+answered, rather lamely, it seemed to me:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw him when the keepers brought the body to the castle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the
+dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore,
+that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end?</p>
+
+<p>I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but,
+nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very
+peculiar fact.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You judge him to be a foreigner?&quot; I remarked as casually as I could.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From his features and complexion I guessed him to be Italian,&quot; she
+responded quickly, at which I pretended to express surprise. &quot;I saw him
+after the keepers had found him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides,&quot; she went on, &quot;the stiletto was evidently an Italian one,
+which would almost make it appear that a foreigner was the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that your own suspicion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment, then in a low, eager voice she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because I have already seen that three-edged knife in another person's
+possession.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's pretty strong evidence,&quot; I declared. &quot;The person in question
+will have to prove that he was not in Rannoch Wood last evening at
+nightfall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you know it was done at nightfall?&quot; she asked quickly with some
+surprise, half-rising from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I merely surmised that it was,&quot; I responded, inwardly blaming myself
+for my ill-timed admission.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she said with a slight sigh, &quot;there is more mystery in this affair
+than we have yet discovered, Mr. Gregg. What, I wonder, brought the
+unfortunate young man up into our wood?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An appointment, without a doubt. But with whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father often goes to that spot to shoot pigeon in the evening. He
+told us so at luncheon to-day. How fortunate he was not there last
+night, or he might be suspected.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;It is a very fortunate circumstance, for it cannot be a
+pleasant experience to be under suspicion of being an assassin. He was
+at home last night, was he?&quot; I added casually.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. Don't you recollect that when you called he chatted with
+you? I did some typewriting for him in the study, and we were together
+all the afternoon&mdash;or at least till nearly five o'clock, when we went
+out into the hall to tea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then what is your theory regarding the affair?&quot; I inquired, rather
+puzzled why she should so decisively prove an alibi for her father.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems certain that the poor fellow went to the wood by appointment,
+and was killed. But have you been up to the spot since the finding of
+the body?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Have you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. The affair interested me, and as soon as I recognized the old
+Italian knife in the hand of the keeper, I went up there and looked
+about. I am glad I did so, for I found something which seems to have
+escaped the notice of the detectives.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what's that?&quot; I asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, about three yards from the pool of blood where the unfortunate
+foreigner was found is another small pool of blood where the grass and
+ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle
+there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have
+staggered some distance before he fell dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall,
+would he not?&quot; she suggested. &quot;No. The police seem very dense, and this
+plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as
+what you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I
+believe that a second person also fell a victim,&quot; she added in a low,
+distinct tone.</p>
+
+<p>I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth?
+Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A second person!&quot; I echoed, as though in surprise. &quot;Then do you believe
+that a double murder was committed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck
+in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which
+separates the one mark from the other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he might have been slightly wounded&mdash;on the hand, or in the
+face&mdash;at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck
+fatally,&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her
+confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some
+unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments
+later she said to me:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is for this reason, Mr. Gregg, that I have sought you in confidence.
+Nobody must know that I have come here to you, or they would suspect;
+and if suspicion fell upon me it would bring upon me a fate worse than
+death. Remember, therefore, that my future is entirely in your hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't quite understand,&quot; I said, rising and standing before her in
+the fading twilight, while the rain drove upon the old diamond window
+panes. &quot;But I can only assure you that whatever confidence you repose in
+me, I shall never abuse, Miss Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, I know!&quot; she said quickly. &quot;I trust you in this matter
+implicitly. I have come to you for many reasons, chief of them being
+that if a second victim has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, it
+is, I know, a woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A woman! Whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At present I cannot tell you. I must first establish the true facts. If
+this woman were really stricken down, then her body lies concealed
+somewhere in the vicinity. We must find it and bring home the crime to
+the guilty one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if we succeed in finding it, could we place our hand upon the
+assassin?&quot; I asked, looking straight at her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we find it, the crime would then tell its own tale&mdash;it would convict
+the person in whose hand I have seen that fatal weapon,&quot; was her clear,
+bold answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you wish me to assist you in this search, Miss Leithcourt?&quot; I
+said, wondering if her suspicions rested upon that mysterious yachtsman,
+Philip Hornby, the man to whom she was engaged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I would beg of you to do your utmost in secret to endeavor to
+discover the body of the second victim. It is a woman&mdash;of that I am
+certain. Find her, and we shall then be able to bring the crime home to
+the assassin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But my search may bring suspicion upon me,&quot; I remarked. &quot;It will be
+difficult to examine the whole wood without arousing the curiosity of
+somebody&mdash;the keeper or the police.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have already thought of that,&quot; she said. &quot;I will pretend to-morrow to
+lose this watch-bracelet in the wood,&quot; and she held up her slim wrist to
+show me the little enameled watch set in her bracelet. &quot;Then you and I
+will search for it diligently, and the police will never suspect the
+real reason of our investigation. To-morrow I shall write to you telling
+you about my loss, and you will come over to Rannoch and offer to help
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is Mr. Woodroffe back at the castle? I heard he was to return to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I had a letter from him from Bordeaux a week ago. He is still on
+the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he
+sometimes has business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr.
+Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company,&quot; I
+explained, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Her cheeks flushed slightly, as though confused at my reference to her
+engagement, and she said mischievously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see why he should object in the least. If you are good enough
+to assist me to search for my bracelet, he surely ought to be much
+obliged to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to that dark-eyed, handsome
+girl the circumstances in which I had met her lover on the sunny
+Mediterranean shore, yet prudence forbade me to refer to the matter, and
+I at once gladly accepted her invitation to investigate the curious
+disappearance of the body of poor Olinto's fellow-victim.</p>
+
+<p>What secret knowledge could be possessed by that smart, handsome girl
+before me? That her suspicions were in the right direction I felt
+confident, yet if the dead woman had been removed and hidden by the
+assassin it must have been after the discovery made by me. The fellow
+must have actually dared to return to the spot and carry off the victim.
+Yet if he had actually done that, why did he allow the corpse of the
+Italian to remain and await discovery? He might perhaps have been
+disturbed and compelled to make good his escape.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some
+assistance,&quot; I pointed out. &quot;He could not have carried the body very far
+unaided.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had
+been committed alone and unaided.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you any idea as to the motive?&quot; I asked her, eager to hear her
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she answered hesitatingly, &quot;if the woman has fallen a victim,
+the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a
+complete mystery.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny
+all knowledge of the murdered man!&quot; I exclaimed in a tone of slight
+reproach.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,&quot;
+was her answer. &quot;I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect
+is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most
+startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the
+life of another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then a man is the assassin, you think?&quot; I exclaimed quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so. But even of that I am not at all sure. We must first find
+the woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly
+<i>misericordia</i> that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had
+discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had
+been committed. But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own
+suspicions might become aroused. My own policy was to remain silent and
+to wait. The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little
+way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her
+departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left
+by one of the servants' entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart
+and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the
+gloom.</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I
+stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where
+Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless
+sky.</p>
+
+<p>True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking
+me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to
+Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone
+over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll
+together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or
+hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high
+shooting-boots and a tam-o'-shanter hat, while I also had on an old
+shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could
+prod likely spots.</p>
+
+<p>On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely
+corner, but she replied:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years,
+while this is only my first season here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; I answered. &quot;Let us place ourselves in the position of the
+murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the
+vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the
+wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords
+but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the
+valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore
+have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place
+to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle,
+examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
+beneath a thicket and well escape observation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
+way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
+minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
+great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
+very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
+which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
+surmise.</p>
+
+<p>All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
+Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
+received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
+scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
+any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
+admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
+that spot.</p>
+
+<p>More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
+discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
+such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
+complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
+be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
+watchful.</p>
+
+<p>When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
+was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
+find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
+was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
+beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
+stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
+wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
+of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
+point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
+mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
+no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
+wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
+kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
+covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
+fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
+undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
+fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is a most likely place,&quot; declared my dainty little companion as we
+approached it. &quot;Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
+down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end,&quot; she cried
+with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
+descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
+and then by springing from stone to stone&mdash;sometimes slipping into the
+water, be it said&mdash;we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
+examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
+athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
+water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
+and wringing out her wet skirt, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
+of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
+steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
+the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
+openly denounce the assassin.</p>
+
+<p>As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
+connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
+Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the <i>Bulwark</i>
+and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
+left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
+not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
+original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed&mdash;that
+girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
+hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
+was marvelous&mdash;and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
+determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
+truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
+convicting the guilty one?</p>
+
+<p>Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
+a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
+save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
+in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
+years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
+tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
+ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
+windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
+ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
+afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
+our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
+boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
+I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Someone is there,&quot; I whispered quickly. &quot;Behind that rock.&quot; She nodded
+in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.</p>
+
+<p>We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
+other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
+was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
+being disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
+intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
+huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
+diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
+This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
+the utterance of a single word.</p>
+
+<p>To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
+shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
+side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
+slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
+summit.</p>
+
+<p>Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
+figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
+glen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who are they, I wonder?&quot; I asked. &quot;Do you recognize them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. They are entire strangers to me,&quot; was her answer. &quot;But they seem
+fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
+the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I don't think they carried guns,&quot; I said. &quot;One of them had
+something over his shoulder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short&mdash;and
+seemed more like a spade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A spade!&quot; she gasped quickly in a low voice. &quot;A spade! Are you certain
+of that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
+We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
+broad and square&mdash;the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
+the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles.&quot; She only spoke in a
+whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.</p>
+
+<p>I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
+that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
+curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
+the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
+recently disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a spade the man is carrying!&quot; I cried excitedly. &quot;Look down
+there! They've just been burying something!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I really believe they have concealed something!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
+down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
+that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.</p>
+
+<p>Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
+we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
+freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
+with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
+had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
+really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
+large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
+over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
+high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
+ground had ever been interfered with.</p>
+
+<p>Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
+long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
+But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
+silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
+soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
+stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
+progress was very slow and difficult.</p>
+
+<p>At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
+standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
+suddenly cried:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why&mdash;whatever is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
+that I was held dumb and motionless.</p>
+
+<p>By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
+rather than diminished.</p>
+
+<p>I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
+blankly into my companion's face.</p>
+
+<p>The amazing enigma was surely complete!</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>CONTAINS A SURPRISE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
+was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
+proved to be part of a woman's skirt.</p>
+
+<p>With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
+soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.</p>
+
+<p>A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
+had dug.</p>
+
+<p>Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
+from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
+woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
+Olinto. Both had been assassinated!</p>
+
+<p>When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
+expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
+she had expected to find.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is she, I wonder?&quot; my companion ejaculated. &quot;Not a lady, evidently,
+by her dress and hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Evidently not,&quot; was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
+own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
+of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
+countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
+were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.</p>
+
+<p>Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
+black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
+was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
+dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
+issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
+struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those men&mdash;those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?&quot; my
+companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. &quot;We must follow them and
+ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
+and concealed the evidence of this second crime.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;Let us go after them. They must not escape us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
+waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
+point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
+disappeared in the darkness of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
+suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
+back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
+familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
+could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.</p>
+
+<p>We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and
+evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.
+But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night
+bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew
+their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had
+nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be
+already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet
+even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that
+of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat
+nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.</p>
+
+<p>We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew
+bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely
+faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills
+looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had
+so secretly concealed the body of their victim.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I said. &quot;And then
+I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be
+arrested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, do,&quot; she urged. &quot;I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for
+they must not see me in this terrible plight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as
+she did so I felt that she was shivering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are very wet,&quot; I remarked. &quot;I hope you won't take cold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and
+very often get drenched,&quot; was her reply. Then after a pause she said:
+&quot;We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and
+her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I think so,&quot; was my reply. &quot;I will tell the police all that we
+have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,&quot;
+she declared. &quot;One of them&mdash;the one in brown&mdash;was unusually
+broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?&quot;
+I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she answered. &quot;I expected to find an entirely different person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with
+whom you are acquainted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the
+identity of the assassins?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter
+in the hands of the police.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if the identity of the dead woman is established?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It might furnish me with a clue,&quot; she exclaimed quickly. &quot;Yes, try and
+discover who she is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who was the woman you expected to find?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A friend&mdash;a very dear friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you not tell me her name?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, it would be unfair to her,&quot; she responded decisively, an answer
+which to me was particularly tantalizing.</p>
+
+<p>On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not
+strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger
+still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from
+Scotland, but away to the Continent?</p>
+
+<p>Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?</p>
+
+<p>It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who,
+tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good
+fortune in my investigations.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything,
+won't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind
+the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across
+the open fields to my uncle's house.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief
+police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair
+Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the
+previous day.</p>
+
+<p>When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related
+my adventure and the result of my investigation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What?&quot; he cried, jumping up. &quot;You've unearthed another body&mdash;a
+woman's?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have. And what is more, I can identify her,&quot; I replied. &quot;Her name is
+Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then both husband and wife were killed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without a doubt&mdash;a double tragedy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must find them.&quot; And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave
+him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all
+the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a
+charge of willful murder.</p>
+
+<p>When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned
+to me and asked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What induced you to search the wood? Why did you suspect a second
+crime?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His question nonplused me for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him
+to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had
+accompanied him here. It was entirely a vague surmise. I wondered
+whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had
+not also been struck down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction. I knew my
+explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import
+Muriel's name into the affair. I had given her my promise, and I
+intended to keep it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. If you wish, I will take you to the spot. I can drive you and your
+assistant up there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. Let us go,&quot; he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his
+bell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this
+gentleman's trap outside,&quot; he said to the constable who answered his
+summons. &quot;And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to
+Rannoch Wood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir,&quot; answered the man; and the door again closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a pity&mdash;a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn't stop those
+two men who buried the body.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket
+before I mounted the rock,&quot; I explained. &quot;Besides, at the moment I had
+no suspicion of what they'd been doing. I believed them to be stragglers
+from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, most unfortunate!&quot; he said. &quot;I hope they don't escape us. If
+they're foreigners, they are not likely to get away. But if they're
+English or Scots, then I fear there's but little chance of us coming up
+with them. Yesterday at the inquest the identity of the murdered man was
+strictly preserved, and the inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course my name was not mentioned?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not,&quot; was the detective's reply. Then he asked: &quot;When do you
+expect to get a telegram from your friend, the Consul at Leghorn? I am
+anxious for that, in order that we may commence inquiries in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The day after to-morrow, I hope. He will certainly reply at once,
+providing the dead man's father can still be found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment a tall, thin man, who proved to be Detective
+Campbell, entered, and five minutes later we were all three driving over
+the uneven cobbles of Dumfries and out in the darkness towards Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley;
+but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill
+up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep,
+rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across the
+moor. When we reached the latter we all descended, and I led the horse,
+for owing to the many treacherous bogs it was unsafe to drive further.
+So, with Mackenzie and Campbell carrying lanterns, we walked on
+carefully, skirting the wood for nearly a mile until we came to the
+rough wall over which I had clambered with Muriel.</p>
+
+<p>I recognized the spot, and having tied up the cob we all three plunged
+into the pitch-darkness of the wood, keeping straight on in the
+direction of the glen, and halting every now and then to listen for the
+rippling of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after some difficulty, we discovered it, and searching along
+the bank with our three powerful lights, I presently detected the huge
+moss-grown boulder whereon I had stood when the pair of fugitives had
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look!&quot; I cried. &quot;There's the spot!&quot; And quickly we clambered down the
+steep bank, lowering ourselves by the branches of the trees until we
+came to the water into which I waded, being followed closely by my two
+companions.</p>
+
+<p>On gaining the opposite side I clambered up to the base of the boulder
+and lowered my lantern to reveal to them the gruesome evidence of the
+second crime, but the next instant I cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! It's gone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone!&quot; gasped the two men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. It was here. Look! this is the hole where they buried it! But they
+evidently returned, and finding it exhumed, they've retaken possession
+of it and carried it away!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The two detectives gazed down to where I indicated, and then looked at
+each other without exchanging a word.</p>
+
+<p>As we stood there dumbfounded at the disappearance of the body, the
+Highlander's quick glance caught something, and stooping he picked it up
+and examined the little object by the aid of his lantern.</p>
+
+<p>Within his palm I saw lying a tiny little gold cross, about an inch
+long, enameled in red, while in the center was a circular miniature of a
+kneeling saint, an elegant and beautifully executed little trinket which
+might have adorned a lady's bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is a pretty little thing!&quot; remarked the detective. &quot;It may
+possibly lead us to something. But, Mr. Gregg,&quot; he added, turning to me,
+&quot;are you quite certain you left the body here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certain?&quot; I echoed. &quot;Why, look at the hole I made. You don't think I
+have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all,&quot; he said apologetically. &quot;Only the whole affair seems so
+very inconceivable&mdash;I mean that the men, having once got rid of the
+evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and re-obtain
+possession of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unless they watched me exhume it, and feared the consequences if it
+fell into your hands,&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course they might have watched you from behind the trees, and when
+you had gone they came and carried it away somewhere else,&quot; he remarked
+dubiously; &quot;but even if they did, it must be in this wood. They would
+never risk carrying a body very far, and here is surely the best place
+of concealment in the whole country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The only thing remaining is to search the wood at daylight,&quot; I
+suggested. &quot;If the two men came back here during my absence they may
+still be on the watch in the vicinity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most probably they are. We must take every precaution,&quot; he said
+decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination
+of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish
+us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate
+Armida had disappeared&mdash;a fact which, knowing all that I did, was
+doubly mysterious.</p>
+
+<p>The pair had, without doubt, watched Muriel and myself, and as soon as
+we had gone they had returned and carried off the ghastly remains of the
+poor woman who had been so foully done to death.</p>
+
+<p>But who were the men&mdash;the fellow with the broad shoulders whom Muriel
+recognized, and the slim seafarer in his pilot-coat and peaked cap? The
+enigma each hour became more and more inscrutable.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn Mackenzie, with four of his men, made a thorough examination of
+the wood, but although they continued until dusk they discovered
+nothing, neither was anything heard of the mysterious seafarer and his
+companion in brown tweeds.</p>
+
+<p>I called on Muriel as arranged, and explained how the body had so
+suddenly disappeared, whereupon she stared at me pale-faced, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The assassins must have watched us! They are aware, then, that we have
+knowledge of their crime?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she cried hoarsely. &quot;Then we are both in deadly peril&mdash;peril of
+our own lives! These people will hesitate at nothing. Both you and I are
+marked down by them, without a doubt. We must both be wary not to fall
+into any trap they may lay for us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her very words seemed an admission that she was aware of the identity of
+the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them.</p>
+
+<p>We went out and up the drive together to the kennels, where her father,
+a tall, imposing figure in his shooting-kit, was giving orders to the
+keepers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa, Gregg!&quot; he cried merrily, extending his hand. &quot;You'll make one
+of a party to Glenlea to-morrow, won't you? Paton and Phillips are
+coming. Ten sharp here, and the ladies are coming out to lunch with us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks,&quot; I said, accepting with pleasure, for by so doing I saw that I
+might be afforded an opportunity of being near Muriel. The fact that the
+assassins were aware of our knowledge seemed to have caused her the
+greatest apprehension lest evil should befall us. Then, as we turned
+away to go back to the house, Leithcourt said to me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know all about the discovery up at the wood the other day! Horrible
+affair&mdash;a young foreigner found murdered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. I've heard about it,&quot; I responded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the police are worse than useless,&quot; he declared with disgust. &quot;They
+haven't discovered who the fellow is yet. Why, if it had happened
+anywhere else but in Scotland, they'd have arrested the assassin before
+this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's an entire stranger, I hear,&quot; I remarked. And then added: &quot;You
+often go up to the wood of an evening after pigeons. It's fortunate you
+were not there that evening, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me quickly with his brows slightly contracted, as though
+he did not exactly comprehend me. In an instant I saw that my remark had
+caused him quick apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he answered with a sickly smile which he intended should convey
+to me utter unconcern. &quot;They might have suspected me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It certainly is a disagreeable affair to happen on one's property.&quot; I
+said, still watching him narrowly. And then Muriel at his side managed
+with her feminine ingenuity to divert the conversation into a different
+channel.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I accompanied the party over to Glenlea, about five miles
+distant, and at noon at a spot previously arranged, we found the ladies
+awaiting us with luncheon spread under the trees. As soon as we
+approached Muriel came forward quickly, handing me a telegram, saying
+that it had been sent over by one of my uncle's grooms at the moment
+they were leaving the castle.</p>
+
+<p>I tore it open eagerly, and read its contents. Then, turning to my
+companions, said in as quiet a voice as I could command&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must go up to London to-night,&quot; whereat the men, one and all,
+expressed hope that I should soon return. Leithcourt's party were a
+friendly set, and at heart I was sorry to leave Scotland. Yet the
+telegram made it imperative, for it was from Frank Hutcheson in Leghorn,
+and read&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;Made inquiries. Olinto Santini married your servant Armida at Italian
+Consulate-General in London about a year ago. They live 64B, Albany
+Road, Camberwell: he is employed waiter Ferrari's Restaurant,
+Westbourne Grove.&mdash;British Consulate, Leghorn&quot;</i></p>
+
+<p>The lunch was a merry one, as shooting luncheons usually are, and while
+we ate the keepers packed our morning bag&mdash;a considerable one&mdash;into the
+Perth-cart in waiting. Then, when we could wander away alone together, I
+explained to Muriel that the reason of my sudden journey to London was
+in order to continue my investigations regarding the mysterious affair.</p>
+
+<p>This puzzled her, for I had not, of course, revealed to her that I had
+identified Olinto. Yet I managed to make such excuses and promises to
+return that I think allayed all her suspicions, and that night, after
+calling upon the detective Mackenzie, I took the sleeping-car express to
+Euston.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurant which Hutcheson had indicated was, I found, situated
+about half-way up Westbourne Grove, nearly opposite Whiteley's, a small
+place where confectionery and sweets were displayed in the window,
+together with long-necked flasks of Italian chianti, chump-chops, small
+joints and tomatoes. It was soon after nine o'clock when I entered the
+long shop with its rows of marble-topped tables and greasy lounges of
+red plush. An unhealthy-looking lad was sweeping out the place with wet
+saw-dust, and a big, dark-bearded, flabby-faced man in shirt-sleeves
+stood behind the small counter polishing some forks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish to see Signor Ferrari,&quot; I said, addressing him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no Ferrari, he is dead,&quot; responded the man in broken English.
+&quot;My name is Odinzoff. I bought the place from madame.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are Russian, I presume?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Polish, m'sieur&mdash;from Varsovie.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had seen from the first moment we had met that he was no Italian. He
+was too bulky, and his face too broad and flat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have come to inquire after a waiter you have in your service, an
+Italian named Santini. He was my servant for some years, and I naturally
+take an interest in him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Santini?&quot; he repeated. &quot;Oh I you mean Olinto? He is not here yet. He
+comes at ten o'clock.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This reply surprised me. I had expected the restaurant-keeper to express
+regret at his disappearance, yet he spoke as though he had been at work
+as usual on the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I have a liqueur brandy?&quot; I asked, seeing that I would be compelled
+to take something. &quot;Perhaps you will have one with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ach no! But a k&uuml;mmel&mdash;yes, I will have a k&uuml;mmel!&quot; And he filled our
+glasses, and tossed off his own at a single gulp, smacking his lips
+after it, for the average Russian dearly loves his national decoction of
+caraway seeds.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You find Olinto a good servant, I suppose?&quot; I said, for want of
+something else to say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent. The Italians are the best waiters in the world. I am
+Russian, but dare not employ a Russian waiter. These English would not
+come to my shop if I did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked around, and it struck me that the trade of the place mainly
+consisted in chops and steaks for chance customers at mid-day, and tea
+and cake for those swarms of women who each afternoon buzz around that
+long line of windows of the &quot;world's provider.&quot; I could see that his was
+a cheap trade, as revealed by the printed notice stuck upon one of the
+long fly-blown mirrors: &quot;Ices <i>4d</i> and <i>6d</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long has Olinto been with you?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About a year&mdash;perhaps a little more. I trust him implicitly, and I
+leave him in charge when I go away for holidays. He does not get along
+very well with the cook&mdash;who is Milanese. These Italians from different
+provinces always quarrel,&quot; he added, laughing. &quot;If you live in Italy you
+know that, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed in chorus, and then glancing at my watch, said: &quot;I'll wait for
+him, if he will be here at ten. I'd much like to see him again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Russian was by no means nonplused, but merely remarked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is late sometimes, but not often. He lives on the other side of
+London&mdash;over at Camberwell.&quot; His confidence that the waiter would return
+struck me as extremely curious; nevertheless I possessed myself in
+patience, strolled up and down the restaurant, and then stood watching
+the traffic in the Grove outside.</p>
+
+<p>The man Odinzoff seemed a quick, hard-working fellow with a keen eye to
+business, for he fell to polishing the top of the marble tables with a
+pail and brush, at the same time directing the work of the
+pallid-looking youth. Suddenly a side door opened, and the cook put his
+head in to speak with his master in French. He was a typical Italian,
+about forty, with dark mustaches turned upwards, and an easy-going,
+careless manner. Seeing me, however, and believing me to be a customer,
+he turned and closed the door quickly. In that instant I noticed the
+high broadness of his shoulders, and his back struck me as strangely
+similar to that of the man in brown whom we had seen disappearing in
+Rannoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p>The suspicion held me breathless.</p>
+
+<p>Was this Russian endeavoring to deceive me when he declared that Olinto
+would arrive in a few minutes? It seemed curious, for the man now dead
+must, I reflected, have been away at least four days. Surely his
+absence from work had caused the proprietor considerable inconvenience?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was your cook, wasn't it? The Milanese who is quarrelsome?&quot; I
+laughed, when the side door had closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, m'sieur. But Emilio is a very good workman&mdash;and very honest, even
+though I had constantly to complain that he uses too much oil in his
+cooking. These English do not like the oil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I stood in the doorway again watching the busy throng passing outside
+towards Royal Oak. Ten o'clock struck from a neighboring church, and I
+still waited, knowing only too well that I waited in vain for a man
+whose body had already been committed to the grave outside that far-away
+old Scotch town. But I waited in order to ascertain the motive of the
+bearded Russian in leading me to believe that the young fellow would
+really return.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Odinzoff went outside, carrying with him two boards upon which
+the menu of the &quot;Eight-penny Luncheon! This Day!&quot; was written in scrawly
+characters, and proceeded to affix them to the shop-front.</p>
+
+<p>This was my opportunity, and quick as thought I moved towards where the
+unhealthy youth was at work, and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll give you half-a-sovereign if you'll answer my questions
+truthfully. Now, tell me, was the cook, the man I've just seen, here
+yesterday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was he here the day before?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir. He's been away ill for four days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your master?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's been away too, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had no time to put any further question, for the Russian re-entered at
+that moment, and the youth busied himself rubbing the front of the
+counter in pretense that I had not spoken to him. Indeed, I had some
+difficulty in slipping the promised coin into his hand at a moment when
+his master was not looking.</p>
+
+<p>Then I paced up and down the restaurant, waiting patiently and wondering
+whether the absence of Emilio had any connection with the tragedy up in
+Rannoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p>While I stood there a rather thin, respectably-dressed man entered, and
+seating himself upon one of the plush lounges at the further end,
+removed his bowler hat and ordered from the proprietor a chop and a pot
+of tea. Then, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he settled himself to
+read, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>And yet as I watched I saw that over the top of his paper he was
+carefully taking in the general appearance of the place, and his eyes
+were keenly following the Russian's movements. The latter shouted&mdash;in
+French&mdash;the order for the chop through the speaking-tube to the man
+Emilio, and then returning to his customer he spread out a napkin and
+placed a small cruet, with knife, fork, and bread before him. But the
+customer seemed immersed in his paper, and never looked up until after
+the Russian's back was turned. Then so deep was his interest in the
+place, and so keen those dark eyes of his, that the truth suddenly
+dawned upon me. Mackenzie had telegraphed to Scotland Yard, and the
+customer sitting there was a detective who had come to investigate. I
+had advanced to the counter to chat again with the proprietor, when a
+quick step behind me caused me to turn.</p>
+
+<p>Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy
+black jacket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Dio Signor Padrone!</i>&quot; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>I staggered as though I had received a blow.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>No words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I
+faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that gray stone
+slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.</p>
+
+<p>My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his
+paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently
+been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself,
+discovered him alive and living.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Signor Padrone!&quot; cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely
+bewildering. &quot;How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when
+I told you I worked at the Milano,&quot; he went on rapidly in Italian. &quot;But
+it was under compulsion&mdash;my actions that night were not my own&mdash;but
+those of others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I understand,&quot; I said. &quot;But come out into the street. I don't wish
+to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! only a very little,&quot; he answered, smiling. &quot;Have no fear of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But there is Emilio, the cook?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you have met him!&quot; he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of
+apprehension. &quot;He is an undesirable person, signore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I gather,&quot; I answered. &quot;But I desire to speak to you outside&mdash;not
+here.&quot; And then turning with a smile to the Pole, I apologized for
+taking away his servant for a few minutes. &quot;Recollect, I am his old
+master, I added.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, m'sieur,&quot; answered the Pole, bowing politely. &quot;Speak with
+him where and how long you will. He is entirely at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And when we were outside in Westbourne Grove, Olinto walking by my side
+in wonderment, I asked suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me. Have you ever been in Scotland&mdash;at Dumfries?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never, signore, in my life. Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Answer me another question,&quot; I said quickly. &quot;You married Armida at the
+Italian Consulate. Where is she now&mdash;where is she this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned pale, and I saw a complete change in his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he responded, &quot;I only wish I could tell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is untrue that she is an invalid,&quot; I went on, &quot;or that you live in
+Lambeth. Your address is in Albany Road, Camberwell. You can't deny
+these facts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not deny them, Signor Commendatore. But how did you learn this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The authorities in Italy know everything,&quot; I answered. &quot;Like that of
+all your countrymen, your record is written down at the Commune.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a clean one, at any rate, signore,&quot; he declared with some slight
+warmth. &quot;I have a permesso to carry a revolver, which is in itself
+sufficient proof that I am a man of spotless character.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cast no reflection whatever upon you, Olinto,&quot; I answered. &quot;I have
+merely inquired after your wife, and you do not give me a direct reply.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We had walked to the Royal Oak, and stood talking on the curb outside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you no reply, because I can't,&quot; he said in Italian. &quot;Armida&mdash;my
+poor Armida&mdash;has left home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did you tell me such a tale of distress regarding her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I have already explained, signore, I was not then master of my own
+actions. I was ruled by others. But I saved your life at risk of my own.
+Some day, when it is safe, I will reveal to you everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us allow the past to remain,&quot; I said. &quot;Where is your wife now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment, looking straight into my face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Signor Commendatore, to tell the truth, she has disappeared.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Disappeared!&quot; I echoed. &quot;And have you not made any report to the
+police?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For reasons known only to myself I did not wish the police to pry into
+my private affairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know. Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife&mdash;eh?
+I recollect quite well that affair&mdash;a love affair, was it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Signor Commendatore. But I was a youth then&mdash;a mere boy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared,&quot; I
+urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset
+him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was
+bursting to tell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, signore,&quot; he said at last in a low tone of confidence, &quot;I don't
+like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told
+you when we last met.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on,&quot; I said. &quot;Tell me the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined
+to doubt him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously
+disappeared. Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the
+garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out. She
+apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of
+her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so
+strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon
+his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated
+to relate what I knew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She spoke English, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She could make herself understood very well,&quot; he said with a sigh, and
+I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow. That he was really devoted
+to her, I knew. With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is
+all-consuming&mdash;it is either perfect love or genuine hatred. The Tuscan
+character is one of two extremes.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered
+his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go
+away from home? Perhaps you had some words!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Words, signore!&quot; he echoed. &quot;Why, we were the happiest pair in all
+London. No unkind word ever passed between us. There seems absolutely no
+reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of
+farewell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why haven't you told the police?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For reasons that I have already stated. I prefer to make inquiries for
+myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And in what have your inquiries resulted?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing&mdash;absolutely nothing,&quot; he said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not suspect any plot? I recollect that night in Lambeth you
+told me that you had enemies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! so I have, signore&mdash;and so have you!&quot; he exclaimed hoarsely. &quot;Yes,
+my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if entrapped, what then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a
+fly,&quot; he said. &quot;Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people. I
+only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere,
+and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise. She
+delights in startling me,&quot; he added with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Poor fellow, I thought, she would never again be able to startle him.
+She had actually fallen a victim just as he dreaded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you think she must have been called away from home by some urgent
+message?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the manner in which she left things, it seemed as though she went
+away hurriedly. There were five sovereigns in a drawer that we had saved
+for the rent, and she took them with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I paused again, hesitating whether to tell him the terrible truth. I
+recollected that the body had disappeared, therefore what proof had I of
+my allegation that she had been murdered?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me, Olinto,&quot; I said as we moved forward again in the direction of
+Paddington Station, &quot;have you any knowledge of a man named Leithcourt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He started suddenly and looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard of him,&quot; he answered very lamely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And of his daughter&mdash;Muriel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And also of her. But I am not acquainted with them&mdash;nor, to tell the
+truth, do I wish to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because they are enemies of mine&mdash;bitter enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His declaration was strange, for it threw some light upon the tragedy in
+Rannoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And of your wife also?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know that,&quot; he responded. &quot;My enemies are my wife's also, I
+suppose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have not told me the secret of that dastardly attempt upon me when
+we last met,&quot; I said in a low voice. &quot;Why not tell me the truth? I
+surely ought to know who my enemies really are, so as to be warned
+against any future plot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You shall know some day, signore. I dare not tell you now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You said that before,&quot; I exclaimed with dissatisfaction. &quot;If you are
+faithful to me, you ought at least to tell me the reason they wished to
+kill me in secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because they fear you,&quot; was his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should they fear me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture with his hands
+indicative of utter ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ask you one question. Answer yes or no. Is the man Leithcourt my
+enemy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young Italian paused, and then answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is not your friend. I am quite well aware of that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And his daughter? She is engaged, I hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where did you first meet Leithcourt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have known him several years. When we first met he was poor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suddenly became rich&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bought a fine house in the country; lives mostly at the Carlton when he
+and his wife and daughter are in London&mdash;although I believe they now
+have a house somewhere in the West End&mdash;and he often makes long cruises
+on his steam-yacht.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how did he make his money?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again Olinto elevated his shoulders, without replying.</p>
+
+<p>If he would only betray to me the reason he had been induced to entice
+me to that house, I might then be able to form some conclusion regarding
+the tenants of Rannoch and their friends.</p>
+
+<p>Who was the man who, having represented the man now before me, had been
+struck dead by an unerring hand? Was it possible that Armida had been
+called by telegram to meet her husband, and recognizing the fraud
+perpetrated upon her threatened to disclose it and, for that reason,
+shared the same fate as the masquerader?</p>
+
+<p>This was the first theory that occurred to me; one which I believed to
+be the correct one. The motive was a mystery, yet the facts seemed to me
+plain enough.</p>
+
+<p>As the young Italian had refused to give any satisfactory explanation, I
+resolved within myself to wait until the unfortunate woman's body was
+recovered before revealing to him the ghastly truth. Without doubt he
+had some reason in withholding from me the true facts, either because he
+feared that I might become unduly alarmed, or else he himself had been
+deeply implicated in the plot. Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to
+believe in the latter.</p>
+
+<p>He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with
+all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew
+concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal
+that I had only that morning returned from Scotland. Then at last we
+parted, and he retraced his steps to the little restaurant in Westbourne
+Grove, while I entered a hansom and drove to the well-known
+photographer's in New Bond Street, whose name had been upon the torn
+photograph of the young girl in the white piqu&eacute; blouse and her hair
+fastened with a bow of black ribbon, the picture that I had found on
+board the <i>Lola</i> on that memorable night in the Mediterranean, and a
+duplicate of which I had seen in Muriel's cosy little room up at
+Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>I recollected that she had told me the name of the original was Elma
+Heath, and that she had been a schoolfellow of hers at Chichester.
+Therefore I inquired of the photographer's lady-clerk whether she could
+supply me with a print of the negative.</p>
+
+<p>For a considerable time she searched in her books for the name, and at
+last discovered it. Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret, sir, that we can't give you a print, for the customer
+purchased the negative at the time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I'm very sorry for that,&quot; I said. &quot;To what address did you send
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The customer who ordered it was apparently a foreigner,&quot; she said, at
+the same time turning round the ledger so that I could read. And I saw
+that the entry was: &quot;Heath&mdash;Miss Elma&mdash;3 dozen cabinets and negative.
+Address: Baron Xavier Oberg, Vosnesenski Prospect 48, St. Petersburg,
+Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did this gentleman come with the young lady when her portrait was
+taken?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't tell, sir,&quot; she replied. &quot;I've only been here a year, and you
+see the date&mdash;over two years ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The photographer would know, perhaps?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a new man, sir. He only came a month ago. In fact, the business
+changed hands a year ago, and none of the previous employees have
+remained.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! that's unfortunate,&quot; I said, greatly disappointed; and having
+copied the address to which the negative and prints had been sent, I
+thanked her and left.</p>
+
+<p>Who, I wondered, was this Baron Oberg, and what relation was he to Elma
+Heath?</p>
+
+<p>The picture of the girl in the white blouse somehow exercised a strange
+attraction for me.</p>
+
+<p>Have you never experienced the fascination of a photograph, inexplicable
+and yet forcible&mdash;a kind of magnetism from which you cannot release
+yourself? Perhaps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it
+from its frame on board the <i>Lola</i> and destroyed it that first aroused
+my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room
+at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often
+wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the
+yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.</p>
+
+<p>Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived
+in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I
+resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.</p>
+
+<p>At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend
+Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the
+name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German
+books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name
+did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He may be Russian&mdash;Polish most probably,&quot; added the captain, a tall,
+fair fellow in gold spectacles, whom I had known when he was third
+secretary of Embassy at Rome. His opinion was that it was not a German
+name, for there was a little place called Oberg, he said, on the railway
+between Lodz and Lowicz.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary,
+old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian
+days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open
+waste. I found the house where Olinto lived&mdash;a small, smoke-blackened,
+semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with
+a wooden veranda before the first floor windows. The house, according to
+the woman who kept a general shop at the corner, was occupied by two
+families. The &quot;Eye-talians,&quot; as she termed them, lived above, while the
+Gibbonses rented the ground floor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, sir. The foreigners are respectable enough. Always pays me
+ready money for everythink, except the milk. That they pays for weekly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand that the wife has disappeared. What have you heard about
+that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They do say, sir, that they 'ad some words together the other day, and
+that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe
+all you 'ear, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did they often quarrel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable
+persons for foreigners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I repassed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy
+Camberwell Road I took an omnibus back to the Hotel Cecil in the Strand
+where I had put up, tired and disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I ran down to Chichester, and after some difficulty found the
+Cheverton College for Ladies, a big old-fashioned house about
+half-a-mile out of the town on the Drayton Road. The seminary was
+evidently a first-class one, for when I entered I noticed how well
+everything was kept.</p>
+
+<p>To the principal, an elderly lady of a somewhat severe aspect, I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret, madam, to trouble you, but I am in search of information you
+can supply. It is with regard to a certain Elma Heath whom you had as
+pupil here, and who left, I believe, about two years ago. Her parents
+lived in Durham.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remember her perfectly,&quot; was the woman's response as she sat behind
+the big desk, having apparently at first expected that I had a daughter
+to put to school.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;there has been some little friction in the family, and
+I am making inquiries on behalf of another branch of it&mdash;an aunt who
+desires to ascertain the girl's whereabouts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you that. The Baron, her uncle,
+came here one day and took her away suddenly&mdash;abroad, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Had she no school-friend to whom she would probably write?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was a girl named Leithcourt&mdash;Muriel Leithcourt&mdash;who was her
+friend, but who has also left.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And no one else?&quot; I asked. &quot;Girls often write to each other after
+leaving school, until they get married, and then the correspondence
+usually ceases.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The principal was silent and reflective.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she said at last, &quot;there was another pupil who was also on
+friendly terms with Elma&mdash;a girl named Lydia Moreton. She may have
+written to her. If you really desire to know, sir, I dare say I could
+find her address. She left us about nine months after Elma.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should esteem it a great favor if you would give me that young lady's
+address,&quot; I said, whereupon she unlocked a drawer in her writing-table
+and took therefrom a thick, leather-bound book which she consulted for a
+few minutes, at last exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, here it is&mdash;'Lydia Moreton, daughter of Sir Hamilton Moreton,
+K.C.M.G., Whiston Grange, Doncaster.'&quot; And she scribbled it in pencil
+upon an envelope, and handing it to me, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elma Heath was, I fear, somewhat neglected by her parents. She remained
+here for five years, and had no holidays like the other girls. Her
+uncle, the Baron, came to see her several times, but on each occasion
+after he had left I found her crying in secret. He was mean and unkind
+to her. Now that I recollect, I remember that Lydia had said she had
+received a letter from her, therefore she might be able to give you some
+information.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And with that I took my leave, thanking her, and returned to London.</p>
+
+<p>Could Lydia Moreton furnish any information? If so, I might find this
+girl whose photograph had aroused the irate jealousy of the mysterious
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>The ten o'clock Edinburgh express from King's Cross next morning took me
+up to Doncaster, and hiring a musty old fly at the station, I drove
+three miles out of the town on the Rotherham Road, finding Whiston
+Grange to be a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the center of a great
+park, with tall old twisted chimneys, and beautifully-kept gardens.</p>
+
+<p>When I descended at the door and rang, the footman was not aware whether
+Miss Lydia was in. He looked at me somewhat suspiciously, I thought,
+until I gave my card and impressed upon him meaningly that I had come
+from London purposely to see his young mistress upon a very important
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell her,&quot; I said, &quot;that I wish to see her regarding her friend, Miss
+Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Elma 'Eath,&quot; repeated the man. &quot;Very well, sir. Will you walk this
+way?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then I followed him across the big old oak-paneled hall, filled with
+trophies of the chase and arms of the civil wars, into a small paneled
+room on the left, the deep-set window with its diamond panes giving out
+upon the old bowling-green and the flower-garden beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the door opened, and a tall dark-haired girl in white entered
+with an enquiring expression upon her face as she halted and bowed to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Lydia Moreton, I believe?&quot; I commenced, and as she replied in the
+affirmative I went on: &quot;I have first to apologize for coming to you, but
+Miss Sotheby, the principal of the school at Chichester, referred me to
+you for information as to the present whereabouts of Miss Elma Heath,
+who, I believe, was one of your most intimate friends at school.&quot; And I
+added a lie, saying: &quot;I am trying, on behalf of an aunt of hers, to
+discover her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; responded the girl, &quot;I have had only one or two letters. She's
+in her uncle's hands, I believe, and he won't let her write, poor girl.
+She dreaded leaving us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! she would never say. She had some deep-rooted terror of her uncle,
+Baron Oberg, who lived in St. Petersburg, and who came over at long
+intervals to see her. But possibly you know the whole story?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know nothing,&quot; I cried eagerly. &quot;You will be furthering her
+interests, as well as doing me a great personal favor, if you will tell
+me what you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is very little,&quot; she answered, leaning back against the edge of the
+table and regarding me seriously. &quot;Poor Elma! Her people treated her
+very badly indeed. They sent her no money, and allowed her no holidays,
+and yet she was the sweetest-tempered and most patient girl in the whole
+school.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;and the story regarding her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was supposed that her people at Durham did not exist,&quot; she
+explained. &quot;Elma had evidently lived a greater part of her life abroad,
+for she could speak French and Italian better than the professor
+himself, and therefore always won the prizes. The class revolted, and
+then she did not compete any more. Yet she never told us of where she
+had lived when a child. She came from Durham, she said&mdash;that was all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You had a letter from her after the Baron came and took her away?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, from London. She said that she had been to several plays and
+concerts, but did not care for life in town. There was too much bustle
+and noise and study of clothes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what other letters did you receive from her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Three or four, I think. They were all from places abroad. One was from
+Vienna, one was from Milan, and one from some place with an
+unpronounceable name in Hungary. The last----&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the last?&quot; I gasped eagerly, interrupting her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the last I received only a fortnight ago. If you will wait a
+moment I will go and get it. It was so strange that I haven't destroyed
+it.&quot; And she went out, and I heard by the frou-frou of her skirts that
+she was ascending the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>After five minutes of breathless anxiety she rejoined me, and handing me
+the letter to read, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not in her handwriting&mdash;I wonder why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The paper was of foreign make, with blue lines ruled in squares. Written
+in a hand that was evidently foreign, for the mistakes in the
+orthography were many, was the following curious communication:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My Dear Lydia:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you may never get this letter&mdash;the last I shall ever be able to
+send you. Indeed, I run great risks in sending it. Ah! you do not know
+the awful disaster that has happened to me, all the terrors and the
+tortures I endure. But no one can assist me, and I am now looking
+forward to the time when it will all be over. Do you recollect our old
+peaceful days in the garden at Chichester? I think of them always,
+always, and compare that sweet peace of the past with my own terrible
+sufferings of to-day. Ah, how I wish I might see you once again; how
+that I might feel your hand upon my brow, and hear your words of hope
+and encouragement! But happiness is now debarred from me, and I am only
+sinking to the grave under this slow torture of body and of soul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This will pass through many hands before it reaches the post. If,
+however, it ever does get despatched and you receive it, will you do me
+one last favor&mdash;a favor to an unfortunate girl who is friendless and
+helpless, and who will no longer trouble the world? It is this: Take
+this letter to London, and call upon Mr. Martin Woodroffe at 98 Cork
+Street, Piccadilly. Show him my letter, and tell him from me that
+through it all I have kept my promise, and that the secret is still
+safe. He will understand&mdash;and also know why I cannot write this with my
+own hand. If he is abroad, keep it until he returns.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is all I ask of you, Lydia, and I know that if this reaches you, you
+will not refuse me. You have been my only friend and confidante, but I
+now bid you farewell, for the unknown beckons me, and from the grave I
+cannot write. Again farewell, and for ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your loving and affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Elma.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A very strange letter, is it not?&quot; remarked the girl at my side. &quot;I
+can't make it out. You see there is no address, but the postmark is
+Russian. She is evidently in Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Finland,&quot; I said, examining the stamp and making out the post town
+to be Abo. &quot;But have you been to London and executed this strange
+commission?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. We are going up next week. I intend to call upon this person named
+Woodroffe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made no remark. He was, I knew, abroad, but I was glad at having
+obtained two very important clues: first, the address of the mysterious
+yachtsman, Woodroffe, alias Hornby, and, secondly, ascertaining that the
+young girl I sought was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Abo,
+the Finnish port on the Baltic.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor Elma, you see, speaks in her letter of some secret, Mr. Gregg,&quot; my
+companion said. &quot;She says she wishes this Mr. Woodroffe, whoever he is,
+to know that she has kept her promise and has not divulged it. This only
+bears out what I have all along suspected.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are your suspicions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, from her deep, thoughtful manner, and from certain remarks she at
+times made to me, I believe that Elma is in possession of some great and
+terrible secret&mdash;a secret which her uncle, Baron Oberg, is desirous of
+learning. I know she holds him in deadly fear&mdash;she is in terror that she
+may inadvertently betray to him the truth!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a><h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The strange letter of Elma Heath, combined with what Lydia Moreton had
+told me, aroused within me a determination to investigate the mystery.
+From the moment I had landed from the <i>Lola</i> on that hot, breathless
+night at Leghorn, mystery had crowded upon mystery until it was all
+bewildering.</p>
+
+<p>It was now proved that the sweet-faced girl, the original of the torn
+photograph, held a secret, and that, by her own words, she knew that
+death was approaching. The incomprehensible attempt upon my life, the
+strange actions of Hornby and Chater&mdash;who, by the way, seemed to have
+entirely disappeared&mdash;the assassination of the man who by masquerading
+as the Italian waiter had met his death, and the murder of Olinto's wife
+were all problems which required solution.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been for the mystery of it all&mdash;and mystery ever arouses the
+human curiosity&mdash;I should have given up trying to get at the truth. Yet
+as a man with some leisure, and knowing by that letter of Elma Heath's
+that she was in sore distress, I redoubled my efforts to ascertain the
+reason of it all.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of the <i>Lola</i> was still a mystery along the Mediterranean.
+At every French and Italian port the yacht's false name and general
+build was written in the police-books, while at Lloyd's the name <i>Lola</i>
+was marked down as among the mysterious craft at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Chater was missing, while Hornby was abroad. Perhaps they were both
+cruising again, with their yacht repainted and bearing a fresh name. But
+why? What had been their motive?</p>
+
+<p>Stirred by the complete mystery which now seemed to enshroud the
+unfortunate girl, I set before myself the task of elucidating it.
+Hitherto I had remained passive rather than active, but I now realized
+by that curious letter that at least one woman's life was at stake&mdash;that
+Elma Heath was in possession of some secret.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving Leghorn I had given up all hope of tracing the mysterious
+yachtsman, and had left the matter in the hands of the Italian police.
+But, without any effort on my own part, I seemed to have been drawn into
+a veritable network of strange incidents, all of which combined to form
+the most complete and remarkable enigma ever presented in life. Surely
+no man was ever confronted by so many mysteries at one time as I was at
+this moment.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately I had been careful not to show my hand to anyone, and this
+perhaps gave me a distinct advantage. On my journey back to London, as
+the train swung through Peterborough and out across the rich level lands
+towards Hitchin, I recollected Jack Durnford's words when I had
+mentioned the <i>Lola</i>. What, I wondered, did he know?</p>
+
+<p>Next month, in November, he was due back in London after his three
+years' service on the Mediterranean station. Then we should meet in a
+few weeks I hoped. Would he tell me anything when he became aware of all
+I knew? He held some secret knowledge. Was it possible that his secret
+was the same as that held by the unfortunate girl in far-off, dreary
+Finland?</p>
+
+<p>I called at the house in Cork Street indicated by Elma, and learned
+from the old commissionaire who acted as lift-man and porter, that Mr.
+Woodroffe's chambers were closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'E's nearly always away, sir&mdash;abroad, I think,&quot; was all I could get out
+of the old soldier, who, like his class, was no doubt well paid to keep
+his mouth closed.</p>
+
+<p>For two days I lounged about Westbourne Grove watching Ferrari's
+restaurant. In such a busy, bustling thoroughfare, with so many shop
+windows as excuses for loitering, the task was easy. I saw that Olinto
+came regularly at ten o'clock in the morning, worked hard all day, and
+left at nine o'clock at night, taking an omnibus home from Royal Oak.
+His exterior was calm and unconcerned, unlike that of a man whose
+devoted wife had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>I would have approached him and explained the ghastly truth, had it not
+been for the fact that the poor woman's body was missing.</p>
+
+<p>Those September days were full of anxiety for me. Alone and unaided I
+was trying to solve one of the greatest of problems, plunged as I was in
+a veritable sea of mystery. I wanted to see Muriel Leithcourt, and to
+question her further regarding Elma Heath. Therefore again I left
+Euston, and, traveling through the night, took my seat at the
+breakfast-table at Greenlaw next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George, who was sitting alone&mdash;it not being my aunt's habit to
+appear early&mdash;welcomed me, and then in his bluff manner sniffed and
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nice goings on up at Rannoch! Have you heard of them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. What?&quot; I cried breathlessly, staring at him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, my suspicions that those Leithcourts were utter outsiders turns
+out to be about correct.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it's a very funny story, and there are a dozen different
+distorted versions of it,&quot; he said. &quot;But from what I can gather the true
+facts are these: About seven o'clock the night before last, as
+Leithcourt and his house-party were dressing for dinner, a telegram
+arrived. Mrs. Leithcourt opened it, and at once went off into hysterics,
+while her husband, in a breathless hurry, slipped off his evening
+clothes again and got into an old blue serge suit, tossed a few things
+into a bag, and then went along to Muriel's room to urge her to prepare
+for secret flight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Flight!&quot; I gasped. &quot;What, have they gone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen, and I'll tell you. The servants have described the whole affair
+down in the village, so there's no doubt about it. Leithcourt showed
+Muriel the telegram and urged her to fly. At first she refused, but for
+her father's sake was induced to prepare to accompany him. Of course,
+the guests were in ignorance of all this. The brougham was ordered to be
+ready in the stable-yard and not to go round, while Mrs. Leithcourt's
+maid tried to bring the lady back to her senses. Leithcourt himself, it
+seemed, rushed hither and thither, seizing the jewel-cases of his wife
+and daughter and whatever valuables he could place his hand upon, while
+the mother and daughter were putting on their things. As he rushed down
+the main staircase to the library, where his check-book and some ready
+cash were locked in the safe, he met a stranger who had just been
+admitted and shown into the room. Leithcourt closed the door and faced
+him. What afterwards transpired, however, is a mystery, for two hours
+later, after he and the two women had escaped, leaving the house-party
+to their own diversions, the stranger was found locked in a large
+cupboard and insensible. The sensation was a tremendous one. Cowan, the
+doctor, was called, and declared that the stranger had been drugged and
+was suffering from some narcotic. The servant who admitted him declared
+that the man had said he had an appointment with his master, and that no
+card was necessary. He, however, gave the name of Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chater!&quot; I cried, starting up. &quot;Are you certain of that name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I only know what Cowan told me,&quot; was my uncle's reply. &quot;But do you know
+him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all. Only I've heard that name before,&quot; I said. &quot;I knew a man
+out in Italy of the same name. But where is the visitor now?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the hospital at Dumfries. They took him there in preference to
+leaving him alone at Rannoch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alone?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. Everyone has left, now the host and hostess have slipped off
+without saying good-bye. Scandalous affair, isn't it? But, my boy,
+you'll remember that I always said I didn't like those people. There's
+something mysterious about them, I feel certain. That telegram gave them
+warning of the visit of the man Chater, depend upon it, and for some
+reason they're afraid of him. It would be interesting to know what
+transpired between the two men in the library. And these are people
+who've been taken up by everybody&mdash;mere adventurers, I should call
+them!&quot; And old Sir George sniffed again at thought of such scandal
+happening in the neighborhood. &quot;If Gilrae must let Rannoch, then why in
+the name of Fortune doesn't he let it to respectable folk and not to the
+first fellow who answers his advertisement in <i>The Field?</i> It's simply
+disgraceful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly, it is a most extraordinary story,&quot; I declared. &quot;Leithcourt
+evidently wished to escape from his visitor, and that's why he drugged
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why he poisoned him, you mean. Cowan says the fellow is poisoned, but
+that he'll probably recover. He is already conscious, I hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I resolved to call on the doctor, who happened to be well known to me,
+and obtain further particulars. Therefore at eleven o'clock I drove into
+Dumfries and entered his consulting-room.</p>
+
+<p>He was a spare, short, fair man, a trifle bald, and when I was shown in
+he welcomed me warmly, speaking with his pronounced Galloway accent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it is a very mysterious case, Mr. Gregg,&quot; he said, after I had
+told him the object of my visit. &quot;The gentleman is still in the
+hospital, and I have to keep him very quiet. He was poisoned without a
+doubt, and has had a very narrow escape of his life. The police got wind
+of the affair, and Mackenzie called to question him. But he refused to
+make any statement whatever, apparently treating the affair very
+lightly. The police, however, are mystified as to the reason of Mr.
+Leithcourt's sudden flight, and are anxious to get at the bottom of the
+curious affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Naturally. And more especially after the tragedy up in Rannoch Wood a
+short time ago,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's just it,&quot; said the doctor, removing his pince-nez and rubbing
+them. &quot;Mackenzie seems to suspect some connection between Leithcourt's
+sudden disappearance and that mysterious affair. It seems very evident
+that the telegram was a warning to Leithcourt of the man Chater's
+intention of calling, and that the last-named was shown in just at the
+moment when the fugitive was on the point of leaving.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Chater.&quot; I echoed. &quot;Do you know his Christian name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hylton Chater. He is apparently a gentleman. Curious that he will tell
+us nothing of the reason he called, and of the scene that occurred
+between them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Knowing all that I did, I was not surprised. Leithcourt had undoubtedly
+taken him unawares, but knights of industry never betray each other.</p>
+
+<p>My next visit was to Mackenzie, for whom I had to wait nearly an hour,
+as he was absent in another quarter of the town.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Mr. Gregg!&quot; he cried gladly, as he came in to find me seated in a
+chair patiently reading the newspaper. &quot;You are the very person I wish
+to see. Have you heard of this strange affair at Rannoch?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have,&quot; was my answer. &quot;Has the man in the hospital made any statement
+yet?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None. He refuses point-blank,&quot; answered the detective. &quot;But my own idea
+is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries of
+the wood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first mystery&mdash;that of the man&mdash;proves to be a double mystery,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How? Explain it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the waiter Olinto Santini is alive and well in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; he gasped, starting up. &quot;Then he is not the person you
+identified him to be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. But he was masquerading as Santini&mdash;made up to resemble him, I
+mean, even to the mole upon his face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you identified him positively?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When a person is dead it is very easy to mistake countenances. Death
+alters the countenance so very much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's true,&quot; he said reflectively. &quot;But if the man we've buried is not
+the Italian, then the mystery is considerably increased. Why was the
+real man's wife here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where has her body been concealed? That's the question.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Again a mystery. We have made a thorough search for four days, without
+discovering any trace of it. Quite confidentially, I'm wondering if this
+man Chater knows anything. It is curious, to say the least, that the
+Leithcourts should have fled so hurriedly on this man's appearance. But
+have you actually seen Olinto Santini?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and have spoken with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I sent up to London asking that inquiries should be made at the
+restaurant in Bayswater, but up to the present I have received no
+report.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have chatted with Olinto. His wife has mysteriously disappeared, but
+he is in ignorance that she is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did not tell him anything?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you did well. There is widespread conspiracy here, depend upon it,
+Mr. Gregg. It will be an interesting case when we get to the bottom of
+it all. I only wish this fellow Chater would tell us the reason he
+called upon Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does he say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Merely that he has no wish to prosecute, and that he has no statement
+to make.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can't you compel him to say something?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I can't. That's the infernal difficulty of it. If he don't choose
+to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel
+confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective's belief.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on
+everyone's tongue in Dumfries. In the smoke-room of the railway hotel
+three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and
+the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the
+strange goings-on up at the Castle.</p>
+
+<p>As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top
+before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the
+situation. I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet
+when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the
+<i>Lola</i>, I naturally hesitated. He was allied with Hornby, apparently
+against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby's friend.</p>
+
+<p>What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle
+which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through
+the rain? How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible
+and hiding him in that cupboard? Did he believe that he had killed him?</p>
+
+<p>If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of
+myself. No. I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so
+affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain
+in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge. Therefore I stayed for
+a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care
+that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.</p>
+
+<p>Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that
+tantalizing silence. The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man
+in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful
+murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public
+had no knowledge, for the body was not discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Time after time I searched the wood alone, on the pretense of shooting
+pigeon, but discovered nothing. When not having sport on my uncle's
+property, I joined various parties in the neighborhood, not because
+Scotland at that time attracted me, but because I desired to watch
+events.</p>
+
+<p>Chater, as soon as he recovered, left the hospital and went south&mdash;to
+London, I ascertained&mdash;leaving the police utterly in the dark and filled
+with suspicion of the fugitives from Rannoch.</p>
+
+<p>I longed to know the whereabouts of Muriel, hoping to gain from her some
+information regarding their visitor who had so nearly escaped with his
+life. That she was aware of the object of his visit was plain from the
+statements of the servants, all of whom had been left without either
+money or orders.</p>
+
+<p>One day I called at the castle, the front entrance of which I found
+closed. Gilrae, the owner, had come up from London, met his factor
+there, and discharged all the late tenant's servants, keeping on only
+three of his own who had been in service there for a number of years.
+Ann Cameron, a housemaid, was one of these, and it was she whom I met
+when entering by the servants' hall.</p>
+
+<p>On questioning her, I found her most willing to describe how she was in
+the corridor outside the young mistress's room when Mr. Leithcourt
+dashed along in breathless haste with the telegram in his hand. She
+heard him cry: &quot;Look at this! Read it, Muriel. We must go. Put on your
+things at once, my dear. Never mind about luggage. Every minute lost is
+of consequence. What!&quot; he cried a moment later. &quot;You won't go? You'll
+stay here&mdash;stay here and face them? Good Heavens! girl, are you mad?
+Don't you know what this means? It means that the secret is out&mdash;the
+secret is out, you hear! We must fly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman told me that she distinctly heard Miss Muriel sobbing, while
+her father walked up and down the room speaking rapidly in a low tone.
+Then he came out again and returned to his dressing-room, while Miss
+Muriel presumably changed from her evening-gown into a dark
+traveling-dress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did she say anything to you?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only that they were called away suddenly, sir. But,&quot; the domestic
+added, &quot;the young lady was very pale and agitated, and we all knew that
+something terrible had happened. Mrs. Leithcourt gave orders that
+nothing was to be told to the guests, who dined alone, believing that
+their host and hostess had gone down to the village to see an old man
+who was dying. That was the story we told them, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And in the meantime the Leithcourts were in the express going to
+Carlisle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. They say in Dumfries that the police telegraphed after them,
+but they had reached Carlisle and evidently changed there, and so got
+away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By the administration of a judicious tip I was allowed to go up to Miss
+Muriel's room, an elegantly furnished little chamber in the front of the
+fine old place, with a deep old-fashioned window commanding a
+magnificent view across the broad Nithsdale.</p>
+
+<p>The room had been tidied by the maids, but allowed to remain just as she
+had left it. I advanced to the window, in which was set the large
+dressing-table with its big swing-mirror and silver-topped bottles, and
+on gazing out saw, to my surprise, it was the only window which gave a
+view of that corner of Rannoch Wood where the double tragedy had taken
+place. Indeed, any person standing at the spot would have a clear view
+of that one distant window while out of sight of all the rest. A light
+might be placed there at night as signal, for instance; or by day a
+towel might be hung from the window as though to dry and yet could be
+plainly seen at that distance.</p>
+
+<p>Another object in the room also attracted my attention&mdash;a pair of long
+field-glasses. Had she used these to keep watch upon that spot?</p>
+
+<p>I took them up and focused them upon the boundary of the wood, finding
+that I could distinguish everything quite plainly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's where they found the man who was murdered,&quot; explained the
+servant, who still stood in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; I replied. &quot;I was just trying the glasses.&quot; Then I put them
+down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red
+candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon
+the electric table-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Muriel was very fond of a red light,&quot; explained the young woman;
+and as I held it I wondered if that light had ever been placed upon the
+toilet-table and the blind drawn up&mdash;whether it had ever been used as a
+warning of danger?</p>
+
+<p>As I expressed a desire to see the young lady's boudoir, the maid
+Cameron took me down to the luxurious little room where, the first
+moment I entered, one fact struck me as peculiar. The picture of Elma
+Heath was no longer there. The photograph had been taken from its frame,
+and in its place was the portrait of a broad-browed, full-bearded man in
+a foreign military uniform&mdash;a picture that, being soiled and faded, had
+evidently been placed there to fill the empty frame.</p>
+
+<p>Whose hand had secured that portrait before the Leithcourt's flight?
+Why, indeed, should I, for the second time, discover the unhappy girl's
+picture missing?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the gentleman who called on the evening of Mr. Leithcourt's
+disappearance been back here again since he left the hospital?&quot; I
+inquired as a sudden idea occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. He called here in a fly on the day he came out, and at his
+request I took him over the castle. He went into the library, and spent
+half-an-hour in pacing across it, taking measurements, and examining
+the big cupboard in which he was found insensible. It was a strange
+affair, sir,&quot; added the young woman, &quot;wasn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The gentleman might have been in there now had I not gone into the
+library and found a lot of illustrated papers, which I always put in the
+cupboard to keep the place tidy, thrown out on to the floor. I went to
+put them back but discovered the door locked. The key I afterwards found
+in the grate, where Mr. Leithcourt had evidently thrown it, and on
+opening the door imagine the shock I had when I found the visitor lying
+doubled up. I, of course, thought he was dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And when he returned here on his recovery, did he question you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes. He asked about the Leithcourts, and especially about Miss
+Muriel. I believe he's rather sweet on her, by the way he spoke. And
+really no better or kinder lady never breathed, I'm sure. We're all very
+sorry indeed for her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she had nothing to do with the affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not. But she shares in the scandal and disgrace. You should
+have seen the effect of the news upon the guests when they knew that the
+Leithcourts had gone. It was a regular pandemonium. They ordered the
+best champagne out of the cellars and drank it, the men cleared all the
+cigar-boxes, and the women rummaged in the wardrobes until they seemed
+like a pack of hungry wolves. Everybody went away with their trunks full
+of the Leithcourt's things. They took whatever they could lay their
+hands on, and we, the servants, couldn't stop them. I did remonstrate
+with one lady who was cramming into her trunk two of Miss Muriel's best
+evening dresses, but she told me to mind my own business and leave the
+room. One man I saw go away with four of Mr. Leithcourt's guns, and
+there was a regular squabble in the billiard-room over a set of pearl
+and emerald dress-studs that somebody found in his dressing-room. Crane,
+the valet, says they tossed for them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Disgraceful!&quot; I ejaculated. &quot;Then as soon as the host and hostess had
+gone, they simply swept through the rooms and cleared them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. They took away all that was most valuable. They'd have had
+the silver, only Mason had thrown it into the plate-chest, all dirty as
+it was, locked it up and hid the key. The plate was Mr. Gilrae's, you
+know, sir, and Mason was responsible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He acted wisely,&quot; I said, surprised at the domestic's story. &quot;Why, the
+guests acted like a gang of thieves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were, sir. They rushed all over the house like demons let loose,
+and they even stole some of our things. I lost a silver chain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what did the stranger say when you told him of this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He smiled. It did not seem to surprise him in the least, for after all
+his visit was the cause of the sudden breaking up of the party, wasn't
+it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And did you show him over the whole house?&quot; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir,&quot; responded the servant. &quot;Curiously enough he had with him
+what seemed to be a large plan of the castle, and as we went from room
+to room he compared it with his plan. He was here for hours, and told me
+he wanted to make a thorough examination of the place and didn't want to
+be disturbed. He also said that he might probably take the place for
+next season, if he liked it. I think, however, he only told me this
+because he thought I would be more patient while he took his
+measurements and made his investigations. He was here from twelve till
+nearly six o'clock, and went through every room, even up to the
+turrets.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He came into this room, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir,&quot; she responded, with just a slight hesitation, I thought.
+&quot;This was the room where he stayed the longest. There was a photograph
+in that frame over there,&quot; she added, indicating the frame that had held
+the picture of Elma Heath, &quot;a portrait of a young lady, which he begged
+me to give him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you gave it to him?&quot; I cried quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;yes, sir. He begged so hard for it, saying that it was the
+portrait of a friend of his.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he gave you something handsome for it&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young woman, whom I knew could not refuse half-a-sovereign, colored
+slightly and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who put that picture in its place?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did, sir. I found it upstairs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He didn't tell you who the young lady was, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, sir. He only said that that was the only photograph that existed,
+and that she was dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead!&quot; I gasped, staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, sir. That was why he was so anxious for the picture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Elma Heath dead! Could it be true? That sweet-pictured face haunted me
+as no other face had ever impressed itself upon my memory. It somehow
+seemed to impel me to endeavor to penetrate the mystery, and yet Hylton
+Chater had declared that she was dead! I recollected the remarkable
+letter from Abo, and her own declaration that her end was near. That
+letter was, she said, the last she should write to her friend. Did
+Hylton Chater actually possess knowledge of the girl's death? Had he all
+along been acquainted with her whereabouts? What the young woman told
+me upset all my plans. If Elma Heath were really dead, then she was
+beyond discovery, and the truth would be hidden forever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After he had put the photograph in his pocket, the gentleman made a
+most minute search in this room,&quot; the domestic went on. &quot;He consulted
+his plan, took several measurements, and then tapped on the paneling all
+along this wall, as though he were searching for some hidden cupboard or
+hiding place. I looked at the plan, and saw a mark in red ink upon it.
+He was trying to discover that spot, and was greatly disappointed at not
+being able to do so. He was in here over an hour, and made a most
+careful search all around.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what explanation did he give?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He only said, 'If I find what I want, Ann, I shall make you a present
+of a ten-pound note.' That naturally made me anxious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He made no other remark about the young lady's death?&quot; I inquired
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Only he sighed, and looked steadily for a long time at the
+photograph. I saw his lips moving, but his words were inaudible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You haven't any idea of the reason why he called upon Mr. Leithcourt, I
+suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From what he said, I've formed my own conclusions,&quot; was her answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what is your opinion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I feel certain that there is, or was, something concealed in this
+house that he's very anxious to obtain. He came to demand it of Mr.
+Leithcourt, but what happened in the library we don't know. He, however,
+believes that Mr. Leithcourt has not taken it away, and that, whatever
+it may be, it is still hidden here.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a><h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>I SHOW MY HAND</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>On my return to London next day I made inquiry at the Admiralty and
+learned that the battleship <i>Bulwark</i> was lying at Palermo, therefore I
+telegraphed to Jack Durnford, and late the same afternoon his reply came
+at the Cecil:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Due in London twentieth. Dine with me at club that evening</i>&mdash;Jack.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The twentieth! That meant nearly a month of inactivity. In that time I
+could cross to Abo, make inquiries there, and ascertain, perhaps, if
+Elma Heath were actually dead as Chater had declared.</p>
+
+<p>Two facts struck me as remarkable: Baron Oberg was said to be Polish,
+while the dark-bearded proprietor of the restaurant in Westbourne Grove
+was also of the same nationality. Then I recollected that pretty little
+enameled cross that Mackenzie had found in Rannoch Wood, and it suddenly
+occurred to me that it might possibly be the miniature of one of the
+European orders of chivalry. In the club library at midnight I found a
+copy of Cappelletti's <i>Storia degli Ordini Cavallereschi</i>, the standard
+work on the subject, and on searching the illustrations I at length
+discovered a picture of it. It was a Russian order&mdash;the coveted Order of
+Saint Anne, bestowed by the Czar only upon persons who have rendered
+eminent services to the State and to the sovereign. One fact was now
+certain, namely, that the owner of that tiny cross, the small replica of
+the fine decoration, must be a person of high official standing.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I spent in making inquiries with a view to discovering the
+house said to be occupied by Leithcourt. As it was not either in the
+Directory or the Blue Book, I concluded that he had perhaps rented it
+furnished, and after many inquiries and considerable difficulties I
+found that such was the fact. He had occupied the house of Lady
+Heathcote, a few doors from Grosvenor Square, for the previous season,
+although he had lived there but very little.</p>
+
+<p>Where the fugitives were in hiding I had no idea. I longed to meet
+Muriel again and tell her what I had discovered, yet it was plain that
+the trio were concealing themselves from Hylton Chater, whom I supposed
+to be now back in London.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn days were dull and rainy, and the streets were muddy and
+unpleasant, as they always are at the fall of the year. Compelled to
+remain inactive, I idled in the club with the recollection of that
+pictured face ever before me&mdash;the face of the unfortunate girl who
+wished her last message to be conveyed to Philip Hornby. What, I
+wondered, was her secret? What was really her fate?</p>
+
+<p>This latter question troubled me until I could bear it no longer. I felt
+that it was my duty to go to Finland and endeavor to learn something
+regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me
+declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing
+wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew
+how dull he was when alone. Even his Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer
+from homesickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a
+glass of homely bitter ale.</p>
+
+<p>But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of
+time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and
+how sweet are the recollections of our dear gray old England with her
+green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray,
+grimy cities. You have but one &quot;home,&quot; and England Is still your home,
+even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may
+have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year
+through.</p>
+
+<p>Duty&mdash;the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
+defenseless woman was a victim&mdash;called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
+passport properly vis&eacute;d and my papers all in order, I one night left
+Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
+weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
+capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
+plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
+Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
+those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
+knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
+perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
+had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
+landing on the half-deserted quay.</p>
+
+<p>In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
+passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
+forgotten to date the vis&eacute; which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
+It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon
+the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in
+Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before
+you can proceed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it is not my fault,&quot; I protested. &quot;It is the fault of the clerk at
+the Consulate-General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You should have examined it before leaving. You must send it to London,
+and return to Stockholm by to-night's boat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But this is outrageous!&quot; I cried, as he had already taken the papers of
+a passenger behind me and was looking at them with unconcern.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough!&quot; he exclaimed, glaring at me. &quot;You will return to-night, or if
+you choose to stay you will be arrested for landing without a passport.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall not go back!&quot; I declared defiantly. &quot;Your Consul-General vis&eacute;d
+my passport, and I claim, under international law, to be allowed to
+proceed without hindrance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The steamer leaves at six o'clock,&quot; he remarked without looking up. &quot;If
+you are in Abo after that it will be at your own risk.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am English, recollect,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To me it does not matter what or who you are. Your passport, undated,
+is worthless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall complain to the Ambassador at Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Ambassador does not interest me in the least. He is not Ambassador
+here in Finland. There is no Czar here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Who is ruler in this country, pray?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency the Governor-General, an official who has love for
+neither England nor the pigs of English. So recollect that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said meaningly, &quot;I shall recollect it.&quot; And I turned and went
+out of the little wooden office, replacing my passport in my
+pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>I had already been directed to the hotel, and walked there, but as I
+did so I saw that I was already under the surveillance of the police,
+for two men in plain clothes who were lounging outside the
+passport-office strolled on after me, evidently to watch my movements.
+Truly Finland was under the iron-heel of autocracy.</p>
+
+<p>After taking my rooms, I strolled about the flat, uninteresting town,
+wondering how best to commence my search. If I had but a photograph to
+show people it would give me a great advantage, but I had nothing. I had
+never, indeed, set eyes upon the unfortunate girl.</p>
+
+<p>Six o'clock came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound
+for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost,
+therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in
+company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across from
+Stockholm.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock, however, just as we were idling over dessert, two
+gray-coated police officers entered and arrested me on the serious
+charge of landing without a passport.</p>
+
+<p>I accompanied them to the police-office, where I was ushered into the
+presence of the big, bristly Russian who held the town of Abo in terror,
+the Chief of Police. The officials which Russia sends into Finland are
+selected for their harsh discipline and hide-bound bureaucracy, and this
+human machine in uniform was no exception. Had he been the Minister of
+the Interior himself, he could not have been more self-opinionated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; he snapped, looking up at me as I was placed before him. &quot;Your
+name is Gordon Gregg, English, from Stockholm. No passport, and decline
+to leave even though warned&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a passport,&quot; I said firmly, producing it.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at it, and pointing with his finger, said: &quot;It has no date,
+and is therefore worthless.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fault is not mine, but that of a Russian official. If you wish it
+to be dated, you may send it to your Consulate-General in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall not,&quot; he cried, glaring at me angrily. &quot;And for your insult to
+the law, I shall commit you to prison for one month. Perhaps you will
+then learn Russian manners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! so you will commit an Englishman to prison for a month, without
+trial&mdash;eh? That's very interesting! Perhaps if you attempt such a thing
+as that they may have something to say about it in Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You defy me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the least. I have presented my passport and demand common
+courtesy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your passport is worthless, I tell you!&quot; he cried. &quot;There, that's how
+much it is worth to me!&quot; And snatching it up he tore it in half and
+tossed the pieces of blue paper in my face.</p>
+
+<p>My blood was up at this insult, yet I bit my lips and remained quite
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you will kindly tell me who you are?&quot; I asked in as quiet a
+voice as I could command.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With pleasure. I am Michael Boranski, Chief of Police of the Province
+of Abo-Biornebourg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! Well, Michael Boranski, I shall trouble you to pick up my passport,
+stick it together again, and apologize to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Apologize! Me apologize!&quot; And the fellow laughed aloud, while the
+police officers on either side of me grinned from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You refuse?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Refuse? Certainly I do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, then,&quot; I said, re-opening my pocket-book and taking out an
+open letter. &quot;Perhaps you will kindly glance at that. It is in Russian,
+so you can read it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He snatched it from me with ill-grace, but not without curiosity. And
+then, as he read the lines, his face changed and he went paler. Raising
+his head, he stood staring at me open-mouthed in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I apologize to your Excellency!&quot; he gasped, blanched to the lips. &quot;I
+most humbly apologize. I&mdash;I did not know. You told me nothing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you will kindly mend my passport, and give it a proper vis&eacute;.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he was up from his chair, and having gathered the torn
+paper from the floor, proceeded to paste it together. On the back he
+endorsed that it had been torn by accident, and then gave it the proper
+vis&eacute;, affixing the stamps.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I trust, Excellency,&quot; he said, bowing low as he handed it to me, &quot;I
+trust that this affair will not trouble you further. I assure you I had
+no intention of insulting you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, you had!&quot; I said. &quot;You insulted me merely because I am English.
+But recollect in future that the man who insults an Englishman generally
+pays for it, and I do not intend to let this pass. There is a higher
+power in Finland than even the Governor-General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Excellency,&quot; whined the fellow who only ten minutes ago had been
+such an insulting bully, &quot;I shall lose my position. I have a wife and
+six children&mdash;my wife is delicate, and my pay here is not a large one.
+You will forgive, won't you, Excellency? I have apologized&mdash;I most
+humbly apologize.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with
+trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:</p>
+
+<br>&quot;MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD,<br>
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 9em;">&quot;PALACE OF PETERHOF.</span><br>
+
+<p style="margin-top: 0; text-indent: 0;">&quot;The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom
+it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey
+through our dominion. And we hereby command all Governors of Provinces
+and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and
+privileges and immunities as Our guest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian,
+while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred
+and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from
+the gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific&mdash;&quot;Nicholas.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the
+invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry
+into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British
+public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them.
+It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in
+Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in
+European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return
+to Italy to recuperate. The document had therefore remained in my
+possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following
+summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked,
+and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the
+Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given
+me that most valuable document.</p>
+
+<p>Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a
+whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest
+of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He
+begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling
+himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded
+me with awe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires,&quot;
+declared the official. &quot;I will serve your Excellency in any way he may
+command.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he
+feared me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said after some reluctance, &quot;there is a little matter in which
+you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my
+decision of complaining to Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what is that, Excellency?&quot; he gasped eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma
+Heath,&quot; I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper.
+&quot;Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a
+niece of a certain Baron Oberg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Baron Oberg!&quot; he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is
+somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she
+is, and I will say nothing more about my passport,&quot; I added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?&quot; he said
+reflectively, with the paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
+Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made,&quot; was his answer. &quot;When
+I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
+your Excellency's hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
+officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.</p>
+
+<p>On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
+Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
+an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
+south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and
+meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every
+hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the
+country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg
+to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian
+bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful
+neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most
+unscrupulous officials it could import.</p>
+
+<p>My fellow-traveler from Stockholm, who represented a firm of
+paper-makers in Hamburg, and who paid an annual visit to Abo and
+Helsingfors, acted as my guide around the town, while I awaited the
+information from the humbled Chief of Police. My German friend pointed
+out to me how, since Russia placed her hand upon Finland, progress had
+been arrested, and certainly plain evidences were on every hand. There
+was growing discontent everywhere, for many of the newspapers had
+recently been suppressed and the remainder were under a severe
+censorship; agriculture had already decreased, and many of the
+cotton-spinning and saw mills were silent and deserted. The exploitation
+of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated
+down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners
+were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression
+everywhere. Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the
+more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken,
+artificially isolated and oppressed Russia. The double-headed eagle was
+everywhere, and the people sat silent and brooding beneath its black
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There will be an uprising here before long,&quot; declared the German
+confidentially, as we were taking tea one day on the wooden balcony of
+the hotel where the sea and the low-lying islands stretched out before
+us in the pale yellow of the autumn sundown. &quot;The people will revolt, as
+they did in Poland. The Finnish Government can only appeal to the Czar
+through the Governor-General, and one can easily imagine that their
+suggestions never reach the Emperor. It is said here that the harsher
+and more corrupt the official, the greater honor does he receive from
+Petersburg. But trouble is brewing for Russia,&quot; he added. &quot;A very
+serious trouble&mdash;depend upon it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked upon the gray dismal scene, the empty port, the silent quay,
+the dark line of gloomy pine forest away beyond the town, the broken
+coast and the wide expanse of water glittering in the northern sunset.
+Yes. The very silence seemed to forbode evil and mystery. Truly what I
+saw of Finland impressed me even more than what I had witnessed in the
+far-off eastern provinces of European Russia.</p>
+
+<p>My object, however, was not to inquire into the internal condition of
+Finland, or of her resentment of her powerful conqueror. I was there to
+find that unfortunate girl who had written so strangely to her old
+school friend and whose portrait had, for some hidden reason, been
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the third day after my arrival at Abo, while sitting
+on the hotel veranda reading an old copy of the Paris <i>Journal</i>, many
+portions of which had been &quot;blacked out&quot; by the censor, the Chief of
+Police, in his dark green uniform, entered and saluted before me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Excellency, may I be permitted to speak with you in private?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; I responded, rising and conducting him to my bedroom, where
+I closed the door, invited him to a seat, and myself sat upon the edge
+of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have made various inquiries,&quot; he said, &quot;and I think I have found the
+lady your Excellency is seeking. My information, however, must be
+furnished to you in strictest confidence,&quot; he added, &quot;because there are
+reasons why I should withhold her whereabouts from you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; I inquired. &quot;What reasons?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;the lady is living in Finland in secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then she is alive!&quot; I exclaimed quickly. &quot;I thought she was dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To the world she is dead,&quot; responded Michael Boranski, stroking his red
+beard. &quot;For that reason the information I give you must be treated as
+confidential.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should she be in hiding? She is guilty of no offense&mdash;is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this Baron Oberg? You tell me nothing of him,&quot; I said with
+dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can I when I know nothing, Excellency?&quot; was his response.</p>
+
+<p>I felt certain that the fellow was not speaking the truth, for I had
+noticed his surprise when I had first uttered the mysterious nobleman's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I have already said, Excellency, I am desirous of atoning for my
+insult, and will serve you in every manner I can. For that reason I had
+sought news of the young English lady&mdash;the Mademoiselle Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have all foreigners registered in your books,&quot; I said. &quot;The
+search was surely not a difficult one. I know your police methods in
+Russia too well,&quot; I laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, the lady was not registered,&quot; he said. &quot;There was a reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have told you, Excellency. She is in hiding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret that much as I desire, I dare not appear to have any
+connection with your quest. But I will direct you. Indeed, I will give
+you instructions to a second person to take you to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is she in Abo?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. Away in the country. If your Excellency will be down at the end of
+the quay to-morrow at noon you will find a carriage in waiting, and the
+driver will have full instructions how to take you to her and how to
+act. Follow his directions implicitly, for he is a man I can trust.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow!&quot; I cried anxiously. &quot;Why not to-day? I am ready to go at any
+moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Chief of Police remained thoughtful for a few moments, then said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if I could find the man, you might go to-day. Yet it is a long
+way, and you would not return before to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The roads are safe, I suppose? I don't mind driving in the night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The official glanced at the clock, and rising exclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, I will send for the man. If we find him, then the carriage
+will be at the same spot at the eastern end of the quay in two hours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At noon. Very well. I shall keep the appointment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And after seeing her, you will of course keep your promise of secrecy
+regarding our little misunderstanding?&quot; he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have already given my word,&quot; was the response; and the man bowed and
+left, much, I think, to the surprise of the hotel-proprietor and his
+staff. It was an unusual thing for such a high official as the Chief of
+Police to visit one of their guests in person. If he desired to
+interview any of them, he commanded them to attend at his office, or
+they were escorted there by his gray-coated agents.</p>
+
+<p>The day was cold, with a biting wind from the icy north, when after a
+hasty luncheon I put on my overcoat and strolled along the deserted quay
+where I lounged at the further end, watching the approach of a great
+pontoon of pine logs that had apparently floated out of one of the
+rivers and was now being navigated to the port by four men who seemed
+every moment in imminent danger of being washed off the raft into the
+sea as the waves broke over and drenched them. They had, however, lashed
+themselves to their raft, I saw, and now slowly piloted the great
+floating platform towards the quay.</p>
+
+<p>I think I must have waited half an hour, when my attention was suddenly
+attracted by the rattle of wheels over the stones, and turning I saw an
+old closed carriage drawn by three horses abreast, with bells upon the
+harness, approaching me rapidly. When it drew up, the driver, a
+burly-looking, fair-headed Finn in a huge sheepskin overcoat, motioned
+me to enter, urging in broken Russian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quickly, Excellency!&mdash;quickly!&mdash;you must not be seen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then the instant I was seated, and before I could close the door,
+the horses plunged forward and we were tearing at full gallop out of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road
+through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had
+already been garnered. There were no villages. All around was a
+houseless land, rolling miles of brown and green, broken and checkered
+by bits of forest and clumps of dark melancholy pines. The road ran ever
+and anon right down to where the cold, green waves broke upon the rocky
+shore. In a few weeks that coast would be ice-bound and snow-covered,
+and then the silence of the God-forsaken country would be complete.</p>
+
+<p>After five miles or so, the driver pulled up and descended to readjust
+his harness, whereupon I got out and asked him in the best Russian I
+could command:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To Nystad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How far is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sixty-eight,&quot; was his reply.</p>
+
+<p>I took him to imply kilometres, as being a Finn he would not speak of
+versts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Chief of Police has given you directions?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His high Excellency has told me exactly what to do,&quot; was the man's
+answer, as he took out his huge wooden pipe and filled it. &quot;You wish to
+see the young lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered, &quot;to first see her, and I do not know whether it will
+be necessary for me to make myself known to her. Where is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beyond Nystad,&quot; was his vague answer with a wave of his big fat hand in
+the direction of the dark pine forest that stretched before us. &quot;We
+shall be there about an hour after sundown.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I re-entered the stuffy old conveyance that rocked and rolled as we
+dashed away over the uneven forest road, and sat wondering to what
+manner of place I was being conducted.</p>
+
+<p>Elma Heath was in hiding. Why? I recollected her curious letter and
+remembered every word of it. She wished Hornby to know that she had
+never revealed her secret. What secret, I wondered?</p>
+
+<p>I lit an abominable cigar, and tried to smoke, but I was too filled with
+anxiety, too bewildered by the maze of mystery in which I now found
+myself. Two hours later we pulled up before a long log-built post-house
+just beyond a small town in a hollow that faced the sea, and I alighted
+to watch the steaming horses being replaced by a trio of fresh ones. The
+place was Dadendal, I was informed, and the proprietor of the place,
+when I entered and tossed off a liqueur-glass of cognac, pointed out to
+me a row of granite buildings fallen much to decay as the ancient
+convent.</p>
+
+<p>Then, resuming our journey, the short day quickly drew to a close, the
+sun sank yellow and watery over the towering pines through which we went
+mile after mile, a dense, interminable forest wherein the wolves lurked
+in winter, often rendering the road dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>The temperature fell, and it froze again. Through the window in front I
+could see the big Finn driver throwing his arms across his shoulders to
+promote circulation, in the same manner as does the London &quot;cabby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When night drew on we changed horses again at a small, dirty post-house
+in the forest, at the edge of a lake, and then pushed forward again,
+although it was already long past the hour at which he had said we
+should arrive.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed slowly in the darkness, for we had no light, and the horses
+seemed to find their way by instinct. The rolling of the lumbering old
+vehicle after six hours had rendered me sleepy, I think, for I recollect
+closing my eyes and conjuring up that strange scene on board the
+<i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, I suppose I must have slept, for I was awakened by a light
+shining into my face and the driver shaking me by the shoulder. When I
+roused myself and, naturally, inquired the reason, he placed his finger
+mysteriously upon my lips, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush, your high nobility, hush! Come with me. But make no noise. If we
+are discovered, it means death for us&mdash;death. Come, give me your hand.
+Slowly. Tread softly. See, here is the boat. I will get in first. We
+shall not be heard upon the water. So.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the fellow led me, half-dazed, down to the bank of a broad, dark
+river which I could just distinguish&mdash;he led me to an unknown bourne.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat
+he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around
+a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the
+starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a
+distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot; I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only
+whispered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young
+Englishwoman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current,
+steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed
+again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps
+indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of
+a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.</p>
+
+<p>After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake
+where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a
+long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one
+corner&mdash;an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small
+windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining
+upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had
+undoubtedly been placed there as signal.</p>
+
+<p>With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow
+of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the
+lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a
+moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers
+until it was wholly consumed.</p>
+
+<p>Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting
+five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark
+tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as
+any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege
+guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had
+probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.</p>
+
+<p>I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping,
+and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and
+half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had
+opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.</p>
+
+<p>My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper,
+and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the
+narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the
+darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival
+and watching our signal.</p>
+
+<p>Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a
+match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her
+features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray
+wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of
+hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while
+around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized
+that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps,
+with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character,
+and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken
+figure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The sister speaks French?&quot; I hazarded in that language, knowing that in
+most convents throughout Europe French is known.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oui, m'sieur,&quot; was her answer. &quot;And a leetle Engleesh, too&mdash;a ve-ry
+leetle,&quot; she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know why I am here?&quot; I said, gratified that at least one person in
+that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I have already been told,&quot; was her answer with a strong accent, as
+we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the
+tower, once perhaps a prison. &quot;But are you not afraid to venture here?&quot;
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well&mdash;because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your
+presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive&mdash;so I
+warn you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am prepared to risk that,&quot; I said, smiling; at the same time my hand
+instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe.
+&quot;I wish to see Miss Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and
+found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all
+blame?&quot; she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her
+keen gray eyes. &quot;By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I
+should not have done were it not compulsory.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Compulsory! How?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order
+the closed door of the convent had been opened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not,&quot; I answered. &quot;Russian officialdom is all-powerful in
+Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?&quot; she asked in a
+hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am,&quot; I said. &quot;Lead me to her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise
+me that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Sister!&quot; I cried. &quot;You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I
+come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question
+her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be
+permitted to speak with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You wish to learn the truth, sir!&quot; remarked the woman. &quot;I thought you
+were her lover&mdash;that you merely wished to see her once again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I am not her lover,&quot; I answered. &quot;Indeed, we have never yet met.
+But I am in search of the truth from her own lips.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you will never learn,&quot; she said, in a hard, changed voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!&quot; I cried. &quot;But I
+intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
+from England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
+impetuosity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English,&quot; she remarked in
+her broken English. &quot;If your object were known, you would never be
+spared to return to your own land. Ah!&quot; she sighed, &quot;you do not know the
+mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
+and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
+forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
+Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----&quot; and she shrugged her shoulders
+without finishing her sentence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Baron Oberg&mdash;Governor-General of Finland!&quot; I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. Did you not know?&quot; she said, dropping into French. &quot;It is
+four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
+poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot
+upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous
+of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man
+in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His
+niece&mdash;poor young lady!&mdash;can that be? Surely not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and
+sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart
+was really softer than I had believed it to be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where does this Baron live?&quot; I asked, surprised that he should occupy
+so high a place in Russian officialdom&mdash;the representative of the Czar,
+with powers as great as the Emperor himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Elma Heath is here&mdash;in this grim fortress! Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They
+account for so much, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is exactly my opinion,&quot; I said. &quot;She has been brought here against
+her will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five
+months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from
+civilization and see no new face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Terrible!&quot; I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that
+seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I
+supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and
+Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place.
+&quot;And have you been here long?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary
+life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and
+dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had
+half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the
+past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had
+been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a
+distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If
+so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I
+questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, m'sieur,&quot; she declared, &quot;they call him 'The Strangler of the
+Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until
+four of them died&mdash;and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for
+it&mdash;he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in
+prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in
+Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the
+officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered
+Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public
+education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the
+mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are
+filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and
+'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is
+submissive and is Russianized!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to
+time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of
+the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was &quot;The Strangler of
+Finland,&quot; the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country
+to a state of ruin and revolt!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cannot I see her?&quot; I asked, feeling that we had remained too long
+there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped
+from it the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, come,&quot; she said. &quot;But silence! Walk softly,&quot; and holding up the
+old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone
+corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages,
+all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we
+crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big
+nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right
+angles, I saw that we were in a kind of <i>cul de sac,</i> before the door of
+which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then,
+motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her,
+and leaving me in the pitch darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving
+within. No word was uttered, or if so, it was whispered so low that it
+did not reach me. For nearly five minutes I waited in impatience
+outside that closed door, until again the handle turned and my
+conductress beckoned me in silence within.</p>
+
+<p>I stepped into a small, square chamber, the floor of which was carpeted,
+and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light
+over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of
+sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there
+was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was
+another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment;
+then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown,
+a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever
+seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders,
+and as her hands were clasped before her she looked straight at me in
+surprise as she was led towards me.</p>
+
+<p>She walked but feebly, and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress,
+as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her
+beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such
+fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed
+them to be. I stood before her dumbfounded in admiration.</p>
+
+<p>In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with
+astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Elma Heath, I presume?&quot; I exclaimed at last. &quot;May I introduce
+myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan
+by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question&mdash;a question that
+concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.</p>
+
+<p>Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness.
+No sound escaped her.</p>
+
+<p>I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in
+a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.</p>
+
+<p>She was both deaf and dumb!</p>
+
+<p>She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in
+her splendid eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is this place?&quot; I demanded of the woman in the religious habit,
+when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction.
+&quot;Where am I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is the Castle of Kajana&mdash;the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland,&quot;
+was her answer. &quot;The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and
+hearing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Deaf and dumb!&quot; I cried, looking at the beautiful original of that
+destroyed photograph on board the <i>Lola</i>. &quot;But she has surely not always
+been so!&quot; I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I think not always,&quot; replied the sister quietly. &quot;But you said you
+intended to question her, and did I not tell you that to learn the truth
+was impossible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she can write responses to my questions?&quot; I argued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alas! no,&quot; was the old woman's whispered reply. &quot;Her mind is affected.
+She is, unfortunately, a hopeless lunatic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked straight into those sad, wide-open, yet unflinching brown eyes
+utterly confounded.</p>
+
+<p>Those white wrists held in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the
+inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that
+letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands
+were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had
+spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was
+slowly being driven to suicide? She had kept her secret, and she wished
+the man Hornby&mdash;the man who was to marry Muriel Leithcourt&mdash;to know.</p>
+
+<p>The room in which we stood was evidently an apartment set apart for her
+use, for beyond was the tiny bedchamber; yet the small, high-up window
+was closely barred, and the cold bareness of the prison was sufficient
+indeed to cause anyone confined there to prefer death to captivity.</p>
+
+<p>Again I spoke to her slowly and kindly, but there was no response. That
+she was absolutely dumb was only too apparent. Yet surely she had not
+always been so! I had gone in search of her because the beauty of her
+portrait had magnetized me, and I had now found her to be even more
+lovely than her picture, yet, alas! suffering from an affliction that
+rendered her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth
+staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes
+upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the
+countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so full of blank
+unutterable despair.</p>
+
+<p>She placed her clasped hands to her mouth and made signs by shaking her
+head that she could neither understand nor respond. I therefore took my
+wallet from my pocket and wrote upon a piece of paper in a large hand
+the words: &quot;<i>I come from Lydia Moreton. My name is Gordon Gregg</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When her eager gaze fell upon the words she became instantly filled with
+excitement, and nodded quickly. Then holding her steel-clasped wrists
+towards me she looked wistfully at me, as though imploring me to release
+her from the awful bondage in that silent tomb.</p>
+
+<p>Though the woman who had led me there endeavored to prevent it, I
+handed her the pencil, and placed the paper on the table for her to
+write.</p>
+
+<p>The nun tried to snatch it up, but I held her arm gently and forcibly,
+saying in French:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I wish to see if she is really insane. You will at least allow me
+this satisfaction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And while we were in altercation, Elma, with the pencil in her fingers,
+tried to write, but by reason of her hands being bound so closely was
+unable. At length, however, after several attempts, she succeeded in
+printing in uneven capitals the response:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know you. You were on the yacht. I thought they killed you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thin-faced old woman saw her response&mdash;a reply that was surely
+rational enough&mdash;and her brows contracted with displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why are you here?&quot; I wrote, not allowing the sister to get sight of my
+question.</p>
+
+<p>In response, she wrote painfully and laboriously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am condemned for a crime I did not commit. Take me from here, or I
+shall kill myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed the old woman. &quot;You see, poor girl, she believes herself
+innocent! They all do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why is she here?&quot; I demanded fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know, m'sieur. It is not my duty to inquire the history of
+their crimes. When they are ill I nurse them; that is all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is the commandant of this fortress?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Colonel Smirnoff. If he knew that I had admitted you, you would never
+leave this place alive. This is the Schusselburg of Finland&mdash;the place
+of imprisonment for those who have conspired against the State.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The prison of political conspirators, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Alas, m'sieur, yes! The place in which some of the poor creatures are
+tortured in order to obtain confessions and information with as much
+cruelty as in the black days of the Inquisition. These walls are thick,
+and their cries are not heard from the oubliettes below the lake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I had long ago heard of the horrors of Schusselburg. Indeed who has not
+heard of them who has traveled in Russia? The very mention of the modern
+Bastille on Lake Ladoga, where no prisoner has ever been known to come
+forth alive, is sufficient to cause any Russian to turn pale. And I was
+in the Schusselburg of Finland!</p>
+
+<p>I turned over the sheet of paper and wrote the question&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did Baron Oberg send you here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In response, she printed the words&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so. I was arrested in Helsingfors. Tell Lydia where I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know Muriel Leithcourt?&quot; I inquired by the same means, whereupon
+she replied that they were at school together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you see me on board the <i>Lola</i>?&quot; I wrote.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. But I could not warn you, although I had overheard their
+intentions. They took me ashore when you had gone, to Siena. After three
+days I found myself deaf and dumb&mdash;I was made so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her allegation startled me. She had been purposely afflicted!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who did it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A doctor, I suppose. They put me under chloroform.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;People who said they were my friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned to the woman in the religious habit, and cried&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you see what she has written? She has been maimed by some friends
+who intended that the secret she holds should be kept. They feared to
+kill her, so they bribed a doctor to deliberately operate upon her so
+that she could neither speak nor hear. And now they are driving her to
+suicide!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M'sieur, I am astounded!&quot; declared the nun. &quot;I have always believed
+that she was not in her right mind, yet assuredly she seems to be as
+sane as I am, only willfully mutilated by some pretended friend who
+determined that no further word should pass her lips.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A shameful mutilation has been committed upon this poor defenseless
+girl!&quot; I cried in anger. &quot;And I will make it my duty to discover and
+punish the perpetrators of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, m'sieur. Do not act rashly, I pray of you,&quot; the woman said
+seriously, placing her hand upon my arm. &quot;Recollect you are in
+Finland&mdash;where the Baron Oberg is all-powerful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not fear the Baron Oberg,&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;If necessary, I will
+appeal to the Czar himself. Mademoiselle is kept here for the reason
+that she is in possession of some secret. She must be released&mdash;I will
+take the responsibility.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you must not try to release her from here. It would mean death to
+you both. The Castle of Kajana tells no secrets of those who die within
+its walls, or of those cast headlong into its waters and forgotten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again I turned to Elma, who stood in anxious wonder of the subject of
+our conversation, and had suddenly taken the old nun's hand and kissed
+it affectionately, perhaps in order to show me that she trusted her.</p>
+
+<p>Then upon the paper I wrote&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is the Baron Oberg your uncle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head in the negative, showing that the dreaded
+Governor-General of Finland had only acted a part towards her in which
+she had been compelled to concur.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is Philip Hornby?&quot; I inquired, writing rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My friend&mdash;at least, I believe so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Friend! And I had all along believed him to be an adventurer and an
+enemy!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why did he go to Leghorn?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For a secret purpose. There was a plot to kill you, only I managed to
+thwart them,&quot; were the words she printed with much labor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I owe my life to you,&quot; I wrote. &quot;And in return I will do my utmost
+to rescue you from here, if you do not fear to place yourself in my
+hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And to this she replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I
+believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day.
+Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But,&quot;
+she wrote, &quot;I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined here
+on a life sentence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you are English, and if you have had no trial I can complain to our
+Ambassador.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England
+when I was a girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own
+country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that
+allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high
+official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of
+appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!</p>
+
+<p>A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A
+thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her,
+but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood
+there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me,
+notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was,
+perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered
+at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.</p>
+
+<p>Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that
+Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with
+bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both
+hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should
+be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in
+insanity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have decided,&quot; I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had
+conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the
+prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the
+calm attitude of the religious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not act with rashness?&quot; she implored in quick apprehension.
+&quot;Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!&quot; I answered, looking
+straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath
+a spell. &quot;They have drawn her into their power because she had no means
+of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!&quot; cried the old woman in a hoarse
+voice. &quot;If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both
+night and day they would shoot you both.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will risk it,&quot; I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny
+bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had
+verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to
+accompany me.</p>
+
+<p>The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to
+the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here,
+for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will
+not dare to accept such responsibility.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come,&quot; I said to Elma, although, alas! she could not hear my voice.
+&quot;Let us at least make a dash for freedom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be
+conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and
+making no noise.</p>
+
+<p>I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring
+to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone
+corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been
+first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt
+the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her
+faith in me as her deliverer.</p>
+
+<p>I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake
+how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable
+forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt
+the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I
+not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met
+that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though
+fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low
+corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the
+lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses
+awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or
+raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw
+that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my
+side.</p>
+
+<p>Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that
+unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the
+uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep
+voice cried out of the darkness in Russian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halt! or I fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded
+carbine.</p>
+
+<p>A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes
+shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder
+within six feet of us.</p>
+
+<p>The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.</p>
+
+<p>My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the
+hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous
+Governor-General&mdash;fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very
+cleverly prepared for me.</p>
+
+<p>I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save
+the guards had ever been known to emerge&mdash;the Bastille of &quot;The Strangler
+of Finland!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw I was lost.</p>
+
+<p>The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speak!&quot; cried the fellow. &quot;Who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's
+hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it,
+but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his
+gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close
+with him was my only chance.</p>
+
+<p>Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn
+driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl
+whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a
+single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow,
+she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to
+wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying
+to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old
+trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and
+nearly fell.</p>
+
+<p>An oath escaped him, yet in that moment Elma succeeded in twisting the
+gun from his sinewy hands, which I now held with a strength begotten of
+a knowledge of my imminent peril. My whole future, as well as hers,
+depended upon my success in that desperate encounter. He was huge and
+powerful, with a strength far exceeding my own, yet I had been reckoned
+a good wrestler at Uppingham, and now my knowledge of that most ancient
+form of combat held me in good stead.</p>
+
+<p>The man shouted for help, his deep, hoarse voice sounding along the
+stone corridors. If heard by his comrades-in-arms, then the alarm would
+at once be given.</p>
+
+<p>We struggled desperately, swaying to and fro, he trying to throw me,
+while I, at every turn, practiced upon him the tricks learned in my
+youth. It seemed an even match, however, for he kept his feet by sheer
+brute force, and his muscles seemed hard and unbending as steel.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, as we were striving so vigorously and desperately,
+the English girl slipped past us with the carbine in her hand, and with
+a quick movement dragged open the heavy door that gave exit to the
+lake.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant I unfortunately made a false move, and his hand closed
+upon my throat like a band of steel. I fought and struggled to loose
+myself, exerting every muscle, but alas! he gained the advantage. I
+heard a splash, and saw that Elma no longer held the sentry's weapon in
+her hands, having thrown it into the water.</p>
+
+<p>Then at the same moment I heard a voice outside cry in a low tone:
+&quot;Courage, Excellency! Courage! I will come and help you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the faithful Finn, who had been awaiting me in the deep shadow,
+and with a few strokes pulled his boat up to the narrow rickety ledge
+outside the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take the lady!&quot; I succeeded in gasping in Russian. &quot;Never mind me,&quot; and
+I saw to my satisfaction that he guided Elma to step into the boat,
+which at that moment drifted past the little platform.</p>
+
+<p>I struggled valiantly, but against such a man of brute strength I was
+powerless. He held my throat, causing me excruciating pain, and each
+moment I felt my chance of victory grow smaller. My strength was
+failing. While I held his arms at his sides, I could keep him secure
+without much effort, but now with his fingers pressing in my windpipe I
+could not breathe.</p>
+
+<p>I was slowly being strangled.</p>
+
+<p>To be vanquished meant imprisonment there, perhaps even death. Victory
+meant Elma's life, as well as my own. Mine was therefore a fight for
+life. A sudden idea flashed across my mind, and I continued to struggle,
+at the same time gradually forcing my enemy backward towards the door.
+He shouted for help, but was unheard. He cursed and swore and shouted
+until, with a sudden and almost superhuman effort, I tripped him,
+bringing his head into such violent contact with the stone lintel of the
+door that the sound could surely be heard a considerable distance. For a
+moment he was stunned, and in that brief second I released his grip from
+my throat and hurled him backwards beyond the door.</p>
+
+<p>There was the sound of the crashing of wood as the rotten platform gave
+way, a loud splash, and next instant the dark waters closed over the
+big, bearded fellow who would have snatched Elma Heath from me, and have
+held me prisoner in that castle of terrors. He sank like a stone, for
+although I stood watching for him to rise, I could only distinguish the
+woodwork floating away with the current.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment, however, even as I stood there in horror at my deed of
+self-defense, the place suddenly resounded with shouts of alarm, and in
+the tower above me the great old rusty bell began to swing, ringing its
+brazen note across the broad expanse of waters.</p>
+
+<p>The fair-bearded Finn again shot the boat across to where I stood,
+crying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jump, Excellency! For your life, jump! The guards will be upon us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Behind me in the passage I saw a light and the glitter of arms. A shot
+rang out, and a bullet whizzed past me, but I stood unharmed. Then I
+jumped, and nearly upset the boat, but taking an oar I began to row for
+life, and as we drew away from those grim, black walls the fire belched
+forth from three rifles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Row!&quot; I shrieked, turning to see if my fair companion had been hit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Keep cool, Excellency,&quot; urged the Finn. &quot;See, right away there in the
+shadow. We might trick them, for the patrol-boat will be at the head of
+the river waiting to cut us off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again the guards fired upon us, but in the darkness their aim was
+faulty. Lights appeared in the high windows of the castle, and we could
+see that the greatest commotion had been caused by the escape of the
+prisoner. The men at the door in the tower were shouting to the
+patrol-boats, which were nowhere to be seen, calling them to row us down
+and capture us, but by plying our oars rapidly we shot straight across
+the lake until we got under the deep shadow of the opposite shore, and
+then crept gradually along in the direction we had come.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we meet the boats, Excellency, we must run ashore and take to the
+woods,&quot; explained the Finn. &quot;It is our only chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had he spoken when out in the center of the lake we could just
+distinguish a long boat with three rowers going swiftly towards the
+entrance to the river, which we so desired to gain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look!&quot; cried our guide, backing water, and bringing the boat to a
+standstill. &quot;They are in search of us! If we are discovered they will
+fire. It is their orders. No boat is allowed upon this lake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Elma sat watching our pursuers, but still calm and silent. She seemed to
+intrust herself entirely to me.</p>
+
+<p>The guards were rowing rapidly, the oars sounding in the rowlocks,
+evidently in the belief that we had made for the river. But the
+Finlander had apparently foreseen this, and for that reason we were
+lying safe from observation in the deep shadow of an overhanging tree.</p>
+
+<p>A gray mist was slowly rising from the water, and the Finn, noticing it,
+hoped that it might favor us. In Finland in late autumn the mists are
+often as thick as our proverbial London fogs, only whiter, denser, and
+more frosty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If we disembark we shall be compelled to make a detour of fully four
+days in the forest, in order to pass the marshes,&quot; he pointed out in a
+low whisper. &quot;But if we can enter the river we can go ashore anywhere
+and get by foot to some place where the lady can lie in hiding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you advise? We are entirely in your hands. The Chief of Police
+told me he could trust you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think it will be best to risk it,&quot; he said in Russian after a brief
+pause. &quot;We will tie up the boat, and I will go along the bank and see
+what the guards are doing. You will remain here, and I shall not be
+seen. The rushes and undergrowth are higher further along. But if there
+is danger while I am absent get out and go straight westward until you
+find the marsh, then keep along its banks due south,&quot; and drawing up the
+boat to the bank the shrewd, big-boned fellow disappeared into the dark
+undergrowth.</p>
+
+<p>There were no signs yet of the break of day. Indeed, the stars were now
+hidden, and the great plane of water was every moment growing more
+indistinct as we both sat in silence. My ears were strained to catch the
+dipping of an oar or a voice, but beyond the lapping of the water
+beneath the boat there was no other sound. I took the hand of the
+fair-faced girl at my side and pressed it. In return she pressed mine.</p>
+
+<p>It was the only means by which we could exchange confidences. She whom I
+had sought through all those months sat at my side, yet powerless to
+utter one single word.</p>
+
+<p>Still holding her hands in both my own I gripped them to show her that I
+intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as
+though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history?
+What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which
+had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and
+afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up
+before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very
+seriously, or such drastic means would never be employed to secure her
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and next moment a low
+voice spoke which I recognized as that of our friend, the Finn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is danger, Excellency&mdash;a grave danger!&quot; he said in a low half
+whisper. &quot;Three boats are in search of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And scarcely had he uttered those words when there was the flash of a
+rifle from the haze, a loud report, and again a bullet whizzed past just
+behind my head. In an instant the truth became apparent, for I saw the
+dark shadow of a boat rapidly rowed, bearing full upon us. The shot had
+been fired as a signal that we had been sighted, and were pursued. Other
+shots rang out, mingled with the wild exultant shouts of the guards as
+they bore down full upon us, and then I knew that, notwithstanding our
+escape, we were now lost. They were too close upon us to admit of
+eluding them. The peril we had dreaded had fallen. The Finn's presence
+on the bank had evidently been detected by a boat drawn up at the shore,
+and he had been followed to where we had lain in what we had so
+foolishly believed to be a safe hiding-place. Nought else was to be done
+but to face the inevitable. Three times the red fire of a rifle belched
+angrily in our faces, and yet, by good fortune, neither of us was
+struck. Yet we knew too well that the intention of our pursuers was to
+kill us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quick, Excellency! Fly! while there is yet time!&quot; gasped the Finn,
+grasping my hand and half dragging me from the boat, while, I, in turn,
+placed Elma upon the bank.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Hoida!</i> This way! Swiftly!&quot; cried our guide, and the three of us,
+heedless of the consequences, plunged forward into the impenetrable
+darkness, just as our fierce pursuers came alongside where we had only a
+moment ago been seated. They shouted wildly as they sprang to land after
+us, but our guide, who had been born and bred in these forests, knew
+well how to travel in a semi-circle, and how to conceal himself. It was
+a race for freedom&mdash;nay, for very life.</p>
+
+<p>So dark that we could see before us hardly a foot, we were compelled to
+place our hands in front of us to avoid collision with the big tree
+trunks, while ever and anon we found ourselves entangled in the mass of
+dead creepers and vegetable parasites that formed the dense undergrowth.
+Around us on every side we heard the shouts and curses of our pursuers,
+while above the rest we heard an authoritative voice, evidently that of
+a sergeant of the guard, cry&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shoot the man, but spare the woman! The Colonel wants her back. Don't
+let her escape! We shall be well rewarded. So keep on, comrades! <i>Mene
+edemm&auml;ski!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the trembling girl beside me heard nothing, and perhaps indeed it
+was best that she could not hear. My only fear was that our pursuers, of
+whom there now seemed to be a dozen, had extended, with the intention of
+encircling us. They, no doubt, knew every inch of that giant forest with
+its numerous bogs and marshes, and if they could not discover us would
+no doubt drive us into one or other of the bogs, where escape was
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Our gallant guide, on the other hand, seemed to utterly disregard the
+danger and kept on, every now and then stretching out his hand and
+helping along the afflicted girl we had rescued from that living tomb.
+Headlong we went in a straight line, until suddenly we began to feel
+our feet sinking into the soft ground, and then the Finlander turned to
+the left, at right angles, and we found ourselves in a denser
+undergrowth, where in the darkness our hands and faces became badly
+scratched.</p>
+
+<p>Another gun was fired as signal, echoing through the wood, but the sound
+came from the opposite direction to that we were traveling; therefore we
+hoped that we had eluded those whose earnest desire it was to capture us
+for the reward. Suddenly, however, a second gun, an answering signal,
+was fired from straight before us, and that revealed the truth. We were
+actually between the two parties, and they were closing in upon us! They
+had already driven us to the edge of the bog. The Finlander recognized
+our peril as quickly as I did, and halted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us turn straight back,&quot; he urged breathlessly. &quot;We may yet elude
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then we again turned off at right angles, traveling as quickly as we
+were able back towards the lake shore. It was an exciting chase in the
+darkness, for we knew not whither we were going, nor into what pitfall
+or ravine or treacherous marsh we might fall. Once we saw afar through
+the trees the light of a lantern held by a guard, and already the
+sweet-faced girl beside me seemed tired and terribly fatigued. But we
+hurried on and on, striving to make no noise, and yet the crackling of
+wood beneath our feet seemed to us to sound like the noise of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>At last, breathless, we halted to listen. We were already in sight of
+the gray mist where lay the silent lake that held so many secrets. There
+was not a sound. The guards had gone straight on, believing they had
+driven us into that deadly bog wherein, if we had entered, we must have
+been slowly sucked down and engulfed. They were surrounding it, no
+doubt, feeling certain of their prey.</p>
+
+<p>But we crept along the water's edge, until in the gray light we could
+distinguish two empty boats&mdash;that of the guards and our own. We were
+again at the spot where we had disembarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us row to the head of the lake,&quot; suggested the Finn. &quot;We may then
+land and escape them.&quot; And a moment later we were all three in the
+guards' boat, rowing with all our might under the deep shadow of the
+bank northward, in the opposite direction to the town of Nystad.</p>
+
+<p>We kept a sharp look-out for any other boat, but saw none. The signals
+ashore had attracted all the guards to that spot to join in the search,
+and now, having doubled back and again embarked, we were every moment
+increasing the distance between ourselves and our pursuers. I think we
+must have rowed several miles, for ere we landed again, upon a low, flat
+and barren shore, the first gray streak of day was showing in the east.</p>
+
+<p>Elma noticed it, and kept her great brown eyes fixed upon it
+thoughtfully. It was the dawn for her&mdash;the dawn of a new life. Our eyes
+met; she smiled at me, and then gazed again eastward, full of silent
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Having landed, we drew the boat up and concealed it in the undergrowth
+so that the guards, on searching, should not know the direction we had
+taken, and then we went straight on northward across the low-lying
+lands, to where the forest showed dark against the morning gray. The
+mist had now somewhat cleared, but the air was keen and frosty.</p>
+
+<p>This wood, we found, was of tall high pines, where walking was not
+difficult, a wide wilderness of trees which, hour after hour, we
+traversed in the vain endeavor to find the rough path which our guide
+told us led for a hundred miles from Alavo down to Tammerfors, the
+manufacturing center of the country. But to discover a path in a forest
+forty miles wide is a matter of considerable difficulty, and for hours
+we wandered on and on, but alas! always in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Faint and hungry, yet we still kept courage. Fortunately we found a
+little spring, and all three of us drank eagerly with our hands. But of
+food we had nothing, save a small piece of hard rye bread which the Finn
+had in his pocket, the remains of his evening meal; and this we gave to
+Elma, who, half famished, ate it quickly. We knew quite well that it
+would be an easy matter to die of starvation in that great trackless
+forest, therefore we kept on undaunted, while the yellow autumn sun
+struggled through the dark pines, glinting on the straight gray trunks
+and reflecting a golden light in that dead unbroken silence.</p>
+
+<p>How many miles we trudged I have no idea. It was a consolation to know
+that we now had no pursuers, yet what fate lay before us we knew not. If
+we could only find that forest-road we might come across some
+wood-cutter's hut, where we could obtain rough food of some sort, yet
+our guide, used as he was to those enormous woods of central Finland,
+was utterly out of his bearings, and no mark of civilization attracted
+his quick, experienced eye. The light above gradually faded, and over a
+sharp stone Elma stumbled and ripped her shoe.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at my watch, and found that it was already five o'clock. In an
+hour it would be dark, the beginning of the long northern night. Elma,
+who was weary and footsore, asked by signs to be permitted to lay down
+and rest. Therefore we gathered a bed of dried leaves for her, and she
+lay down, and while we watched she was soon asleep. The Finn, who
+declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and
+placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined
+features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss
+upon that soft inviting cheek. Yet I had no right to do so&mdash;no right to
+take such an advantage.</p>
+
+<p>The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused
+me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and
+notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals,
+we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.</p>
+
+<p>Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write,
+therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner
+of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath
+the spell of her beauty. All the little acts of homage I was able to
+perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep
+luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.</p>
+
+<p>The mist had not cleared, for it was soon after dawn when we again moved
+along, hungry, chill, and yet hopeful. At a spring we obtained some
+water, and then, in silent procession, pressed forward in search of the
+rough track of the woodcutters.</p>
+
+<p>Elma's torn shoe gave her considerable trouble, and noticing her
+limping, I induced her to sit down while I took it off, hoping to be
+able to mend it, but, having unlaced it, I saw that upon her stocking
+was a large patch of congealed blood, where her foot itself had also
+been cut. I managed to beat the nails of the shoe with a stone, so that
+its sole should not be lost, and she readjusted it, allowing me to lace
+it up for her and smiling the while.</p>
+
+<p>Forward we trudged, ever forward, across that enormous forest where the
+myriad treetrunks presented the same dismal scene everywhere, a forest
+untrodden save by wild, half-savage lumbermen. Throughout that dull
+gray day we marched onward, faint with hunger, yet suffering but little
+pain, for the first pangs were now past, and were succeeded by slight
+light-headedness. My only fear was that we should be compelled to spend
+another night without shelter, and what its effect might be upon the
+delicately-reared girl whose hand I held tenderly in mine. Surely my
+position was a strange one. Her terrible affliction seemed to cause her
+to be entirely dependent upon me.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, just as the yellow sunlight overhead had begun to fade, the
+flat-faced Finn, whose name he had told me was Felix Estlander, cried
+joyfully&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Polushaite!</i> Look, Excellency! Ah! The road at last!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And as we glanced before us we saw that his quick, well-trained eyes had
+detected away in the twilight, at some distance, a path traversing our
+vista among the gray-green tree-trunks. Then, hurrying along, we found
+ourselves upon a track, on which we turned to the right&mdash;a track, rough
+and deeply-rutted by the felled trunks that were dragged along it to the
+nearest river.</p>
+
+<p>Elma made a gesture of renewed hope, and all three of us redoubled our
+pace, expecting every moment to come upon some log hut, the owner of
+which would surely give us hospitality for the night. But darkness came
+on quickly, and yet we still pushed forward. Poor Elma was limping, and
+I knew that her injured foot was paining her, even though she could tell
+me nothing.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, after walking for nearly four hours in the almost
+impenetrable forest gloom, always fearing lest we might miss the path,
+our hearts suddenly beat quickly by seeing before us a light shining in
+a window, and five minutes later Felix was knocking at the door, and
+asking in Finnish the occupant to give hospitality to a lady lost in
+the forest.</p>
+
+<p>We heard a low growl like a muttered imprecation within, and when the
+door opened there stood upon the threshold a tall, bearded, muscular old
+fellow in a dirty red shirt, with a big revolver shining in his hand. A
+quick glance at us satisfied him that we were not thieves, and he
+invited us in while Felix explained that we had landed from the lake,
+and our boat having drifted away we had been compelled to take to the
+woods. The man heard the Finn's picturesque story, and then said
+something to me which Felix translated into Russian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Excellency is welcome to all the poor fare he has. He gives up his
+bed in the room yonder to the lady, so that she may rest. He is honored
+by your Excellency's presence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And while he was making this explanation the herculean wood-cutter in
+the red shirt stirred the red embers whereon a big pot was simmering,
+and sending forth an appetizing odor, and in five minutes we were all
+three sitting down to a stew of capercailzie, with a foaming light beer
+as a fitting beverage. We finished the dish with such lightning rapidity
+that our host boiled us a number of eggs, which, I fear, denuded his
+larder.</p>
+
+<p>The place was a poor one of two low rooms, built of rough log-pines,
+with double windows for the winter and a high brick stove. Cleanliness
+was not exactly its characteristic, nevertheless we all passed a very
+comfortable hour, and received a warm welcome from the lonely old fellow
+who passed his life so far beyond European civilization, and whose
+house, he told us, was often snowed up and cut off from all the world
+for three or four months at a time.</p>
+
+<p>After we had finished our meal, I asked the sturdy old fellow for a
+pencil, but the nearest thing he possessed was a stick of thick
+charcoal, and with that it was surely difficult to communicate with our
+fair companion. Therefore she rose, gave me her hand, bowed smilingly,
+and then passed into the inner room and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>The old wood-cutter gave us some coarse tobacco, and after smoking and
+chatting for an hour we threw ourselves wearily upon the wooden benches
+and slept soundly.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, at early dawn, we were startled by a loud banging at
+the door, the clattering of hoofs, and authoritative shouts in Russian.
+The old wood-cutter sprang up, and looking through a chink in the heavy
+shutters turned to us with blanched face, whispering breathlessly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The police! What can they want of me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Open!&quot; shouted the horsemen outside. &quot;Open in the name of his Majesty!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Felix and I sprang up facing each other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are entrapped!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an instant our guide Felix made a dash for the door of the inner room
+where Elma had retired, but next second he reappeared, gasping in
+Russian&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellency! Why, the door is open! The lady has gone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gone!&quot; I cried, dismayed, rushing into the little room, where I found
+the truckle couch empty, and the door leading outside wide open. She had
+actually disappeared!</p>
+
+<p>The police again battered at the opposite door, threatening loudly to
+break it in if it were not opened at once, whereupon the old wood-cutter
+drew the bolt and admitted them. Two big, hulking fellows in heavy
+riding-coats and swords strode in, while two others remained mounted
+outside, holding the horses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your names?&quot; demanded one of the fellows, glancing at us as we stood
+together in expectation.</p>
+
+<p>Our host told them his name, and asked why they wished to enter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana,&quot; was the
+reply. &quot;Have you seen any woman here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; responded the wood-cutter. &quot;We never see any woman out in these
+woods.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make
+certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked,
+&quot;Who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is my own affair,&quot; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She
+seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some
+warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore
+she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your identity is my affair,&quot; declared the man with the fair, bristly
+beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is your chief?&quot; I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Melnikoff, at Helsingfors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then this is not in the district of Abo?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gordon Gregg, British subject,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are the drosky-driver from Abo,&quot; remarked the fellow, turning
+to Felix. &quot;Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at
+Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the
+Czar, I arrest you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave
+peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron
+Oberg, the Strangler of Finland. Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing
+that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?&quot; I inquired as
+coolly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For aiding a prisoner to escape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and,
+secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly
+willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is outside my district,&quot; growled the fellow, but I saw that his
+hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make
+all the explanation necessary. Until we have an interview with him, I
+refuse to give any information concerning myself,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have a passport?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I drew it from my pocket, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is the woman?&quot; he demanded. &quot;Tell me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; was my reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps you will tell me,&quot; he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with
+a sinister expression upon his face. &quot;Remember, these fugitives are
+found in your house, and you are liable to arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know&mdash;indeed I don't!&quot; protested the old fellow, trembling
+beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police,
+and held them in dread.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!&quot; he smiled. &quot;Well, perhaps your
+memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also
+arrested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, your Excellency, I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough!&quot; blared the bristly officer. &quot;You have given shelter to
+conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!&quot; the poor old man
+protested. &quot;His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall see afterwards,&quot; he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of
+police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully,
+an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They
+upset everything and pried everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may find papers or letters,&quot; said the officer. &quot;Search thoroughly.&quot;
+And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards
+in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly
+refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted
+on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by
+what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the
+Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom,
+I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared
+that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of
+the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be
+actively making a house-to-house search.</p>
+
+<p>But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her
+own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and
+dastardly plot. That gray dress of hers might, I recollected, betray her
+if she dared to venture near any town, while her affliction would, of
+itself, be plain evidence of identification. All I hoped was that she
+had gone and hidden herself in the forest somewhere in the vicinity to
+wait until the danger of recapture had passed.</p>
+
+<p>For nearly half an hour I argued with the police officer whose intention
+it was to take me under arrest to Helsingfors. Once there, however, I
+knew too well that my liberty would be probably gone for ever. Whatever
+was the Baron's motive in holding the poor girl a prisoner, it would
+also be his motive to silence me. I knew too much for his liking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I refuse to go to Helsingfors,&quot; I said defiantly. &quot;I am a British
+subject, and demand to be taken back to the port where my passport was
+vis&eacute;d.&quot; This argument I repeated time after time, until at length I
+succeeded in convincing him that I really had a right to be taken to
+Abo, and to seek the aid of the British Vice-Consul if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>For as long as possible I succeeded in delaying our departure, but at
+length, just as the yellow sun began to struggle through the gray
+clouds, we were all three compelled to depart in sorrowful procession.</p>
+
+<p>What, we wondered, had really happened to Elma? It was evident that she
+had not fallen into the hands of the police; nevertheless, the fact that
+the door of the inner room was open caused them to look upon the
+statement of the wood-cutter with distinct suspicion and disbelief.</p>
+
+<p>Our captors seemed quite well aware of all the circumstances of our
+escape from Kajana, and were consequently filled with chagrin that Elma,
+the person they so much desired to recapture, had slipped through their
+fingers. While the police rode, we were compelled to walk before them,
+and after trudging ten miles or so through the forest we came across
+another small posse of police, who were apparently in search of us, for
+they expressed delight when they saw us under arrest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is the woman?&quot; inquired one officer of the other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Still at liberty,&quot; replied the man who held us as prisoners. &quot;In hiding
+twenty versts back, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, we shall find her before long,&quot; he said confidently. &quot;Within twelve
+hours we shall have searched the whole forest. She cannot escape us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our captors explained who we were, and then we were pushed forward
+again, skirting a great wide lake called the Nasjarvi, along the wooded
+shore of which we walked the whole day long until, at sundown, we came
+to a picturesque little log-built town facing the water, called
+Filppula. Here we obtained a hasty meal, and afterwards took the train
+down to Abo, where we arrived next morning, after a very uncomfortable
+and sleepless journey.</p>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock I stood in the big bare office of Michael Boranski,
+where only a few days before we had had such a heated argument. As soon
+as the Chief of Police entered, he recognized me under arrest, and
+dismissed my guards with a wave of the hand&mdash;all save the officer who
+had brought me there. The Finnish driver and the old wood-cutter were in
+another room, therefore I stood alone with the police-officer of
+Helsingfors and the Chief of Police at Abo. The latter listened to the
+officer's story of my arrest without saying a word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The prisoner, your Excellency, desired to be brought here to you before
+being taken to Helsingfors. He said you would be aware of the facts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so I am,&quot; remarked Boranski, with a smile. &quot;There is no conspiracy.
+You must at once release this gentleman and the other two prisoners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, Excellency, the Governor-General has issued orders for the
+prisoner's arrest and deportation to Helsingfors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That may be. But I am Chief of Police in Abo, and I release him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The officer looked at me in such blank astonishment that I could not
+resist smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am well aware of the reason of this Englishman's visit to the north,&quot;
+added Boranski. &quot;More need not be said. Has the lady been arrested?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, your Excellency. Every effort is being made to find her. Colonel
+Smirnoff has already been relieved of his post as Governor of Kajana,
+and many of the guards are under arrest for complicity in the plot to
+allow the woman to escape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes. I see from the despatches that a reward is offered for her
+recapture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General is determined that she shall not escape,&quot; remarked
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is probably hidden in the forest, somewhere or other.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. They are making a thorough search over every verst of it. If
+she is there, she will most certainly be found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; remarked Boranski, leaning back in his padded chair and
+looking at me meaningly across the littered table. &quot;And now I wish to
+speak to this Englishman privately, so please leave us. Also inform the
+other two prisoners that they are at liberty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But your Excellency does this upon his own responsibility,&quot; he said
+anxiously. &quot;Remember that I brought them to you under arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I release them entirely at my own discretion,&quot; he said. &quot;As Chief
+of Police of this province, I am permitted to use my jurisdiction, and I
+exercise it in this matter. You are liberty to report that at
+Helsingfors, if you so desire, but I should suggest that you say nothing
+unless absolutely obliged&mdash;you understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which Boranski spoke apparently decided my captor, for
+after a moment's hesitation he said, saluting:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If that is really your wish, then I will obey.&quot; And he left.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellency!&quot; exclaimed the Chief of Police, rising quickly and walking
+towards me as soon as the door was closed, and we were alone, &quot;you have
+had a very narrow escape&mdash;very. I did my best to assist you. I succeeded
+in bribing the water-guards at Kajana in order that you might secure the
+lady's release. But it seems that just at the very moment when you were
+about to get away one of the guards turned informer and roused the
+governor of the castle, with the result that you all three nearly lost
+your lives. The whole matter has been reported to me officially, and,&quot;
+he added with a grim smile, &quot;my men are now searching everywhere for
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why is Baron Oberg so extremely anxious to recapture Miss Heath?&quot; I
+asked earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no idea,&quot; was his reply. &quot;The secret orders from Helsingfors to
+me are to arrest her at all hazards&mdash;alive or dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which means that the Baron would not regret if she was dead,&quot; I
+remarked, in response to which he nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>I told him of the faithful services of Felix, the Finlander, whereupon
+he said simply:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I told you that you might trust him implicitly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But now that you have shown yourself my friend,&quot; I said, &quot;you will
+assist Miss Heath to escape this man, who desires to hold her prisoner
+in that awful place. They are driving her mad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will do my best,&quot; he answered, but shaking his head dubiously. &quot;But
+you must recollect that Baron Oberg is Governor-General of Finland,
+with all the powers of the Czar himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if Elma Heath again falls into his unscrupulous hands, she will
+die,&quot; I declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he sighed, looking me straight in the face, &quot;I fear that what you
+say is only too true. She evidently holds some secret which he fears she
+will reveal. He wishes to rearrest her in order&mdash;well&mdash;&quot; he added in a
+low tone, &quot;in order to close her lips. It would not be the first time
+that persons have been silenced in secret at Kajana. Many fatal
+accidents take place in that fortress, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;THE STRANGLER&quot;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Where was Elma? What was the cause of her inexplicable disappearance
+into the gloomy forest while we had slept?</p>
+
+<p>I returned to the hotel where I had stayed on my arrival, a comfortable
+place called the Phoenix, and lunched there alone. Both Felix, the Finn,
+and my host, the wood-cutter, had received their <i>douceurs</i> and left,
+but to the last-named I had given instructions to return home at once
+and report by telegraph any news of my lost one.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand conflicting thoughts arose within me as I sat in that crowded
+<i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i> filled with a gobbling crowd of the commercial men of
+Abo. I had, I recognized, now to deal with the most powerful man in that
+country, and I suffered a distinct disadvantage by being in ignorance of
+the reason he held that sweet English girl a prisoner. The tragedy of
+the dastardly manner in which she had been willfully maimed caused my
+blood to boil within me. I had never believed that in this civilized
+twentieth century such things could be.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Boranski had given his pledge to assist me, yet he had most
+plainly explained to me his fears. The Baron was intent upon again
+getting Elma into his power. Was it at his orders, I wondered, that the
+sweet-faced girl had been deprived of speech and hearing? Had she fallen
+an innocent victim to his infamous scheming?</p>
+
+<p>About me men were eating strange dishes and talking in Finnish, while
+others were smoking and drinking their vodka; but I was in no mood for
+observation. My only thought was of she who was now lost to me.</p>
+
+<p>Why had she disappeared without warning I was at loss to imagine, yet I
+could only surmise that her flight had been compulsory. Some women
+possess a mysterious sense of intuition, a curious and indescribable
+faculty of knowing when evil threatens them, that presents a strange and
+puzzling problem to our scientists. It is unaccountable, and yet many
+women possess it in a very marked degree. Was it, therefore, possible
+that Elma had awakened, and being warned of her peril had fled without
+arousing us? The suggestion was possible, but I feared improbable.</p>
+
+<p>Another very curious feature in the affair was the sudden manner in
+which Michael Boranski had exerted his power and influence in order to
+render me that service. He had actually bribed the guards of Kajana; he
+had instructed the faithful Felix, he had provided our boat, and he had
+ordered the nun to open the water-gate to me. Why?</p>
+
+<p>There was, I felt convinced, some hidden motive in all that sudden and
+marked friendliness. That he really hated the English I had seen plainly
+when we had first met, and I had only compelled him to serve me by
+presenting the order signed by the Emperor, which made me his guest
+within the Russian dominions. Even that document did not account for the
+length he had gone to secure the release of the woman I now loved in
+secret. The more I thought it over, the more anxious did I become. I
+could discern no motive for his friendliness, and, truth to tell, I
+always distrust those who are too friendly. What straight and decided
+line of action should I take? Carefully I went over all the strange
+events that had happened in England, and while anxious to obtain some
+solution of the amazing problem, yet I could not bring myself to leave
+Finland, and allow Elma to fall into the clutches of that high official
+who so persistently sought her end. No. I would go to him and face him.
+I was anxious to see what manner of man was &quot;The Strangler of Finland.&quot;
+Therefore, that same evening I left Abo, and traveled by rail up to the
+junction Toijala, whence, after a wait of six hours, I resumed by slow
+journey to Helsingfors. I put up at Kamp's, an elegant hotel on the long
+esplanade overlooking the port, and found the town, with its handsome
+streets and spacious squares, to be a much finer place than I had
+believed. When I inquired of the French director of my hotel for the
+residence of his Excellency, the Governor-General, he regarded me with
+some surprise, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron lives up at the Palace, m'sieur&mdash;that great building opposite
+the Salutong. The driver of your drosky will point it out to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is his Excellency in Helsingfors at the present moment?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron never leaves the Palace, m'sieur,&quot; responded the man. &quot;This
+is a strange country, you know,&quot; he added, with a grin. &quot;It is said that
+his Excellency is in hourly fear of assassination.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps not without cause,&quot; I remarked in a low voice, at which he
+elevated his shoulders and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>At noon I descended from a drosky before a long, gray, massive building,
+over the big doorway of which was a large escutcheon bearing the Russian
+arms emblazoned in gold, and on entering where a sentry stood on either
+side, a colossal concierge in livery of bright blue and gold came
+forward to meet me, asking in Russian:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whom do you wish to see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency, the Governor-General.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you an appointment?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency sees no one without an appointment,&quot; the man told me
+somewhat gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not here on public business, but upon a private matter,&quot; I
+explained. &quot;Perhaps I may see his Excellency's secretary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you wish, but I repeat that his Excellency sees no one without a
+previous appointment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew this quite well, for the &quot;Strangler of Finland,&quot; fearful of
+assassination, was as unapproachable as the Czar himself. Following the
+directions of the concierge, however, I crossed a great bare courtyard,
+and, ascending a wide stone staircase, was confronted by a servant, who,
+on hearing my inquiry took me into a waiting-room, and left with my card
+to Colonel Luganski, whom he informed me was the Baron's private
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>After ten minutes or so the man returned, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Colonel will see you if you will please step this way,&quot; and
+following him he conducted me into the richly furnished private
+apartments of the Palace, across a great hall filled with fine
+paintings, and then up a long thickly-carpeted passage to a small,
+elegant room, where a tall bald-headed man in military uniform stood
+awaiting me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your name is M'sieur Gregg,&quot; he exclaimed in very good French, &quot;and I
+understand you desire audience of his Excellency, the Governor-General.
+I regret, however, that he never gives audience to strangers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The matter upon which I desire to see his Excellency is of a purely
+private and confidential nature,&quot; I said, for used as I was to the ways
+of foreign officialdom, I spoke with the same firm courtesy as himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am very sorry, m'sieur, but I fear it will be necessary in that case
+for you to write to his Excellency, and mark your letter 'personal.' It
+will then go into the Governor-General's own hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I have to say cannot be committed to writing,&quot; was my reply. &quot;I
+must see Baron Oberg upon a matter which affects him personally, and
+which admits of no delay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at me quickly, and then in a low voice inquired:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it in regard to a&mdash;well, a conspiracy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His question instantly suggested to me a ruse, and I replied in the
+affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you can place the facts before me without the slightest
+hesitation,&quot; he said, going to the door and slipping the bolt into its
+socket. &quot;Anything spoken into my ear is as though it were spoken into
+that of his Excellency himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I much regret, M'sieur the Colonel, that I must see the Baron in
+person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the plot assassination as its object&mdash;or revolt?&quot; he asked
+pointedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I will explain to the Baron only.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I tell you he will not see you. We have so many persons here with
+secret information concerning Finnish conspiracies against our Russian
+rule. Why, if his Excellency saw everyone who desired to see him, he
+would be compelled to give audience the whole twenty-four hours round.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At a glance I saw that this elegant Colonel, who seemed to take the
+greatest pride over his exquisitely kept person and his spotless
+uniform, did not intend to allow me the satisfaction of an audience of
+that most hated official of the Czar. The latter was in fear of the
+dagger, the pistol, or the bomb, and consequently hedged himself in by
+persons of the Colonel's type&mdash;courteous, diplomatic, but utterly
+unbending. After some further argument, I said at last in a firm tone:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish to impress upon you the extreme importance of the information I
+have to impart, and can only repeat that it is a matter concerning his
+Excellency privately. Will you therefore do me the favor to take my name
+to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency refuses to be troubled with the names of strangers,&quot; was
+his cold reply, as he turned over my card in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if I write upon it the nature of my business, and enclose it in an
+envelope, will you then take it to him?&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated for a short time, twisting his mustache, and then replied
+with great reluctance:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if you are so determined, you may write your business upon your
+card.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I therefore took out one, and on the back wrote in French the words
+which I knew must have the effect of obtaining an audience for me:</p>
+
+<blockquote>&quot;<i>To give information regarding Miss Elma Heath</i>.&quot;</blockquote>
+<br>
+
+<p>This I enclosed in the envelope he handed to me, when, ringing a bell,
+he handed it to the footman who appeared, with orders to take it to his
+Excellency and await a reply. The response came in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Excellency will give audience to the English m'sieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I rose and followed the footman through several wide corridors
+filled with palms and flowers, which formed a kind of winter-garden,
+until we crossed a red-carpeted ante-room, where two statuesque sentries
+stood on guard, and the man conducting me rapped at the great polished
+mahogany doors of the room beyond.</p>
+
+<p>A voice responded, the door was opened, and I found myself in a high,
+beautifully-painted room, with long windows hung with pastel-blue silk
+with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall
+a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle
+embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the
+center of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin,
+wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lapel of
+which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne. His
+hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position
+that when I entered I could not at first see his face against the
+strong, gray light behind.</p>
+
+<p>But when the footman had bowed and retired and we were alone, he turned
+slightly, and I then saw that his bony face, with high cheek-bones,
+slight gray side-whiskers, hard mouth and black eyes set closely
+together, was one that bore the mark of evil upon it&mdash;the keen, sinister
+countenance of one who could act without any compunction and without
+regret. Truly one would not be surprised at any cruel, dastardly action
+of a man with such a face&mdash;the face of an oppressor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; he snapped in French in a high-pitched voice. &quot;You want to see
+me concerning that mad English girl? What picturesque lies do you intend
+to tell me concerning her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no intention of telling any untruths concerning her,&quot; was my
+quick response, as I faced him unflinchingly. &quot;She has told me
+sufficient to&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has told you something! Ah! I guessed as much. I expected this!&quot;
+And I saw that his thin, crafty face went pale, while his eyes glanced
+evilly upon me. He believed that she had revealed to me her secret. He
+placed his hand upon the back of a chair wherein was concealed an
+electric button, and next instant a little stout man in shabby black
+appeared as though by magic through a secret door hidden in the dark
+paneling of the audience chamber&mdash;the man who was his personal guard
+against the plots for his assassination.</p>
+
+<p>His Excellency spoke, and the words he uttered staggered me. I stood
+aghast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seize that man!&quot; he cried, pointing to me. &quot;He is armed! He has just
+threatened to kill me! He is the man against whom we were recently
+warned&mdash;the Englishman!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I cried, standing before the thin-faced official of the Czar, the
+unscrupulous man who had crushed Finland beneath the iron heel of
+Russia, and who, by his lying allegation, now held me in his power. &quot;I
+see your object, Baron Oberg! You intend to arrest me as a conspirator!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Search the fellow. He has a revolver there in his hip-pocket,&quot; declared
+the Governor-General, and in an instant the short, ferret-eyed little
+man had run his hands down me and felt my weapon.</p>
+
+<p>I drew it forth and handed it to him, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are quite welcome to it if you fear that I am here with any
+sinister motive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He obtained admission by a clever ruse,&quot; the Baron explained to the
+police agent. &quot;And then he threatened me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's untrue,&quot; I protested hotly. &quot;I have merely called to see you
+regarding the young English lady, Elma Heath&mdash;the unfortunate lady whom
+you consigned to the fortress of Kajana.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The mad woman, you mean!&quot; he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is not mad,&quot; I cried, &quot;but as sane as you yourself. It is you who
+intended that the horrors of the castle should drive her insane, and
+thus your secret should be kept!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you suggest?&quot; he demanded, stepping a few paces towards me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean, Xavier Oberg, that you would kill Elma Heath if you dared to
+do so,&quot; I answered plainly, as I faced him unflinchingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see?&quot; he laughed, turning to the stout man at my side. &quot;The fellow
+is insane. He does not know what he is talking about. Ah, my dear
+Malkoff, I've had a narrow escape! He came here intending to shoot me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not,&quot; I protested. &quot;I am here to demand satisfaction on behalf of
+Miss Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&mdash;well, if the lady cares to come here herself, I will give her the
+satisfaction she desires,&quot; was his crafty reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The lady has escaped you, and it is therefore hardly likely she will
+willingly return to Helsingfors,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was you who succeeded, by throwing the guard into the water, in
+abducting her from the castle,&quot; he remarked. &quot;But,&quot; he added sneeringly,
+with a sinister smile, &quot;I presume your gallantry was prompted by
+affection&mdash;eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is my own affair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A deaf and dumb woman is surely not a very cheerful companion!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who caused her that affliction?&quot; I cried hotly. &quot;When she was at
+Chichester she possessed speech and hearing as other girls. Indeed, she
+was not afflicted when on board the <i>Lola</i> in Leghorn harbor only a few
+months ago. Perhaps you recollect the narrow escape the yacht had on the
+Meloria sands?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes met mine, and I saw by his drawn face and narrow brows that my
+words were causing him the utmost consternation. My object was to make
+him believe that I knew more than I really did&mdash;to hold him in fear, in
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps the man whom some know as Hornby, or Woodroffe, could tell an
+interesting story,&quot; I went on. &quot;He will, no doubt, when he meets Elma
+Heath, and finds the terrible affliction of which she has been the
+victim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His thin, bony countenance was bloodless, his mouth twitched and his
+gray brows contracted quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't the least idea what you mean, my dear sir,&quot; he stammered.
+&quot;All that you say is entirely enigmatical to me. What have I to do with
+this mad Englishwoman's affairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Send out this man,&quot; I said, pointing to the detective Malkoff, who had
+appeared from behind the paneling of the audience-chamber. &quot;Send him
+out, and I will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the representative of the Czar, always as much in dread of
+assassination as his imperial master, refused. I saw that what I had
+said had upset him, and that he was not at all clear as to how much or
+how little of the true facts I knew.</p>
+
+<p>The connection between the little miniature cross of the Order of St.
+Anne and that red and yellow ribbon in his button-hole struck me
+forcibly at that moment, and I said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no desire to make any statements before a second person. I came
+here to see you privately, and in private will I speak. I have certain
+information that will, I feel confident, be of the utmost interest to
+you--concerning another woman, Armida Santini.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His lips were pressed together, and I noticed how he started when I
+uttered the name of that woman whom I had found dead in Rannoch Wood,
+and whose body had so mysteriously disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what on earth can the woman concern me?&quot; he asked, with a brave
+attempt to remain cool, still speaking in French.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only that you knew her,&quot; was my brief reply. Then, with my eyes still
+fixed upon his, I asked: &quot;Will you not now request this gentleman to
+retire?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment, and then with a wave of his hand dismissed the
+man he had summoned to his aid. A moment later the &quot;Strangler's&quot;
+personal protector had disappeared through that secret door in the
+paneling by which he had entered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; asked the Baron, turning quickly to me again, his dark, evil
+eyes trying to fathom my intentions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I asked. &quot;And what, pray, can you profit by denouncing me as an
+assassin? Remember, Baron, that your secret is mine,&quot; I said in a clear
+voice full of meaning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your intention is blackmail&mdash;eh?&quot; he snapped, walking to the window
+and back again. &quot;How much do you want?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My intention is nothing of the kind. My object is to avenge the
+outrageous injury to Elma Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. That is only natural, m'sieur, if you have fallen in love
+with her,&quot; he said. &quot;But are not your intentions somewhat ill-advised
+considering her position as a criminal lunatic?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is neither,&quot; I protested quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well. You know better than myself,&quot; he laughed. &quot;The offense for
+which she was condemned to confinement in a fortress was the attempted
+assassination of Madame Vakuroff, wife of the General commanding the
+Uleaborg Military Division.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Assassination!&quot; I cried. &quot;Have you actually sent her to prison as a
+murderess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have not. The Criminal Court of Abo did so,&quot; he said dryly. &quot;The
+offense has since been proved to have been the outcome of a political
+conspiracy, and the Minister of the Interior in Petersburg last week
+signed an order for the prisoner's transportation to the island of
+Saghalien.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; I remarked with set teeth. &quot;Because you fear lest she shall write
+down your secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are insulting! You evidently do not know what you are saying,&quot; he
+exclaimed resentfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know what I am saying quite well. You have requested her removal to
+Saghalien in order that the truth shall be never known. But Baron
+Oberg,&quot; I added with mock politeness, &quot;you may do as you will, you may
+send Elma Heath to her grave, you may hold me prisoner if you dare, but
+there are still witnesses of your crime that will rise against you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In an instant he went ghastly pale, and I knew that my blind shot had
+struck its mark. The man before me was guilty of some crime, but what it
+was only Elma herself could tell. That he had had her arrested for an
+attempted political assassination only showed how ingeniously and
+craftily the heartless ruler of that ruined country had laid his plans.
+He feared Elma, and therefore had conspired to have her sent out to that
+dismal penal island in the far-off Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not fear arrest, m'sieur?&quot; he asked, as though with some
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the least&mdash;at least, not arrest by you. You may be the
+representative of the Emperor in Finland, but even here there is justice
+for the innocent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sinister smile played around the thin, gray lips of the man whose very
+name was hated through the great empire of the Czar, and was synonymous
+of oppression, injustice, and heartless tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All I can repeat,&quot; he said, &quot;is that if you bring the young
+Englishwoman here I shall be quite prepared to hear her appeal.&quot; And he
+laughed harshly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ask that because you know it is impossible,&quot; I said, whereat he
+again laughed in my face&mdash;a laugh which made me wonder whether Elma had
+not already fallen into his hands. The uncertainty of her fate held me
+in terrible suspense.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that I have not the
+slightest interest whatsoever in the person in question,&quot; he said
+coldly. &quot;You seem to have formed some romantic attachment towards this
+young woman who attempted to poison Madame Vakuroff, and to have
+succeeded in rescuing her from Kajana. You afterwards disregard the fact
+that you are liable to a long term of imprisonment yourself, and
+actually have the audacity to seek audience of me and make all sorts of
+hints and suggestions that I have held the woman a prisoner for my own
+ends!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not only do I repeat that, Baron Oberg,&quot; I said quickly. &quot;But I also
+allege that it was at your instigation that in Siena an operation was
+performed upon the unfortunate girl which deprived her of speech and
+hearing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At my instigation?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, at yours!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again, but uneasily, a forced laugh, and leaned against the
+edge of the big writing-table near the window.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, what next?&quot; he inquired, pretending to be interested in my
+allegations. &quot;What do you want of me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I desire you to give the Mademoiselle Heath her complete freedom,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All&mdash;for the present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But her future is not in my hands. The Minister in Petersburg has
+decreed her removal to Saghalien as a person dangerous to the State.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which means that she will be ill-treated&mdash;knouted to death, perhaps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We do not use the knout in the Russian prisons nowadays,&quot; he said
+briefly. &quot;His Majesty has decreed its abolition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you adopt torture in Kajana and Schusselburg instead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My time is too limited to discuss our penal system, m'sieur,&quot; he
+exclaimed impatiently, while I could well see that he was anxious to
+escape before I made any further charges against him. I had already
+shown him that Elma had spoken, and he feared that she had told the
+truth. While this would embitter him against her and cause him to seek
+to silence her at all hazards, it was of course in my own interests that
+he should fear any revelations that I might make.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have posed in England as the uncle of Elma Heath, and yet you here
+hold her prisoner. For what reason?&quot; I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is held prisoner by the State&mdash;for conspiracy against Russian
+rule&mdash;not by herself personally.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who enticed her here? Why you, yourself. Who conspired to throw the
+guilt of this attempted murder of the general's wife upon her? You&mdash;you,
+the man whom they call 'The Strangler of Finland'! But I will avenge the
+cruel and abominable affliction you have placed upon her. Her
+secret&mdash;your secret, Baron Oberg&mdash;shall be published to the world. You
+are her enemy&mdash;and therefore mine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; he growled between his teeth, advancing towards me
+threateningly, his fists clenched in his rage. &quot;Recollect, m'sieur, that
+you have insulted me. Recollect that I am Governor-General of Finland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you were Czar himself, I should not hesitate to denounce you as the
+tyrant and mutilator of a poor defenseless woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And to whom, pray, will you tell this romantic story of yours?&quot; he
+laughed hoarsely. &quot;To your prison walls below the lake at Kajana? Yes,
+M'sieur Gregg, you will go there, and once within the fortress you shall
+never again see the light of day. You threaten me&mdash;the Governor-General
+of Finland!&quot; he laughed in a strange, high-pitched key as he threw
+himself into a chair and scribbled something rapidly upon paper,
+appending his signature in his small crabbed handwriting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not threaten,&quot; I said in open defiance, &quot;I shall act.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so shall I,&quot; he said with an evil grin upon his bony face as he
+blotted what he had written and took it up, adding: &quot;In the darkness
+and silence of your living tomb, you can tell whatever strange stories
+you like concerning me. They are used to idiots where you are going,&quot; he
+added grimly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! And where am I going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Back to Kanaja. This order consigns you to confinement there as a
+dangerous political conspirator, as one who has threatened me&mdash;it
+consigns you to the cells below the lake&mdash;for life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed aloud, and my hand sought my wallet wherein was that
+all-powerful document&mdash;the order of the Emperor which gave me, as an
+imperial guest, immunity from arrest. I would produce it as my
+trump-card.</p>
+
+<p>Next second, however, I held my breath, and I think I must have turned
+pale. My pocket was empty! My wallet had been stolen! Entirely and
+helplessly I had fallen into the hands of the tyrant of the Czar.</p>
+
+<p>His own personal interest would be to consign me to a living tomb in
+that grim fortress of Kajana, the horrors of which were unspeakable. I
+had seen enough during my inspection of the Russian prisons as a
+journalist to know that there, in strangled Finland, I should not be
+treated with the same consideration or humanity as in Petersburg or
+Warsaw. The Governor-General consigned me to Kajana as a &quot;political,&quot;
+which was synonymous with a sentence of death in those damp, dark
+<i>oubliettes</i> beneath the water-dungeons every whit as awful as those of
+the Paris Bastile.</p>
+
+<p>We faced each other, and I looked straight into his gray, bony face, and
+answered in a tone of defiance:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are Governor-General, it is true, but you will, I think, reflect
+before you consign me, an Englishman, to prison without trial. I know
+full well that the English are hated by Russia, yet I assure you that in
+London we entertain no love for your nation or its methods.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he laughed, &quot;you are quite right. Russia has no use for an
+effete ally such as England is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Effete or powerful, my country is still able to present an ultimatum
+when diplomacy requires it,&quot; I said. &quot;Therefore I have no fear. Send me
+to prison, and I tell you that the responsibility rests upon yourself.&quot;
+And folding my arms I kept my eyes intently upon his, so that he should
+not see that I wavered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As for the responsibility, I certainly do not fear that, m'sieur,&quot; he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the exposure that will result&mdash;are you prepared to face that?&quot; I
+asked. &quot;Perhaps you are not aware that others beside myself&mdash;one other,
+indeed, who is a diplomatist&mdash;is aware of my journey here? If I do not
+return, your Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Petersburg will be pressed
+for a reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which they will not give.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then if they do not, the truth will be out,&quot; I said laughing harshly,
+for I saw how determined he had become to hold me prisoner. &quot;Come, call
+up your myrmidon and send me to Kajana. It will be the first step
+towards your own downfall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall see,&quot; he growled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! you surely do not think that I, after ten years' service in the
+British diplomatic service, would dare to come to Finland upon this
+quest&mdash;would dare to face the rotten and corrupt officialdom which
+Russia has placed within this country&mdash;without first taking some
+adequate precaution? No, Baron. Therefore I defy you, and I leave
+Helsingfors to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not. You are under arrest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed heartily and snapped my fingers, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Before you give me over to your police, first telegraph to your
+Minister of Finance, Monsieur de Witte, and inquire of him who and what
+I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have merely to send my name and description to the Minister and ask
+for a reply,&quot; I said. &quot;He will give you instructions&mdash;or, if you so
+desire, ask his Majesty yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And why, pray, does his Majesty concern himself about you?&quot; he asked,
+at once puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will learn later, after I am confined in Kajana and your secret is
+known in Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean,&quot; I said, &quot;I mean that I have taken all the necessary steps to
+be forearmed against you. The day I am incarcerated by your order, the
+whole truth will be known. I shall not be the sufferer&mdash;but you will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My words, purposely enigmatical, misled him. He saw the drift of my
+argument, and being of course unaware of how much I knew, he was still
+in fear of me. My only uncertainty was of the actual fate of poor Elma.
+My wallet had been stolen&mdash;with a purpose, without a doubt&mdash;for the
+thief had deprived me of that most important of all documents, the open
+sesame to every closed door, the ukase of the Czar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You defy me!&quot; he said hoarsely, turning back to the window with the
+written order for my imprisonment as a political still in his hand. &quot;But
+we shall see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You rule Finland,&quot; I said in a hard tone, &quot;but you have no power over
+Gordon Gregg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have power, and intend to exert it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For your own ruin,&quot; I remarked with a self-confident smile. &quot;You may
+give your torturers orders to kill me&mdash;orders that a fatal accident
+shall occur within the fortress&mdash;but I tell you frankly that my death
+will neither erase nor conceal your own offenses. There are others, away
+in England, who are aware of them, and who will, in order to avenge my
+death, speak the truth. Remember that although Elma Heath has been
+deprived of both hearing and of speech, she can still write down the
+true facts in black and white. The Czar may be your patron, and you his
+favorite, but his Majesty has no tolerance of officials who are guilty
+of what you are guilty of. You talk of arresting me!&quot; I added with a
+smile. &quot;Why, you ought rather to go on your knees and beg my silence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went white with rage at my cutting sarcasm. He literally boiled over,
+for he saw that I was quite cool and had no fear of him or of the
+terrible punishment to which he intended to consign me. Besides which,
+he was filled with wonder regarding the exact amount of information
+which Elma had imparted to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are certain persons,&quot; I went on, &quot;to whom it would be of intense
+interest to know the true reason why the steam-yacht <i>Lola</i> put into
+Leghorn; why I was entertained on board her; why the safe in the
+British Consulate was rifled, and why the unfortunate girl, kept a
+prisoner on board, was taken on shore just before the hurried sailing of
+the vessel. And there are other mysteries which the English police are
+trying to solve, namely, the reason Armida Santini and a man disguised
+as her husband died in Scotland at the hand of an assassin. But surely I
+need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the
+truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For whom?&quot; he asked, opening his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For you. Come, Baron,&quot; I said, &quot;can we not yet speak frankly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he was silent for a moment, a fact which was in itself proof that my
+pointed argument had caused him to reconsider his intention of sending
+me under escort back to that castle of terror.</p>
+
+<p>If my journey there was in order to meet my love, I would not have
+cared. It was the ignorance of her whereabouts or of her fate that held
+me in such deep, all-consuming anxiety. Each hour that passed increased
+my fond and tender affection for her. And yet what irony of
+circumstance! She had been cruelly snatched from me at the very moment
+that freedom had been ours.</p>
+
+<p>I think it was well that I assumed that air of defiance with the man who
+had ground Finland beneath his heel. He was unused to it. No one dared
+to go against his will, or to utter taunt or threat to him. He was
+paramount, with all the powers of an emperor&mdash;the power, indeed, of life
+and death. Therefore he was not in the habit of being either thwarted or
+criticised, and I could see that my words had aroused within him a
+boiling tumult of resentment and of rage. I told him nothing of the loss
+of my wallet or of the precious document that it had contained. My
+defiance was merely upon principle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Arrest me if you like. Denounce me by means of any lie that arises to
+your lips, but remember that the truth is known beyond the confines of
+the Russian Empire, and for that reason traces will be sought of me and
+full explanation demanded. I have taken precaution, Xavier Oberg,&quot; I
+added, &quot;therefore do your worst. I repeat again that I defy you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paced the big room, his thin claw-like hands still clenched, his
+yellow teeth grinding, his dark, deep-set eyes fixed straight before
+him. If he had dared, he would have struck me down at his feet. But he
+did not dare. I saw too plainly that even though my wallet was gone I
+still held the trump-card&mdash;that he feared me.</p>
+
+<p>The mention I had made of the Minister of Finance, however, seemed to
+cause him considerable hesitation. That high official had the ear of the
+Emperor, and if I were a friend there might be inquiries. As I stood
+before him leaning against a small buhl table, I watched all the complex
+workings of his mind, and tried to read the mysterious motive which had
+caused him to consign poor Elma to Kajana.</p>
+
+<p>He was a proud bully, possessing neither pity nor remorse, an average
+specimen of the high Russian official, a hide-bound bureaucrat, a slave
+to etiquette and possessing a veneer of polish. But beneath it all I saw
+that he was a coward in deadly fear of assassination&mdash;a coward who
+dreaded lest some secret should be revealed. That concealed door in the
+paneling with the armed guard lurking behind was sufficiently plain
+evidence that he was not the fearless Governor-General that was
+popularly supposed. He, &quot;The Strangler of Finland,&quot; had crushed the
+gallant nation into submission, ruining their commerce, sapping the
+country by impressing its youth into the Russian army, forbidding the
+use of the Finnish language, and taxing the people until the factories
+had been compelled to close down while the peasantry starved. And now,
+on the verge of revolt, there had arisen a band of patriots who resented
+ruin, and who had already warned his Majesty by letter that if Baron
+Oberg were not removed from his post he would die.</p>
+
+<p>These and other thoughts ran through my mind in the silence that
+followed our heated argument, for I saw well that he was in actual fear
+of me. I had led him to believe that I knew everything, and that his
+future was in my hands, while he, on his part, was anxious to hold me
+prisoner, and yet dared not do so.</p>
+
+<p>My wallet had probably been stolen by some lurking police-spy, for
+Russian agents abound everywhere in Finland, reporting conspiracies that
+do not exist and denouncing the innocent as &quot;politicals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Baron had halted, and was looking through one of the great windows
+down upon the courtyard below where the sentries were pacing. The palace
+was for him a gilded prison, for he dared not go out for a drive in one
+or other of the parks or for a blow on the water across to Hogholmen or
+Dagero, being compelled to remain there for months without showing
+himself publicly. People in Abo had told me that when he did go out into
+the streets of Helsingfors it was at night, and he usually disguised
+himself in the uniform of a private soldier of the guard, thus escaping
+recognition by those who, driven to desperation by injustice, sought his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>A long silence had fallen between us, and it now occurred to me to take
+advantage of his hesitation. Therefore I said in a firm voice, in
+French&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think, Baron, our interview is at an end, is it not? Therefore I wish
+you good-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned upon me suddenly with an evil flash in his dark eyes, and a
+snarling imprecation in Russian upon his lips. His hand still held the
+order committing me to the fortress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But before I leave you will destroy that document. It may fall into
+other hands, you know,&quot; and I walked towards him with quick
+determination.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall do nothing of the kind!&quot; he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>Without further word I snatched the paper from his thin white fingers
+and tore it up before his face. His countenance went livid. I do not
+think I have ever seen a man's face assume such an expression of
+fiendish vindictiveness. It was as though at that instant hell had been
+let loose within his heart.</p>
+
+<p>But I turned upon my heel and went out, passing the sentries in the
+ante-room, along the flower-filled corridors and across the courtyard to
+the main entrance where the gorgeous concierge saluted me as I stepped
+forth into the square.</p>
+
+<p>I had escaped by means of my own diplomacy and firmness. The Czar's
+representative&mdash;the man who ruled that country&mdash;feared me, and for that
+reason did not hold me prisoner. Yet when I recalled that evil look of
+revenge on my departure, I could not help certain feelings of grave
+apprehension arising within me.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to my hotel, I smoked a cigar in my room and pondered. Where
+was Elma? was the chief question which arose within my mind. By
+remaining in Helsingfors I could achieve nothing further, now that I had
+made the acquaintance of the oppressor, whereas if I returned to Abo I
+might perchance be able to obtain some clue to my love's whereabouts. I
+call her my love because I both pitied and loved the poor afflicted girl
+who was so helpless and defenseless.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore I took the midnight train back to Abo, arriving at the hotel
+next morning. After an hour's rest I set out anxiously in search of
+Felix, the drosky-driver. I found him in his log-built house in the
+Ludno quarter, and when he asked me in I saw, from his face, that he had
+news to impart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I inquired. &quot;And what of the lady? Has she been found?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! your Excellency. It is a pity you were not here yesterday,&quot; he said
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why? Tell me quickly. What has happened?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been assisting the police as spy, Excellency, as I often do, and
+I have seen her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seen her! Where?&quot; I cried in quick anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here, in Abo. She arrived yesterday morning from Tammerfors accompanied
+by an Englishman. She had changed her dress, and was all in black. They
+lunched together at the Restaurant du Nord opposite the landing stage,
+and an hour later left by steamer for Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An Englishman!&quot; I cried. &quot;Did you not inform the Chief of Police,
+Boranski?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, your Excellency. But he said that their passports being in order
+it was better to allow the lady to proceed. To delay her might mean her
+rearrest in Finland,&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then their passports were vis&eacute;d here on embarking?&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;What
+was the name upon that of the Englishman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have it here written down, Excellency. I cannot pronounce your
+difficult English names.&quot; And he produced a scrap of dirty paper whereon
+was written in a Russian hand the name&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Martin Woodroffe.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>I went to the railway station, and from the time-table gathered that if
+I left Abo by rail at noon I could be in Petersburg an hour before noon
+on the morrow, or about four hours before the arrival of the steamer by
+which the silent girl and her companion were passengers. This I decided
+upon doing, but before leaving I paid a visit to my friend, Boranski,
+who, to my surprise and delight, handed me my wallet with the Czar's
+letter intact, saying that it had been found upon a German thief who had
+been arrested at the harbor on the previous night. The fellow had, no
+doubt, stolen it from my pocket believing I carried my paper money in
+the flap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The affair of the English lady is a most extraordinary one,&quot; remarked
+the Chief of Police, toying with his pen as he sat at his big table.
+&quot;She seems to have met this Englishman up at Tammerfors, or at some
+place further north, yet it is curious that her passport should be in
+order even though she fled so precipitately from Kajana. There is a
+mystery connected with her disappearance from the wood-cutter's hut that
+I confess I cannot fathom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither can I,&quot; I said. &quot;I know the man who is with her, and cannot
+help fearing that he is her bitterest enemy&mdash;that he is acting in
+concert with the Baron.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why is he taking her to the capital&mdash;beyond the jurisdiction of
+the Governor-General?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am going straight to Petersburg to ascertain,&quot; I said. &quot;I have only
+come to thank you for your kindness in this matter. Truth to tell, I
+have been somewhat surprised that you should have interested yourself on
+my behalf,&quot; I added, looking straight at the uniformed official.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was not on yours, but on hers,&quot; he answered, somewhat enigmatically.
+&quot;I know something of the affair, but it was my duty as a man to help the
+poor girl to escape from that terrible place. She has, I know, been
+unjustly condemned for the attempted assassination of the wife of a
+General&mdash;condemned with a purpose, of course. Such a thing is not
+unusual in Finland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Abominable!&quot; I cried. &quot;Oberg is a veritable fiend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the man only shrugged his shoulders, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The orders of his Excellency the Governor-General have to be obeyed,
+whatever they are. We often regret, but we dare not refuse to carry them
+out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Russian rule is a disgrace to our modern civilization,&quot; I declared
+hotly. &quot;I have every sympathy with those who are fighting for freedom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, you are not alone in that,&quot; he sighed, speaking in a low whisper,
+and glancing around. &quot;His Majesty would order reforms and ameliorate the
+condition of his people, if only it were possible. But he, like his
+officials, are powerless. Here we speak of the great uprising with bated
+breath, but we, alas! know that it must come one day--very soon&mdash;and
+Finland will be the first to endeavor to break her bonds&mdash;and the Baron
+Oberg the first to fall.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For nearly an hour I sat with him, surprised to find how, although his
+exterior was so harsh and uncouth, yet his heart really bled for the
+poor starving people he was so constantly forced to oppress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have ruined this town of Abo,&quot; he declared, quite frankly. &quot;To my
+own knowledge five hundred innocent persons have gone to prison, and
+another two hundred have been exiled to Siberia. Yet what I have done is
+only at direct orders from Helsingfors&mdash;orders that are stern, pitiless
+and unjust. Men have been torn from their families and sent to the
+mines, women have been arrested for no offense and shipped off to
+Saghalien, and mere children have been cast into prison on charges of
+political conspiracy with their elders&mdash;in order to Russify the
+province! Only,&quot; he added anxiously, &quot;I trust you will never repeat what
+I tell you. You have asked me why I assisted the English Mademoiselle to
+escape from Kajana, and I have explained the reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We ate a hearty meal in company at the <i>Sampalinna</i>, a restaurant built
+like a Swiss ch&acirc;let, and at noon I entered the train on the first stage
+of my slow, tedious journey through the great silent forests and along
+the shores of the lakes of Southern Finland, by way of Tavestehus and
+Viborg, to Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of
+wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended
+the steep gradients. I had not even a newspaper with which to while away
+the time, only my own apprehensive thoughts of whither my helpless love
+was being conducted.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>Surely to no man was there ever presented such a complicated problem as
+that which I was now trying so vigorously to solve. I loved Elma Heath.
+The more I reflected, the deeper did her sweet countenance and tender
+grace impress themselves upon my heart. I loved her, therefore I was
+striving to overtake her.</p>
+
+<p>The steamer, I learned, would call at Hango and Helsingfors. Would they,
+I wonder, disembark at either of those places? Was the man whom I had
+known as Hornby, the owner of the <i>Lola</i>, taking her to place her again
+in the fiendish hands of Xavier Oberg? The very thought of it caused me
+to hold my breath.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight came at last, cold and gray, over those dreary interminable
+marshes where game, especially snipe, seemed abundant, and at a small
+station at the head of a lake called Davidstadt I took my morning glass
+of tea; then we resumed our journey down to Viborg, where a short,
+thick-set Russian of the commercial class, but something of a dandy,
+entered my compartment, and we left express for Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>We had passed by a small station called Galitsina, near which were many
+villas occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, and were
+traveling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveler,
+having asked permission to smoke, commenced to chat affably. He seemed a
+pleasant fellow, and told me that he was a wool merchant, and that he
+had been having a pleasant vacation trout fishing in the Vuoski above
+the falls of the Imatra, where the pools between the rapids abound with
+fish.</p>
+
+<p>He had told me that on account of the shore being so full of weeds and
+the clearness of the water, fishing from the banks was almost an
+impossibility, and how they had to accustom themselves to troll from a
+boat so small as to only accommodate the rower and the fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>Then he remarked suddenly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are English, I presume&mdash;possibly from Helsingfors?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; I answered. &quot;From Abo. I crossed from Stockholm, and am going to
+Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I also. I live in Petersburg,&quot; he added. &quot;We may perhaps meet one
+day. Do you know the capital?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained that I had visited it once before, and had done the usual
+round of sight-seeing. His manner was brisk and to the point, as became
+a man of business, but when we stopped at Bele-Ostrof, on the opposite
+side of the small winding river that separates Finland from Russia
+proper, the Customs officer who came to examine our baggage exchanged a
+curious meaning look with him.</p>
+
+<p>My fellow-traveler believed that I had not observed, yet, keenly on the
+alert as I now was, I was shrewd to detect the least sign or look, and I
+at once resolved to tell the fellow nothing further of my own affairs.
+He was, no doubt, a spy of &quot;The Strangler's,&quot; who had followed me all
+the way from Abo, and had only entered my carriage for the final stage
+of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>This revelation caused me some uneasiness, for even though I was able to
+evade the man on arrival in Petersburg, he could no doubt quickly obtain
+news of my whereabouts from the police to whom my passport must be sent.
+I pretended to doze, and lay back with my eyes half-closed watching him.
+When he found me disinclined to talk further, he took up the paper he
+had bought and became engrossed in it, while I, on my part, endeavored
+to form some plan by which to mislead and escape his vigilance.</p>
+
+<p>The fellow meant mischief&mdash;that I knew. If Elma was flying in secret and
+he watched me, he would know that she was in Petersburg. At all hazards,
+for my love's sake as well as for mine, I saw that I must escape him.
+The ingeniousness and cleverness of Oberg's spies was proverbial
+throughout Finland, therefore he might not be alone, or in any case, on
+arrival in Petersburg would obtain assistance in keeping observation
+upon me. I knew that the Baron desired my death, and that therefore I
+could not be too wary of pitfalls. That fatal chair so cunningly
+prepared for me in Lambeth was still vividly within my memory.</p>
+
+<p>As we passed Lanskaya, and ran through the outer suburbs of Petersburg,
+my fellow-traveler became inquisitive as to where I was going, but I was
+somewhat unresponsive, and busied myself with my bag until we entered
+the great echoing terminus whence I could see the Neva gleaming in the
+pale sunlight and the city beyond. The fellow made no attempt to follow
+me&mdash;he was too clever a secret agent for that. He merely wished me
+&quot;<i>sdravstvuite</i>&quot; raised his hat politely and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>A porter carried my bag out of the station, and I drove across the
+bridge to the large hotel where I had stopped before, the Europe, on the
+corner of the Nevski Prospect and the Michael Street. There I engaged a
+front room looking down into the broad Nevski, had a wash, and then
+watched at the window for the appearance of the spy. I had already a
+good four hours before the steamer from Abo was due, and I intended to
+satisfy myself whether or not I was being followed.</p>
+
+<p>Within twenty minutes the fellow lounged along on the opposite side of
+the road, just as I had expected. He had changed his clothes, and
+presented such a different appearance that at first sight I failed to
+recognize him. He knew that I had driven there, and intended to follow
+me if I came forth. My position was one of extreme difficulty, for if I
+went down to the quay he would most certainly follow me.</p>
+
+<p>Having watched his movements for ten minutes or so I descended to the
+big <i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i> and there ate my luncheon, chatting to the French
+waiter the while. I sat purposely in an alcove, so as to be away from
+the other people lunching there, and in order that I might be able to
+talk with the waiter without being overheard.</p>
+
+<p>Just as I had finished my meal, and he was handing me my bill, I bent
+towards him and asked&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you want to earn twenty roubles?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, m'sieur,&quot; he answered, looking at me with some surprise. &quot;They
+would be acceptable. I am a married man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I want to escape from this place without being observed. There is
+a disagreeable little matter regarding a lady, and I fear a fracas with
+a man who is awaiting me outside in the Nevski.&quot; Then, seeing that he
+hesitated, I assured him that I had committed no crime, and that I
+should return for my baggage that evening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You could pass through the kitchen and out by the servants' entrance,&quot;
+he said, after a moment's reflection. &quot;If m'sieur so desires, I will
+conduct him out. The exit is in a back street which leads on to the
+Catherine Canal.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent!&quot; I said. &quot;Let us go. Of course you will say nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a word, m'sieur,&quot; and he gathered up the notes plus twenty roubles
+with which I paid my bill, and taking my hat I followed him to the end
+of the <i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i> behind a high wooden screen, across the huge
+kitchen, and then through a long stone corridor at the end of which sat
+a gruff old doorkeeper. My guide spoke a word to him, and then the door
+opened and I found myself in a narrow back slum with the canal beyond.</p>
+
+<p>My first visit was to a clothier's, where I purchased and put on a new
+light overcoat and then to a hatter's for a hat of different shape to
+that I was wearing. I carried the hat back to a quiet alley which I had
+noticed, and quickly exchanged the one I was wearing for it, leaving my
+old hat in a corner. Then I entered a <i>caf&eacute;</i> in order to while away the
+hours until the vessel from Finland was due.</p>
+
+<p>At four o'clock I was out upon the quay, straining my eyes seaward for
+any sign of smoke, but could see nothing. The sun was sinking, and the
+broad expanse of water westward danced like liquid gold. The light died
+out slowly, the cold gray of evening crept on. A chill wind sprang up
+and swept the quay, causing me to shiver. I asked of a dock laborer
+whether the steamer was usually late, whereupon he told me that it was
+often five or six hours behind time, depending upon the delay at
+Helsingfors.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight deepened into night, and the rain fell heavily, yet I still
+paced the wet flags in patience, my eyes ever seaward for the light of
+the vessel which I hoped bore my love. My presence there aroused some
+speculation among the loungers, I think; nevertheless, I waited in
+deepest anxiety whether, after all, Elma and Hornby had not disembarked
+at Helsingfors.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after ten o'clock a light shone afar off, and the movement of the
+police and porters on the quay told me that it was the vessel. Then
+after a further anxious quarter of an hour it came, amid great shouting
+and mutual imprecations, slowly alongside the quay, and the passengers
+at last began to disembark in the pelting rain.</p>
+
+<p>One after another they walked up the gangway, filing into the
+passport-office and on into the Custom House, people of all sorts and
+all grades&mdash;Swedes, Germans, Finns, and Russians&mdash;until suddenly I
+caught sight of two figures&mdash;one a man in a big tweed traveling-coat and
+a golf-cap, and the other the slight figure of a woman in a long dark
+cloak and a woolen tam-o'-shanter. The electric rays fell upon them as
+they came up the wet gangway together, and there once again I saw the
+sweet face of the silent woman whom I had grown to love with such
+fervent desperation. The man behind her was the same who had
+entertained me on board the <i>Lola</i>&mdash;the man who was said to be the
+lover of the fugitive Muriel Leithcourt.</p>
+
+<p>Without betraying my presence I watched them pass through the
+passport-office and Custom House, and then, overhearing the address
+which Martin Woodroffe gave the <i>isvoshtchik</i>, I stood aside, wet to the
+skin, and saw them drive away.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock on the following day I found myself installed in the
+Hotel de Paris, a comfortable hostelry in the Little Morskaya, having
+succeeded in evading the vigilance of the spy who had so cleverly
+followed me from Abo, and in getting my suit-case round from the Hotel
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>I was beneath the same roof as Elma, although she was in ignorance of my
+presence. Anxious to communicate with her without Woodroffe's knowledge,
+I was now awaiting my opportunity. He had, it appeared, taken for her a
+pleasant front room with sitting-room adjoining on the first floor,
+while he himself occupied a room on the third floor. The apartments he
+had engaged for her were the most expensive in the hotel, and as far as
+I could gather from the French waiter whom I judiciously tipped, he
+appeared to treat her with every consideration and kindness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, poor young lady!&quot; the man exclaimed as he stood in my room
+answering my questions, &quot;What an affliction! She writes down all her
+orders&mdash;for she can utter no word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has the Englishman received any visitors?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One man&mdash;a Russian&mdash;an official of police, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he receives anyone else, let me know,&quot; I said. &quot;And I want you to
+give Mademoiselle a letter from me in secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bien, m'sieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I turned to the little writing-table and scribbled a few hasty lines to
+my love, announcing my presence, and asking her to grant me an interview
+in secret as soon as Woodroffe was absent. I also warned her of the
+search for her instigated by the Baron, and urged her to send me a line
+in reply.</p>
+
+<p>The note was delivered into her hand, but although I waited in suspense
+nearly all day she sent no reply. While Woodroffe was in the hotel I
+dared not show myself lest he should recognize me, therefore I was
+compelled to sham indisposition and to eat my meals alone in my room.</p>
+
+<p>Both the means by which she had met Martin Woodroffe and the motive were
+equally an enigma. By that letter she had written to her schoolfellow it
+was apparent that she had some secret of his, for had she not wished to
+send him a message of reassurance that she had divulged nothing? This
+would seem that they were close friends; yet, on the other hand,
+something seemed to tell me that he was acting falsely, and was really
+an ally of the Baron's.</p>
+
+<p>Why had he brought her to Petersburg? If he had desired to rescue her he
+would have taken her in the opposite direction&mdash;to Stockholm, where she
+would be free&mdash;whereas he took her, an escaped prisoner, into the very
+midst of peril. It was true that her passport was in order, yet I
+remembered that an order had been issued for her transportation to
+Saghalien, and now once arrested she must be lost to me for ever. This
+thought filled me with fierce anxiety. She was in Petersburg, that city
+where police spies swarm, and where every fresh arrival is noted and his
+antecedents inquired into. No attempt had been made to disguise who she
+was, therefore before long the police would undoubtedly come and arrest
+her as the escaped criminal from Kajana.</p>
+
+<p>For several hours I sat at my window watching the life and movement
+down in the street below, my mind full of wonder and dark forebodings.
+Was Martin Woodroffe playing her false?</p>
+
+<p>Just after half-past six o'clock the waiter entered, and handing me a
+note on a salver, said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mademoiselle has, I believe, only this moment been able to write in
+secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I tore it open and read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>DEAR FRIEND.&mdash;<i>I am so surprised. I thought you were still in Abo.
+Woodroffe has an appointment at eight o'clock on the other side of the
+city, therefore come to me at 8.15. I must see you, and at once. I am in
+peril</i>.&mdash;ELMA HEATH.</p>
+
+<p>My love was in peril! It was just as I had feared. I thanked Providence
+that I had been sent to help her and extricate her from that awful fate
+to which &quot;The Strangler of Finland&quot; had consigned her.</p>
+
+<p>At the hour she named, after the waiter had come to me and announced the
+Englishman's departure, I descended to her sitting-room and entered
+without rapping, for if I had rapped she could not, alas! have heard.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment was spacious and comfortable, thickly carpeted, with heavy
+furniture and gilding. Before the long window were drawn curtains of
+dark green plush, and on one side was the high stove of white porcelain
+with shining brass bands, while from her low lounge-chair a slim wan
+figure sprang up quickly and came forward to greet me, holding out both
+her hands and smiling happily.</p>
+
+<p>I took her hands in mine and held them tightly in silence for some
+moments, as I looked earnestly into those wonderfully brilliant eyes of
+hers. She turned away laughing, a slight flush rising to her cheeks in
+her confusion. Then she led me to a chair, and motioned me to be
+seated.</p>
+
+<p>Ours was a silent meeting, but her gestures and the expression of her
+eyes were surely more eloquent than mere words. I knew well what
+pleasure that re-encounter caused her&mdash;equal pleasure with that it gave
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>Until that moment I had never really loved. I had admired and flirted
+with women. What man has not? Indeed, I had admired Muriel Leithcourt.
+But never until now had I experienced in my heart the real flame of true
+burning affection. The sweetness of her expression, the tender caress of
+those soft, tapering hands, the deep mysterious look in those
+magnificent eyes, and the incomparable grace of all her movements,
+combined to render her the most perfect woman I had ever met&mdash;perfect in
+all, alas! save speech and hearing, of which, with such dastard
+wantonness, she had been deprived.</p>
+
+<p>She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her
+hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret. Then
+turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote
+something with a gold pencil and handed to me. It read&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed
+you from England. He is my enemy. You must take me from here and hide
+me. They intend to send me into exile. Have you ever been in Petersburg
+before? Do you know anyone here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will do my best, dear friend. I have been once in Petersburg. But is
+it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Impossible at present,&quot; she wrote. &quot;We should both be arrested at the
+frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I
+believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that
+he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he
+learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and
+discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter's
+hut. Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were
+asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window. At first I was
+alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend. He told me that the
+police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I
+fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here. At
+that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get
+me out of the Baron's clutches and wring from me my secret. If I
+confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the
+mines.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does your secret concern him?&quot; I asked in writing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she wrote in response. &quot;It would be equally in his interests as
+well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity
+effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore
+with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust in me,&quot; I scribbled quickly. &quot;I will act upon any suggestion you
+make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you
+until this danger is past?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is one friend&mdash;a true friend. Will you take a note to her?&quot; she
+wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the
+contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat
+watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching
+her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and
+unblemished in her youthful womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: &quot;Madame Olga
+Stassulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff.&quot; I knew
+that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the
+Little Neva.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I
+will prepare to be ready when you return,&quot; she wrote. &quot;If Olga is not at
+home, ask to see the Red Priest&mdash;in Russian, '<i>Krasny-pastor</i>.' Return
+quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I assured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later
+I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the canal and across
+the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let
+out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large brass plate
+bearing the name, &quot;Olga Stassulevitch: modes.&quot; I pressed the electric
+button, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame is not at home,&quot; was his brief reply to my inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will see the Red Priest,&quot; I said in a lower tone. &quot;I come from
+Elma Heath.&quot; Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into
+the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the gas was
+not lighted. But striking a match he led me up the broad staircase and
+into a small, cosy, well-furnished room on the second floor, evidently
+the sitting-room of some studious person, judging from the books and
+critical reviews lying about.</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes I waited there, until the door reopened, and there
+entered a man of medium height, with a shock of long snow-white hair
+and almost patriarchal beard, whose dark eyes that age had dimmed
+flashed out at me with a look of curious inquiry, and whose movements
+were those of a person not quite at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have called on behalf of Mademoiselle Elma Heath, to give this letter
+to Madame Stassulevitch, or if she is absent to place it in the hands of
+the Red Priest,&quot; I explained in my best Russian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, sir,&quot; the old man responded in quite good English. &quot;I am the
+person you seek,&quot; and taking the letter he opened it and read it
+through.</p>
+
+<p>I saw by the expression on his furrowed face that its contents caused
+him the utmost consternation. His countenance, already pale, blanched to
+the lips, while in his eyes there shot a fire of quick apprehension. The
+thin, almost transparent hand holding the letter trembled visibly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know Mademoiselle&mdash;eh?&quot; he asked in a hoarse, strained voice as he
+turned to me. &quot;You will help her to escape?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will risk my own life in order to save hers,&quot; I declared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your devotion to her is prompted by what?&quot; he inquired
+suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>I was silent for a moment. Then I confessed the truth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My affection.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he sighed deeply. &quot;Poor young lady! She, who has enemies on every
+hand, sadly needs a friend. But can we trust you&mdash;have you no fear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of being implicated in the coming revolution in Russia? Remember I am
+the Red Priest. Have you never heard of me? My name is Otto Kampf.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Otto Kampf!</p>
+
+<p>I stood before him open-mouthed. Who in Russia had not heard of that
+mysterious unknown person who had directed a hundred conspiracies
+against the Imperial Autocrat, and yet the identity of whom the police
+had always failed to discover. It was believed that Kampf had once been
+professor of chemistry at Moscow University, and that he had invented
+that most terrible and destructive explosive used by the revolutionists.
+The ingredients of the powerful compound and the mode of firing it was
+the secret of the Nihilists alone&mdash;and Otto Kampf, the mysterious
+leader, whose personality was unknown even to the conspirators
+themselves, directed those constant attempts which held the Emperor and
+his Government in such hourly terror.</p>
+
+<p>Rewards without number had been offered by the Ministry of the Interior
+for the betrayal and arrest of the unseen man whose power in Russia,
+permeating every class, was greater than that of the Emperor himself&mdash;at
+whose word one day the people would rise in a body and destroy their
+oppressors.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor, the Ministers, the police, and the bureaucrats knew this,
+yet they were powerless&mdash;they knew that the mysterious professor who had
+disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been
+seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would
+stagger and crush the Empire from end to end&mdash;yet of his whereabouts
+they were in utter ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are surprised,&quot; the old man laughed, noticing my amazement. &quot;Well,
+you are not one of us, yet I need not impress upon you the absolute
+necessity, for Mademoiselle's sake, to preserve the secret of my
+existence. It is because you are not a member of 'The Will of the
+People,' that you have never heard of 'The Red Priest'&mdash;red because I
+wrote my ultimatum to the Czar in the blood of one of his victims
+knouted in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and priest because I preach
+the gospel of freedom and justice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall say nothing,&quot; I said, gazing at the strangely striking figure
+before me&mdash;the unknown man who directed the great upheaval that was to
+revolutionize Russia. &quot;My only desire is to save Mademoiselle Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are prepared to do so at risk of your own liberty&mdash;your own
+life? Ah! you said you love her. Would not this be a test of your
+affection?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am prepared for any test, as long as she escapes the trap which her
+enemies have set for her. I succeeded in saving her from Kajana, and I
+intend to save her now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was it you who actually entered Kajana and snatched her from that
+tomb!&quot; he exclaimed, and he took my hand enthusiastically, adding&mdash;&quot;I
+have no further need to doubt you.&quot; And turning to the table he wrote an
+address upon a slip of paper, saying, &quot;Take Mademoiselle there. She will
+find a safe place of concealment. But go quickly, for every moment
+places you both in more deadly peril. Hide yourself there also.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him and left at once, but as I stepped out of the house and
+re-entered the drosky I saw close by, lurking in the shadow, the spy of
+&quot;The Strangler of Finland,&quot; who had traveled with me from Abo.</p>
+
+<p>Our eyes met, and he recognized me, notwithstanding my light overcoat
+and new hat.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with heart-sinking, the ghastly truth flashed upon me. All had
+been in vain. Elma was lost to me.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Instantly the danger was apparent, and instead of driving back to the
+hotel, I called out to the man to take me to the Moscow railway station,
+in order to put the spy off the scent. I knew he would follow me, but as
+he was on foot, with no drosky in sight, I should be able to reach the
+station before he could, and there elude him.</p>
+
+<p>Over the stones we rattled, leaving the lurking agent standing in the
+deep shadow, but on turning back I saw him dash across the road to a
+by-street, where, in all probability, he had a conveyance in waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after we had crossed the Neva, I countermanded my order to the
+man, saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't go right up to the station. Turn into the Liteinoi Prospect to
+the left, and put me down there. Drive quickly, and I'll pay double
+fare.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He whipped his horses, and we turned into that maze of dark, ill-lit,
+narrow streets that lies between the Vosnesenski and the Nevski, turning
+and winding until we emerged at last into the main thoroughfare again,
+and then at last we turned into the street I had indicated&mdash;a wide road
+of handsome buildings where I knew I was certain to be able to instantly
+get another drosky. I flung the man his money, alighted, and two minutes
+later was driving on towards the Alexander Bridge, traveling in a circle
+back to the hotel. Time after time I glanced behind, but saw nothing of
+the Baron's spy, who had evidently gone to the station with all speed,
+expecting that I was leaving the capital.</p>
+
+<p>I found Elma in her room, ready dressed to go out, wearing a long
+traveling-cloak, and in her hand was a small dressing-case. She was pale
+and full of anxiety until I showed her the slip of paper which Otto
+Kampf had given me with the address written upon it, and then together
+we hurried forth.</p>
+
+<p>The house to which we drove was, we discovered, a large one facing the
+Fontanka Canal, one of the best quarters of the town, and on descending
+I asked the liveried <i>dvornick</i> for Madame Zurloff, the name which the
+&quot;Red Priest&quot; had written.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean the Princess Zurloff,&quot; remarked the man through his red beard.
+&quot;Whom shall I say desires to see her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take that,&quot; I said, handing to him the piece of paper which, beside the
+address, bore a curious cipher-mark like three triangles joined.</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door, leaving us in the wide carpeted hall, the statuary
+in which showed us that it was a richly-furnished place, and when a few
+minutes later he returned, he conducted us upstairs to a fine gilded
+salon, where an elderly gray-haired lady in black stood gravely to
+receive us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Allow me to present Mademoiselle Elma Heath, Princess,&quot; I said,
+speaking in French and bowing, and afterwards telling her my own name.</p>
+
+<p>Our hostess welcomed my love in a graceful speech, but I said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mademoiselle unfortunately suffers a terrible affliction. She is deaf
+and dumb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, how very, very sad!&quot; she exclaimed sympathetically. &quot;Poor girl!
+poor girl!&quot; and she placed her hand tenderly upon Elma's shoulder and
+looked into her eyes. Then, turning to me, she said: &quot;So the Red Priest
+has sent you both to me! You are in danger of arrest, I suppose&mdash;you
+wish me to conceal you here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would only ask sanctuary for Mademoiselle,&quot; was my reply. &quot;For
+myself, I have no fear. I am English, and therefore not a member of the
+Party.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Mademoiselle fears arrest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is an order signed for her banishment to Saghalein,&quot; I said. &quot;She
+was imprisoned at Kajana, the fortress away in Finland, but I succeeded
+in liberating her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has actually been in Kajana!&quot; gasped the Princess. &quot;Ah! we have all
+heard sufficient of the horrors of that place. And you liberated her!
+Why, she is the only person who has ever escaped from that living tomb
+to which Oberg sends his victims.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so, Princess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And may I take it, m'sieur, that the reason you risked your life for
+her is because you love her? Pardon me for suggesting this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have guessed correctly,&quot; I answered. Then, knowing that Elma could
+not hear, I added: &quot;I love her, but we are not lovers. I have not told
+her of my affection. Hers is a long and strange story, and she will
+perhaps tell you something of it in writing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; exclaimed the gray-haired lady smiling, leading my love across
+the luxurious room, the atmosphere of which was filled with the scent of
+flowers, and taking off her cloak with her own hands, &quot;you are safe
+here, my poor child. If spies have not followed you, then you shall
+remain my guest as long as you desire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sure it is very good of you, Princess,&quot; I said gratefully. &quot;Miss
+Heath is the victim of a vile and dastardly conspiracy. When I tell you
+that she has been afflicted as she is by her enemies&mdash;that an operation
+was performed upon her in Italy while she was unconscious&mdash;you will
+readily see in what deadly peril she is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; she cried. &quot;Have her enemies actually done this? Horrible!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She will perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her&mdash;a
+mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian
+subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself
+is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! the Strangler!&quot; she exclaimed with a quick flash in her dark eyes.
+&quot;But his end is near. The Movement is active in Helsingfors. At any
+moment now we may strike our blow for freedom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was an enthusiastic revolutionist, I could see, unsuspected,
+however, by the police on account of her high position in Petersburg
+society. It was she who, as I afterwards discovered, had furnished the
+large sums of money to Kampf for the continuation of the revolutionary
+propaganda, and indeed secretly devoted the greater part of her revenues
+from her vast estates in Samara and Kazan to the Nihilist cause. Her
+husband, himself an enthusiast of freedom, although of the high
+nobility, had been killed by a fall from his horse six years before, and
+since that time she had retired from society and lived there quietly,
+making the revolutionary movement her sole occupation. The authorities
+believed that her retirement was due to the painful loss she had
+sustained, and had no suspicion that it was her money that enabled the
+mysterious &quot;Red Priest&quot; to slowly but surely complete the plot for the
+general uprising.</p>
+
+<p>She compelled me to remove my coat, and tea was served by a Tartar
+footman, whose family she explained had been serfs of the Zurloffs for
+three centuries, and then Elma exchanged confidences with her by means
+of paper and pencil.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is this man Martin Woodroffe, of whom she speaks?&quot; asked the
+Princess presently, turning to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have met him twice&mdash;only twice,&quot; I replied, &quot;and under strange
+circumstances.&quot; Then, continuing, I told her something concerning the
+incidents of the yacht <i>Lola</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He may be in love with her, and desires to force her into marriage,&quot;
+she suggested, expressing amazement at the curious narrative I had
+related.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think not, for several reasons. One is because I know she holds some
+secret concerning him, and another because he is engaged to an English
+girl named Muriel Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leithcourt? Leithcourt?&quot; repeated the Princess, knitting her brows with
+a puzzled air. &quot;Do you happen to know her father's name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Philip Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And has he actually been living in Scotland?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I answered in quick anxiety. &quot;He rented a shoot called Rannoch,
+near Dumfries. A mysterious incident occurred on his estate&mdash;a double
+murder, or murder and suicide; which is not quite clear&mdash;but shortly
+afterwards there appeared one evening at the house a man named Chater,
+Hylton Chater, and the whole family at once fled and disappeared.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Princess Zurloff sat with her lips pressed close together, looking
+straight at the silent girl before her. Elma had removed her hat and
+cloak, and now sat in a deep easy chair of yellow silk, with the
+lamplight shining on her chestnut hair, settled and calm as though
+already thoroughly at home. I smiled to myself as I thought of the
+chagrin of Woodroffe when he returned to find his victim missing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your Highness evidently knows the Leithcourts,&quot; I hazarded, after a
+brief silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard of them,&quot; was her unsatisfactory reply. &quot;I go to England
+sometimes. When the Prince was alive, we were often at Claridge's for
+the season. The Prince was for five years military <i>attach&eacute;</i> at the
+Embassy under de Staal, you know. What I know of the Leithcourts is not
+to their credit. But you tell me that there was a mysterious incident
+before their flight. Explain it to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the long white doors of the handsome salon were thrown
+open by the faithful Tartar servitor, and there entered a man whose hair
+fell over the collar of his heavy overcoat, but whom, in an instant, I
+recognized as Otto Kampf.</p>
+
+<p>Both Elma and I sprang to our feet, while advancing to the Princess he
+bent and gallantly kissed the hand she held forth to him. Then he shook
+hands with Elma, and acknowledging my own greetings, took off his coat
+and threw it upon a chair with the air of an accustomed visitor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I come, Princess, in order to explain to you,&quot; he said. &quot;Mademoiselle
+fears rearrest, and the only house in Petersburg that the police never
+suspect is this. Therefore I send her to you, knowing that with your
+generosity you will help her in her distress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is all arranged,&quot; was her Highness's response. &quot;She will remain
+here, poor girl, until it is safe for her to get out of Russia.&quot; Then,
+after some further conversation, and after my well-beloved had made
+signs of heartfelt gratitude to the man known from end to end of the
+Russian empire as &quot;The Red Priest,&quot; the Princess turned to me, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would much like to know what occurred before the Leithcourts left
+Scotland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Leithcourts!&quot; exclaimed Kampf in utter surprise. &quot;Do you know the
+Leithcourts&mdash;and the English officer Durnford?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked into his eyes in abject amazement. What connection could Jack
+Durnford, of the Marines, have with the adventurer Philip Leithcourt?
+I, however, recollected Jack's word, when I had described the visit of
+the <i>Lola</i> to Leghorn, and further I recollected that very shortly he
+would be back in London from his term of Mediterranean service.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said after a pause, &quot;I happen to know Captain Durnford very
+well, but I had no idea that he was friendly with Leithcourt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Red Priest smiled, stroking his white beard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Explain to her Highness what she desires to know, and I will tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My eyes met Elma's, and I saw how intensely eager and interested she
+was, watching the movement of my lips and trying to make out what words
+I uttered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, &quot;a mysterious tragedy occurred on the edge of a wood
+near the house rented by Leithcourt&mdash;a tragedy which has puzzled the
+police to this day. An Italian named Santini and his wife were found
+murdered.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Santini!&quot; gasped Kampf, starting up. &quot;But surely he is not dead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. That's the curious part of the affair. The man who was killed was a
+man disguised to represent the Italian, while the woman was actually the
+waiter's wife herself. I happen to know the man Santini well, for both
+he and his wife were for some years in my employ.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Princess and the director of the Russian revolutionary movement
+exchanged quick glances. It was as though her Highness implored Kampf to
+reveal to me the truth, while he, on his part, was averse to doing so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And upon whom does suspicion rest?&quot; asked her Highness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As far as I can make out, the police have no clue whatever, except one.
+At the spot was found a tiny miniature cross of one of the Russian
+orders of chivalry&mdash;the Cross of Saint Anne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no suspicion upon Leithcourt?&quot; she asked with some undue
+anxiety I thought.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did he entertain any guests at the shooting-box?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A good many.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No foreigners among them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never met any. They seemed all people from London&mdash;a smart set for
+the most part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why did the Leithcourts disappear so suddenly?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because of the appearance of the man Chater,&quot; I replied. &quot;It is evident
+that they feared him, for they took every precaution against being
+followed. In fact, they fled leaving a big party of friends in the
+house. The man Woodroffe, now at the Hotel de Paris, is a friend of
+Leithcourt as well as of Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was not a guest of Leithcourt when this man representing Santini was
+assassinated?&quot; asked Kampf, again stroking his beard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. As soon as Woodroffe recognized me as a visitor he left&mdash;for
+Hamburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was afraid to face you because of the ransacking of the British
+Consul's safe at Leghorn,&quot; remarked the Princess, who, at the same
+moment, took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then,
+turning to me, she said: &quot;What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg,
+throws a new light upon certain incidents that had hitherto puzzled us.
+The mystery of it all is a great and inscrutable one&mdash;the mystery of
+this poor unfortunate girl, greatest of all. But both of us will
+endeavor to help you to elucidate it; we will help poor Elma to crush
+her enemies&mdash;these cowardly villains who had maimed her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Princess!&quot; I cried. &quot;If you will only help and protect her, you
+will be doing an act of mercy to a defenseless woman. I love her&mdash;I
+admit it. I have done my utmost: I have striven to solve the dark
+mystery, but up to the present I have been unsuccessful, and have only
+remained, even till to-day, the victim of circumstance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let her stay with me,&quot; the kindly woman answered, smiling tenderly upon
+my love. &quot;She will be safe here, and in the meantime we will endeavor to
+discover the real and actual truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And in response I took the Princess's hand and pressed it fervently.
+Although that striking, white-headed man and the rather stiff, formal
+woman in black were the leaders of the great and all-powerful movement
+in Russia known through the civilized world as &quot;The Terror,&quot; yet they
+were nevertheless our friends. They had pledged themselves to help us
+thwart our enemies.</p>
+
+<p>I scribbled a few hasty words upon paper and handed it to Elma. And for
+answer she smiled contentedly, looking into my eyes with an expression
+of trust, devotion and love.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>JUST OFF THE STRAND</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>A week had gone by. The Nord Express had brought me posthaste across
+Europe from Petersburg to Calais, and I was again in London. I had left
+Elma in the care of the Princess Zurloff, whom I knew would conceal her
+from the horde of police-agents now in search of her.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery had so increased until now it had become absolutely
+bewildering. The more I had tried to probe it, the more inexplicable had
+I found it. My brain was awhirl as I sat in the <i>wagon-lit</i> rushing
+across those wide, never-ending plains that lie between the Russian
+capital and Berlin and the green valleys between the Rhine-lands and the
+sea. The maze of mystery rendered me utterly incapable of grasping one
+solid tangible fact, so closely interwoven was each incident of the
+strange life-drama in which, through mere chance, I was now playing a
+leading part. I was aware of one fact only, that I loved Elma with all
+my soul, even though I knew not whom she really was&mdash;or her strange life
+story. Her sweet face, with those soft, brown eyes, so tender and
+intense, stood out ever before me, sleeping or waking. Each moment as
+the express rushed south increased the distance between us, yet was I
+not on my way back to England with a clear and distinct purpose? I
+snatched at any clue, however small, with desperate eagerness, as a
+drowning man clutches at a straw.</p>
+
+<p>The spy from Abo had seen me on the railway platform on my departure
+from Petersburg. He had overheard me buy a ticket for London, and
+previous to stepping into the train I had smiled at him in glad triumph.
+My journey was too long a one for him to follow, and I knew that I had
+at last outwitted him. He had expected to see Elma with me, no doubt,
+and his disappointment was plainly marked. But of Woodroffe I had
+neither seen nor heard anything.</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>It was a cold but dry November night in London, and I sat dining with
+Jack Durnford at a small table in the big, well-lit room of the Junior
+United Service Club. Easy-going and merry as of old, my friend was
+bubbling over with good spirits, delighted to be back again in town
+after three years sailing up and down the Mediterranean, from Gib. to
+Smyrna, Maneuvering always, yet with never a chance of a fight. His
+well-shaven face bore the mark of the southern suns, and the backs of
+his hands were tanned by the heat and the sea. He was, indeed, as smart
+an officer as any at the Junior, for the Marines are proverbial for
+their neatness, and his men on board the <i>Bulwark</i> had received many a
+pleasing compliment from the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Glad to be back!&quot; he exclaimed, as he helped himself to a &quot;peg.&quot; &quot;I
+should rather think so, old chap. You know how awfully wearying the life
+becomes out there. Lots going on down at Palermo, Malta, Monte Carlo, or
+over at Algiers, and yet we can never get a chance of it. We're always
+in sight of the gay places, and never land. I don't blame the youngsters
+for getting off from Leghorn for two days over here in town when they
+can. Three years is a bigger slice out of a fellow's life than anyone
+would suppose. But, by the way, I saw Hutcheson the other day. We put
+into Spezia, and he came out to see the Admiral&mdash;got despatches for
+him, I think. He seems as gay as ever. He lunched at mess, and said how
+sorry he was you'd deserted Leghorn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I haven't exactly deserted it,&quot; I said. &quot;But I really don't love it
+like he does.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. A year or two of the Mediterranean blue is quite sufficient to last
+any fellow his lifetime. I shouldn't live in Leghorn if I had my choice.
+I'd prefer somewhere up in the mountains, beyond Pisa, or outside
+Florence, where you can have a good time in winter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then a silence fell between us, and I sat eating on until the end of the
+meal, wondering how to broach the question I so desired to put to him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall try if I can get on recruiting service at home for a bit,&quot; he
+said presently. &quot;There's an appointment up in Glasgow vacant, and I
+shall try for it. It'll be better, at any rate, than China or the
+Pacific.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was just about to turn the conversation to the visit of the mysterious
+<i>Lola</i> to Leghorn, when two men he knew entered the dining-room, and,
+recognizing him, came across to give him a welcome home. One of the
+newcomers was Major Bartlett, whom I at once recollected as having been
+a guest of Leithcourt's up at Rannoch, and the other a younger man whom
+Durnford introduced to me as Captain Hanbury.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Major!&quot; I cried, rising and grasping his hand. &quot;I haven't seen you
+since Scotland, and the extraordinary ending to your house-party.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he laughed. &quot;It was an amazing affair, wasn't it? After the
+Leithcourts left it was like pandemonium let loose; the guests collared
+everything they could lay their hands upon! It's a wonder to me the
+disgraceful affair didn't get into the papers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But where's Leithcourt now?&quot; I asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Haven't the ghost of an idea,&quot; replied the Major, standing astride with
+his hands in his pockets. &quot;Young Paget of ours told me the other day
+that he saw Muriel driving in the Terminus Road at Eastbourne, but she
+didn't notice him. They were a queerish lot, those Leithcourts,&quot; he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hulloa! What are you saying about the Leithcourts, Charley?&quot; exclaimed
+Durnford, turning quickly from Hanbury. &quot;I know some people of that
+name&mdash;Philip Leithcourt, who has a daughter named Muriel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, they sound much the same. But if you know them, my dear old chap,
+I really don't envy you your friends,&quot; declared the Major with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, Gregg will tell you,&quot; he said. &quot;He knows, perhaps, more than I
+do. But,&quot; he added, &quot;they may not, of course, be the same people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I first met them yachting over at Algiers,&quot; Jack said. &quot;And then again
+at Malta, where they seemed to have quite a lot of friends. They had a
+steam-yacht, the <i>Iris</i>, and were often up and down the Mediterranean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Must be the same people,&quot; declared the Major. &quot;Leithcourt spoke once or
+twice of his yacht, but we all put it down as a non-existent vessel,
+because he was always drawing the long bow about his adventures.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how did you first come to know him?&quot; I asked of the Major eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't know. Somebody brought him to mess, and we struck up an
+acquaintance across the table. He seemed a good chap, and when he asked
+me to shoot I accepted. On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing
+struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was
+asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town. He called
+himself Martin Woodroffe up there&mdash;although I'd known him at the old
+Corinthian Club as Dick Archer. He was believed then to be one of a
+clever gang of international thieves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I first met him he gave me the name of Hornby,&quot; I said. &quot;It was in
+Leghorn, where he was on board a yacht called the <i>Lola</i>, of which he
+represented himself as owner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He left Rannoch very suddenly,&quot; remarked Bartlett. &quot;We understood that
+he was engaged to marry Muriel. If so, I'm sorry for her, poor girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; cried Durnford, starting up. &quot;That man to marry Muriel
+Leithcourt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But his countenance had turned pale, and he gave no answer to my
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If these same Leithcourts are really friends of yours, Durnford, old
+fellow, I'm sorry I've said anything against them,&quot; the Major exclaimed
+in an apologetic tone. &quot;Only the end of my visit was so abrupt and so
+extraordinary, and the company such a mixed one, that&mdash;well, to tell you
+the truth, the people are a mysterious lot altogether.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps our Leithcourts are not the same as those Jack knows,&quot; I
+remarked, in order to escape from a rather difficult situation;
+whereupon Durnford, as though eager to conceal his surprise, said with a
+forced laugh, &quot;Oh! probably not,&quot; and reseated himself at table. Then
+the Major quickly changed the topic of conversation, and afterwards he
+and his friend passed along to their table and sat down to eat.</p>
+
+<p>I could not help noticing that Jack Durnford was upset at what he had
+learnt, yet I hesitated just then to put any question to him. I resolved
+to approach the subject later, so as to allow him time to question me
+if he wished to do so.</p>
+
+<p>After smoking an hour we went across to the Empire, where we spent the
+evening in the grand circle, meeting many men we knew and having a
+rather pleasant time among old acquaintances. If a man who had lived the
+club life of London returns from abroad, he can always run across
+someone he knows in the circle of the Empire about ten o'clock at night.
+Jack was, however, not his old self that he had been before dinner. His
+brow was now heavy and thoughtful, and he appeared deeply immersed in
+some intricate problem, for his eyes were fixed vacantly when
+opportunity was afforded him to think, and he appeared to desire to
+avoid his friends rather than to greet them.</p>
+
+<p>After the theater I induced him to come round to the Cecil, and in the
+wicker chair in the big portico before the entrance we sat to smoke our
+final cigars. It is a favorite spot of mine when in London, for at
+afternoon, when the string band plays and the Americans and other
+cosmopolitans drink tea, there is a continual coming and going, a little
+panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely
+interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the
+shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to
+speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of
+London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than
+perhaps at any other spot. All grades pass before you, from the pushful
+American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud
+Indian Rajah with his turbaned suite; from the variety actress to the
+daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've been a bit down in the mouth to-night, Jack,&quot; I said presently,
+after we had been watching the cabs coming up, depositing the
+home-coming revelers from the Savoy or the Carlton.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he sighed. &quot;And surely I have enough to cause me&mdash;after what I've
+heard from Bartlett.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! Did the facts he told us convey any bad news to you?&quot; I inquired
+with pretended ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said hoarsely, after a brief pause. Then he added: &quot;Bartlett
+said you could tell me what happened up in Scotland, where Leithcourt
+had shooting. Tell me everything,&quot; he added with the air of a man in
+whom all hope is dead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I began, &quot;the Leithcourts took Rannoch Castle, close to my
+uncle's place, near Dumfries. I got to know them, of course, and often
+shot with his party. One day, however, I was amazed to notice in one of
+the rooms the photograph of a lady, the exact counterpart of that
+picture which, I recollect, I told you when in Leghorn I had found torn
+up on board the <i>Lola</i>. You recollect what I narrated about my strange
+adventure, don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remember every word,&quot; was his answer. &quot;Go on. What did you do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing. I held my tongue. But when I discovered that the fellow who
+called himself Woodroffe&mdash;the man who had represented himself as the
+owner of the <i>Lola</i>, and who, no doubt, had had a hand in breaking open
+Hutcheson's safe in the Consulate&mdash;was engaged to Muriel, I became full
+of suspicion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Woodroffe, after meeting me, disappeared&mdash;went to Hamburg, they said,
+on business. Then other things occurred. A man and woman were found
+murdered up in the wood about a mile and a half from the castle. The man
+was made up to represent my man Olinto--I believe you've seen him in
+Leghorn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! They've killed Olinto?&quot; he gasped, starting from his chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. The fellow was made up very much like him. But his wife Armida was
+killed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They killed the woman, and believed they had also killed her husband,
+eh?&quot; he said bitterly through his teeth, and I saw that his strong hands
+grasped the arms of his chair firmly. &quot;And Martin Woodroffe is engaged
+to Muriel Leithcourt. Are you certain of this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; quite certain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And is there no suspicion as to who is the assassin of the woman
+Santini and this mysterious man who posed as her husband?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For some time Jack Durnford smoked in silence, and I could just
+distinguish his white, hard face in the faint light, for it was now
+late, and the big electric lamps had been turned out and we were in
+semi-darkness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That fellow shall never marry Muriel,&quot; he declared in a fierce, hoarse
+voice. &quot;What you have just told me reveals the truth. Did you meet
+Chater?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He appeared suddenly at Rannoch, and the Leithcourts fled precipitately
+and have not since been heard of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, no wonder!&quot; he remarked with a dry laugh. &quot;No wonder! But look
+here, Gordon, I'm not going to stand by and let that scoundrel Woodroffe
+marry Muriel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You love her, perhaps?&quot; I hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I do love her,&quot; he admitted. &quot;And, by heaven!&quot; he cried, &quot;I will
+tell the truth and crush the whole of their ingenious plot. Have you met
+Elma Heath?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said in quick anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then listen,&quot; he said in a low, earnest voice. &quot;Listen, and I'll tell
+you something.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is a greater mystery surrounding that yacht, the <i>Lola</i>, than you
+have ever imagined, my dear old chap,&quot; declared Jack Durnford, looking
+me straight in the face. &quot;When you told me about it on the quarter-deck
+that day outside Leghorn, I was half a mind to tell you what I knew.
+Only one fact prevented me&mdash;my disinclination to reveal my own secrets.
+I loved Muriel Leithcourt, yet, afloat as I was, I could never see
+her&mdash;I could not obtain from her own lips the explanation I desired. Yet
+I would not prejudge her&mdash;no, and I won't now!&quot; he added with a fierce
+resolution.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I love her,&quot; he went on, &quot;and she reciprocates my love. Ours is a
+secret engagement made in Malta two years ago, and yet you tell me that
+she has pledged herself to that fellow Woodroffe&mdash;the man known here in
+London as Dick Archer. I can't believe it--I really can't, old fellow.
+She could never write to me as she has done, urging patience and secrecy
+until my return.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unless, of course, she desired to gain time,&quot; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>But my friend was silent; his brows were deep knit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Woodroffe is at the present moment in Petersburg,&quot; I said. &quot;I've just
+come back from there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In St. Petersburg!&quot; he gasped, surprised. &quot;Then he is with that
+villainous official, Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; Oberg is living shut up in his palace at Helsingfors, fearing to go
+out lest he shall be assassinated,&quot; was my answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Elma? What has become of her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is in hiding in Petersburg, awaiting such time as I can get her
+safely out of Russia,&quot; and then, continuing, I explained how she had
+been maimed and rendered deaf and dumb.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What!&quot; he cried fiercely. &quot;Have they actually done that to the poor
+girl? Then they feared that she should reveal the nature of their plot,
+for she had seen and heard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Seen and heard what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be patient; we will elucidate this mystery, and the motive of this
+terrible infliction upon her. Muriel wrote to me saying that poor Elma,
+her friend, had disappeared, and she feared that some evil had also
+happened to her. So Oberg had sent her to his fortress&mdash;his own private
+Bastille&mdash;the place to which, on pretended charges of conspiracy against
+Russia, he sends those who thwart him to a living tomb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have seen him, and I have defied him,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have! Man alive! be careful. He's not a fellow who sticks at
+trifles,&quot; said Jack warningly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't fear,&quot; I replied. &quot;Elma's enemies are also mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I take it, old fellow, that notwithstanding her affliction, you
+are actually in love with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I intend to rescue, and to marry her,&quot; I answered quite frankly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But first we must tear aside this veil of mystery and ascertain all the
+facts concerning her,&quot; he said. &quot;At present I only know one or two very
+vague details. The baron is certainly not her uncle, as he represents
+himself to be, but it seems certain that she is the daughter of
+Anglo-Russian parents, and was born in Russia and brought to England
+when a child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But from whom do you expect I can obtain the true facts concerning her,
+and the reason of the baron's desire to keep her silent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; he said, twisting his mustache thoughtfully. &quot;That's just the
+question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive
+of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow
+Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot,
+whatever it may be, I feel convinced. She may be the victim of that
+blackleg Woodroffe, who, as Bartlett has told you, is one of the most
+expert swindlers in London, and who has already done two terms of penal
+servitude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what was the motive in breaking open the Consul's safe, if not to
+obtain the Foreign Office or Admiralty ciphers? Perhaps they wanted to
+steal them and sell them to a foreign government?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; that was not their object. I've thought over it many, many times
+since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a
+fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows
+his ciphers to remain behind. When he leaves his post he always deposits
+those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his
+Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port. They'd surely
+ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet. The affair was a
+risky one, and Dick Archer is known as a man of many precautions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he is on extremely friendly terms with Elma. It was he who
+succeeded in finding her in Finland, and taking her beyond Oberg's
+sphere of influence to Petersburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then it is certainly only an affected friendship, with some sinister
+motive underlying it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She wrote a letter from her island prison to an old schoolfellow named
+Lydia Moreton, asking her to see Woodroffe at his rooms in Cork Street,
+and tell him that through all she was suffering she had kept her promise
+to him, and that the secret was still safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly. And now the fellow fears that as you are so actively searching
+out the truth, she may yield to your demands and explain. He therefore
+intends to silence her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! to kill her, you mean?&quot; I gasped, in quick apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, he might do so, in order to save himself, you see,&quot; Jack replied,
+adding: &quot;He certainly would have no compunction if he thought that it
+would not be brought home to him. Only he, no doubt, fears you, because
+you have found her, and are in love with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I admitted the force of his argument, but recollected that my dear one
+was safe in concealment, and that the Princess was our friend, even
+though I, as an Englishman, had no sympathy with the doctrine of the
+bomb and the knife.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to get from him all that he knew concerning Elma, but he seemed,
+for some curious reason, disinclined to tell. All I could gather was
+that Leithcourt was in league with Chater and Woodroffe, and that Muriel
+had acted as an entirely innocent agent. What the conspiracy was, or
+what was its motive, I could not discern. I was as far off the solution
+of the problem as ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We must first find Muriel,&quot; he declared, when I pressed him to tell me
+everything he knew. &quot;There are facts you have told me which negative my
+own theories, and only from her can we obtain the real truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But surely you know where she is? She writes to you,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The last letter, which I received at Gib. ten days ago, was from the
+Hotel Bristol, at Botzen, in the Tyrol, yet Bartlett says she has been
+seen down at Eastbourne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you have an address where you always write to her, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, a secret one. I have written and made an appointment, but she has
+not kept it. She has been prevented, of course. She may be with her
+parents, and unable to come to London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did not know that they had fled, and were in hiding?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not. What I've heard to-night is news to me&mdash;amazing news.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And does it not convey to you the truth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It does&mdash;a ghastly truth concerning Elma Heath,&quot; he answered in a low
+voice, as though speaking to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me. What? I'm dying, Jack, to know everything concerning her. Who
+is that fellow Oberg?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her enemy. She, by mere accident, learned his secret and Woodroffe's,
+and they now both live in deadly fear of her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And for that reason she was taken to Siena, where some villainous
+Italian doctor was bribed to render her deaf and dumb.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Chater?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know very little concerning him. He may have conspired with them, or
+he may be innocent. It seems as though he were antagonistic to their
+schemes, if Leithcourt and his family really fled from him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet he was on board the <i>Lola</i>. Indeed, he may have helped to
+commit the burglary at the Consulate,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite likely,&quot; he answered. &quot;But our first object must be to rediscover
+Muriel. Paget says she is in Eastbourne. If she is there, we shall
+easily find her. They publish visitors' lists in the papers, don't they,
+like they do at Hastings?&quot; Then he added: &quot;Visitors' lists are most
+annoying when you find your name printed in them when you are supposed
+officially to be somewhere else. I was had once like that by the
+Bournemouth papers, when I was supposed to be on duty over at
+Queenstown. I narrowly escaped a terrible wigging.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall we go to Eastbourne?&quot; I suggested eagerly. &quot;I'll go there with
+you in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Or would it not be best to send an urgent wire to the address where I
+always write? She would then reply here, no doubt. If she's in
+Eastbourne, there may be reasons why she cannot come up to town. If her
+people are in hiding, of course she won't come. But she'll make an
+appointment with me, no doubt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well. Send a wire,&quot; I said. &quot;And make it urgent. It will then be
+forwarded. But as regards Olinto? Would you like to see him? He might
+tell you more than he has told me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; by no means. He must not know that I have returned to London,&quot;
+declared my friend quickly. &quot;You had better not see him&mdash;you
+understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then his interests are&mdash;well, not exactly our own?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why don't you tell me more about Elma?&quot; I urged, for I was eager to
+learn all he knew. &quot;Come, do tell me!&quot; I implored.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've told you practically everything, my dear old fellow,&quot; was his
+response. &quot;The revelation of the true facts of the affair can be made
+only by Muriel. I tell you, we must find her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, we must&mdash;at all hazards,&quot; I said. &quot;Let's go across to the
+telegraph office opposite Charing Cross. It's open always.&quot; And we rose
+and walked out along the Strand, now nearly deserted, and despatched an
+urgent message to Muriel at an address in Hurlingham Road, Fulham.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards we stood outside on the curb, still talking, I loth to part
+from him, when there passed by in the shadow two men in dark overcoats,
+who crossed the road behind us to the front of Charing Cross station,
+and then continued on towards Trafalgar Square.</p>
+
+<p>As the light of the street lamp fell upon them, I thought I recognized
+the face of one as that of a person I had seen before, yet I was not at
+all certain, and my failure to remember whom the passer-by resembled
+prevented me from saying anything further to Jack than:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A fellow I know has just gone by, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We seem to be meeting hosts of friends to-night,&quot; he laughed. &quot;After
+all, old chap, it does one good to come back to our dear, dirty old town
+again. We abuse it when we are here, and talk of the life in Paris, and
+Vienna, and Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so
+dear to us, for it is 'home.' But there!&quot; he laughed, &quot;I'm actually
+growing romantic. Ah! if we could only find Muriel! But we must
+to-morrow. Ta-ta! I shall go around to the club and sleep, for I haven't
+fixed on any diggings yet. Come in at ten to-morrow, and we will decide
+upon some plan. One thing is plainly certain; Elma must at once be got
+out of Russia. She's in deadly peril of her life there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said. &quot;And you will help me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With all my heart, old fellow,&quot; answered my friend, warmly grasping my
+hand, and then we parted, he strolling along towards the National
+Gallery on his way back to the &quot;Junior,&quot; while I returned to the <i>Cecil</i>
+alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>MARKED MEN</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Durnford?&quot; I inquired of the hall-porter of the club next
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not here, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he slept here last night,&quot; I remarked. &quot;I have an appointment with
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man consulted the big book before him, and answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Durnford went out at 9:27 last night, sir, but has not
+returned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Strange, I thought, but although I waited in the club nearly an hour, he
+did not put in an appearance. I called again at noon, and he had not
+come in, and again at two o'clock, but he had not even then made his
+appearance. Then I began to be anxious. I returned to the hotel,
+resolved to wait for a few hours longer. He might have altered his mind
+and gone to Eastbourne in search of Muriel; yet, had he done so, he
+would surely have telegraphed to me.</p>
+
+<p>About four o'clock, as I was passing through the big hall of the hotel,
+I heard a voice behind me utter a greeting in Italian, and turning in
+surprise, found Olinto, dressed in his best suit of black, standing hat
+in hand.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant I recollected what Jack had told me, and regarded him with
+some suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Signor Commendatore,&quot; he said in a low voice, as though fearing to be
+overheard, &quot;may I be permitted to speak in private with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly,&quot; I said, and I took him in the lift up to my room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have come to warn you, signore,&quot; he said, when I had given him a
+seat. &quot;Your enemies mean harm to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who are they, pray?&quot; I asked, biting my lips. &quot;The same, I suppose,
+who prepared that ingenious trap in Lambeth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not here to reveal to you who they are, signore, only to warn you
+to have a care of yourself,&quot; was the Italian's reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, Olinto!&quot; I exclaimed determinedly, &quot;I've had enough of this
+confounded mystery. Tell me the truth regarding the assassination of
+your poor wife up in Scotland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore!&quot; he answered sadly in a changed voice, &quot;I do not know. It
+was a plot. Someone represented me&mdash;but he was killed also. They
+believed they had struck me down,&quot; he added, with a bitter laugh. &quot;Poor
+Armida's body was found concealed behind a rock on the opposite side of
+the wood. I saw it&mdash;ah!&quot; he cried shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you are ignorant of the identity of your wife's assassin?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Entirely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me one thing,&quot; I said. &quot;Did Armida possess any trinket in the form
+of a little enameled cross&mdash;like a miniature cross of cavaliere?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I gave it to her. I found it on the floor at the Mansion House,
+where I was engaged as odd waiter for a banquet. I know I ought to have
+given it up to the Lord Mayor's servants, but it was such a pretty
+little thing that I was tempted to keep it. It probably had fallen from
+the coat of one of the diplomatists dining there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. The faint suspicion that Oberg had been at that spot was
+now entirely removed. The only clue I had was satisfactorily accounted
+for.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you ask, Signor Commendatore?&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because the cross was found at the spot, and was believed to have been
+dropped by the assassin,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>The police had, it seemed, succeeded in discovering the unfortunate
+woman after all, and had found that she was his wife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know a man named Leithcourt?&quot; I asked a few moments later. &quot;Now,
+tell the truth. In this affair, Olinto, our interests are mutual, are
+they not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, after a moment's hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you know also a man named Archer&mdash;who is sometimes known as Hornby,
+or Woodroffe&mdash;as well as a friend of his called Chater.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Si, signore,&quot; he said. &quot;I have met them all&mdash;to my regret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And have you ever met a Russian&mdash;a certain Baron Oberg&mdash;and his niece,
+Elma Heath?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His niece? She isn't his niece.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then who is she?&quot; I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do I know? I have seen her once or twice. But she's dead, isn't
+she? She knew the secret of those men, and they intended to kill her. I
+tried to prevent them taking her away on the yacht, and I would have
+gone to the police&mdash;only I dare not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, because my own hands were not quite clean,&quot; he answered after a
+pause, his eyes fixed upon mine the while. &quot;I knew they intended to
+silence her, but I was powerless to save her, poor young lady. They took
+her on board Leithcourt's yacht, the <i>Iris</i>, and they sailed for the
+Mediterranean, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the name and appearance of the yacht was altered on the voyage,
+and it became the <i>Lola</i>,&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; he smiled. &quot;The <i>Iris</i> was a steamer of many names, and had,
+I believe, been painted nearly all the colors of the rainbow at various
+times. It was a mysterious vessel, but she exists no more. They scuttled
+her somewhere up in the Baltic, I've heard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is this Oberg?&quot; I inquired, urging him to reveal to me all he
+knew concerning him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He stands in great fear of the poor young lady, I believe, for it was
+at his instigation that Leithcourt and his friends took her on that
+fatal yachting cruise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what was your connection with them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I was Leithcourt's servant,&quot; was his reply. &quot;I was steward on the
+<i>Iris</i> for a year, until I suppose they thought that I began to see too
+much, and then I was placed in a position ashore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what did you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;More than I care to tell, signore. If they were arrested I should be
+arrested, too, you see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I mean to solve this mystery, Olinto,&quot; I said fiercely, for I was
+in no trifling mood. &quot;I'll fathom it if it costs me my life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the signore solves it himself, then I cannot be charged with
+revealing the truth,&quot; was the man's diplomatic reply. &quot;But I fear that
+they are far too wary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armida has lost her life. Surely that is sufficient incentive for you
+to bring them all to justice?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. But if the law falls upon them, it will also fall upon me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained the terrible affliction to which my love had been subjected
+by those heartless brutes, whereupon he cried enthusiastically:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then she is not dead! She can tell us everything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But cannot you tell us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; not all. The secret she knows has never been revealed. They feared
+she might be incautious, and for that reason Oberg made the villainous
+suggestion of the yachting trip. She was to be drowned&mdash;accidentally, of
+course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is in St. Petersburg now. I left her a week ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Russia! Ah, signore, for her sake, don't allow the young lady to
+remain there. The Baron is all-powerful. He does what he wishes in
+Russia, and the more merciless he is to the people he governs, the
+greater rewards he receives from the Czar. I have never been in Russia,
+but surely it must be a strange country, signore!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I said, sitting upon the edge of the bed and looking at him.
+&quot;Are you prepared to denounce them if I bring the Signorina Heath here,
+to England?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what is the use, if we have no clear proof?&quot; was his evasive reply.
+I could see plainly that he feared being himself implicated in some
+extraordinary plot, the exact nature of which he so steadfastly refused
+to reveal to me.</p>
+
+<p>We talked on for fully half an hour, and from his conversation I
+gathered that he was well acquainted with Elma.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, signore, she was such a pleasant and kind-hearted young lady. I
+always felt very sorry for her. She was in deadly fear of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because they were thieves?&quot; I hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, worse!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why did they induce you to entice me to that house in Lambeth? Why
+did they so evidently desire that I should be killed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By accident,&quot; he interrupted, correcting me. &quot;Always by accident,&quot; and
+he smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely you know their secret motive?&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the time I did not,&quot; he declared. &quot;I acted on their instructions,
+being compelled to, for they hold my future in their hands. Therefore I
+could not disobey. You knew too much, therefore you were marked down for
+death&mdash;just as you are now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who is it who is now seeking my life?&quot; I inquired gravely. &quot;I only
+returned from Russia yesterday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your movements are well known,&quot; answered the young Italian. &quot;You cannot
+be too careful. Woodroffe has been in Russia with you, has he not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought so, but was not quite sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Chater?&quot; I inquired; &quot;where is he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the Leithcourts?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of ignorance, adding: &quot;The
+Signorina Muriel returned to London from Eastbourne this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where can I find her?&quot; I inquired eagerly. &quot;It is of the utmost
+importance that I should see her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is with a relation, a cousin, I think, at Bassett Road, Notting
+Hill. The house is called 'Holmwood.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have seen her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I heard she had returned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And her father is still in hiding from Chater?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is still in hiding, but Chater is his best friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is curious,&quot; I remarked, recollecting the hurried departure from
+Rannoch. &quot;They've made it up, I suppose?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They never quarreled, to my knowledge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then why did Leithcourt leave Scotland so hurriedly on Chater's
+arrival? You know all about the affair, of course?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, saying with a grim smile, &quot;Yes; I know. The party up there
+must have been a very interesting one. If the police could have made a
+raid on the place they would have found among the guests certain persons
+long 'wanted.' But the arrival of Chater and the flight of Leithcourt
+had an ulterior object. Chater had never been Leithcourt's enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I can't understand that,&quot; I said. &quot;Why should Leithcourt have
+attacked Chater, rendered him unconscious, and shut him up in the
+cupboard in the library?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Was it Leithcourt who did that?&quot; he asked dubiously. &quot;I think not. It
+was another of the guests who was Chater's bitterest enemy. But Philip
+Leithcourt took advantage of the fracas in order to make believe that he
+had fled because of Chater's arrival. Ah!&quot; he added, &quot;you haven't any
+idea of their ruses. They are amazing!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So it seems,&quot; I said, nevertheless only half convinced that the Italian
+was telling me the truth. If it was really, as he had said, that the
+arrival of Chater and the flight was merely a &quot;blind,&quot; then the mystery
+was again deepened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then who was the man who attacked Chater?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only Chater himself knows. It was one of the guests, that is quite
+evident.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you say that the flight had been prearranged?&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, with a distinct motive,&quot; he said; then, after a pause, he added,
+with a strange, earnest look in his dark eyes, &quot;Pardon me, Signor
+Commendatore, if I presume to suggest something, will you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly. What do you suggest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That you should remain here, in this hotel, and not venture out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For fear of something unfortunate happening to me!&quot; I laughed. &quot;I'm
+really not afraid, Olinto,&quot; I added. &quot;You know I carry this,&quot; and I drew
+out my revolver from my hip-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, signore,&quot; he said anxiously. &quot;But you might not be afforded
+opportunity for using it. When they lay a trap they bait it well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know. They're a set of the most ingenious scoundrels in London, it is
+very evident. Yet I don't fear them in the least,&quot; I declared. &quot;I must
+rescue the Signorina Heath.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, signore, have a care for yourself,&quot; cried the Italian, laying his
+hand upon my arm. &quot;You are a marked man. Ah! do I not know,&quot; he
+exclaimed breathlessly. &quot;If you go out you may run right into&mdash;well, the
+fatal accident.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never fear, Olinto,&quot; I said reassuringly. &quot;I shall keep my eyes well
+open. Here, in London, one's life is safer than anywhere else in the
+world, perhaps&mdash;certainly safer than in some places I could name in your
+own country, eh?&quot; at which he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment he grew serious again, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I only warn the signore that if he goes out it is at his own peril.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then let it be so,&quot; I laughed, feeling self-confident that no one could
+lead me into any trap. I was neither a foreigner nor a country cousin. I
+knew London too well. He was silent and shook his head; then, after
+telling me that he was still at the same restaurant in Westbourne Grove,
+he took his departure, warning me once more not to go forth.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later, disregarding his words, I strode out into the
+Strand, and again walked round to the &quot;Junior.&quot; The short wintry day had
+ended, the gas-lamps were lit, and the darkness of night was gradually
+creeping on.</p>
+
+<p>Jack had not been to the club, and I began now to grow thoroughly
+uneasy. He had parted from me at the corner of the Strand with only a
+five minutes' walk before him, and yet he had apparently disappeared. My
+first impulse was to drive to Notting Hill to inquire of Muriel if she
+had news of him, but somehow the Italian's warning words made me wonder
+if he had met with foul play.</p>
+
+<p>I suddenly recollected those two men who had passed by as we had talked,
+and how that the features of one had seemed strangely familiar.
+Therefore I took a cab to the police-station down at Whitehall, and made
+inquiry of the inspector on duty in the big bare office with its flaring
+gas-jets in wire globes. He heard me to the end, then turning back the
+book of &quot;occurrences&quot; before him, glanced through the ruled entries.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should think this is the gentleman, sir,&quot; he said. And he read to me
+the entry as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;P.C. 462A reports that at 2.07 a.m., while on duty outside the National
+Gallery, he heard a revolver shot, followed by a man's cry. He ran to
+the corner of Suffolk Street, where he found a gentleman lying upon the
+pavement suffering from a serious shot-wound in the chest and quite
+unconscious. He obtained the assistance of P.C.'s 218A and 343A, and the
+gentleman, who was not identified, was taken to the Charing Cross
+Hospital, where the house-surgeon expressed a doubt whether he could
+live. Neither P.C.'s recollect having noticed any suspicious-looking
+person in the vicinity.</p>
+
+<span style="layout-flow: horizontal; margin-left: 5em;">&quot;JOHN PERCIVAL, <i>Inspector</i>.&quot;</span><br>
+
+<p>I waited for no more, but rushed round to the hospital in the cab, and
+was, five minutes later, taken along the ward, where I identified poor
+Jack lying in bed, white-faced and unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The doctor was here a quarter of an hour ago,&quot; whispered the sister.
+&quot;And he fears he is sinking.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has uttered no words?&quot; I asked anxiously. &quot;Made no statement?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None. He has never regained consciousness, and I fear, sir, he never
+will. It is a case of deliberate murder, the police told me early this
+morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I clenched my fists and swore a fierce revenge for that dastardly act.
+And as I stood beside the narrow bed, I realized that what Olinto had
+said regarding my own peril was the actual truth. I was a marked man.
+Was I never to penetrate that inscrutable and ever-increasing mystery?</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TRUTH ABOUT THE &quot;LOLA&quot;</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Throughout the long night I called many times at the hospital, but the
+reply was always the same. Jack had not regained consciousness, and the
+doctor regarded his case as hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I drove in hot haste to Bassett Road, Notting Hill, and
+at the address Olinto had given me found Muriel. When she entered the
+room with folding doors into which I had been shown, I saw that she was
+pale and apprehensive, for we had not met since her flight, and she was,
+no doubt, at a loss for an explanation. But I did not press her for one.
+I merely told her that the Italian Santini had given me her address and
+that I came as bearer of unfortunate news.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; she gasped quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It concerns Captain Durnford,&quot; I replied. &quot;He has been injured in the
+street, and is in Charing Cross Hospital.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she cried. &quot;I see. You do not explain the truth. By your face I
+can tell there is something more. He's dead! Tell me the worst.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Miss Leithcourt,&quot; I said gravely, &quot;not dead, but the doctors fear
+that he may not recover. His wound is dangerous. He has been shot by
+some unknown person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shot!&quot; she echoed, bursting into tears. &quot;Then they have followed him,
+after all! They have deceived me, and now, as they intend to take him
+from me, I will myself protect him. You, Mr. Gregg, have been in peril
+of your life, that I know, but Jack's enemies are yours, and they shall
+not go unpunished. May I see him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I fear not, but we will ask at the hospital.&quot; And after the exchange of
+some further explanations, we took a hansom back to Charing Cross.</p>
+
+<p>At first the sister refused to allow Muriel to see the patient, but she
+implored so earnestly that at last she consented, and the distressed
+girl in the black coat and hat crept on tiptoe to the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was conscious for a quarter of an hour or so,&quot; whispered the nurse
+who sat there, &quot;He asked after some lady named Muriel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl at my side burst into low sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell him,&quot; she said, &quot;that Muriel is here&mdash;that she has seen him, and
+is waiting for him to recover.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were not allowed to linger there, and on leaving the hospital I took
+her back again to Notting Hill, promising to keep her well informed of
+Jack's condition. He had returned to consciousness, therefore there was
+now a faint hope for his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>Day succeeded day, and although I was not allowed to visit my friend, I
+was told that he was very slowly progressing. I idled at the Hotel Cecil
+longing daily for news of Elma. Only once did a letter come from her, a
+brief, well-written note from which it appeared that she was quite well
+and happy, although she longed to be able to go out. The Princess was
+very kind indeed to her, and, she added, was making secret arrangements
+for her escape across the Russian frontier into Germany.</p>
+
+<p>I knew what that meant. Use was to be made of certain Russian officials
+who were secretly allied with the Revolutionists in order to secure her
+safe conduct beyond the power of that order of exile of the tyrant de
+Plehve. I wrote to her under cover to the Princess, but there had been
+no time yet for a reply.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Muriel many times, but never once did she refer to Rannoch or
+their sudden departure. Her only thought was of the man she loved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I always believed that you were engaged to Mr. Woodroffe,&quot; I said one
+day, when I called to tell her of Jack's latest bulletin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is true that he asked me to marry him,&quot; she responded. &quot;But there
+were reasons why I did not accept.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reasons connected with his past, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Mr. Gregg, it is all a strange and very tragic story. I must see
+Jack. When do you think they will allow me to go to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I explained that the doctor feared to cause the patient any undue
+excitement, but that in two or three days there was hope of her being
+allowed to visit him. Several times the police made inquiry of me, but I
+could tell them nothing. I could not for the life of me recollect where
+I had before seen the face of that man who had passed in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, ten days after the attempt upon Jack, I was allowed to
+sit by his bedside and question him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Gordon, old fellow!&quot; he said faintly, &quot;I've had a narrow escape&mdash;by
+Jove! After I left you I walked quickly on towards the club, when, all
+of a sudden, two scoundrels sprang out of Suffolk Street, and one of
+them fired a revolver full at me. Then I knew no more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But who were the men? Did you recognize them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not at all. That's the worst of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Muriel knows who they were!&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, yes! Bring her here, won't you?&quot; the poor fellow implored, &quot;I'm
+dying to see her once again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I told him how she had looked upon him while unconscious, and how I
+had taken the daily bulletin to her. For an hour I talked with him,
+urging him to get well soon, so that we could unite in probing the
+mystery, and bringing to justice those responsible for the dastardly
+act.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Muriel knows, and if she loves you she will no doubt assist us,&quot; I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, she does love me, Gordon, I know that,&quot; said the prostrate man,
+smiling contentedly, and when I left I promised to bring her there on
+the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>This I did, but having conducted her to the bed at the end of the ward I
+discreetly withdrew. What she said to him I am not, of course, aware.
+All I know is that an hour later when I returned I found them the
+happiest pair possible to conceive, and I clearly saw that Jack's trust
+in her was not ill-placed.</p>
+
+<p>But of Elma? No further word had come from her, and I began to grow
+uneasy. The days went on. I wrote twice, but no reply was forthcoming.
+At last I could bear the suspense no longer, and began to contemplate
+returning to Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, when at last discharged from the hospital, came across to the
+Cecil and lived with me in preference to the &quot;Junior.&quot; He was very weak
+at first, and I looked after him, while every day Muriel came and ate
+with us, brightening our lives by her smart and merry chatter. She knew
+that I loved Elma and was also aware of the exciting events in Russia,
+Jack having told her of them during their long drives in hansoms when he
+went out with her to take the air.</p>
+
+<p>One day I received a brief note from the Princess in Petersburg, urging
+me to remain patient and saying Elma was quite safe and well. There
+were reasons, however, why she was unable to write, she added. What were
+they, I wondered? Yet I could only wait until I received word to travel
+back to Russia and fetch her home. The Princess had promised to arrange
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>December came, and we still remained on at the hotel. Once Olinto had
+written me repeating his warning, but I did not heed it. I somehow
+distrusted the fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Jack, now thoroughly recovered, called almost daily at Bassett Road, and
+would often bring Muriel to the Cecil to tea or to luncheon. Often I
+inquired the whereabouts of her father and of Hylton Chater, but she
+declared herself in entire ignorance, and believed they were abroad.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, shortly before Christmas, as we were idling in the
+American bar of the hotel, my friend told me that Muriel had invited us
+to tea at her cousin's that afternoon, and accordingly we went there in
+company.</p>
+
+<p>The drawing-room into which we were ushered was familiar to me as the
+apartment wherein I had told Muriel of the attempt upon her lover's
+life.</p>
+
+<p>As we sat together Muriel, a smart figure in a pale blue gown, poured
+tea for us and chatted more merrily, I thought, than ever before. She
+seemed quick and nervous and yet full of happiness, as she should indeed
+have been, for Jack Durnford was one of the best fellows in the world,
+and his restoration to health little short of miraculous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gordon,&quot; he said to me with a sudden seriousness when tea had ended and
+we had placed down our cups. &quot;I want to tell you something&mdash;something
+I've been longing always to tell you, and now I have got dear Muriel's
+consent. I want to tell you about her father and his friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And about Elma, too?&quot; I said in quick eagerness. &quot;Yes, tell me
+everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not everything, for I don't know it myself. But what I know I will
+explain as briefly as I can, and leave you to form your own conclusions.
+It is,&quot; he went on, &quot;a strange&mdash;most amazing story. When I myself became
+first cognizant of the mystery I was on board the flagship the <i>Renown</i>,
+under Admiral Sir John Fisher. We were lying in Malta when there arrived
+the English yacht <i>Iris</i>, owned by Mr. Philip Leithcourt, and among
+those on board cruising for pleasure were Mr. Martin Woodroffe, Mr.
+Hylton Chater, and the owner's wife and daughter Muriel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Muriel and I met first at a tennis-party, and afterwards frequently at
+various houses in Malta, for anyone who goes there and entertains is
+soon entertained in return. A mutual attachment sprang up between Muriel
+and myself,&quot; he said, placing his hand tenderly upon hers and smiling,
+&quot;and we often met in secret and took long walks, until quite suddenly
+Leithcourt said that it was necessary to sail for Smyrna to pick up some
+friends who had been traveling in Palestine. The night they sailed a
+great consternation was caused on the island by the news that the safe
+in the Admiral Superintendent's office had been opened by expert
+safe-breakers, and certain most important secret documents stolen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; I asked, much interested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Again, two months later, when the villa of the Prince of Montevachi, at
+Palmero, was broken into and the whole of the famous jewels of the
+Princess stolen, it was a very strange fact that the <i>Iris</i> was at the
+moment in that port. But it was not until the third occasion, when the
+yacht was at Villefranche, and our squadron being at Toulon I got four
+days' leave to go along the Riviera, that my suspicions were aroused,
+for at the very hour when I was dining at the London House at Nice with
+Muriel and a schoolfellow of hers, Elma Heath&mdash;who was spending the
+winter there with a lady who was Baron Oberg's cousin&mdash;that a great
+robbery was committed in one of the big hotels up at Cimiez, the wife of
+an American millionaire losing jewels valued at thirty thousand pounds.
+Then the robberies, coincident with the visit of the yacht, aroused my
+strong suspicion. I remarked the nature of those documents stolen from
+Malta, and recognized that they could only be of service to a foreign
+government. Then came the Leghorn incident of which you told me. The
+yacht's name had been changed to the <i>Lola</i>, and she had been repainted.
+I made searching inquiry, and found that on the evening she was
+purposely run aground in order to strike up a friendship at the
+Consulate, a Russian gunboat was lying in the vicinity. The Consul's
+safe was rifled, and the scheme certainly was to transfer anything
+obtained from it to the Russian gunboat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what was in the safe?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fortunately nothing. But you see they knew that our squadron was due in
+Leghorn, and that some extremely important despatches were on the way to
+the Admiral&mdash;secret orders based upon the decision of the British
+Cabinet as to the vexed question of Russian ships passing the
+Dardanelles&mdash;they expected that they would be lodged in the safe until
+the arrival of the squadron, as they always are. They were, however,
+bitterly disappointed because the despatches had not arrived.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the only Russian who appeared to have any connection with them
+was Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland, whose habit it was to
+spend part of the winter in the Mediterranean. From Elma Heath's
+conversation at dinner that evening at Nice I gathered that she and her
+uncle had been guests on the <i>Iris</i> on several occasions, although I
+must say that Muriel was extremely reticent regarding all that concerned
+the yacht.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; she said quickly. &quot;Now that I have told you the truth,
+Jack, don't you think it was only natural?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most certainly, dear,&quot; he answered, still holding her hand. &quot;Yours was
+not a secret that you could very well tell to me until you could
+thoroughly trust me, especially as your father had been implicated in
+the theft of those documents from Malta. The truth is,&quot; he said, turning
+to me, &quot;Philip Leithcourt has all along been the catspaw of Baron Oberg.
+A few years ago he was a well-known money-lender in the city, and in
+that capacity met the Baron, who, being in disgrace, required a loan. He
+was also in the habit of having certain shady transactions with that
+daring gang of continental thieves of whom Dick Archer and Hylton Chater
+were leaders. For this reason he purchased a yacht for their use, so
+that they might not only use it for the purpose of storing the stolen
+goods, but for the purpose of sailing from place to place under the
+guise of wealthy Englishmen traveling for pleasure. Upon that vessel,
+indeed, was stored thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of jewels
+and objects of value, the proceeds of many great robberies in England,
+France and Belgium. Sometimes they traveled for the purpose of disposing
+of the jewels in various inland towns where the gems, having been recut,
+were not recognized, while at other times, Chater and Archer, assisted
+by Mackintosh, the captain, and Olinto Santini, the steward, sailed for
+a port, landed, committed a robbery, and then sailed away again, quite
+unsuspected, as rich Englishmen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the crew?&quot; I asked, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were, of course, well paid, and were kept in ignorance of what
+the supposed owner and his friends did ashore.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Oberg's connection with it?&quot; I asked, surprised at those
+revelations.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed Muriel. &quot;The ingenuity of that crafty villain is
+fiendish. Before he got into the Czar's favor he owed my father a large
+sum, and then sought how to evade repayment. By means of his spies he
+discovered the real purpose of the cruises of the <i>Iris</i>&mdash;for I was
+often taken on board with a maid in order to allay any suspicion that
+might arise if only men were cruising. Then he not only compelled my
+father to cancel the debt, but he impressed the vessel and those who
+owned and navigated it into the secret service of Russia. A dozen times
+did we make attempts to obtain secret papers from Italian, French and
+English dockyards, but only once in the case of Malta and once at Toulon
+did we succeed. Ah! Mr. Gregg,&quot; she added, &quot;you do not know all the
+anxiety I suffered, how at every hour we were in danger of betrayal or
+capture, and of the hundred narrow escapes we have had of Custom House
+officers rummaging the yacht for contraband. You will no doubt recollect
+the sensation caused by the theft of the jewels of the Princess
+Wilhelmine of Schaumbourg-Lippe from the lady's-maid in the rapide
+between Cannes and Les Arcs, the robbery from the Marseilles branch of
+the Cr&eacute;dit Lyonnais, and the great haul of plate from the ch&acirc;teau of
+Bardon, the Paris millionaire, close to Arcachon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, for they were all robberies of which I had read in the
+newspapers a couple of years before.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; she said, &quot;they were all committed by Archer or Woodroffe and
+his gang&mdash;with accomplices ashore, of course&mdash;and never once did it seem
+that any suspicion fell upon us. While the police were frantically
+searching hither and thither, we used to weigh anchor and calmly steam
+away with our booty on board. We had with us an old Dutch lapidary, and
+one of the cabins was fitted as a workshop, where he altered the
+appearance of the stones, and prepared them ready for sale, while the
+gold was melted in a crucible and put ashore to be sent to agents in
+Hamburg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But that night in Leghorn?&quot; I said. &quot;What happened to poor Elma?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not know,&quot; was Muriel's reply. &quot;We were both on board together,
+and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that
+evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against
+your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the
+proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on
+board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some
+conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in
+great fear the whole time lest they might injure you. Yet it seemed,
+after all, as though their idea was the same as always, to worm
+themselves into your confidence. The instant, however, you went ashore,
+Chater, Woodroffe&mdash;whom you called Hornby&mdash;and Mackintosh, the
+captain&mdash;who, by the way, was an old ticket-of-leave man&mdash;went ashore,
+and, of course, broke into the Consulate. Then, as soon as they
+returned, Elma came to my cabin, awoke me, and said that the Baron was
+taking her ashore, and that they were to travel overland back to London.
+She was ready dressed to go, therefore I kissed her, and promising to
+meet her soon, we parted. That was the last I saw of her. What happened
+to her afterwards only she alone can tell us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she is not the Baron's niece?&quot; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. There is some mystery,&quot; declared Muriel. &quot;She holds some secret
+which he fears she may divulge. But of what nature, I am in ignorance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you say that your father has never taken any active part in the
+robberies?&quot; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. He commenced by lending money, and amassed a considerable fortune.
+Then avarice seized him, as it does so many men, and coming into contact
+with Archer and his friends, he saw that the idea of the yacht was a
+safe and profitable one. Therefore he purchased the vessel, and ran it
+at the disposition of the thieves, and subsequently under compulsion in
+the secret service of Russia, as I have already described to you. The
+profits were colossal. In one year my father's share was eighty thousand
+pounds.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And where is your father now?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; she exclaimed sadly, her face pale and haggard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard that the vessel was scuttled somewhere in the Baltic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is true. Oberg's purpose having been served, he demanded half the
+property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval
+authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail
+my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was
+frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma,
+defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors,
+telegraphed to the admiral of the Russian fleet in the Baltic. The crew
+from the <i>Iris</i> were at once landed at Riga, and only Mackintosh and my
+father put to sea again. Ah! my father was desperate, for he knew the
+merciless character of that man whose victim he had been for so long.
+They watched a Russian cruiser bearing down upon them, when, just as it
+drew near, they got off in a boat and blew up the yacht, which sank in
+three minutes with its ill-obtained wealth on board.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And your father?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, and I saw tears standing in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was a tragedy,&quot; Jack explained in a low, hoarse voice. &quot;He and
+the captain did not, unfortunately, get sufficiently far from the yacht
+when they blew her up, and they went down with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I looked in silence at Muriel, who stood with her head bent and her
+white face covered with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Almost at the same moment there was a low tap at the door, and the
+servant-maid announced:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Santini, miss.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; exclaimed Jack quickly, as Olinto entered the room. &quot;Then you had
+my note! We have asked you here to reveal to us this dastardly plot
+which seemed to have been formed against Mr. Gregg and myself. As you
+know, I've had a narrow escape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know, signore. And the Signor Commendatore is also threatened.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By those who killed my poor wife, and who intended also to silence me,&quot;
+was his answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same who compelled you take me to that house where the fatal chair
+was prepared, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was Archer, who, fearing that you came to London in search of them,
+devised that devilish contrivance,&quot; he said in his broken English. Then
+continuing, he went on fiercely: &quot;Now that I have discovered why my poor
+Armida was killed, I will tell the truth, and not spare them. Since you
+left Scotland, signore, I have been up in Dumfries, and have discovered
+several facts which prove that for some reason known only to himself,
+Leithcourt, while at Rannoch, wrote to both Armida and myself
+separately, making an appointment to see us at the same time at that
+spot on the edge of the wood, as he had some secret commission to
+entrust to us. The letter addressed to me apparently fell into someone
+else's hands&mdash;probably one of the secret agents of Baron Oberg, who were
+always watching Leithcourt's doings, and he, anxious to learn what was
+intended, made himself up to look like me, and kept the appointment in
+my place. Armida, having received the letter unknown to me, went up to
+Scotland, and was also there at the appointed time. What actually
+transpired can only be surmised, yet it seems that Leithcourt was in the
+habit of going up to that spot and loitering there in the evening in
+order to meet Chater in secret, as the latter was in hiding in a small
+hotel in Dumfries. Therefore those who formed the plot must have
+endeavored to throw suspicion upon Leithcourt. It is plain, however, as
+both myself and Armida knew the gang, it was to their interest to get
+rid of us, because the suspicions of the police had at last become
+aroused. Poor Armida was therefore deliberately enticed there to her
+death, while the inquisitive man whom the assassin took to be myself was
+also struck down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By whom?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not by Chater, for he was in London on that night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then by Woodroffe?&quot; Durnford said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without a doubt. It was all most cleverly thought out. It was to his
+advantage alone to close our lips, because in that same fatal chair in
+Lambeth old Jacob Moser, the Jew bullion-broker of Hatton Garden, met
+his death&mdash;a most dastardly crime, with which none of his friends were
+associated, and of which we alone held knowledge. He therefore wrote to
+us as though from Leithcourt, calling us up to Rannoch, in order to
+strike the blows in the darkness,&quot; he added in his peculiar Italian
+manner. &quot;Besides, he feared we would tell the signore the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have not told the police?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare not, signore. Surely the less the police know about this matter
+the better, otherwise the Signorina Leithcourt must suffer for her
+father's avarice and evil-doing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; cried Jack anxiously. &quot;That's right, Olinto. The police must know
+nothing. The reprisals we must make ourselves. But who was it who shot
+me in Suffolk Street?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same man, Martin Woodroffe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then the assassin is back from Russia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He followed closely behind the Signor Commendatore. Markoff, a clever
+secret agent of Baron Oberg's, came with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then for the first time I recollected that the man I had recognized in
+the Strand was a fellow I had seen lounging in the ante-room of the
+palace of the Governor-General of Finland. The pair, fearing that I
+should reveal what I knew, were undoubtedly in London to take my life in
+secret. Now that Leithcourt was dead, Woodroffe had united forces with
+Oberg, and intended to silence me because they feared that Elma, besides
+escaping them, had also revealed her secret.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I trust that the Signorina Leithcourt has explained the story of the
+yacht and its crew,&quot; Olinto remarked. &quot;And has also shown you how I was
+implicated. You will therefore discern the reason why I have hitherto
+feared to give you any explanation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said, &quot;Miss Leithcourt has told me a great deal, but not
+everything. I cannot yet gather for what reason she and her father fled
+from Rannoch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will tell you,&quot; said Muriel quickly. &quot;My father suspected
+Woodroffe of being the assassin in Rannoch Wood, for he knew that he had
+broken away from the original compact, and had now allied himself with
+Oberg. Yet it was also my father's object to appear in fear of them,
+because he was only awaiting an opportunity to lay plans for poor Elma's
+rescue from Finland. Therefore one evening Woodroffe called, and my
+father encountered him in the avenue, and admitted him with his own
+latchkey by one of the side doors of the castle, afterwards taking him
+up to the study. He knew that he had come to try and make terms for
+Oberg, therefore he saw that he must fly at once to Newcastle, where the
+<i>Iris</i> was lying, get on board, and sail away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With some excuse he left him in the study, and then warned my mother
+and myself to prepare to leave. But while we were packing, it appeared
+that Chater, who had followed, was shown into the study by the butler,
+or rather he entered there himself, being well acquainted with the
+house. Thus the two men, now bitter enemies, met. A fierce quarrel must
+have ensued, and Chater was poisoned and concealed, Woodroffe, of
+course, believing he had killed him. My father entered the study again,
+and seeing only Woodroffe there, did not know what had occurred. Some
+words probably arose, when my father again turned and left. Then we fled
+to Carlisle and on to Newcastle, and next morning were on board the
+yacht out in the North Sea, afterwards landing at Rotterdam. Those,&quot; she
+added, &quot;are briefly the facts, as my poor father related them to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what of poor Elma&mdash;and of her secret? When, I wonder, shall I see
+her?&quot; I cried in despair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will see her now, signore,&quot; answered Olinto. &quot;A servant of the
+Princess Zurloff brought her to London this afternoon, and I have just
+conveyed her from the station. She is in the next room, in ignorance,
+however, that you are here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And without another word I fled forward joyfully, and threw open the
+folding-doors which separated me from my silent love.</p>
+
+<p>Silent, yes! But she could, nevertheless, tell her story&mdash;surely the
+strangest that any woman has ever lived to tell.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Before me stood my love, a slim, tragic, rather wan figure in a heavy
+dark traveling-coat and felt toque, her sweet lips parted and a look of
+bewildered amazement upon her countenance as I burst in so suddenly upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In silence I grasped her tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in
+silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark
+eyes&mdash;those eyes that spoke although she was mute&mdash;met mine, and in them
+was a look that I had never seen there before&mdash;a look which as plainly
+as any words told me that my wild fevered passion was reciprocated.</p>
+
+<p>She gazed beyond into the room where the others had assembled, and then
+looked at me inquiringly, whereupon I led her forward to where they
+were, and Muriel fell upon her and kissed her with tears streaming from
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I prepared this surprise for you, Mr. Gregg,&quot; Muriel said, laughing
+through her tears of joy. &quot;Olinto learnt that she was on her way to
+London, and I sent him to meet her. The Princess has managed
+magnificently, has she not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. Thank God she is free!&quot; I exclaimed. &quot;But we must induce her to
+tell us everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Muriel was already helping my love out of her heavy Russian coat, a
+costly garment lined with sable, and when, after greeting Jack and
+Olinto, she was comfortably seated, I took some notepaper from the
+little writing-table by the window and scribbled in pencil the words:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I need not write how delighted I am that you are safe&mdash;that the
+Almighty has heard my prayers for you. Jack and Muriel have told me all
+about Leithcourt and his scoundrelly associates. I know, too, dear&mdash;for
+I may call you that, may I not?&mdash;how terribly you must have suffered in
+silence through it all. Leithcourt is dead. He sank the yacht with all
+the stolen property on board, but by accident was himself engulfed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bending and watching intently as I wrote, she drew back in horror and
+surprise at the words. Then I added: &quot;We are all four determined that
+the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
+you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love&mdash;I am bold enough
+to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
+caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
+your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
+unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
+tell us everything&mdash;all that you know&mdash;without fear, for now that we are
+united no harm can assail us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
+first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
+her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
+extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
+to us the absolute truth.</p>
+
+<p>Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
+chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
+though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
+her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write,
+she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.</p>
+
+<p>All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her,
+but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started,
+however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence
+for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the
+pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become
+seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw
+we were in real, dead earnest.</p>
+
+<p>I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
+across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
+speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly,
+peerless above all others.</p>
+
+<p>With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
+in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
+written to me.</p>
+
+<p>In breathless eagerness I read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it true, dear love&mdash;for I call you so in return&mdash;that you were
+impelled towards me by the mysterious hand that directs all things? You
+came in search of me, and you risked your life for mine at Kajana,
+therefore you have a right to know the truth. You, as my champion, and
+the Princess as my friend, have contrived to effect my freedom. Were it
+not for you, I should ere this have been on my way to Saghalien, to the
+tomb to which Oberg had so ingeniously contrived to consign me. Ah! you
+do not know&mdash;you never can know&mdash;all that I have suffered ever since I
+was a girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Here the statement broke off, and recommenced as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In order that you should understand the truth, I had better begin at
+the beginning. My father was an English merchant in Petersburg, and my
+mother, Vera Bessanoff, who, before her marriage with my father, was
+celebrated at Court for her beauty, and was one of the maids-of-honor to
+the Czarina. She was the only daughter of Count Paul Bessanoff,
+ex-Governor of Kharkoff, and before marrying my father she had, with her
+mother, been a well-known figure in society. Immediately after her
+marriage her father died, leaving her in possession of an ample fortune,
+which, with my father's own wealth, placed them among the richest and
+most influential in Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Among my father's most intimate friends was Baron Xavier Oberg&mdash;who, at
+that time, held a very subordinate position in the Ministry of the
+Interior&mdash;and from my earliest recollections I can remember him coming
+frequently to our house and being invited to the brilliant
+entertainments which my mother gave. When I was thirteen, however, my
+father died of a chill contracted while boar-hunting on his estate in
+Kiev, and within a few months a further disaster happened to us. One
+night, while I was sitting alone reading aloud to my mother, two
+strangers were announced, and on being shown in they arrested my dear
+mother on a charge of complicity in a revolutionary plot against the
+Czar which had been discovered at Peterhof. I stood defiant and
+indignant, for my mother was certainly no Nihilist, yet they said that
+the bomb had been introduced into the palace by the Countess Anna
+Shiproff, one of the ladies-in-waiting, who was an intimate friend of my
+mother's and often used to visit her. They alleged that the conspiracy
+had been hatched in our house, color being lent to that theory by the
+fact that a year before a well-known Russian with whom my father had had
+many business dealings had been proved to be the author of the plot by
+which the Czar's train was blown up near Lividia. They tore my mother
+away from me and placed her in that gray prison-van, the sight of which
+in the streets of Petersburg strikes terror into the heart of every
+Russian, for a person once in that rumbling vehicle is, as you know,
+lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed
+in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted, for I
+recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the
+gray dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth came back to me. My
+mother was gone from me for ever!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In sheer desperation I went to the Ministry of the Interior and sought
+an interview with the Baron, who, when I told him of the disaster,
+appeared greatly concerned, and went at once to the Police Department to
+make inquiry. Next day, however, he came to me with the news that the
+charge against my mother had been proved by a statement of the woman
+Shiproff herself, and that she had already started on her long journey
+to Siberia&mdash;she had been exiled to one of those dreaded Arctic
+settlements beyond Yakutsk, a place where it is almost eternal winter,
+and where the conditions of life are such that half the convicts are
+insane. The Baron, however, declared that, as my father's friend, it was
+his duty to act as guardian to me, and that as my father had been
+English I ought to be put to an English school. Therefore, with his
+self-assumed title of uncle, he took me to Chichester. For years I
+remained there, until one day he came suddenly and fetched me away,
+taking me over to Helsingfors&mdash;for the Czar had now appointed him
+Governor-General to Finland. There, for the first time, he introduced me
+to his son Michael, a pimply-faced lieutenant of cavalry, and said in a
+most decisive manner that I must marry him. I naturally refused to marry
+a man of whom I knew so little, whereupon, finding me obdurate, he
+quickly altered his tactics and became kindness itself, saying that as I
+was young he would allow me a year in which to make up my mind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A week later, while living in the palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a
+conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to
+me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself
+who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had
+made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the
+reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father,
+came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in
+order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in
+the hands of that unscrupulous pair, and I recognized, too, sufficient
+of the Baron's methods as 'The Strangler of Finland,' to show me what
+kind of character he was beneath that calm, eminently respectable
+black-coated exterior. After deliberately sending my poor mother to
+Siberia, he had assumed the role of my guardian in order that he might,
+when I came of age, obtain control of my inheritance, the idea no doubt
+being that I should marry Michael, and then, after the necessary legal
+formalities, I should, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, share the
+same fate as my mother had done.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The infernal scoundrel!&quot; I ejaculated, when I read her words, while
+from Jack, who had been looking over my shoulder, escaped a fierce and
+forcible vow of vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron took me with him to Petersburg when he went on official
+business, and we remained there nearly a month,&quot; the narrative went on.
+&quot;While there I received a secret message from 'The Red Priest,' the
+unseen and unknown power of Nihilism, who has for so many years baffled
+the police. I went to see him, and he revealed to me how Oberg had
+contrived to have my mother banished upon a false charge. He warned me
+against the man who had pretended to be my father's friend, and also
+told me that he had known my father intimately, and that if I got into
+any further difficulty I was to communicate with him and he would assist
+me. Oberg took me back to Helsingfors a few months later, and in summer
+we went to England. He was a marvelously clever diplomatist. His tactics
+he could change at will. When I was at school he was rough and brutal in
+his manner towards me, as he was to all; but now he seemed to be
+endeavoring to inspire my confidence by treating me with kindly regard
+and pleasant affability.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In London, at Claridge's, we met my old schoolfellow Muriel and her
+father&mdash;a friend of Oberg's&mdash;and in response to their invitation went
+for a cruise on their yacht, the <i>Iris</i>, from Southampton. Our party was
+a very pleasant one, and included Woodroffe and Chater, while our cruise
+across the Bay of Biscay and along the Portuguese coast proved most
+delightful. One night, while we were lying outside Lisbon, Woodroffe and
+Chater, together with Olinto, went ashore, and when they returned in the
+early hours of the morning they awoke me by crossing the deck above my
+head. Then I heard someone outside my cabin-door working as though with
+a screwdriver, unscrewing a screw from the woodwork. This aroused my
+interest, and next day I made a minute examination of the paneling,
+where, in one part, I found two small brass screws that had evidently
+been recently removed. Therefore I succeeded in getting hold of a
+screwdriver from the carpenter's shop, and next night, when everyone was
+asleep, I crept out and unscrewed the panel, when to my surprise I saw
+that the secret cavity behind was filled with beautiful jewelry, diamond
+collars, tiaras, necklets, fine pearls, emeralds and turquoises, all
+<i>thrown</i> in indiscriminately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I replaced the panel and kept careful watch. At Marseilles, where we
+called, more jewelry and a heavy bagful of plate was brought aboard and
+secreted behind another panel. Then I knew that the men were thieves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But surely,&quot; continued the strange story my mute love had written, &quot;I
+need not describe all that occurred upon that eventful voyage, except to
+tell you of one very curious incident which occurred. I had spoken
+confidentially with Muriel regarding my suspicions of the men who were
+our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on
+board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced
+that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some
+unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that
+since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and
+that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however,
+never suspected the truth until I pointed it out to her. Well, one hot
+summer's night we were lying off Naples, and as it was a grand festa
+ashore and there was to be a gala performance at the theater, Leithcourt
+took a box and the whole party were rowed ashore. The crew were also
+given shore-leave for the evening, but as the great heat had upset me I
+declined to accompany the theater-party, and remained on board with one
+sailor named Wilson to constitute the watch. We had anchored about half
+a mile from land, and earlier in the evening the Baron had gone ashore
+to send telegrams to Russia, and had not returned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About ten o'clock I went below to try and sleep, but I had a slight
+attack of fever, and was unable. Therefore I redressed and sat with the
+light still out, gazing across the starlit bay. Presently from my
+port-hole I saw a shore-boat approaching, and recognized in it the Baron
+with a well-dressed stranger. They both came on board, and the boatman,
+having been paid, pulled back to the shore. Then the Baron and his
+friend&mdash;a dark, middle-aged, full-bearded man, evidently a person of
+refinement&mdash;went below to the saloon, and after a few moments called to
+the man Wilson who was on the watch, and gave him a glass of whisky and
+water, which he took up on deck to drink at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The unusual character of my fellow-guests on board that craft was such
+that my suspicion was constantly on the alert, therefore curiosity
+tempted me to creep along and peep in at the crack of the door standing
+ajar. A closer view revealed the fact that the stranger was a high
+Russian official to whom I had once been introduced at the Government
+Palace at Helsingfors, the Privy-Councillor and Senator Paul Polovstoff.
+They were smoking together, and were discussing in Russian the means by
+which he, Polovstoff, had arranged to obtain plans of some new British
+fortifications at Gibraltar. From what he said, it seemed that some
+Russian woman, married to an Englishman, a captain in the garrison, had
+been impressed into the secret service against her will, but that she
+had, in order to save herself, promised to obtain the photographs and
+plans that were required. I heard the Englishman's name, and I resolved
+to take some steps to inform him in secret of the intentions of the
+Russian agent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Presently the two men took fresh cigars, ascended on deck, and cast
+themselves in the long cane chairs amidships. Still all curiosity to
+hear further details on the ingenious piece of espionage against my own
+nation, I took off my shoes and crept up to a spot where I could crouch
+concealed and overhear their conversation, for the Italian night was
+calm and still. They talked mainly about affairs in Finland, and with
+some of Oberg's expressions of opinion Polovstoff ventured to differ.
+This aroused the Baron's anger, and I knew from the cold sarcasm of his
+remarks, and the peculiarly hard tone of his voice, that he was more
+incensed than he outwardly showed himself to be. He rose and stood with
+his back to the bulwarks facing his friend, who still sat leaning back
+in his deck-chair insisting upon his own views. He was quite calm, and
+not in the least perturbed by the evil glint in the Baron's eye. Perhaps
+he did not know him so well as I did. He did not know what that look
+meant. Suddenly, while the Privy-Councillor lay back in his chair
+pulling thoughtfully at his cigar, there was a bright, blood-red flash,
+a dull report, and a man's short agonized cry. Startled, I leaned around
+the corner of the deck-house, when, to my abject horror, I saw under the
+electric rays the Czar's Privy-Councillor lying sideways in his chair
+with part of his face blown away. Then the hideous truth in an instant
+became apparent. The cigar which Oberg had pressed upon him down in the
+saloon had exploded, and the small missile concealed inside the
+diabolical contrivance had passed upwards into his brain. For a moment I
+stood utterly stupefied, yet as I looked I saw the Baron, in a paroxysm
+of rage, shake his fist in the dead man's face, and cry with a fearful
+imprecation: 'You hound! You have plotted to replace me in the Czar's
+favor. You intended to become Governor-General of Finland! You knew
+certain facts which you intended to put before his Majesty, knowing
+that the revelations would result in my disgrace and downfall. But, you
+infernal cur, you did not know that those who attempt to thwart Xavier
+Oberg either die by accident or go for life to Kajana or the mines!' And
+he spurned the body with his foot and laughed to himself as he gloated
+over his dastardly crime.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I watched his rage, unable to utter a single word. I saw him, after he
+had searched the dead man's pockets, raise the inert body with its awful
+featureless face and drag it to the bulwarks. Then I rushed forward and
+faced him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In an instant he sprang at me, and I screamed. But no aid came. The man
+Wilson was sleeping soundly in the bows, for the whisky he had given him
+had been doctored,&quot; went on the narrative. &quot;Upon his face was a fierce,
+murderous look such as I had never seen before. 'You!' he screamed, his
+dark eyes starting from their sockets as he realized that I had been a
+witness of his cowardly crime. 'You have spied upon me, girl!' he
+hissed, 'and you shall die also!' I sank upon my knees imploring him to
+spare me, but he only laughed at my entreaty. 'See!' he cried, 'as you
+saw how he enjoyed his cigar, you may as well see this!' And with an
+effort he raised the dead body in his arms, poised it for a moment on
+the vessel's side, and then, with a hoarse laugh of triumph, heaved it
+into the sea. There was a splash, and then we were alone. 'And you!' he
+cried in a fierce voice&mdash;'you who have spied upon me&mdash;you will follow!
+The water there will close your chattering mouth!' I shrieked, begged,
+and implored, but his trembling hands were upon my throat. First he
+dragged me to my feet, then he threw me upon my knees, and at last, with
+that grim brutality which characterizes him, he directed me to go and
+get a mop and bucket from the forecastle and remove the dark red stains
+from the chair and deck. This he actually forced me to do, gloating over
+my horror as I removed for him the traces of his cowardly crime. Then,
+with his hand upon my shoulder, he said, 'Girl! Recollect that you keep
+to-night's work secret. If not, you shall die a death more painful than
+that dog has died&mdash;one in which you shall experience all the tortures of
+the damned. Recollect, not a single word&mdash;or death! Now, go to your
+cabin, and never pry into my affairs again.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I went back to my cabin as I was bid, and sat speechless in abject
+horror. The fiendish actions of the man who was my guardian frightened
+me. And yet I was utterly helpless. What could I do? Who in holy Russia
+would hear me? Oberg was a power in the Empire; the Czar himself trusted
+him. If I spoke, who would believe me; who would heed the words of a
+defenseless girl whom he would at once declare to be hysterical? Thus I
+waited alone in the darkness, watching the lights of the port gleaming
+across the placid waters until nearly one o'clock, when the gay party
+returned, and the Baron greeted them merrily as though nothing had
+happened. But my heart was frozen within me by the recollection of the
+awful crime that had been committed.&quot;</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>&quot;Why! Now I remember!&quot; cried Muriel, amazed. &quot;I remember that night
+quite well, how white you were when you came to my cabin and asked to be
+allowed to sleep in my spare berth. You would tell me nothing, and only
+said you were ill. None of us had any idea that such a terrible tragedy
+had been enacted. But of course the Baron had arranged it all, for it
+was at his instigation, I recollect, that the crew had been given
+shore-leave. Mackintosh suggested that only half the crew should go,
+but he declared that if Wilson alone were left it would be sufficient.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I, too, recollect the affair quite well,&quot; Jack declared, tugging at his
+mustache, utterly amazed at my love's strange story. It was a plain
+statement of hard, astounding facts, and she now stood clinging to me,
+looking eagerly into my eyes, reading every thought that passed through
+my mind. &quot;A great sensation was caused when the body was discovered. The
+squadron was lying off Naples about a week after the <i>Iris</i> had left,
+and while we were there the body was washed up near Sorrento. At first
+but little notice was taken of it, but by the marks on the dead man's
+linen it was discovered that he was Polovstoff, one of the highest
+Russian officials who had, it was said, been warned on several occasions
+by the Nihilists. It was, therefore, concluded that his death had been
+due to Nihilist vengeance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Elma pointed to the paper, and made a sign that I was to read on. This I
+did, and the statement ran as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The real reason why the Baron spared my life was because, if I died, my
+fortune would pass to a distant cousin living at Durham. Yet his manner
+towards me was now most polite and pleasant&mdash;a change that I felt boded
+no good. He intended to obtain my money by marrying me to his son
+Michael, whose evil reputation as a gambler was well known in
+Petersburg. We traveled back to Finland in the autumn, and in the winter
+he took me to stay with his sister in Nice. Yet almost daily he referred
+to that tragedy at Naples, and threatened me with death if ever I
+uttered a single word, or even admitted that I had ever seen the man who
+was his rival and his victim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Last June,&quot; commenced another paragraph, &quot;we were in Helsingfors, when
+one day the Baron called me suddenly and told me to prepare for a
+journey. We were to cross to Stockholm and thence to Hull, where the
+<i>Iris</i> was awaiting us, for Mr. Leithcourt and Muriel had invited us for
+a summer cruise to the Greek Islands. We boarded the yacht much against
+my will, yet I was powerless, and dare not allege the facts that I had
+already established concerning our fellow-guests. Muriel and I, it
+seems, were taken merely in order to blind the shore-guards and Customs
+officials as to the real nature of the vessel, which when safely out of
+the Channel, was repainted and renamed the <i>Lola</i>, until her exterior
+presented quite a different appearance from the <i>Iris</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The port of Leghorn was our first place of call, and for some reason we
+ran purposely upon a sandbank and were towed off by Italian
+torpedo-boats. Next evening you came on board and dined, Muriel and
+myself having strict orders not to show ourselves. We, however, watched
+you, and I saw you pick up my photograph which I had that day torn up.
+Then immediately after you had left, Woodroffe, Chater and Mackintosh
+went ashore and were away a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
+Just before they returned the Baron rapped at the door of my cabin
+saying that he must go ashore, and telling me to dress and accompany
+him. He would never allow me the luxury of a maid, fearing, I suppose,
+that she might learn too much. In obedience I rose and dressed, and when
+I went forth he told me to get my traveling-cloak and dressing-bag,
+adding that he was compelled to go north, as to continue the cruise
+would occupy too much time. He was due back at his official duties, he
+said. As soon as I had finished packing, the three men returned to the
+vessel, all of them looking dark-faced and disappointed. Woodroffe
+whispered some words to the Baron, after which I went to Muriel's cabin
+and wished her good-bye, and we went ashore, taking the train first to
+Colle Salvetti, thence to Pisa, and afterwards to the beautiful old city
+of Siena, which I had so longed to see. One of my teeth gave me pain,
+and the Baron, after a couple of days at the Hotel de Sienne, took me to
+a queer-looking little old Italian&mdash;a dentist who, he said, enjoyed an
+excellent reputation. I was quick to notice that the two men had met
+before, and as I sat in the chair and gas was given to me I saw them
+exchange meaning glances. In a few moments I became insensible, but when
+I awoke an hour later I was astounded to feel a curious soreness in my
+ears. My tongue, too, seemed paralyzed, and in a few moments the awful
+truth dawned upon me. I had been rendered deaf and dumb!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baron pretended to be greatly concerned about me,&quot; it went on, &quot;but
+I quickly realized that I had been the victim of a foul and dastardly
+plot, and that he had conceived it, fearing lest I might speak the truth
+concerning the Privy-Councillor Polovstoff, for of exposure he lived in
+constant fear. To encompass my end would be against his own interests,
+as he would lose my fortune, so he had silenced me lest I should reveal
+the terrible truth concerning both him and his associates. He was not
+rich, and I have reason to believe that from time to time he gave
+information as to persons who possessed valuable jewels, and thus shared
+in the plunder obtained by those on the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From Italy we traveled on to Berlin, thence to Petersburg, and back to
+dreary Helsingfors, journeying as quickly as we could, yet never
+allowing me opportunity of being with strangers. Both my ears and tongue
+were very painful, but I said nothing. He was surely a fiend in a black
+coat, and my only thought now was how to escape him. From the moment
+when that so-called dentist had ruined my hearing and deprived me of
+power of speech, he kept me aloof from everyone. The fear that I should
+reveal everything had apparently grown to haunt him, and he had
+conceived that terrible mode of silencing my lips. But the true depth of
+his villainy was not yet apparent until I was back in Finland.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the night of our arrival he called in his son, who had traveled with
+us from Petersburg, and in writing again demanded that I should marry
+him. I wrote my reply&mdash;a firm refusal. He struck the table angrily with
+his fist and wrote saying that I should either marry his son or die.
+Then next day, while walking alone out beyond the town of Helsingfors,
+as I often used to do, I was arrested upon the false charge of an
+attempt upon the life of Madame Vakuroff and transported, without trial,
+to the terrible fortress of Kajana, some of the horrors of which you
+have yourself experienced. The charge against me was necessary before I
+could be incarcerated there, but once within, it was the scheme of the
+Governor-General to obtain my consent to the marriage by threats and by
+the constant terrors of the place. He even went so far as to obtain a
+ministerial order for my banishment to Saghalien and brought it to me to
+Kajana, declaring that if in one month I did not consent he should allow
+me to be sent to exile. While I was in Kajana he knew that his secret
+was safe, therefore by every means in his power he urged me to consent
+to the odious union.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All the rest is known to you&mdash;how Providence directed you to me as my
+deliverer, and how Woodroffe followed you in secret, and pretending to
+be my friend took me with him to Petersburg. He had learnt of my fortune
+from the Baron, and intended to marry me himself. But now that all is
+over it appears to me like some terrible dream. I never believed that so
+much iniquity existed in the world, or that men could fight a
+defenseless woman with such double-dealing and cruel ingenuity. Ah! the
+tortures I endured in Kajana are beyond human conception. Yet surely
+Oberg and Woodroffe will obtain their well-merited deserts&mdash;if not in
+this world, then in the world to come. Are we not taught by Holy Writ to
+forgive our enemies? Therefore, let us forgive.&quot;</p>
+
+<br><hr style="width: 45%;"><br>
+
+<p>There my silent love's strange story ended. A bald, straightforward
+narrative that held us all for some moments absolutely speechless&mdash;one
+of the strangest and most startling stories ever revealed.</p>
+
+<p>She watched every expression of my countenance, and then, when I had
+finished reading and placed my arm tenderly about her slim waist, she
+raised her beautiful face to mine to receive the passionate kiss I
+imprinted upon those soft, full lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This, of course, makes everything plain,&quot; exclaimed Jack. &quot;Polovstoff
+was a very liberal-minded and upright official who was greatly in the
+favor of the Czar, and a serious rival to Oberg, whose drastic and
+merciless methods in Finland were not exactly approved by the Emperor.
+The Baron was well aware of this, and by ingeniously enticing him on
+board the <i>Iris</i> he succeeded by handing that small bomb concealed in a
+cigar&mdash;a Nihilist contrivance that had probably been seized by his
+police in Finland&mdash;in freeing himself from the rival who was destined to
+occupy his post.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I said with a sigh. &quot;The mystery is cleared up, it is true, yet
+my poor Elma is still the victim.&quot; And I kissed my love passionately
+again and again upon the lips.</p>
+
+
+
+<br><br><hr style="width: 65%;"><br><br>
+<a name="CONCLUSION"></a><h2>CONCLUSION</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Nearly two years have now gone by.</p>
+
+<p>There have been changes in holy Russia&mdash;many great and amazing changes
+consequent upon war and its disasters. Russia is no longer the great
+power that she once was supposed to be. Many events that have startled
+the world have occurred since that day when I first enfolded my silent
+love within my arms. One of them is known to you all.</p>
+
+<p>You read in the newspapers, without a doubt, how the Baron Xavier Oberg,
+the persecutor of Finland, the enemy of education, the relentless foe of
+the defenseless, the man who ordered women to be knouted to death in
+Kajana, the heartless official whom the Finns called &quot;The Strangler,&quot;
+was blown to pieces by a bomb thrown beneath his carriage as he drove to
+the railway station at Helsingfors on his way to have audience with the
+Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The secret truth was that the &quot;Red Priest&quot; decreed that Oberg should
+die, and the plot was swiftly put into execution, and although five
+hundred arrests were made the police are unaware to this day of the
+identity of the person who directed it, or of who threw the fatal
+missile. From pillar to post the revolutionists have been hunted by the
+bloodhounds of police, yet the &quot;Red Priest&quot; still lives on quietly in
+Petersburg, and the Princess Zurloff, still unsuspected, devotes the
+greater part of her enormous income to the cause of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Of Jack and Muriel I need only say they were married about three months
+after Elma's return from Russia, and at the present time they are
+living on the outskirts of Glasgow, where Jack has secured the shore
+appointment which he so long coveted.</p>
+
+<p>By some means&mdash;exactly how is not quite certain&mdash;the police discovered
+that Dick Archer, alias Woodroffe, alias Hornby, was concerned in the
+clever robbery of a dressing-bag, containing the Dowager Lady
+Lancashire's jewels, from her footman on Euston platform, and after a
+long search they found him hiding at an hotel in Liverpool. When,
+however, they went to arrest him, he laughed in the faces of the
+detectives, placed something swiftly in his mouth and swallowed it
+before they could prevent him&mdash;then ten minutes later he fell dead. He
+knew what terrible revelations must be made if we gave evidence against
+him, and he therefore preferred death by his own hand to that following
+a judicial sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Chater, although one of the most expert jewel thieves in Europe, had
+never been actually guilty of any graver offense, and when we heard that
+he was in San Francisco, where he had opened a small bar and was trying
+to live honestly, we resolved to allow him to remain there. Indeed, Jack
+wrote to him about nine months ago warning him never to set foot on
+English soil again on pain of arrest.</p>
+
+<p>Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road,
+Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well.</p>
+
+<p>And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell
+you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic&mdash;that is all I
+can say.</p>
+
+<p>My proposal of marriage was made to Elma a very few days after she wrote
+down her startling and romantic story, and a year ago at a little
+village church in Hertfordshire we became man and wife, there being
+present at our wedding Madame Heath, my bride's mother, to whom, by my
+exertions in official quarters in Petersburg, the Czar's clemency was
+extended, and she was released from that far-off Arctic prison to which
+she had been sent with such cruel injustice.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the greatest London specialists have continually treated my dear
+wife, and under them she has already recovered her speech&mdash;so far,
+indeed, that she can now whisper in a low, soft voice. But they tell me
+they are hopeful that ere long her voice will become stronger, and
+speech practically restored. Already, too, she can begin to hear.</p>
+
+<p>After all the storms and perils of the past, our lives are now indeed
+full of a calm, sweet peace. In our own comfortable little house, with
+its trellised porch covered with roses and honeysuckle, that faces the
+blue Channel at St. Margaret's Bay, beyond Dover, we lead a life of
+mutual trust and boundless love. We are supremely content&mdash;the happiest
+pair in all the world, we think.</p>
+
+<p>Often as we sit together at evening, gazing out upon the great ships
+passing darkly away into the mysterious afterglow, our hands clasp
+mutually in a silence more eloquent than words, and as we gaze into each
+other's eyes there occurs to us the Divine injunction: &quot;WHOM GOD HATH
+JOINED, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Czar's Spy, by William Le Queux
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Czar's Spy
+       The Mystery of a Silent Love
+
+Author: William Le Queux
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10102]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CZAR'S SPY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Susan Woodring and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CZAR'S SPY
+
+_The Mystery of a Silent Love_
+
+By CHEVALIER WILLIAM LE QUEUX
+_Author of "The Closed Book," Etc._
+
+
+
+ 1905.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+    I. HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE
+
+   II. WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED
+
+  III. THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"
+
+   IV. IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES
+
+    V. CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES
+
+   VI. THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS
+
+  VII. CONTAINS A SURPRISE
+
+ VIII. LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM
+
+   IX. STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE
+
+    X. I SHOW MY HAND
+
+   XI. THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
+
+  XII. "THE STRANGLER"
+
+ XIII. A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+  XIV. HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
+
+   XV. JUST OFF THE STRAND
+
+  XVI. MARKED MEN
+
+ XVII. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"
+
+XVIII. CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S SERVICE
+
+
+"There was a mysterious affair last night, signore."
+
+"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Anything that interests us?"
+
+"Yes, signore," replied the tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking
+with a strong accent. "An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria
+about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought
+the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which
+managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the
+Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make
+away with the vessel."
+
+"To lose her, you mean?"
+
+The faithful Francesco, whose English had mostly been acquired from
+sea-faring men, and was not the choicest vocabulary, nodded, and, true
+Tuscan that he was, placed his finger upon his closed lips, indicative
+of silence.
+
+"Sounds curious," I remarked. "Since the Consul went away on leave
+things seem to have been humming--two stabbing affrays, eight drunken
+seamen locked up, a mutiny on a tramp steamer, and now a yacht being
+cast away--a fairly decent list! And yet some stay-at-home people
+complain that British consuls are only paid to be ornamental! They
+should spend a week here, at Leghorn, and they'd soon alter their
+opinion."
+
+"Yes, they would, signore," responded the thin-faced old fellow with a
+grin, as he twisted his fierce gray mustache. Francesco Carducci was a
+well-known character in Leghorn; interpreter to the Consulate, and
+keeper of a sailor's home, an honest, good-hearted, easy-going fellow,
+who for twenty years had occupied the same position under half a dozen
+different Consuls. At that moment, however, there came from the outer
+office a long-drawn moan.
+
+"Hulloa, what's that?" I enquired, startled.
+
+"Only a mad stoker off the _Oleander_, signore. The captain has brought
+him for you to see. They want to send him back to his friends at
+Newcastle."
+
+"Oh! a case of madness!" I exclaimed. "Better get Doctor Ridolfi to see
+him. I'm not an expert on mental diseases."
+
+My old friend Frank Hutcheson, His Britannic Majesty's Vice-Consul at
+the port of Leghorn, was away on leave in England, his duties being
+relegated to young Bertram Cavendish, the pro-Consul. The latter,
+however, had gone down with a bad touch of malaria which he had picked
+up in the deadly Maremma, and I, as the only other Englishman in
+Leghorn, had been asked by the Consul-General in Florence to act as
+pro-Consul until Hutcheson's return.
+
+It was in mid-July, and the weather was blazing in the glaring
+sun-blanched Mediterranean town. If you know Leghorn, you probably know
+the Consulate with its black and yellow escutcheon outside, a large,
+handsome suite of huge, airy offices facing the cathedral, and
+overlooking the principal piazza, which is as big as Trafalgar Square,
+and much more picturesque. The legend painted upon the door, "Office
+hours, 10 to 3," and the green persiennes closed against the scorching
+sun give one the idea of an easy appointment, but such is certainly not
+the case, for a Consul's life at a port of discharge must necessarily
+be a very active one, and his duties never-ending.
+
+Carducci had left me to the correspondence for half an hour or so, and I
+confess I was in no mood to write replies in that stifling heat,
+therefore I sat at the Consul's big table, smoking a cigarette and
+stretched lazily in my friend's chair, resolving to escape to the cool
+of England as soon as he returned in the following week. Italy is all
+very well for nine months in the year, but Leghorn is no place for the
+Englishman in mid-July. My thoughts were wandering toward the English
+lakes, and a bit of grouse-shooting with my uncle up in Scotland, when
+the faithful Francesco re-entered, saying--
+
+"I've sent the captain and his madman away till this afternoon, signore.
+But there is an English signore waiting to see you."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"I don't know him. He will give no name, but wants to see the Signor
+Console."
+
+"All right, show him in," I said lazily, and a few moments later a tall,
+smartly-dressed, middle-aged Englishman, in a navy serge yachting suit,
+entered, and bowing, enquired whether I was the British Consul.
+
+When he had seated himself I explained my position, whereupon he said--
+
+"I couldn't make much out of your clerk. He speaks so brokenly, and I
+don't know a word of Italian. But perhaps I ought to first introduce
+myself. My name is Philip Hornby," and he handed me a card bearing the
+name with the addresses "Woodcroft Park, Somerset ------ Brook's." Then
+he added: "I am cruising on board my yacht, the _Lola_, and last night
+we unfortunately went aground on the Meloria. I have a new captain whom
+I engaged a few months ago, and he seems an arrant fool. Very
+fortunately for us a fishing-boat saw our plight and gave the alarm at
+port. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats and a tug, and after about
+three hours they managed to get us off."
+
+"And you are now in harbor?"
+
+"Yes. But the reason I've called is to ask you to do me a favor and
+write me a letter of thanks in Italian to the Admiral, and one to the
+Captain of the Port--polite letters that I can copy and send to them.
+You know the kind of thing."
+
+"Certainly," I replied, the more interested in him on account of the
+curious suspicion that the port authorities seemed to entertain. He was
+evidently a gentleman, and after I had been with him ten minutes I
+scouted the idea that he had endeavored to cast away the _Lola_.
+
+I took down a couple of sheets of paper and scribbled the drafts of two
+letters couched in the most elegant phraseology, as is customary when
+addressing Italian officialdom.
+
+"Fortunately, I left my wife in England, or she would have been terribly
+frightened," he remarked presently. "There was a nasty wind blowing all
+night, and the fool of a captain seemed to add to our peril by every
+order he gave."
+
+"You are alone, then?"
+
+"I have a friend with me," was the answer.
+
+"And how many of the crew are there?"
+
+"Sixteen, all told."
+
+"English, I suppose?"
+
+"Not all. I find French and Italians are more sober than English, and
+better behaved in port."
+
+I examined him critically as he sat facing me, and the mere fact of his
+desire to send thanks to the authorities convinced me that he was a
+well-bred gentleman. He was about forty-five, with a merry round,
+good-natured face, red with the southern sun, blue eyes, and a short
+fair beard. His countenance was essentially that of a man devoted to
+open-air sport, for it was slightly furrowed and weather-beaten as a
+true yachtsman's should be. His speech was refined and cultivated, and
+as we chatted he gave me the impression that as an enthusiastic lover of
+the sea, he had cruised the Mediterranean many times from Gibraltar up
+to Smyrna. He had, however, never before put into Leghorn.
+
+After we had arranged that his captain should come to me in the
+afternoon and make a formal report of the accident, we went out together
+across the white sunny piazza to Nasi's, the well-known pastry-cook's,
+where it is the habit of the Livornese to take their ante-luncheon
+vermouth.
+
+The more I saw of Hornby, the more I liked him. He was chatty and witty,
+and treated his accident as a huge joke.
+
+"We shall be here quite a week, I suppose," he said as we were taking
+our vermouth. "We're on our way down to the Greek Islands, as my friend
+Chater wants to see them. The engineer says there's something strained
+that we must get mended. But, by the way," he added, "why don't you dine
+with us on board to-night? Do. We can give you a few English things that
+may be a change to you."
+
+This invitation I gladly accepted for two reasons. One was because the
+suspicions of the Captain of the Port had aroused my curiosity, and the
+other was because I had, honestly speaking, taken a great fancy to
+Hornby.
+
+The captain of the _Lola_, a short, thickset Scotsman from Dundee, with
+a barely healed cicatrice across his left cheek, called at the Consulate
+at two o'clock and made his report, which appeared to me to be a very
+lame one. He struck me as being unworthy his certificate, for he was
+evidently entirely out of his bearings when the accident occurred. The
+owner and his friend Chater were in their berths asleep, when suddenly
+he discovered that the vessel was making no headway. They had, in fact,
+run upon the dangerous shoal without being aware of it. A strong sea was
+running with a stiff breeze, and although his seamanship was poor, he
+was capable enough to recognize at once that they were in a very
+perilous position.
+
+"Very fortunate it wasn't more serious, sir," he added, after telling me
+his story, which I wrote at his dictation for the ultimate benefit of
+the Board of Trade.
+
+"Didn't you send up signals of distress?" I Inquired.
+
+"No, sir--never thought of it."
+
+"And yet you knew that you might be lost?" I remarked with recurring
+suspicion.
+
+The canny Scot, whose name was Mackintosh, hesitated a few moments, then
+answered--
+
+"Well, sir, you see the fishing-boat had sighted us, and we saw her
+turning back to port to fetch help."
+
+His excuse was a neat one. Probably it was his neglect to make signals
+of distress that had aroused the suspicions of the Captain of the Port.
+From first to last the story of the master of the _Lola_ was, I
+considered, a very unsatisfactory one.
+
+"How long have you been in Mr. Hornby's service?" I inquired.
+
+"Six months, sir," was the man's reply. "Before he engaged me, I was
+with the Wilsons, of Hull, running up the Baltic."
+
+"As master?"
+
+"I've held my master's certificate these fifteen years, sir. I was with
+the Bibbys before the Wilsons, and before that with the General Steam.
+I did eight years in the Mediterranean with them, when I was chief
+mate."
+
+"And you've never been into Leghorn before?"
+
+"Never, sir."
+
+I dismissed the captain with a distinct impression that he had not told
+me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal
+appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I
+wished he would bring them to me on the morrow.
+
+Was it possible that an attempt had actually been made to cast away the
+yacht, and that it had been frustrated by the master of the felucca, who
+had sighted the vessel aground? There certainly seemed some mystery
+surrounding the circumstances, and my interest in the yacht and its
+owner deepened each hour. How, I wondered, had the captain received that
+very ugly wound across the cheek? I was half-inclined to inquire of him,
+but on reflection decided that it was best to betray no undue curiosity.
+
+That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory,
+bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands
+of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant
+horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within
+the inner harbor, I found the _Lola_, one of the most magnificent
+private vessels I had ever seen. Her dimensions surprised me. She was
+painted dead white, with shining brass everywhere. At the stern hung
+limply the British flag, while at the masthead the ensign of the Royal
+Yacht Squadron. The yellow funnel emitted no smoke, and as she lay
+calmly in the sunset a crowd of dock-loungers and crimps leaned upon the
+parapet discussing her merits and wondering who could be the rich
+Englishman who could afford to travel in a small liner of his own--for
+her size surprised even those Italian dock-hands, used as they were to
+seeing every kind of craft enter the busy port.
+
+On stepping on deck Hornby, who like myself wore a clean suit of white
+linen as the most sensible dinner-garb in a hot climate, came forward to
+greet me, and took me along to the stern where, lying in a long wicker
+deck-chair beneath the awning, was a tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven man
+of about forty, also dressed in cool white linen. His keen face gave one
+the impression that he was a barrister.
+
+"My friend, Hylton Chater--Mr. Gordon Gregg," he said, introducing us,
+and then when, as we shook hands, the clean-shaven man exclaimed,
+smiling pleasantly--
+
+"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gregg. You are not a stranger by
+any means to Hornby or myself. Indeed, we've got a couple of your books
+on board. But I had no idea you lived out here."
+
+"At Ardenza," I said. "Three miles along the sea-shore. To-morrow I hope
+you'll both come and dine with me."
+
+"Delighted, I'm sure," declared Hornby. "To eat ashore is quite a treat
+when one has been boxed up on board for some time. So we'll accept,
+won't we, Hylton?"
+
+"Certainly," replied the other; and then we began chatting about the
+peril of the previous night, Hornby telling me how he had copied the two
+letters of thanks in Italian and sent them to their respective
+addresses.
+
+"Phil blasphemed like a Levant skipper when he copied those Italian
+words!" laughed Chater. "He had made three copies of each letter before
+he could get all the lingo in accordance with your copy."
+
+"I've been the whole afternoon at them--confound them!" declared the
+owner of the _Lola_ with a laugh. "But, of course, I didn't want to make
+a lot of errors in spelling. These Italians are so very punctilious."
+
+"Well, you certainly did the right thing to thank the Admiral," I said.
+"It's very unusual for him to send out torpedo-boats to help a vessel in
+distress. That is generally left to the harbor tug."
+
+"Yes, I feel that it was most kind of him. That's why I took all the
+trouble to write. I don't understand a word of Italian, neither does
+Chater."
+
+"But you have Italians on board?" I remarked. "The two sailors who rowed
+me out are Genoese, from their accent."
+
+Hornby and Chater exchanged glances--glances of distinct uneasiness, I
+thought.
+
+Then the owner of the _Lola_ said--
+
+"Yes, they are useful for making arrangements and buying things in
+Italian ports. We have a Spaniard, a Greek, and a Syrian, all of whom
+act as interpreters in different places."
+
+"And make a handsome thing in the way of secret commissions, I suppose?"
+I laughed.
+
+"Of course. But to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant,"
+declared the man with the fair beard. "In Greece and the Levant they are
+more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want
+squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and discovering mares'
+nests."
+
+"Did you have any trouble here?" I inquired.
+
+"They didn't visit us," he said with a smile, and at the same time he
+rubbed his thumb and finger together, the action of feeling paper money.
+
+This increased my surprise, for I happened to know that the Leghorn
+Customs officers were not at all given to the acceptance of bribes. They
+were too well watched by their superiors. If the yacht had really
+escaped a search, then it was a most unusual thing. Besides, what motive
+could Hornby have in eluding the Customs visit? They would, of course,
+seal up his wines and liquors, but even if they did, they would leave
+him out sufficient for the consumption of himself and his friends.
+
+No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to
+avoid the visit of the _dogana_. If he really had paid, he must have
+paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.
+
+Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly
+appointed craft?
+
+Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted
+saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone
+with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some
+artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles
+peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale
+blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely
+wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.
+
+Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him,
+chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked
+dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine of a
+brand which only a millionaire could keep in his cellar, while our host,
+apparently a most abstemious man, took only a glass of iced Cinciano
+water.
+
+The two smart stewards served in a manner which showed them to be well
+trained to their duties, and as the evening light filtering through the
+pale blue silk curtains over the open port-holes slowly faded, we
+gossiped on as men will gossip over an unusually good dinner.
+
+From his remarks I discerned that, contrary to my first impression,
+Hylton Chater was an experienced yachtsman. He owned a craft called the
+_Alicia_, and was a member of the Cork Yacht Club. He lived in London,
+he told me, but gave me no information as to his profession. It might be
+the law, as I had surmised.
+
+"You've seen our ass of a captain, Mr. Gregg?" he remarked presently.
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Well," I said rather hesitatingly, "to tell the truth, I don't think
+very much of his seamanship--nor will the Board of Trade when his report
+reaches them."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Hornby, "I was a fool to engage him. From the very first
+I mistrusted him, only my wife somehow took a fancy to the fellow, and,
+as you know, if you want peace you must always please the women. In this
+case, however, her choice almost cost me the vessel, and perhaps our
+lives into the bargain."
+
+"You knew nothing of him previously?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And he engaged the crew?" I asked.
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Are they all fresh hands?"
+
+"All except the cook and the two stewards."
+
+I was silent. I did not like Mackintosh. Indeed, I entertained a
+distinct suspicion of both master and crew.
+
+"The captain seems to have had a nasty cut across the cheek," I
+remarked, whereupon my two companions again exchanged quick,
+apprehensive glances.
+
+"He fell down the other day," explained Chater, with a rather sickly
+smile, I thought. "His face caught the edge of an iron stair in the
+engine-room, and caused a nasty gash."
+
+I smiled within myself, for I knew too well that the ugly wound in the
+captain's face had never been inflicted by falling on the edge of a
+stair. But I remained silent, being content that they should endeavor
+to mislead me.
+
+After dessert had been served we rose, and in the summer twilight, when
+all the ports were opened, Hornby took me over the vessel. Everywhere
+was abundant luxury--a veritable floating palace. To each of the cabins
+of the owner and his guests a bathroom was attached with sea-water or
+fresh water as desired, while the ladies' saloon, the boudoir, the
+library, and the smoking-room were furnished richly with exquisite
+taste. As he was conducting me from his own cabin to the boudoir we
+passed a door that had been blown open by the wind, and which he
+hastened to close, not, however, before I had time to glance within. To
+my surprise I discovered that it was an armory crammed with rifles,
+revolvers and ammunition.
+
+It had not been intended that I should see that interior, and the reason
+why the Customs officers had been bribed was now apparent.
+
+I passed on without remark, making believe that I had not discerned
+anything unusual, and we entered the boudoir, Chater having gone back to
+the saloon to obtain cigars.
+
+The dainty little chamber was upholstered in carnation-pink silk with
+furniture of inlaid rosewood, and bore everywhere the trace of having
+been arranged by a woman's hand, although no lady passenger was on
+board.
+
+Just as we had entered, and I was admiring the dainty nest of luxury,
+Chater shouted to his host asking for the keys of the cigar cupboard,
+and Hornby, excusing himself, turned back along the gangway to hand them
+to his friend, thus leaving me alone for a few moments.
+
+I stood glancing around, and as I did so my eyes fell upon a quantity of
+photographs, framed and unframed, that were scattered about--evidently
+portraits of Hornby's friends. Upon a small side table, however, stood a
+heavy oxidized silver frame, but empty, while lying on the floor beneath
+a couch was the photograph it had contained, which had apparently been
+taken hastily out, torn first in half and then in half again, and cast
+away.
+
+Curiosity prompted me to stoop, pick up the four pieces and place them
+together, when I found them to form the cabinet portrait of a
+sweet-looking and extremely pretty English girl of eighteen or nineteen,
+with a bright, smiling expression, and wearing a fresh morning blouse of
+white pique. Her hair was dressed low and fastened with a bow of black
+ribbon, while the brooch at her throat was in the form of a heart edged
+with pearls. Whether it was her sweet expression, or whether the curious
+look in her eyes had attracted my attention and riveted the face upon my
+memory, I know not. Perhaps it was the mystery of why it should have
+been so hastily torn from its frame and destroyed that held my
+attention.
+
+It seemed as though it had been torn up surreptitiously by someone who
+had been sitting on that couch, and who had had no opportunity of
+casting the fragments away through the port-hole into the water.
+
+I looked at the back of the torn photograph, and saw that it had been
+taken by a well-known and fashionable firm in New Bond Street.
+
+About the expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot
+describe--a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both
+attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were
+indelibly impressed upon my memory.
+
+Next second, however, hearing Hornby's returning footsteps, I flung the
+fragments hastily beneath the couch where I had discovered them.
+
+Why, I wondered, had the picture been destroyed--and by whom?
+
+The face of the empty frame had been purposely turned towards the
+panelling, therefore when he entered he did not notice that the picture
+had been destroyed; but after a brief pause, explaining that that cosy
+little place was his wife's particular nook, he conducted me on through
+the ladies' saloon and afterwards on deck, where we flung ourselves into
+the long chairs, took our coffee and certosina, that liqueur essentially
+Tuscan, and smoked on as the moon rose and the lights of the harbor
+began to twinkle in the steely night.
+
+As I sat talking, my thoughts ran back to that torn photograph. To me it
+seemed as though some previous visitor that day had sat upon the couch,
+destroyed the picture, and cast it where I had found it. But for what
+reason? Who was the merry-faced girl whose picture had aroused such
+jealousy or revenge?
+
+I purposely led the conversation to Hornby's family, and learned from
+him that he had no children.
+
+"You'll get the repairs to your engines done at Orlando's, I suppose?" I
+remarked, naming the great shipbuilding firm of Leghorn.
+
+"Yes. I've already given the order. They are contracted to be finished
+by next Thursday, and then we shall be off to Zante and Chio."
+
+For what reason, I wondered, recollecting that formidable armory on
+board. Already I had seen quite sufficient to convince me that the
+_Lola_, although outwardly a pleasure yacht, was built of steel, armored
+in its most vulnerable parts, and capable of resisting a very sharp
+fire.
+
+The hours passed, and beneath the brilliant moon we smoked long into the
+night, for after the blazing sunshine of that Tuscan town the cool
+sea-wind at night is very refreshing. From where we sat we commanded a
+view of the whole of the sea-front of Leghorn and Ardenza, with its
+bright open-air cafe-concerts and restaurants in full swing--all the
+life and gayety of that popular watering-place.
+
+Presently, when Hornby had risen to call a steward and left me alone
+with Hylton Chater, the latter whispered to me in confidence--
+
+"If you find my friend Hornby a little bit strange in his manner, Mr.
+Gregg, you must take no notice. To tell the truth, he is a man who has
+become suddenly wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, and I fear
+it has had an effect upon his brain. He does very queer things at
+times."
+
+I looked at my companion in surprise. He was either telling the truth,
+or else he was endeavoring to allay my suspicions by an extremely clever
+ruse. Now I had already decided that Philip Hornby was no eccentric, but
+a particularly level-headed and practical man. Therefore I instantly
+arrived at the conclusion that the clean-shaven fellow who looked so
+much like a London barrister had some distinct and ulterior purpose in
+arousing within my mind suspicion of his host's sanity.
+
+It was past midnight when, having bade the strange pair adieu, I was put
+ashore by the two sailors who had rowed me out and drove home along the
+sea-front, puzzled and perplexed.
+
+Next morning, on my arrival at the Consulate, old Francesco, who had
+entered only a moment before, met me with blanched face, gasping--
+
+"There have been thieves here in the night, signore! The Signor
+Console's safe has been opened!"
+
+"The safe!" I cried, dashing into Hutcheson's private room, and finding
+to my dismay the big safe, wherein the seals, ciphers and other
+confidential documents were kept, standing open, and the contents in
+disorder, as though a hasty search had been made among them.
+
+Was it possible that the thieves had been after the Admiralty and
+Foreign Office ciphers, copies of which the Chancelleries of certain
+European Powers were ever endeavoring to obtain? I smiled within myself
+when I realized how bitterly disappointed the burglars must have been,
+for a British Consul when he goes on leave to England always takes his
+ciphers with him, and deposits them at the Foreign Office for
+safekeeping. Hutcheson had, of course, taken his, according to the
+regulations.
+
+Curiously enough, however, the door of the Consulate and the safe had
+been opened with the keys which my friend had left in my charge. Indeed,
+the small bunch still remained in the safe door.
+
+In an instant the recollection flashed across my mind that I had felt
+the keys in my pocket while at dinner on board the _Lola_. Had I lost
+them on my homeward drive, or had my pocket been picked?
+
+Carducci, with an Italian's volubility, commenced to hurl imprecations
+upon the heads of the unknown sons of dogs who dared to tamper with his
+master's safe, and while we were engaged in putting the scattered papers
+in order the door-bell rang, and the clerk went to attend to the caller.
+
+In a few moments he returned, saying--
+
+"The English yacht left suddenly last night, signore, and the Captain of
+the Port has sent to inquire whether you know to what port she is
+bound."
+
+"Left!" I gasped in amazement "Why, I thought her engines were
+disabled!"
+
+A quarter of an hour later I was sitting in the private office of the
+shrewd, gray-haired functionary who had sent this messenger to me.
+
+"Do you know, Signor Commendatore," he said, "some mystery surrounds
+that vessel. She is not the _Lola_, for yesterday we telegraphed to
+Lloyd's, in London, and this morning I received a reply that no such
+yacht appears on their register, and that the name is unknown. The
+police have also telegraphed to your English police inquiring about the
+owner, Signor Hornby, with a like result. There is no such place as
+Woodcroft Park, in Somerset, and no member of Brook's Club of the name
+of Hornby."
+
+I sat staring at the official, too amazed to utter a word. Certainly
+they had not allowed the grass to grow beneath their feet.
+
+"Unfortunately the telegraphic replies from England are only to hand
+this morning," he went on, "because just before two o'clock this morning
+the harbor police, whom I specially ordered to watch the vessel, saw a
+boat come to the wharf containing a man and woman. The pair were put
+ashore, and walked away into the town, the woman seeming to walk with
+considerable difficulty. The boat returned, and an hour after, to the
+complete surprise of the two detectives, steam was suddenly got up and
+the yacht turned and went straight out to sea."
+
+"Leaving the man and the woman?"
+
+"Leaving them, of course. They are probably still in the town. The
+police are now searching for traces of them."
+
+"But could not you have detained the vessel?" I suggested.
+
+"Of course, had I but known I could have forbidden her departure. But as
+her owner had presented himself at the Consulate, and was recognized as
+a respectable person, I felt that I could not interfere without some
+tangible information--and that, alas! has come too late. The vessel is
+a swift one, and has already seven hours start of us. I've asked the
+Admiral to send out a couple of torpedo-boats after her, but,
+unfortunately, this is impossible, as the flotilla is sailing in an hour
+to attend the naval review at Spezia."
+
+I told him how the Consul's safe had been opened during the night, and
+he sat listening with wide-open eyes.
+
+"You dined with them last night," he said at last. "They may have
+surreptitiously stolen your keys."
+
+"They may," was my answer. "Probably they did. But with what motive?"
+
+The Captain of the Port elevated his shoulders, exhibited his palms, and
+declared--
+
+"The whole affair from beginning to end is a complete and profound
+mystery."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHY THE SAFE WAS OPENED
+
+
+That day was an active one in Questura, or police office, of Leghorn.
+
+Detectives called, examined the safe, and sagely declared it to be
+burglar-proof, had not the thieves possessed the key. The Foreign Office
+knew that, for they supply all the safes to the Consulates abroad, in
+order that the precious ciphers shall be kept from the prying eyes of
+foreign spies. The Questore, or chief of police, was of opinion that it
+was the ciphers of which the thieves had been in search, and was much
+relieved to hear that they were in safekeeping far away in Downing
+Street.
+
+His conjecture was the same as my own, namely, that the reason of
+Hornby's call upon me was to ascertain the situation of the Consulate
+and the whereabouts of the safe, which, by the way, stood in a corner of
+the Consul's private room. Captain Mackintosh, too, had taken his
+bearings, and probably while I sat at dinner on board the _Lola_ my keys
+had been stolen and passed on to the scarred Scotsman, who had promptly
+gone ashore and ransacked the place while I had remained with his master
+smoking and unsuspicious.
+
+But what was the motive? Why had they ransacked all those confidential
+papers?
+
+My own idea was that they were not in search of the ciphers at all, but
+either wanted some blank form or other, or else they desired to make use
+of the Consular seal. The latter, however, still remained on the floor
+near the safe, as though it had rolled out and been left unheeded. As
+far as Francesco and I could ascertain, nothing whatever had been taken.
+Therefore, we re-arranged the papers, re-locked the safe and resolved
+not to telegraph to Hutcheson and unduly disturb him, as in a few days
+he would return from England, and there would be time enough then to
+explain the remarkable story.
+
+One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
+station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
+lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which
+left at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They
+were foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as
+though they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed,
+however, that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in
+question. To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the
+Maremma, passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to
+any of the great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious
+pair who had come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had
+merely taken tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle
+Salvetti, the junction with that long main line which connects Genoa
+with Rome.
+
+The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the _Lola_ and
+first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
+alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
+first man who came aboard.
+
+"They were English!" remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
+sea, grinning knowingly. "And the English, when they drink their cognac,
+know not what they do."
+
+"Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?" I
+asked.
+
+"Reward!" echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. "Not a soldo!
+The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed that
+they were trying to make away with the vessel."
+
+The description of the _Lola_, its owner, his guest, and the captain
+were circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a
+request that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really
+one of mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across
+to some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
+vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
+that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any of
+the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
+first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
+tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
+evaded their watchers and got clean away.
+
+Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
+the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
+circumstances had prevented this and the _Lola_ had consequently
+escaped.
+
+For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
+and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris on
+to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
+extraordinary story.
+
+"The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident," he responded, holding up
+the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which contained
+his jealously-guarded ciphers. "By Jove!" he laughed, "how disappointed
+they must have been!"
+
+"It may be so," I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
+"But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
+that you possess."
+
+"What can my papers concern them?" exclaimed the jovial, round-faced
+Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper trading up and
+down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the most cultured and
+popular men in the British Consular Service. "I don't keep bank notes in
+that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't roll in gold as our
+public at home appears to think."
+
+"No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
+them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
+Englishmen abroad, you know."
+
+"Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
+registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
+papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon, depend
+upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it so as
+to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and sail
+merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave you a
+jolly good dinner and got nothing in return."
+
+"They might very easily have carried me off too," I declared.
+
+"Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had
+the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!"
+
+"But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she sailed,
+and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder who they were?
+Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were alone, and yet there
+was evidently a lady and a gentleman on board. I guessed there was a
+woman there, from the way the boudoir and ladies' saloon were arranged,
+and certainly no man's hand decorated a dinner table as that was
+decorated."
+
+"Yes. That's decidedly funny," remarked the Consul thoughtfully. "They
+went to Colle Salvetti, you say? They changed there, of course.
+Expresses call there, one going north and the other south, within a
+quarter of an hour after the train arrives from Leghorn. They showed a
+lot of ingenuity, otherwise they'd have gone direct to Pisa."
+
+"Ingenuity! I should think so! The whole affair was most cleverly
+planned. Hornby would have deceived even you, my dear old chap. He had
+the air of the perfect gentleman, and a glance over the yacht convinced
+me that he was a wealthy man traveling for pleasure."
+
+"You said something about an armory."
+
+"Yes, there were Maxims stowed away in one of the cabins. They aroused
+my suspicions."
+
+"They would not have aroused mine," replied my friend. "Yachts carry
+arms for protection in many cases, especially if they are going to
+cruise along uncivilized coasts where they must land for water or
+provisions."
+
+I told him of the torn photograph, which caused him some deep
+reflection.
+
+"I wonder why the picture had been torn up. Had there been a row on
+board--a quarrel or something?"
+
+"It had been destroyed surreptitiously, I think."
+
+"Pity you didn't pocket the fragments. We could perhaps have discovered
+from the photographer the identity of the original."
+
+"Ah!" I sighed regretfully. "I never thought of that. I recollect the
+name of the firm, however."
+
+"I shall have to report to London the whole occurrence, as British
+subjects are under suspicion," Hutcheson said. "We'll see whether
+Scotland Yard knows anything about Hornby or Chater. Most probably they
+do. Not long ago a description of men on board a yacht was circulated
+from London as being a pair of well-known burglars who were cruising
+about in a vessel crammed with booty which they dared not get rid of.
+They are, however, not the same as our friends on the _Lola_, for both
+men wanted were arrested in New Orleans about eight months ago, without
+their yacht, for they confessed that they had deliberately sunk it on
+one of the islands in the South Pacific."
+
+"Then these fellows might be another pair of London burglars!" I
+exclaimed eagerly, as the startling theory occurred to me.
+
+"They might be. But, of course, we can't form any opinion until we hear
+what Scotland Yard has to say. I'll write a full report in the morning
+if you will give me minute descriptions of the men, as well as of the
+captain, Mackintosh."
+
+Next morning I handed over my charge of the Consulate to Frank, and then
+assisted him to go through the papers in the safe which had been
+examined by the thieves.
+
+"The ruffians seem to have thoroughly overhauled everything," remarked
+the Consul in dismay when he saw the disordered state of his papers.
+"They seem to have read every one deliberately."
+
+"Which shows that had they been in search for the cipher-books they
+would only have looked for them alone," I remarked decisively. "What on
+earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports
+and things?"
+
+"Goodness only knows," replied my friend. Then, calling Cavendish, a
+tall, fair young man, who had now recovered from his touch of fever and
+had returned to the Consulate, he commenced to check the number of those
+adhesive stamps, rather larger than ordinary postage-stamps, used in
+the Consular service for the registration of fees received by the
+Foreign Office. The values were from sixpence to one pound, and they
+were kept in a portfolio.
+
+After a long calculation the Consul suddenly raised his face to me and
+said--
+
+"Then six ten shilling ones have been taken!"
+
+"Why? There must be some motive!"
+
+"They are of no use to anyone except to Consuls," he explained. "Perhaps
+they were wanted to affix to some false certificate. See," he added,
+opening the portfolio, "there were six stamps here, and all are gone."
+
+"But they would have to be obliterated by the Consular stamp," remarked
+Cavendish.
+
+"Ah! of course," exclaimed Hutcheson, taking out the brass seal from the
+safe and examining it minutely. "By Jove!" he cried a second later,
+"it's been used! They've stamped some document with it. Look! They've
+used the wrong ink-pad! Can't you see that there's violet upon it, while
+we always use the black pad!"
+
+I took it in my hand, and there, sure enough, I saw traces of violet ink
+upon it--the ink of the pad for the date-stamp upon the Consul's table.
+
+"Then some document has been stamped and sealed!" I gasped.
+
+"Yes. And my signature forged to it, no doubt. They've fabricated some
+certificate or other which, bearing the stamp, seal and signature of the
+Consulate, will be accepted as a legal document. I wonder what it is?"
+
+"Ah!" I said. "I wonder!" And the three of us looked at each other in
+sheer bewilderment.
+
+"The reason the papers are all upset is because they were evidently in
+search of some blank form or other, which they hoped to find," remarked
+my friend. "As you say, the whole affair was most carefully and
+ingeniously planned."
+
+We crossed the great sunlit piazza together and entered the Questura,
+that sun-blanched old palace with its long cool loggia where the sentry
+paces day and night. The Chief of Police, whom we saw, had no further
+information. The mysterious yacht had not put in at any Italian port.
+From him, however, we learned the name of the detective who had seen the
+two strangers leave Leghorn by the early morning train, and an hour
+afterwards the police-officer, a black-eyed man short of stature, but of
+an intelligent type, sat in the Consulate replying to our questions.
+
+"As far as I could make out, signore," he said, "the man was an
+Englishman, wearing a soft black felt hat and a suit of dark blue serge.
+He had hair just turning gray, a small dark mustache and rather high
+cheek-bones. In his hand he carried a small bag of tan leather of that
+square English shape. He seemed in no hurry, for he was calmly smoking a
+cigarette as he went across to the ticket office."
+
+"And his companion?" asked the Consul.
+
+"She was in black. Rather tall and slim. Her hair was fair, I noticed,
+but she wore a black veil which concealed her features."
+
+"Was she young or old?"
+
+"Young--from her figure," replied the police agent. "As she passed me
+her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in
+them--the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror."
+
+Next day the town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the
+Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the
+Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the
+night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had
+come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had
+maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic
+battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats,
+despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the
+coast.
+
+In the bright morning sunlight the sight was both picturesque and
+imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the
+great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all
+the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters
+was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the
+overwhelming force which upheld Britain's right in that oft-disputed
+sea.
+
+A couple of thousand British sailors were ashore on leave, their white
+caps conspicuous in the streets everywhere as they walked orderly in
+threes and fours to inspect the town. In the square outside the
+Consulate a squad from the flagship were setting up a temporary
+band-stand, where the ship's band was to play when evening fell, while
+Hutcheson, perspiring in his uniform, drove with the Admiral to make the
+calls of courtesy upon the authorities which international etiquette
+demanded.
+
+Myself, I had taken a boat out to the _Bulwark_, the great battleship
+flying the Admiral's flag, and was sitting on deck with my old friend
+Captain Jack Durnford, of the Royal Marines. Each year when the fleet
+put into Leghorn we were inseparable, for in long years past, at
+Portsmouth, we had been close friends, and now he was able to pay me
+annual visits at my Italian home.
+
+He was on duty that morning, therefore could not get ashore till after
+luncheon.
+
+"I'll dine with you, of course, to-night, old chap," he said. "And you
+must tell me all the news. We're in here for six days, and I was half a
+mind to run home. Two of our chaps got leave from the Admiral and left
+at three this morning for London--four days in the train and two in
+town! Gone to see their sweethearts, I suppose."
+
+The British naval officer in the Mediterranean delights to dash across
+Europe for a day at home if he can get leave and funds will allow. It is
+generally reckoned that such a trip costs about two pounds an hour while
+in London. And yet when a man is away from his _fiancee_ or wife for
+three whole years, his anxiety to get back, even for a brief day, is
+easily understood. The youngsters, however, go for mere
+caprice--whenever they can obtain leave. This is not often, for the
+Admiral has very fixed views upon the matter.
+
+"Your time's soon up, isn't it?" I remarked, as I lolled back in the
+easy deck-chair, and gazed away at the white port and its background of
+purple Apennines.
+
+The dark, good-looking fellow in his smart summer uniform leaned over
+the bulwark, and said, with a slight sigh, I thought--
+
+"Yes. This is my last trip to Leghorn, I think. I go back in November,
+and I really shan't be sorry. Three years is a long time to be away from
+home. You go next week, you say? Lucky devil to be your own master! I
+only wish I were. Year after year on this deck grows confoundedly
+wearisome, I can tell you, my dear fellow."
+
+Durnford was a man who had written much on naval affairs, and was
+accepted as an expert on several branches of the service. The Admiralty
+do not encourage officers to write, but in Durnford's case it was
+recognized that of naval topics he possessed a knowledge that was of
+use, and, therefore, he was allowed to write books and to contribute
+critical articles to the service magazines. He had studied the relative
+strengths of foreign navies, and by keeping his eyes always open he had,
+on many occasions, been able to give valuable information to our naval
+_attaches_ at the Embassies. More than once, however, his trenchant
+criticism of the action of the naval lords had brought upon his head
+rebukes from head-quarters; nevertheless, so universally was his talent
+as a naval expert recognized, that to write had never been forbidden him
+as it had been to certain others.
+
+"How's Hutcheson?" he asked a moment later, turning and facing me.
+
+"Fit as a fiddle. Just back from his month's leave at home. His wife is
+still up in Scotland, however. She can't stand Leghorn in summer."
+
+"No wonder. It's a perfect furnace when the weather begins to stoke up."
+
+"I go as soon as you've sailed. I only stayed because I promised to act
+for Frank," I said. "And, by Jove! a funny thing occurred while I was in
+charge--a real first-class mystery."
+
+"A mystery--tell me," he exclaimed, suddenly interested.
+
+"Well, a yacht--a pirate yacht, I believe it was--called here."
+
+"A pirate! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, she was English. Listen, and I'll tell you the whole affair.
+It'll be something fresh to tell at mess, for I know how you chaps get
+played out of conversation."
+
+"By Jove, yes! Things slump when we get no mail. But go on--I'm
+listening," he added, as an orderly came up, saluted, and handed him a
+paper.
+
+"Well," I said, "let's cross to the other side. I don't want the sentry
+to overhear."
+
+"As you like--but why such mystery?" he asked as we walked together to
+the other side of the spick-and-span quarter-deck of the gigantic
+battleship.
+
+"You'll understand when I tell you the story." And then, standing
+together beneath the awning, I related to my friend the whole of the
+curious circumstances, just as I have recorded them in the foregoing
+pages.
+
+"Confoundedly funny!" he remarked with his dark eyes fixed upon mine. "A
+mystery, by Jove, it is! What name did the yacht bear?"
+
+"The _Lola_."
+
+"What!" he gasped, suddenly turning pale. "The _Lola_? Are you quite
+sure it was the _Lola_--_L-O-L-A_?"
+
+
+"Absolutely certain," I replied. "But why do you ask? Do you happen to
+know anything about the craft?"
+
+"Me!" he stammered, and I could see that he had involuntarily betrayed
+the truth, yet for some reason he wished to conceal his knowledge from
+me. "Me! How should I know anything about such a craft? They were
+thieves on board evidently--perhaps pirates, as you say."
+
+"But the name _Lola_ is familiar to you, Jack! I'm sure it is, by your
+manner."
+
+He paused a moment, and I could see what a strenuous effort he was
+making to avoid betraying knowledge.
+
+"It's--well--" he said hesitatingly, with a rather sickly smile. "It's a
+girl's name--a girl I once knew. The name brings back to me certain
+memories."
+
+"Pleasant ones--I hope."
+
+"No. Bitter ones--very bitter ones," he said in a hard tone, striding
+across the deck and back again, and I saw in his eyes a strange look,
+half of anger, half of deep regret.
+
+Was he telling the truth, I wondered? Some tragic romance or other
+concerning a woman had, I knew, overshadowed his life in the years
+before we had become acquainted. But the real facts he had never
+revealed to me. He had never before referred to the bitterness of the
+past, although I knew full well that his heart was in secret filled by
+some overwhelming sorrow.
+
+Outwardly he was as merry as the other fellows who officered that huge
+floating fortress; on board he was a typical smart marine, and on shore
+he danced and played tennis and flirted just as vigorously as did the
+others. But a heavy heart beat beneath his uniform.
+
+When he returned to where I stood I saw that his face had changed: it
+had become drawn and haggard. He bore the appearance of a man who had
+been struck a blow that had staggered him, crushing out all life and
+hope.
+
+"What's the matter, Jack?" I asked. "Come! Tell me--what ails you?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear old chap," he answered hoarsely. "Really nothing--only
+a touch of the blues just for a moment," he added, trying hard to smile.
+"It'll pass."
+
+"What I've just told you about that yacht has upset you. You can't deny
+it"
+
+He started. His mouth was, I saw, hard set. He knew something concerning
+that mysterious craft, but would not tell me.
+
+The sound of a bugle came from the further end of the ship, and
+immediately men were scampering along the deck beneath as some order or
+other was being obeyed with that precision that characterizes the "handy
+man."
+
+"Why are you silent?" I asked slowly, my eyes fixed upon my friend the
+officer. "I have told you what I know, and I want to discover the
+motive of the visit of those men, and the reason they opened Hutcheson's
+safe."
+
+"How can I tell you?" he asked in a strained, unnatural voice.
+
+"I believe you know something concerning them. Come, tell me the truth."
+
+"I admit that I have certain grave suspicions," he said at last,
+standing astride with his hands behind his back, his sword trailing on
+the white deck. "You say that the yacht was called the _Lola_--painted
+gray with a black funnel."
+
+"No, dead white, with a yellow funnel."
+
+"Ah! Of course," he remarked, as though to himself. "They would repaint
+and alter her appearance. But the dining saloon. Was there a long carved
+oak buffet with a big, heavy cornice with three gilt dolphins in the
+center--and were there not dolphins in gilt on the backs of the
+chairs--an armorial device?"
+
+"Yes," I cried. "You are right. I remember them! You've surely been on
+board her!"
+
+"And there is a ladies' saloon and a small boudoir in pink beyond, while
+the smoking-room is entirely of marble for the heat?"
+
+"Exactly--the same yacht, no doubt! But what do you know of her?"
+
+"The captain, who gave his name to you as Mackintosh, is an undersized
+American of a rather low-down type?"
+
+"I took him for a Scotsman."
+
+"Because he put on a Scotch accent," he laughed. "He's a man who can
+speak a dozen languages brokenly, and pass for an Italian, a German, a
+Frenchman, as he wishes."
+
+"And the--the man who gave his name as Philip Hornby?"
+
+Durnford's mouth closed with a snap. He drew a long breath, his eyes
+grew fierce, and he bit his lip.
+
+"Ah! I see he is not exactly your friend," I said meaningly.
+
+"You are right, Gordon--he is not my friend," was his slow, meaning
+response.
+
+"Then why not be outspoken and tell me all you know concerning him?
+Frank Hutcheson is anxious to clear up the mystery because they've
+tampered with the Consular seals and things. Besides, it would be put
+down to his credit if he solved the affair."
+
+"Well, to tell you the truth, I'm mystified myself. I can't yet discern
+their motive."
+
+"But at any rate you know the men," I argued. "You can at least tell us
+who they really are."
+
+He shook his head, still disinclined, for some hidden reason, to reveal
+the truth to me.
+
+"You saw no woman on board?" he asked suddenly, looking straight into my
+eyes.
+
+"No. Hornby told me that he and Chater were alone."
+
+"And yet an hour after you left a man and a woman came ashore and
+disappeared! Ah! If we only had a description of that woman it would
+reveal much to us."
+
+"She was young and dark-haired, so the detective says. She had a curious
+fixed look in her eyes which attracted him, but she wore a thick motor
+veil, so that he could not clearly discern her features."
+
+"And her companion?"
+
+"Middle-aged, prematurely gray, with a small dark mustache."
+
+Jack Durnford sighed and stroked his chin.
+
+"Ah! Just as I thought," he exclaimed. "And they were actually here, in
+this port, a week ago! What a bitter irony of fate!"
+
+"I don't understand you," I said. "You are so mysterious, and yet you
+will tell me nothing!"
+
+"The police, fools that they are, have allowed them to escape, and they
+will never be caught now. Ah! you don't know them as I do! They are the
+cleverest pair in all Europe. And they have the audacity to call their
+craft the _Lola_--the _Lola_, of all names!"
+
+"But as you know who and what the fellows are, you ought, I think, in
+common justice to Hutcheson, to tell us something," I complained. "If
+they are adventurers, they ought to be traced."
+
+"What can I do--a prisoner here on board?" he argued bitterly. "How can
+I act?"
+
+"Leave it all to me. I'm free to travel after them, and find out the
+truth if only you will tell me what you know concerning them," I said
+eagerly.
+
+"Gordon, let me be frank and open with you, my dear old fellow. I would
+tell you everything--everything--if I dared. But I cannot--you
+understand!" And his final words seemed to choke him.
+
+I stood before him, open-mouthed in astonishment.
+
+"You really mean--well, that you are in fear of them--eh?" I whispered.
+
+He nodded slowly in the affirmative, adding: "To tell you the truth
+would be to bring upon myself a swift, relentless vengeance that would
+overwhelm and crush me. Ah! my dear fellow, you do not know--you cannot
+dream--what brought those desperate men into this port. I can guess--I
+can guess only too well--but I can only tell you that if you ever do
+discover the terrible truth--which I fear is unlikely--you will solve
+one of the strangest and most remarkable mysteries of modern times."
+
+"What does the mystery concern?" I asked, in breathless eagerness.
+
+"It concerns a woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HOUSE "OVER THE WATER"
+
+
+The Mediterranean Squadron, that magnificent display of naval force that
+is the guarantee of peace in Europe, after a week of gay festivities in
+Leghorn, had sailed for Gaeta, while I, glad to escape from the glaring
+heat, found myself back once more in dear old London.
+
+One passes one's time in the south well enough in winter, but after a
+year even the most ardent lover of Italy longs to return to his own
+people, be it ever for so brief a space. Exile for a whole year in any
+continental town is exile indeed; therefore, although I lived in Italy
+for choice, I, like so many other Englishmen, always managed to spend a
+month or two in summer in our temperate if much maligned climate.
+
+London, the same dear, dusty old London, only perhaps more dear and more
+dusty than ever, was my native city; hence I always spent a few weeks in
+it, even though all the world might be absent in the country, or at the
+seaside.
+
+I had idled away a pleasant month up in Buxton, and from there had gone
+north to the Lakes, and it was one hot evening in mid-August that I
+found myself again in London, crossing St. James's Square from the
+Sports Club, where I had dined, walking towards Pall Mall. Darkness had
+just fallen, and there was that stifling oppression in the air that
+fore-tokened a thunderstorm. The club was not gay with life and
+merriment as it is in the season, for everyone was away, many of the
+rooms were closed for re-decoration, and most of the furniture swathed
+in linen.
+
+I was on my way to pay a visit to a lady who lived up at Hampstead, a
+friend of my late mother's, and had just turned into Pall Mall, when a
+voice at my elbow suddenly exclaimed in Italian--
+
+"Ah, signore!--why, actually, my padrone!"
+
+And looking round, I saw a thin-faced man of about thirty, dressed in
+neat but rather shabby black, whom I instantly recognized as a man who
+had been my servant in Leghorn for two years, after which he had left to
+better himself.
+
+"Why, Olinto!" I exclaimed, surprised, as I halted. "You--in London--eh?
+Well, and how are you getting on?"
+
+"Most excellently, signore," he answered in broken English, smiling.
+"But it is so pleasant for me to see my generous padrone again. What
+fortune it is that I should pass here at this very moment!"
+
+"Where are you working?" I inquired.
+
+"At the Restaurant Milano, in Oxford Street--only a small place, but we
+gain discreetly, so I must not complain. I live over in Lambeth, and am
+on my way home."
+
+"I heard you married after you left me. Is that true?"
+
+"Yes, signore. I married Armida, who was in your service when I first
+entered it. You remember her? Ah, well!" he added, sighing. "Poor thing!
+I regret to say she is very ill indeed. She cannot stand your English
+climate. The doctor says she will die if she remains here. Yet what can
+I do? If we go back to Italy we shall only starve." And I saw that he
+was in deep distress, and that mention of his ailing wife had aroused
+within him bitter thoughts.
+
+Olinto Santini walked back at my side in the direction of Trafalgar
+Square, answering the questions I put to him. He had been a good,
+hard-working servant, and I was glad to see him again. When he left me
+he had gone as steward on one of the Anchor Line boats between Naples
+and New York, and that was the last I had heard of him until I found him
+there in London, a waiter at a second-rate restaurant.
+
+When I tried to slip some silver into his hand he refused to take it,
+and with a merry laugh said--
+
+"I wonder if you would be offended, signore, if I told you of something
+for which I had been longing and longing?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Well, the signore smokes our Tuscan cigars. I wonder if by chance you
+have one? We cannot get them in London, you know."
+
+I felt in my pocket, laughing, and discovered that I had a couple of
+those long thin penny cigars which I always smoke in Italy, and which
+are so dear to the Tuscan palate. These I handed him, and he took them
+with delight as the greatest delicacy I could have offered him. Poor
+fellow! As an exiled Italian he clung to every little trifle that
+reminded him of his own beloved country.
+
+When we halted before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some
+further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking
+housemaid whom he had married.
+
+"Ah, signore!" he responded in a voice choked with emotion, dropping
+into Italian. "It is the one great sorrow of my life. I work hard from
+early morning until late at night, but what is the use when I see my
+poor wife gradually fading away before my very eyes? The doctor says
+that she cannot possibly live through the next winter. Ah! how delighted
+the poor girl would be if she could see the padrone once again!"
+
+I felt sorry for him. Armida had been a good servant, and had served me
+well for nearly three years. Old Rosina, my housekeeper, had often
+regretted that she had been compelled to leave to attend to her aged
+mother. The latter, he told me, had died, and afterwards he had married
+her. There is more romance and tragedy in the lives of the poor Italians
+in London than London ever suspects. We are too apt to regard the
+Italian as a bloodthirsty person given to the unlawful use of the knife,
+whereas, as a whole, the Italian colony in London is a hard-working,
+thrifty, and law-abiding one, very different, indeed, to those colonies
+of aliens from Northern Europe, who are so continually bringing filth,
+disease, and immorality into the East End, and are a useless incubus in
+an already over-populated city.
+
+He spoke so wistfully that his wife might see me once more that, having
+nothing very particular to do that evening, and feeling a deep sympathy
+for the poor fellow in his trouble, I resolved to accompany him to his
+house and see whether I could not, in some slight manner, render him a
+little help.
+
+He thanked me profusely when I consented to go with him.
+
+"Ah, signor padrone!" he said gratefully, "she will be so delighted. It
+is so very good of you."
+
+We hailed a hansom and drove across Westminster Bridge to the address he
+gave--a gloomy back street off the York Road, one of those narrow, grimy
+thoroughfares into which the sun never shines. Ah, how often do the poor
+Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our
+dismal, sordid streets! Dirt and squalor do not affect them; it is the
+damp and cold and lack of sunshine that so very soon proves fatal.
+
+A low-looking, evil-faced fellow opened the door to us and growled
+acquaintance with Olinto, who, striking a match, ascended the worn,
+carpetless stairs before me, apologizing for passing before me, and
+saying in Italian--
+
+"We live at the top, signore, because it is cheaper and the air is
+better."
+
+"Quite right," I said. "Quite right. Go on." And I thought I heard my
+cab driving away.
+
+It was a gloomy, forbidding, unlighted place into which I would
+certainly have hesitated to enter had not my companion been my trusted
+servant. I instinctively disliked the look of the fellow who had opened
+the door. He was one of those hulking loafers of the peculiarly Lambeth
+type. Yet the alien poor, I recollected, cannot choose where they shall
+reside.
+
+Contrary to my expectations, the sitting-room we entered on the top
+floor was quite comfortably furnished, clean and respectable, even
+though traces of poverty were apparent. A cheap lamp was burning upon
+the table, but the apartment was unoccupied.
+
+Olinto, in surprise, passed into the adjoining room, returning a moment
+later, exclaiming--
+
+"Armida must have gone out to get something. Or perhaps she is with the
+people, a compositor and his wife, who live on the floor below. They are
+very good to her. I'll go and find her. Accommodate yourself with a
+chair, signore." And he drew the best chair forward for me, and dusted
+it with his handkerchief.
+
+I allowed him to go and fetch her, rather surprised that she should be
+well enough to get about after all he had told me concerning her
+illness. Yet consumption does not keep people in bed until its final
+stages.
+
+As I stood there, gazing round the room, I could not well distinguish
+its furthermost corners, for the lamp bore a shade of green paste-board,
+which threw a zone of light upon the table, and left the remainder of
+the room in darkness. When, however, my eyes grew accustomed to the dim
+light, I discerned that the place was dusty and somewhat disordered. The
+sofa was, I saw, a folding iron bedstead with greasy old cushions, while
+the carpet was threadbare and full of holes. When I drew the old rep
+curtains to look out of the window, I found that the shutters were
+closed, which I thought unusual for a room so high up as that was.
+
+Olinto returned in a few moments, saying that his wife had evidently
+gone to do some shopping in the Lower-Marsh, for it is the habit of the
+denizens of that locality to go "marketing" in the evening among the
+costermongers' stalls that line so many of the thoroughfares. Perishable
+commodities, the overplus of the markets and shops, are cheaper at night
+than in the morning.
+
+"I hope you are not pressed for time, signore?" he said apologetically.
+"But, of course, the poor girl does not know the surprise awaiting her.
+She will surely not be long."
+
+"Then I'll wait," I said, and flung myself back into the chair he had
+brought forward for me.
+
+"I have nothing to offer you, signer padrone," he said, with a laugh. "I
+did not expect a visitor, you know."
+
+"No, no, Olinto. I've only just had dinner. But tell me how you have
+fared since you left me."
+
+"Ah!" he laughed bitterly. "I had many ups and downs before I found
+myself here in London. The sea did not suit me--neither did the work.
+They put me in the emigrants' quarters, and consequently I could gain
+nothing. The other stewards were Neapolitans, therefore, because I was a
+Tuscan, they relegated me to the worst post. Ah, signore, you don't know
+what it is to serve those emigrants! I made two trips, then returned and
+married Armida. I called on you, but Tito said you were in London. At
+first I got work at a cafe in Viareggio, but when the season ended, and
+I was thrown out of employment, I managed to work my way from Genoa to
+London. My first place was scullion in a restaurant in Tottenham Court
+Road, and then I became waiter in the beer-hall at the Monico, and
+managed to save sufficient to send Armida the money to join me here.
+Afterwards I went to the Milano, and I hope to get into one of the big
+hotels very soon--or perhaps the grill-room at the Carlton. I have a
+friend who is there, and they make lots of money--four or five pounds
+every week in tips, they say."
+
+"I'll see what I can do for you," I said. "I know several hotel-managers
+who might have a vacancy."
+
+"Ah, signore!" he cried, filled with gratification. "If you only would!
+A word from you would secure me a good position. I can work, that you
+know--and I do work. I will work--for her sake."
+
+"I have promised you," I said briefly.
+
+"And how can I sufficiently thank you?" he cried, standing before me,
+while in his eyes I thought I detected a strange wild look, such as I
+had never seen there before.
+
+"You served me well, Olinto," I replied, "and when I discover real
+sterling honesty I endeavor to appreciate it. There is, alas! very
+little of it in this world."
+
+"Yes," he said in a hoarse voice, his manner suddenly changing. "You
+have to-night shown me, signore, that you are my friend, and I will, in
+return, show you that I am yours." And suddenly grasping both my hands,
+he pulled me from the chair in which I was sitting, at the same time
+asking in a low intense whisper: "Do you always carry a revolver here in
+England, as you do in Italy?"
+
+"Yes," I answered in surprise at his action and his question. "Why?"
+
+"Because there is danger here," he answered in the same low earnest
+tone. "Get your weapon ready. You may want it."
+
+"I don't understand," I said, feeling my handy Colt in my back pocket to
+make sure it was there.
+
+"Forget what I have said--all--all that I have told you to-night, sir,"
+he said. "I have not explained the whole truth. You are in peril--in
+deadly peril!"
+
+"How?" I exclaimed breathlessly, surprised at his extraordinary change
+of manner and his evident apprehension lest something should befall me.
+
+"Wait, and you shall see," he whispered. "But first tell me, signore,
+that you will forgive me for the part I have played in this dastardly
+affair. I, like yourself, fell innocently into the hands of your
+enemies."
+
+"My enemies! Who are they?"
+
+"They are unknown, and for the present must remain so. But if you doubt
+your peril, watch--" and taking the rusty fire-tongs from the grate he
+carefully placed them on end in front of the deep old armchair in which
+I had sat, and then allowed them to fall against the edge of the seat,
+springing quickly back as he did so.
+
+In an instant a bright blue flash shot through the place, and the irons
+fell aside, fused and twisted out of all recognition.
+
+I stood aghast, utterly unable for the moment to sufficiently realize
+how narrowly I had escaped death.
+
+"Look! See here, behind!" cried the Italian, directing my attention to
+the back legs of the chair, where, on bending with the lamp, I saw, to
+my surprise, that two wires were connected, and ran along the floor and
+out of the window, while concealed beneath the ragged carpet, in front
+of the chair, was a thin plate of steel, whereon my feet had rested.
+
+Those who had so ingeniously enticed me to that gloomy house of death
+had connected up the overhead electric light main with that
+innocent-looking chair, and from some unseen point had been able to
+switch on a current of sufficient voltage to kill fifty men.
+
+I stood stock-still, not daring to move lest I might come into contact
+with some hidden wire, the slightest touch of which must bring instant
+death upon me.
+
+"Your enemies prepared this terrible trap for you," declared the man who
+was once my trusted servant. "When I entered into the affair I was not
+aware that it was to be fatal. They gave me no inkling of their
+dastardly intention. But there is no time to admit of explanations now,
+signore," he added breathlessly, in a low desperate voice. "Say that you
+will not prejudge me," he pleaded earnestly.
+
+"I will not prejudge you until I've heard your explanation," I said. "I
+certainly owe my life to you to-night."
+
+"Then quick! Fly from this house this instant. If you are stopped, then
+use your revolver. Don't hesitate. In a moment they will be here upon
+you."
+
+"But who are they, Olinto? You must tell me," I cried in desperation.
+
+"_Dio!_ Go! Go!" he cried, pushing me violently towards the door. "Fly,
+or we shall both die--both of us! Run downstairs. I must make feint of
+dashing after you."
+
+I turned, and seeing his desperate eagerness, precipitately fled, while
+he ran down behind me, uttering fierce imprecations in Italian, as
+though I had escaped him.
+
+A man in the narrow dark passage attempted to trip me up as I ran, but I
+fired point blank at him, and gaining the door unlocked it, and an
+instant later found myself out in the street.
+
+It was the narrowest escape from death that I had ever had in all my
+life--surely the strangest and most remarkable adventure. What, I
+wondered, did it mean?
+
+Next morning I searched up and down Oxford Street for the Restaurant
+Milano, but could not find it. I asked shopkeepers, postmen, and
+policemen; I examined the London Directory at the bar of the Oxford
+Music Hall, and made every inquiry possible. But all was to no purpose.
+No one knew of such a place. There were restaurants in plenty in Oxford
+Street, from the Frascati down to the humble coffeeshop, but nobody had
+ever heard of the "Milano."
+
+Even Olinto had played me false!
+
+I was filled with chagrin, for I had trusted him as honest, upright, and
+industrious; and was puzzled to know the reason he had deceived me, and
+why he had enticed me to the very brink of the grave.
+
+He had told me that he himself had fallen into the trap laid by my
+enemies, and yet he had steadfastly refused to tell me who they were!
+The whole thing was utterly inexplicable.
+
+I drove over to Lambeth and wandered through the maze of mean streets
+off the York Road, yet for the life of me I could not decide into which
+house I had been taken. There were a dozen which seemed to me that they
+might be the identical house from which I had so narrowly escaped with
+my life.
+
+Gradually it became impressed upon me that my ex-servant had somehow
+gained knowledge that I was in London, that he had watched my exit from
+the club, and that all his pitiful story regarding Armida was false. He
+was the envoy of my unknown enemies, who had so ingeniously and so
+relentlessly plotted my destruction.
+
+That I had enemies I knew quite well. The man who believes he has not is
+an arrant fool. There is no man breathing who has not an enemy, from the
+pauper in the workhouse to the king in his automobile. But the unseen
+enemy is always the more dangerous; hence my deep apprehensive
+reflections that day as I walked those sordid back streets "over the
+water," as the Cockney refers to the district between those two main
+arteries of traffic, the Waterloo and Westminster Bridge Roads.
+
+My unknown enemies had secured the services of Olinto in their dastardly
+plot to kill me. With what motive?
+
+I wondered as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to the Strand, whether Olinto
+Santini would again approach me and make the promised explanation. I had
+given my word not to prejudge him until he revealed to me the truth. Yet
+I could not, in the circumstances, repose entire confidence in him.
+
+When one's enemies are unknown, the feeling of apprehension is always
+much greater, for in the imagination danger lurks in every corner, and
+every action of a friend covers the ruse of a suspected enemy.
+
+That day I did my business in the city with a distrust of everyone, not
+knowing whether I was not followed or whether those who sought my life
+were not plotting some other equally ingenious move whereby I might go
+innocently to my death. I endeavored to discover Olinto by every
+possible means during those stifling days that followed. The heat of
+London was, to me, more oppressive than the fiery sunshine of the
+old-world Tuscany, and everyone who could be out of town had left for
+the country or the sea.
+
+The only trace I found of the Italian was that he was registered at the
+office of the International Society of Hotel Servants, in Shaftesbury
+Avenue, as being employed at Gatti's Adelaide Gallery, but on inquiry
+there I found he had left more than a year before, and none of his
+fellow-waiters knew his whereabouts.
+
+Thus being defeated in every inquiry, and my business at last concluded
+in London, I went up to Dumfries on a duty visit which I paid annually
+to my uncle, Sir George Little. Having known Dumfries since my earliest
+boyhood, and having spent some years of my youth there, I had many
+friends in the vicinity, for Sir George and my aunt were very popular in
+the county and moved in the best set.
+
+Each time I returned from abroad I was always a welcome guest at
+Greenlaw, as their place outside the city of Burns was called, and this
+occasion proved no exception, for the country houses of Dumfries are
+always gay in August in prospect of the shooting.
+
+"Some new people have taken Rannoch Castle. Rather nice they seem,"
+remarked my aunt as we were sitting together at luncheon the day after
+my arrival. "Their name is Leithcourt, and they've asked me to drive you
+over there to tennis this afternoon."
+
+"I'm not much of a player, you know, aunt. In Italy we don't believe in
+athletics. But if it's out of politeness, of course, I'll go."
+
+"Very well," she said. "Then I'll order the victoria for three."
+
+"There are several nice girls there, Gordon," remarked my uncle
+mischievously. "You have a good time, so don't think you are going to be
+bored."
+
+"No fear of that," was my answer. And at three o'clock Sir George, his
+wife, and myself set out for that fine old historic castle that stands
+high on the Bognie, overlooking the Cairn waters beyond Dunscore, one of
+the strongholds of the Black Douglas in those turbulent days of long
+ago, and now a splendid old residence with a big shoot which was
+sometimes let for the season at a very high rent by its aristocratic if
+somewhat impecunious owner.
+
+We could see its great round towers, standing grim and gray on the
+hillside commanding the whole of the valley, long before we approached
+it, and when we drove into the grounds we found a gay party in summer
+toilettes assembled on the ancient bowling-green, now transformed into a
+modern tennis-lawn.
+
+Mrs. Leithcourt and her husband, a tall, thin, gray-headed, well-dressed
+man, both came forward to greet us, and after a few introductions I
+joined a set at tennis. They were a merry crowd. The Leithcourts were
+entertaining a large house-party, and their hospitality was on a scale
+quite in keeping with the fine old place they rented.
+
+Tea was served on the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired
+of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright,
+dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and
+flannel tennis skirt.
+
+I was apologizing for my terribly bad play, explaining that I had no
+practice out in Italy, whereupon she said--
+
+"I know Italy slightly. I was in Florence and Naples with mother last
+season."
+
+And then we began to discuss pictures and sculptures and the sights of
+Italy generally. I discerned from her remarks that she had traveled
+widely; indeed, she told me that both her father and mother were never
+happier than when moving from place to place in search of variety and
+distraction. We had entered the huge paneled hall of the Castle, and had
+passed up the quaint old stone staircase to the long banqueting hall
+with its paneled oak ceiling, which in these modern days had been
+transformed into a bright, pleasant drawing-room, from the windows of
+which was presented a marvelous view over the lovely Nithsdale and
+across to the heather-clad hills beyond.
+
+It was pleasant lounging there in the cool old room after the hot
+sunshine outside, and as I gazed around the place I noted how much more
+luxurious and tasteful it now was to what it had been in the days when I
+had visited its owner several years before.
+
+"We are awfully glad to be up here," my pretty companion was saying. "We
+had such a busy season in London." And then she went on to describe the
+Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I
+had read in my English paper beside the Mediterranean.
+
+She attracted me on account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen
+sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter.
+Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with
+Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there
+were others present, in order that our companions should understand.
+Therefore her gossip interested me, and as the golden sunset flooded the
+handsome old room I sat listening to her, inwardly admiring her innate
+grace and handsome countenance.
+
+I had no idea who or what her father was--whether a wealthy
+manufacturer, like so many who take expensive shoots and give big
+entertainments in order to edge their way into Society by its back door,
+or whether he was a gentleman of means and of good family. I rather
+guessed the latter, from his gentlemanly bearing and polished manner.
+His appearance, tall and erect, was that of a retired officer, and his
+clean-cut face was one of marked distinction.
+
+I was telling my pretty companion something of my own life, how, because
+I loved Italy so well, I lived in Tuscany in preference to living in
+England, and how each year I came home for a month or two to visit my
+relations and to keep in touch with things.
+
+Suddenly she said--
+
+"I was once in Leghorn for a few hours. We were yachting in the
+Mediterranean. I love the sea--and yachting is such awfully good fun, if
+you only get decent weather."
+
+The mention of yachting brought back to my mind the visit of the _Lola_
+and its mysterious sequel.
+
+"Your father has a yacht, then?" I remarked, with as little concern as I
+could.
+
+"Yes. The _Iris_. My uncle is cruising on her up the Norwegian Fiords.
+For us it is a change to be here, because we are so often afloat. We
+went across to New York in her last year and had a most delightful
+time--except for one bad squall which made us all a little bit nervous.
+But Moyes is such an excellent captain that I never fear. The crew are
+all North Sea fishermen--father will engage nobody else. I don't blame
+him."
+
+"So you must have made many long voyages, and seen many odd corners of
+the world, Miss Leithcourt?" I remarked, my interest in her increasing,
+for she seemed so extremely intelligent and well-informed.
+
+"Oh, yes. We've been to Mexico, and to Panama, besides Morocco, Egypt,
+and the West Coast of Africa."
+
+"And you've actually landed at Leghorn!" I remarked.
+
+"Yes, but we didn't stay there more than an hour--to send a telegram, I
+think it was. Father said there was nothing to see there. He and I went
+ashore, and I must say I was rather disappointed."
+
+"You are quite right. The town itself is ugly and uninteresting. But the
+outskirts--San Jacopo, Ardenza and Antigniano are all delightful. It was
+unfortunate that you did not see them. Was it long ago when you put in
+there?"
+
+"Not very long. I really don't recollect the exact date," was her reply.
+"We were on our way home from Alexandria."
+
+"Have you ever, in any of the ports you've been, seen a yacht called the
+_Lola_?" I asked eagerly, for it occurred to me that perhaps she might
+be able to give me information.
+
+"The _Lola_!" she gasped, and instantly her face changed. A flush
+overspread her cheeks, succeeded next moment by a death-like pallor.
+"The _Lola_!" she repeated in a strange, hoarse voice, at the same time
+endeavoring strenuously not to exhibit any apprehension. "No. I have
+never heard of any such a vessel. Is she a steam-yacht? Who's her
+owner?"
+
+I regarded her in amazement and suspicion, for I saw that mention of the
+name had aroused within her some serious misgiving. That look in her
+dark eyes as they fixed themselves upon me was one of distinct and
+unspeakable terror.
+
+What could she possibly know concerning the mysterious craft?
+
+"I don't know the owner's name," I said, still affecting not to have
+noticed her alarm and apprehension. "The vessel ran aground at the
+Meloria, a dangerous shoal outside Leghorn, and through the stupidity of
+her captain was very nearly lost."
+
+"Yes?" she gasped, in a half-whisper, bending to me eagerly, unable to
+sufficiently conceal the terrible anxiety consuming her. "And you--did
+you go aboard her?"
+
+"Yes," was the only word I uttered.
+
+A silence fell between us, and as my eyes fixed themselves upon her, I
+saw that from her handsome mobile countenance all the light and life had
+suddenly gone out, and I knew that she was in secret possession of the
+key to that remarkable enigma that so puzzled me.
+
+Of a sudden the door opened, and a voice cried gayly--
+
+"Why, I've been looking everywhere for you, Muriel. Why are you hidden
+here? Aren't you coming?"
+
+We both turned, and as she did so a low cry of blank dismay
+involuntarily escaped her.
+
+Next instant I sprang to my feet. The reason of her cry was apparent,
+for there, in the full light of the golden sunset streaming through the
+long open windows, stood a broad-shouldered, fair-bearded man in tennis
+flannels and a Panama hat--the fugitive I knew as Philip Hornby!
+
+I faced him, speechless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IN WHICH THE MYSTERY INCREASES
+
+
+Neither of us spoke. Equally surprised at the unexpected encounter, we
+stood facing each other dumbfounded.
+
+Hornby started quickly as soon as his eyes fell upon me, and his face
+became blanched to the lips, while Muriel Leithcourt, quick to notice
+the sudden change in him, rose and introduced us in as calm a voice as
+she could command.
+
+"I don't think you are acquainted," she said to me with a smile. "This
+is Mr. Martin Woodroffe--Mr. Gordon Gregg."
+
+I bowed to him in sudden resolve to remain silent in pretense that I
+doubted whether the man before me was actually my host of the _Lola_. I
+intended to act as though I was not sufficiently convinced to openly
+express my doubt. Therefore we bowed, exchanging greetings as strangers,
+while, carefully watching, I saw how greatly the minds of both were
+relieved. They shot meaning glances at each other, and then, as though
+reassured that I was mystified and uncertain, the man who called himself
+Woodroffe explained to my companion------
+
+"I've been over to Newton Stewart with Fred all day, and only got back a
+quarter of an hour ago. Aren't you playing any more to-day?"
+
+"I think not," was her reply. "We've been out there the whole afternoon,
+and I'm rather tired. But they're still on the lawn. You can surely get
+a game with someone."
+
+"If you don't play, I shan't. I returned to keep the promise I made
+this morning," he laughed, standing before the big open fireplace,
+holding his tennis racquet behind his back.
+
+I examined his countenance, and was more than ever convinced that he was
+actually the man who gave me the name of Hornby and the false address in
+Somerset. The pair seemed to be on familiar terms, and I wondered
+whether they were engaged. In any case, the man seemed quite at home
+there.
+
+As he chatted with the daughter of the house, he cast a quick, covert
+glance at me, and then darted a meaning look at her--a look of renewed
+confidence, as though he felt that he had successfully averted any
+suspicions I might have held.
+
+We talked of the prospects of the grouse and the salmon, and from his
+remarks he seemed to be as keen at sport as he had once made out himself
+to be at yachting.
+
+"My friend Leithcourt is awfully fortunate in getting such a splendid
+old place as this. On every hand I hear glowing accounts of the number
+of birds. The place has been well preserved in the past, and there's
+plenty of good cover."
+
+"Yes," I said. "Gilrae, the owner, is a keen sportsman, and before he
+became so hard up he spent a lot of money on the estate, which, I
+believe, has always been considered one of the very best in the
+southwest. There's salmon, they say, down in the Glen yonder--but I've
+never tried for any."
+
+"Certainly there is. I've seen several. I hope to try one of these days.
+The Glen is deep and shady--an ideal place for fish. The only
+disappointment here, as far as I can make out, is the very few head of
+black-game."
+
+"Yes, but every year they are getting rarer and rarer in this part of
+Scotland. A really fine black-cock is quite an event nowadays," I said.
+
+While we were talking, or rather while I was carefully watching the
+rapid working of his mind, Leithcourt himself entered and joined us. He
+had been playing tennis, and had come in to rest and cool.
+
+Host and guest were evidently on the most intimate terms. Leithcourt
+addressed him as "Martin," and began to relate a quarrel which his
+head-gamekeeper had had that day with one of the small farmers on the
+estate regarding the killing of some rabbits. And while they were
+talking Muriel suggested that we should stroll down to the tennis-courts
+again, an invitation which, much as I regretted leaving the two men, I
+was bound to accept.
+
+It seemed as though she wished purposely to take me away from that man's
+presence, fearing that by remaining there longer my suspicions might
+become confirmed. She was acting in conjunction with the man whom I had
+known as Hornby.
+
+There were still a good many people watching the game, for it was
+pleasant in those old-world gardens in the sunset hour. The dried-up
+moat was now transformed into a garden filled with rhododendrons and
+bright azaleas, while the high ancient beech-hedges, the quaint old
+sundial with its motto: "Each time ye shadowe turneth ys one daye nearer
+unto dethe," and the old stone balustrades gray with lichen, all spoke
+mutely of those glorious days when the fierce horsemen of the Lairds of
+Rannoch were feared across the Border, and when many a prisoner of the
+Black Douglas had pined and died in those narrow stone chambers in the
+grim north tower that still stood high above.
+
+Among the party strolling and lounging there prior to departure were
+quite a number of people I knew, people who had shooting-boxes in the
+vicinity and were my uncle's friends. In Scotland there is always a
+hearty hospitality among the sporting folk, and the laws of caste are
+far less rigorous than they are in England.
+
+I was standing chatting with two ladies who were about to take leave of
+their hostess, when Leithcourt returned, but alone. Hornby had not
+accompanied him. Was it because he feared to again meet me?
+
+In order to ascertain something regarding the man who had so
+mysteriously fled from Leghorn, I managed by the exercise of a little
+diplomacy to sit on the lawn with a young married woman named Tennant,
+wife of a cavalry captain, who was one of the house-party. After a
+little time I succeeded in turning the conversation to her fellow
+guests, and more particularly to the man I knew as Hornby.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Woodroffe is most amusing," declared the bright little woman.
+"He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is
+usually the life and soul of our party."
+
+"Yes," I said, "I like what little I have seen of him. He's a very good
+fellow, I should say. I've heard that he's engaged to Muriel," I
+hazarded. "Is that true?"
+
+"Of course. They've been engaged nearly a year, but he's been abroad
+until quite lately. He is rather close about his own affairs, and never
+talks about his travels and adventures, although one day Mr. Leithcourt
+declared that his hairbreadth escapes would make a most exciting book if
+ever written."
+
+"Leithcourt and he are evidently most intimate friends."
+
+"Oh, quite inseparable!" she laughed. "And the other man who is always
+with them is that short, stout, red-faced old fellow standing over there
+with the lady in pale blue, Sir Ughtred Gardner. Mr. Woodroffe has
+nicknamed him 'Sir Putrid.'" And we both laughed. "Of course, don't say
+I said so," she whispered. "They don't call him that to his face, but
+it's so easy to make a mistake in his name when he's not within hearing.
+We women don't care for him, so the nickname just fits."
+
+And she gossiped on, telling me much that I desired to know regarding
+the new tenant of Rannoch and his friends, and more especially of that
+man who had first introduced himself to me in the Consulate at Leghorn.
+
+Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with
+the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the
+Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make
+out. Perhaps it was Philip Leithcourt's intimate relation with the man
+who had so cleverly deceived me that incited my curiosity concerning
+him; perhaps it was that mysterious intuition, that curious presage of
+evil that sometimes comes to a man as warning of impending peril.
+Whatever the reason, I had become filled with grave apprehensions. The
+mystery grew deeper day by day, and was inexplicable.
+
+During the week that followed I sought to learn all I could regarding
+the new people at the castle.
+
+"They are taken up everywhere," declared my aunt when I questioned her.
+"Of course, we knew very little of them, except that they had a shoot up
+near Fort William two years ago, and that they have a town house in
+Green Street. They are evidently rather smart folks. Don't you think
+so?"
+
+"Judging from their house-party, yes," I responded. "They are about as
+gay a crowd as one could find north of Carlisle just at present."
+
+"Exactly. There are some well-known people among them, too," said my
+aunt. "I've asked them over to-morrow afternoon, and they've accepted."
+
+"Excellent!" I exclaimed, for I wanted an opportunity for another chat
+with the dark-eyed girl who was engaged to the man whose alias was
+Hornby. I particularly desired to ascertain the reason of her fear when
+I had mentioned the _Lola_, and whether she possessed any knowledge of
+Hylton Chater.
+
+The opportunity came to me in due course, for next afternoon the Rannoch
+party drove over in two large brakes, and with other people from the
+neighborhood and a band from Dumfries, my aunt's grounds presented a gay
+and animated scene. There was the usual tennis and croquet, while some
+of the men enjoyed a little putting on the excellent course my uncle, a
+golf enthusiast, had recently laid down.
+
+As I expected, Woodroffe did not accompany the party. Mrs. Leithcourt, a
+slightly fussy little woman, apologized for his absence, explaining that
+he had been recalled to London suddenly a few days before, but was
+returning to Rannoch again at the end of the week.
+
+"We couldn't afford to lose him," she declared to my aunt. "He is so
+awfully humorous--his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar
+each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic."
+
+I turned away and strolled with Muriel, pleading an excuse to show her
+my uncle's beautiful grounds, not a whit less picturesque than those of
+the castle, and perhaps rather better kept.
+
+"I only heard yesterday of your engagement, Miss Leithcourt," I remarked
+presently when we were alone. "Allow me to offer my best
+congratulations. When you introduced me to Mr. Woodroffe the other day I
+had no idea that he was to be your husband."
+
+She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of
+suspicion. Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a
+blank, hard voice--
+
+"It's very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant
+things."
+
+"And when is the happy event to take place?"
+
+"The date is not exactly fixed--early next year, I believe," and I
+thought she sighed.
+
+"And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?" I suggested,
+my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed
+remark. But she controlled herself perfectly.
+
+"I love the sea," she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight
+before her.
+
+"Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says."
+
+"Yes. He received a wire, and had to leave immediately. It was an awful
+bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey
+yesterday."
+
+"But he'll be back here again, won't he?"
+
+"I really don't know. It seems quite uncertain. I had a letter this
+morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business,
+instead of coming up to us again."
+
+There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could
+not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from
+Scotland because of my presence.
+
+How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the
+yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any
+undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the
+puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking
+ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her
+answers.
+
+As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly
+impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her
+parents. Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and
+terrible secret which she feared might be revealed. There was a distant
+look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in
+some constant and ever-present dread. Of course she told me nothing of
+her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and
+her bearing a curious apathy--a want of the real enthusiasm of
+affection. Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father's friend, and it
+therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a
+matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive. In the
+mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their
+daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and
+intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter's
+happiness more often than the public ever dream. Tragedy is, alas!
+written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the
+fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the
+paragraph beneath. Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own
+free choice in the matter of a husband is, alas! nowadays the exception,
+for parents who want to "get on" up the social scale have found that
+pretty daughters are a marketable commodity, and many a man has been
+placed "on his legs," both financially and socially, by his son-in-law.
+Hence the marriage of convenience is fast becoming common, while in the
+same ratio the divorce petitions are unfortunately on the increase.
+
+I read tragedy in the dark luminous eyes of Muriel Leithcourt. I knew
+that her young heart was over-burdened by some secret sorrow or guilty
+knowledge that she would reveal to me if she dared. Her own words told
+me that she was perplexed; that she longed to confide and seek advice
+of someone, yet by reason of some hidden and untoward circumstance her
+lips were sealed.
+
+I tried to question her further regarding Woodroffe, of what profession
+he followed and of his past.
+
+But she evidently suspected me, for I had unfortunately mentioned the
+_Lola_.
+
+She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me
+nothing--absolutely nothing.
+
+Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch.
+
+Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended,
+indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the
+Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred
+people and very hospitable.
+
+We exchanged a good many visits and dinners, and while my uncle several
+times invited Leithcourt and his friends to his shoot with _al fresco_
+luncheon, which the ladies joined, the tenant of Rannoch always invited
+us back in return.
+
+Thus I gained many opportunities of talking with Muriel, and of watching
+her closely. I had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and on
+account of that it seemed that she was in no way averse to my
+companionship. She could handle a rook-rifle as well as any woman, and
+was really a very fair shot. Therefore we often found ourselves alone
+tramping across the wide open moorland, or along those delightful glens
+of the Nithsdale, glorious in the autumn tints of their luxurious
+foliage.
+
+Her father, on the other hand, seemed to view me with considerable
+suspicion, and I could easily discern that I was only asked to Rannoch
+because it was impossible to invite my uncle without including myself.
+
+Leithcourt, who perhaps thought I was courting his daughter, was ever
+endeavoring to avoid me, and would never allow me to walk with him
+alone. Why? I wondered. Did he fear me? Had Woodroffe told him of our
+strange encounter in Leghorn?
+
+His pronounced antipathy towards me caused me to watch him
+surreptitiously, and more closely than perhaps I should otherwise have
+done. He was a man of gloomy mood, and often he would leave his guests
+and take walks alone, musing and brooding. On several occasions I
+followed him in secret, and found to my surprise that although he made
+long detours in various directions, yet he always arrived at the same
+spot at the same hour--five o'clock.
+
+The place where he halted was on the edge of a dark wood on the brow of
+a hill about three miles from Rannoch--a good place to get woodpigeon,
+as they came to roost. It was fully two miles across the hills from the
+high road to Moniaive, and from the break the gray wall where he was in
+the habit of sitting to rest and smoke, there stretched the beautiful
+panorama of Loch Urr and the heatherclad hills beyond.
+
+Leithcourt never went direct to the place, but always so timed his walks
+that he arrived just at five, and remained there smoking cigarettes
+until half-past, as though awaiting the arrival of some person he
+expected. Once or twice his guests suggested shooting pigeons at
+sundown, but he always had some excuse for opposing the proposal, and
+thus the party, unsuspecting the reason, were kept away from that
+particular lonely spot.
+
+In my youth I had sat many a quiet hour there in the darkening gloom and
+shot many a pigeon, therefore I knew the wood well, and was able to
+watch the tenant of Rannoch from points where he least suspected the
+presence of another.
+
+Once, when I was alone with Muriel, I mentioned her father's capacity
+for walking alone, whereupon she said--
+
+"Oh, yes, he was always fond of walking. He used to take me with him
+when we first came here, but he always went so far that I refused to go
+any more."
+
+She never once mentioned Woodroffe. I allowed her plenty of opportunity
+for doing so, chaffing her about her forthcoming marriage in order that
+she might again refer to him. But never did his name pass her lips. I
+understood that he had gone abroad--that was all.
+
+Often when alone I reflected upon my curious adventure on that night
+when I met Olinto, and of my narrow escape from the hands of my unknown
+enemies. I wondered if that ingenious and dastardly attempt upon my life
+had really any connection with that strange incident at Leghorn. As day
+succeeded day, my mind became filled by increasing suspicion. Mystery
+surrounded me on every hand.
+
+Indeed, by one curious fact alone it was increased a hundredfold.
+
+Late one afternoon, when I had been out shooting all day with the
+Rannoch party, I drove back to the castle in the Perth-cart with three
+other men, and found the ladies assembled in the great hall with tea
+ready. A welcome log-fire was blazing in the huge old grate, for in
+October it is chilly and damp in Scotland and a fire is pleasant at
+evening.
+
+Muriel was seated upon the high padded fender--like those one has at
+clubs--which always formed a cosy spot for the ladies, especially after
+dinner. When I entered, she rose quickly and handed me my cup,
+exclaiming as she looked at me--
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gregg! what a state you are in!"
+
+"Yes, I was after snipe, and slipped into a bog," I laughed. "But it
+was early this morning, and the mud has dried."
+
+"Come with me, and I'll get you a brush," she urged. And I followed her
+through the long corridors and upstairs to a small sitting-room which
+was her own little sanctum, where she worked and read--a cosy little
+place with two queer old windows in the colossal wall, and a floor of
+polished oak, and great black beams above. When the owner had occupied
+the house that room had been disused, but it had, I found, been now
+completely transformed, and was a most tasteful little nest of luxury
+with its bright chintzes, its Turkey rugs and its cheerful fire on the
+old stone hearth.
+
+She laughed when I expressed admiration of her little den, and said--
+
+"I believe it was the armory in the old days. But it makes quite a comfy
+little boudoir. I can lock myself in and be quite quiet when the party
+are too noisy," she added merrily.
+
+But as my eyes wandered around they suddenly fell upon an object which
+caused me to start with profound wonder--a cabinet photograph in a frame
+of crimson leather.
+
+The picture was that of a young girl--a duplicate of the portrait I had
+found torn across and flung aside on board the _Lola_!
+
+The merry eyes laughed out at me as I stood staring at it in sheer
+bewilderment.
+
+"What a pretty girl!" I exclaimed quickly, concealing my surprise. "Who
+is she?"
+
+My companion was silent a moment, her dark eyes meeting mine with a
+strange look of inquiry.
+
+"Yes," she laughed, "everyone admires her. She was a schoolfellow of
+mine--Elma Heath."
+
+"Heath!" I echoed. "Where was she at school with you?"
+
+"At Chichester."
+
+"Long ago?"
+
+"A little over two years."
+
+"She's very beautiful!" I declared, taking up the photograph and
+discovering that it bore the name of the same well-known photographer in
+New Bond Street as that I had found on the carpet of the _Lola_ in the
+Mediterranean.
+
+"Yes. She's really prettier than her photograph. It hardly does her
+justice."
+
+"And where is she now?"
+
+"Why are you so very inquisitive, Mr. Gregg?" laughed the handsome girl.
+"Have you actually fallen in love with her from her picture?"
+
+"I'm hardly given to that kind of thing, Miss Leithcourt," I answered
+with mock severity. "I don't think even my worst enemy could call me a
+flirt, could she?"
+
+"No. I will give you your due," she declared. "You never do flirt. That
+is why I like you."
+
+"Thanks for your candor, Miss Leithcourt," I said.
+
+"Only," she added, "you seem smitten with Elma's charms."
+
+"I think she's extremely pretty," I remarked, with the photograph still
+in my hand. "Do you ever see her now?"
+
+"Never," she replied. "Since the day I left school we have never met.
+She was several years younger than myself, and I heard that a week after
+I left Chichester her people came and took her away. Where she is now I
+have no idea. Her people lived somewhere in Durham. Her father was a
+doctor."
+
+Her reply disappointed me. Yet I had, at least, retained knowledge of
+the name of the original of the picture, and from the photographer I
+might perhaps discover her address, for to me it seemed that she was
+somehow intimately connected with those mysterious yachtsmen.
+
+What Muriel told me concerning her, I did not doubt for a single
+instant. Yet it was certainly more than a coincidence that a copy of the
+picture which had created such a deep impression upon me should be
+preserved in her own little boudoir as a souvenir of a devoted
+school-friend.
+
+"Then you have heard absolutely nothing as to her present position or
+whereabouts--whether she is married, for instance?"
+
+"Ah!" she cried mischievously. "You betray yourself by your own words.
+You have fallen in love with her, I really believe, Mr. Gregg. If she
+knew, she'd be most gratified--or at least, she ought to be."
+
+At which I smiled, preferring that she should adopt that theory in
+preference to any other.
+
+She spoke frankly, as a pure honest girl would speak. She was not
+jealous, but she nevertheless resented--as women do resent such
+things--that I should fall in love with a friend's photograph.
+
+There was a mystery surrounding that torn picture; of that I was
+absolutely certain. The remembrance of that memorable evening when I had
+dined on board the _Lola_ arose vividly before me. Why had the girl's
+portrait been so ruthlessly destroyed and the frame turned with its face
+to the wall? There was some reason--some distinct and serious motive in
+it. Had Muriel told me the truth, I wondered, or was she merely seeking
+to shield the suspected man who was her lover?
+
+Hour by hour the mystery surrounding the Leithcourts became more
+inscrutable, more intensely absorbing. I had searched a copy of the
+London Directory at the Station Hotel at Carlisle, and found that no
+house in Green Street was registered as occupied by the tenant of
+Rannoch; and, further, when I came to examine the list of guests at the
+castle, I found that they were really persons unknown in society. They
+were merely of that class of witty, well-dressed parasites who always
+cling on to the wealthy and make believe that they are smart and of the
+_grande monde_. Rannoch was an expensive place to keep up, with all that
+big retinue of servants and gamekeepers, and with those nightly dinners
+cooked by a French _chef_; yet Leithcourt seemed to possess a long
+pocket and smiled upon those parasites, officers of doubtful commission
+and younger sprigs of the pseudo-aristocracy who surrounded him, while
+his wife, keen-eyed and of superb bearing, was punctilious concerning
+all points of etiquette, and at the same time indefatigable that her
+mixed set of guests should enjoy a really good time.
+
+But I was not the only person who could not make them out. My uncle was
+the first to open my eyes regarding the true character of certain of the
+men staying at Rannoch.
+
+"I think, Gordon, that one or two of those fellows with Leithcourt are
+rank outsiders," he said confidentially to me one night after we had had
+a hard day's shooting, and were playing a hundred up at billiards before
+retiring. "One man, who arrived yesterday, I know too well. He was
+struck off the list at Boodle's three years ago for card-sharping--that
+thin-faced, fair-mustached man named Cadby. I suppose Leithcourt doesn't
+know it, or he wouldn't have him up here among respectable folk." And my
+uncle, chewing the end of his cigar, sniffed angrily, seeming half
+inclined to give his friend a gentle hint that the name Cadby was placed
+beyond the pale of good society.
+
+"Better not say anything about it," I urged. "It's Leithcourt's own
+affair, uncle--not ours."
+
+"Yes, but if a man sets up a position in the country he mustn't be
+allowed to ask us to meet such fellows. It's coming it a little too
+thick, Gordon. We men can stand the women of the party, but the
+men--well, I tell you candidly, I shan't accept his invites to shoot
+again."
+
+"No, no, uncle," I protested. "Probably it's owing to ignorance. You'll
+be able, a little later on, to give him valuable tips. He's a good
+fellow, and only wants experience in Scotland to get along all right."
+
+"Yes. But I don't like it, my boy, I don't like it! It isn't playing a
+fair game," declared the rigid old gentleman, coloring resentfully. "I'm
+not going to return the invitation and ask that sharper, Cadby, to my
+house--and I tell you that plainly."
+
+Next day I shot with the Carmichaels of Crossburn, and about four
+o'clock, after a good day, took leave of the party in the Black Glen,
+and started off alone to walk home, a distance of about six miles. It
+was already growing dusk, and would be quite dark, I knew, before I
+reached my uncle's house. My most direct way was to follow the river for
+about two miles and then strike straight across the large dense wood,
+and afterwards over a wide moor full of treacherous bogs and pitfalls
+for the unwary.
+
+My gun over my shoulder, I had walked on for about three-quarters of an
+hour, and had nearly traversed the wood, at that hour so dark that I had
+considerable difficulty in finding my way, when--of a sudden--I fancied
+I distinguished voices.
+
+I halted. Yes. Men were talking in low tones of confidence, and in that
+calm stillness of evening they appeared nearer to me than they actually
+were.
+
+I listened, trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out
+nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself,
+for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs
+cracking as they forced their way through them.
+
+Of a sudden, while standing there not daring to breathe lest I should
+betray my presence, a strange sound fell upon my eager ears.
+
+Next moment I realized that I was at that place where Leithcourt so
+persistently kept his disappointed tryst, having approached it from
+within the wood.
+
+The sound alarmed me, and yet it was neither an explosion of fire-arms
+nor a startling cry for help.
+
+One word reached me in the darkness--one single word of bitter and
+withering reproach.
+
+Heedless of the risk I ran and the peril to which I exposed myself, I
+dashed forward with a resolve to penetrate the mystery, until I came to
+the gap in the rough stone wall where Leithcourt's habit was to halt
+each day at sundown.
+
+There, in the falling darkness, the sight that met my eyes at the spot
+held me rigid, appalled, stupefied.
+
+In that instant I realized the truth--a truth that was surely the
+strangest ever revealed to any man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONTAINS CERTAIN CONFIDENCES
+
+
+As I dashed forward to the gap in the boundary wall of the wood, I
+nearly stumbled over a form lying across the narrow path.
+
+So dark was it beneath the trees that at first I could not plainly make
+out what it was until I bent and my hands touched the garments of a
+woman. Her hat had fallen off, for I felt it beneath my feet, while the
+cloak was a thick woolen one.
+
+Was she dead, I wondered? That cry--that single word of
+reproach--sounded in my ears, and it seemed plain that she had been
+struck down ruthlessly after an exchange of angry words.
+
+I felt in my pocket for my vestas, but unfortunately my box was empty.
+Yet just at that moment my strained ears caught a sound--the sound of
+someone moving stealthily among the fallen leaves. Seizing my gun, I
+demanded who was there.
+
+There was, however, no response. The instant I spoke the movement
+ceased.
+
+As far as I could judge, the person in concealment was within the wood
+about ten yards from me, separated by an impenetrable thicket. As,
+however, I stood out against the sky, my silhouette was, I knew, a
+well-defined mark for anyone with fire-arms.
+
+It seemed evident that a tragedy had occurred, and that the victim at my
+feet was a woman. But whom?
+
+Of a sudden, while I stood hesitating, blaming myself for being without
+matches, I heard the movement repeated. Someone was quickly
+receding--escaping from the spot. I listened again. The sound was not
+of the rustling of leaves or the crackling of dried sticks, but the low
+thuds of a man's feet racing over softer ground. He had scaled the rough
+stone dyke and was out in the turnip-field adjacent.
+
+I sprang through the gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did
+so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the
+wall of the wood.
+
+In an instant I dashed after it. But the agility of whoever the fugitive
+was, man or woman, was marvelous. I considered myself a fairly good
+runner, but racing across those rough turnips and heavy, newly-plowed
+land in the darkness and carrying my gun soon caused me to pant and
+blow. Yet the figure I was pursuing was so fleet of foot and so nimble
+in climbing the high rough walls that from the very first I was outrun.
+
+Down the steep hill to the Scarwater I followed the fugitive, crossing
+the old footbridge near Penpont, and then up a wild winding glen towards
+the Cairnsmore of Deugh. For a couple of miles or more I was close
+behind, until, at a turn in the dark wooded glen where it branched in
+two directions, I lost all trace of the person who flew from me. Whoever
+it was they had very cleverly gone into hiding in the undergrowth of one
+or other of the two glens--which I could not decide.
+
+I stood out of breath, the perspiration pouring from me, undecided how
+to act.
+
+Was it Leithcourt himself whom I had surprised?
+
+That idea somehow became impressed upon me and I suddenly resolved to go
+boldly across to Rannoch and ascertain for myself. Therefore, with the
+excuse that I was belated on my walk home, I turned back down the glen,
+and half an hour afterward entered the great well-lighted hall of the
+castle where the guests, ready dressed, were assembling prior to
+dinner.
+
+I was welcomed warmly, as I was always by the men of the party, who
+seeing my muddy plight at once offered me a glass of the sportsman's
+drink in Scotland, and while I was adding soda to it Leithcourt himself
+joined his guests, ready dressed in his dinner jacket, having just
+descended from his room.
+
+"Hulloa, Gregg!" he exclaimed heartily, holding out his hand. "Had a
+long day of it, evidently. Good sport with Carmichael--eh?"
+
+"Very fair," I said. "I remained longer with him than I ought to have
+done, and have got belated on my way home, so looked in for a
+refresher."
+
+"Quite right," he laughed merrily. "You're always welcome, you know. I'd
+have been annoyed if I knew you had passed without coming in."
+
+And Muriel, a pretty figure in a low-cut gown of turquoise chiffon,
+standing behind her father, smiled secretly at me. I smiled at her in
+return, but it was a strange smile, I fear, for with the knowledge of
+that additional mystery within me--the mystery of the woman lying
+unconscious or perhaps dead, up in the wood--held me stupefied.
+
+I had suspected Leithcourt because of his constant trysts at that spot,
+but I had at least proved that my suspicions were entirely without
+foundation. He could not have got home and dressed in the time, for I
+had taken the nearest route to the castle while the fugitive would be
+compelled to make a wide detour.
+
+I only remained a few minutes, then went forth into the darkness again,
+utterly undecided how to act. My first impulse was to return to the
+woman's aid, for she might not be dead after all.
+
+And yet when I recollected that hoarse cry that rang out in the
+darkness, I knew too well that she had been struck fatally. It was this
+latter conviction that prevented me from turning back to the wood. You
+will perhaps blame me, but the fact is I feared that if I went there
+suspicion might fall upon me, now that the real culprit had so
+ingeniously escaped.
+
+If the victim were dead, what aid could I render? A knife had, I
+believed, been used, for my foot caught against it when I had started
+off after the fugitive. The only doubt in my own mind was whether the
+unfortunate woman was actually dead, for if she were not then my
+disinclination to return to the scene of the tragedy was culpable.
+
+Whether or not I acted rightly in remaining away from the place, I leave
+it to you to judge in the light of the amazing truth which afterwards
+transpired.
+
+I decided to walk straight back to my uncle's, and dinner was over
+before I had had my tub and dressed. I therefore ate my meal alone,
+Davis, the grave old butler, serving me with that stateliness which
+always amused me. I usually chatted with him when others were not
+present, but that night I remained silent, my mind full of that strange
+and startling affair of which I alone held secret knowledge.
+
+Next day the body would surely be found; then the whole countryside
+would be filled with horror and surprise. Was it possible that
+Leithcourt, that calm, well-groomed, distinguished-looking man, held any
+knowledge of the ghastly truth? No. His manner as he stood in the hall
+chatting gayly with me was surely not that of a man with a guilty
+secret. I became firmly convinced that although the tragedy affected him
+very closely, and that it had occurred at the spot which he had each day
+visited for some mysterious purpose, yet up to the present he was in
+ignorance of what had transpired.
+
+But who was the woman? Was she young or old?
+
+A thousand times I regretted bitterly that I had no matches with me so
+that I might examine her features.
+
+One sudden thought that struck me as I sat there at table caused me to
+lay down my fork and pause in breathless bewilderment. Was the victim
+that sweet-faced young girl whose photograph had been so ruthlessly cast
+from its frame and destroyed? The theory was a weird one, but was it the
+truth?
+
+I longed for the coming of the dawn when the Rannoch keepers would most
+certainly discover her. Then at least I should know the truth, for I
+might go and see the body out of curiosity without arousing any
+suspicion.
+
+I tried to play my usual game of billiards with my uncle, but my hand
+was so unsteady that the old gentleman began to chaff me.
+
+"It's the gun, I suppose," I remarked. "I've been carrying it all day,
+and am tired out. I walked all the way home from Crossburn."
+
+"The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear," my uncle
+remarked. "Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot."
+
+"They did, but he'd got another engagement--over at Kenmure Castle, I
+think."
+
+I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I
+acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the
+hill? Had I done as a man should do in keeping the tragic secret to
+myself?
+
+I opened my window and gazed away across the dark Nithsdale, where, in
+the distant gloom, the black line of wood loomed up against the stormy
+sky. The stars were no longer shining and the rain clouds had gathered.
+I stood with my face turned to the dark indistinct spot that held the
+secret, lost in wonderment.
+
+At last I closed the window and turned in, but no sleep came to my
+eyes, so full was my mind of the startling events of those past few
+months and of that gruesome discovery I had made.
+
+Had the fugitive actually recognized me? Probably my voice when I had
+called out had betrayed me. Hour after hour I lay puzzling, trying to
+arrive at some solution of that intricate problem which now presented
+itself. Muriel could tell me what I wished to know. Of that I was
+certain. Yet she dared not speak. Some inexpressible terror held her
+dumb--she was affianced to the man Martin Woodroffe.
+
+Again I rose, lit the gas, and tried to read a novel. But I could not
+concentrate my thoughts, which were ever wandering to that strange
+mystery of the wood. At six I shaved, descended, and went out with the
+dogs for a short walk; but on returning I heard of nothing unusual, and
+was compelled to remain inactive until near mid-day.
+
+I was crossing the stable-yard where I had gone to order the carriage
+for my aunt, when an English groom, suddenly emerging from the
+harness-room, touched his cap, saying--
+
+"Have you 'eard, sir, of the awful affair up yonder?"
+
+"Of what?" I asked quickly.
+
+"Well, sir, there seems to have been a murder last night up in Rannoch
+Wood," said the man quickly. "Holden, the gardener, has just come back
+from that village and says that Mr. Leithcourt's under-gamekeeper as he
+was going home at five this morning came upon a dead body."
+
+"A dead body!" I exclaimed, feigning great surprise.
+
+"Yes, sir--a youngish man. He'd been stabbed to the heart."
+
+"A man!"
+
+"Yes, sir--so Holden says."
+
+"Call Holden. I'd like to know all he's heard," I said. And presently,
+when the gardener emerged from the grape-house, I sought of him all the
+particulars he had gathered.
+
+"I don't know very much, sir," was the man's reply. "I went into the inn
+for a glass of beer at eleven, as I always do, and heard them talking
+about it. A young man was murdered last night up in Rannoch Wood. The
+gamekeeper thought at first there'd been a fight among poachers, but
+from the dead man's clothes they say he isn't a poacher at all, but a
+stranger in this district."
+
+"The body was that of a man, then?" I asked, trying to conceal my utter
+bewilderment.
+
+"Yes--about thirty, they say. The police have taken him to the mortuary
+at Dumfries, and the detectives are up there now looking at the spot,
+they say."
+
+A man! And yet the body I found was that of a woman--that I could swear.
+
+After lunch I took the dog-cart and drove alone into Dumfries.
+
+When I inquired of the police-constable on duty at the town mortuary to
+be allowed to view the body of the murdered man, he regarded me, I
+thought, with considerable suspicion. My request was an unusual one.
+Nevertheless, he took me up a narrow alley, unlocked a door, and I found
+myself in the cold, gloomy chamber of death. From a small dingy window
+above the light fell upon an object lying upon a large slab of gray
+stone and covered with a soiled sheet.
+
+The sight was ghastly and gruesome; the body lay there awaiting the
+official inquiry into the cause of death. The silence of the tomb was
+unbroken, save for the heavy tread of the policeman, who having removed
+his helmet in the presence of the dead, lifted the end of the sheet,
+revealing to me a white, hard-set face, with closed eyes and dropped
+jaw.
+
+I started back as my eyes fell upon the dead countenance. I was entirely
+unprepared for such a revelation. The truth staggered me.
+
+The victim was the man who had acted as my friend--the Italian waiter,
+Olinto.
+
+I advanced and peered into the thin inanimate features, scarce able to
+realize the actual fact. But my eyes had not deceived me. Though death
+distorts the facial expression of every man, I had no difficulty in
+identifying him.
+
+"You recognize him, sir?" remarked the officer. "Who is he? Our people
+are very anxious to know, for up to the present moment they haven't
+succeeded in establishing his identity."
+
+I bit my lips. I had been an arrant fool to betray myself before that
+man. Yet having done so, I saw that any attempt to conceal my knowledge
+must of necessity reflect upon me.
+
+"I will see your inspector," I answered with as much calmness as I could
+muster. "Where has the poor fellow been wounded?"
+
+"Through the heart," responded the constable, as turning the sheet
+further down he showed me the small knife wound which had penetrated the
+victim's jacket and vest full in the chest.
+
+"This is the weapon," he added, taking from a shelf close by a long,
+thin poignard with an ivory handle, which he handed to me.
+
+In an instant I recognized what it was, and how deadly. It was an old
+Florentine _misericordia_, a long thin, triangular blade, a quarter of
+an inch wide at its greatest width, tapering to a needle-point, with a
+hilt of yellow ivory, the most deadly and fatal of all the daggers and
+poignards of the Middle Ages. The blade being sharp on three angles
+produced a wound that caused internal hemorrhage and which never
+healed--hence the name given to it by the Florentines.
+
+It was still blood-stained, but as I took the deadly thing in my hand I
+saw that its blade was beautifully damascened, a most elegant specimen
+of a medieval arm. Yet surely none but an Italian would use such a
+weapon, or would aim so truly as to penetrate the heart.
+
+And yet the person struck down was a woman, and not a man!
+
+A wound from a _misericordia_ always proves fatal, because the shape of
+the blade cuts the flesh into little flaps which, on withdrawing the
+knife, close up and prevent the blood from issuing forth. At the same
+time, however, no power can make them heal again. A blow from such a
+weapon is as surely fatal as the poisoned poignard of the Borgia or the
+Medici.
+
+I handed the stiletto back to the man without comment. My resolve was to
+say as little as possible, for I had no desire to figure publicly at the
+inquiry, and consequently negative all my own efforts to solve the
+mystery of the Leithcourts and of Martin Woodroffe.
+
+I returned to where the figure was lying so ghastly and motionless, and
+looked again for the last time upon the dead face of the man who had
+served me so well, and yet who had enticed me so nearly to my death. In
+the latter incident there was a deep mystery. He had relented at the
+last moment, just in time to save me from my secret enemies.
+
+Could it be that my enemies were his? Had he fallen a victim by the same
+hand that had attempted so ingeniously to kill me?
+
+Why had Leithcourt gone so regularly up to Rannoch Wood? Was it in
+order to meet the man who was to be entrapped and killed? What was
+Olinto Santini doing so far from London, if he had not come expressly to
+meet someone in secret?
+
+As I glanced down at the cold, inanimate countenance upon which mystery
+was written, I became seized by regret. He had been a faithful and
+honest servant, and even though he had enticed me to that fatal house in
+Lambeth, yet I recollected his words, how he had done so under
+compulsion. I remembered, too, how he had implored me not to prejudge
+him before I became aware of the full facts.
+
+With my own hand I re-covered the face with the sheet, and inwardly
+resolved to avenge the dastardly crime.
+
+I regretted that I was compelled to reveal the dead man's name to the
+police, yet I saw that to make some statement was now inevitable, and
+therefore I accompanied the constable to the inspector's office some
+distance across the town.
+
+Having been introduced to the big, fair-haired man in a rough tweed
+suit, who was apparently directing the inquiries into the affair, he
+took me eagerly into a small back room and began to question me. I was,
+however, wary not to commit myself to anything further than the
+identification of the body.
+
+"The fact is," I said confidentially, "you must omit me from the
+witnesses at the inquest."
+
+"Why?" asked the detective suspiciously.
+
+"Because if it were known that I have identified him, all chance of
+getting at the truth will at once vanish," I answered. "I have come here
+to tell you in strictest confidence who the poor fellow really is."
+
+"Then you know something of the affair?" he said, with a strong Highland
+accent.
+
+"I know nothing," I declared. "Nothing except his name."
+
+"H'm. And you say he's a foreigner--an Italian--eh?"
+
+"He was in my service in Leghorn for several years, and on leaving me he
+came to London and obtained an engagement as waiter in a restaurant. His
+father lived in Leghorn; he was doorkeeper at the Prefecture."
+
+"But why was he here, in Scotland?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"You know something of the affair. I mean that you suspect somebody, or
+you would have no objection to giving evidence at the inquiry."
+
+"I have no suspicions. To me the affair is just as much of an enigma as
+to you," I hastened at once to explain. "My only fear is that if the
+assassin knew that I had identified him he would take care not to betray
+himself."
+
+"You therefore think he will betray himself?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"By the fact that the man was attacked with an Italian stiletto, it
+would seem that his assailant was a fellow-countryman," suggested the
+detective.
+
+"The evidence certainly points to that," I replied.
+
+"You don't happen to be aware of anyone--any foreigner, I mean--who was,
+or might be his enemy?"
+
+I responded in the negative.
+
+"Ah," he went on, "these foreigners are always fighting among themselves
+and using knives. I did ten years' service in Edinburgh and made lots of
+arrests for stabbing affrays. Italians, like Greeks, are a dangerous lot
+when their blood is up." Then he added: "Personally, it seems to me that
+the murdered man was enticed from London to that spot and coolly done
+away with--from some motive of revenge, most probably."
+
+"Most probably," I said. "A vendetta, perhaps. I live in Italy, and
+therefore know the Italians well," I added.
+
+I had given him my card, and told him with whom I was staying.
+
+"Where were you yesterday, sir?" he inquired presently.
+
+"I was shooting--on the other side of the Nithsdale," I answered, and
+then went on to explain my movements, without, however, mentioning my
+visit to Rannoch.
+
+"And although you know the murdered man so intimately, you have no
+suspicion of anyone in this district who was acquainted with him?"
+
+"I know no one who knew him. When he left my service he had never been
+in England."
+
+"You say he was engaged in service in London?"
+
+"Yes, at a restaurant in Oxford Street, I believe. I met him
+accidentally in Pall Mall one evening, and he told me so."
+
+"You don't know the name of the restaurant?"
+
+"He did tell me, but unfortunately I have forgotten."
+
+The detective drew a deep breath of regret.
+
+"Someone who waited for him on the edge of that wood stepped out and
+killed him--that's evident," he said.
+
+"Without a doubt."
+
+"And my belief is that it was an Italian. There were two foreigners who
+slept at a common lodging-house two nights ago and went on tramp towards
+Glasgow. We have telegraphed after them, and hope we shall find them.
+Scotsmen or Englishmen never use a knife of that pattern."
+
+With his latter remark I entirely coincided. In my own mind that was the
+strongest argument in favor of Leithcourt's innocence. That the tenant
+of Rannoch had kept that secret tryst in daily patience I knew from my
+own observations, yet to me it scarcely seemed feasible that he would
+use a weapon so peculiarly Italian and yet so terribly deadly.
+
+And then when I reflected further, recollecting that the body I had
+discovered was that of a woman and not a man, I stood staggered and
+bewildered by the utterly inexplicable enigma.
+
+I promised the burly detective that in exchange for his secrecy
+regarding my statement that I would assist him in every manner possible
+in the solution of the problem.
+
+"The real name of the murdered man must be at all costs withheld," I
+urged. "It must not appear in the papers, for I feel confident that only
+by the pretense that he is unknown can we arrive at the truth. If his
+name is given at the inquiry, then the assassin will certainly know that
+I have identified him."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Well," I said with some hesitation, "while I am believed to be in
+ignorance we shall have opportunity for obtaining the truth."
+
+"Then you do really suspect?" he said, again looking at me with those
+cold, blue eyes.
+
+"I know not whom to suspect," I declared. "It is a mystery why the man
+who was once my faithful servant should be enticed to that wood and
+stabbed to the heart."
+
+"There is no one in the vicinity who knew him?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+"We might obtain his address in London through his father in Leghorn,"
+suggested the officer.
+
+"I will write to-day if you so desire," I said readily. "Indeed, I will
+get my friend the British Consul to go round and see the old man and
+telegraph the address if he obtains it."
+
+"Capital!" he declared. "If you will do us this favor we shall be
+greatly indebted to you. It is fortunate that we have established the
+victim's identity--otherwise we might be entirely in the dark. A
+murdered foreigner is always more or less of a mystery."
+
+Therefore, then and there, I took a sheet of paper and wrote to my old
+friend Hutcheson at Leghorn, asking him to make immediate inquiry of
+Olinto's father as to his son's address in London.
+
+I said nothing to the police of that strange adventure of mine over in
+Lambeth, or of how the man now dead had saved my life. That his enemies
+were my own he had most distinctly told me, therefore I felt some
+apprehension that I myself was not safe. Yet in my hip pocket I always
+carried my revolver--just as I did in Italy--and I rather prided myself
+on my ability to shoot straight.
+
+We sat for a long time discussing the strange affair. In order to betray
+no eagerness to get away, I offered the big Highlander a cigar from my
+case, and we smoked together. The inquiry would be held on the morrow,
+he told me, but as far as the public was concerned the body would remain
+as that of some person "unknown."
+
+"And you had better not come to my uncle's house, or send anyone," I
+said. "If you desire to see me, send me a line and I will meet you here
+in Dumfries. It will be safer."
+
+The officer looked at me with those keen eyes of his, and said:
+
+"Really, Mr. Gregg, I can't quite make you out, I confess. You seem to
+be apprehensive of your own safety. Why?"
+
+"Italians are a very curious people," I responded quickly. "Their
+vendetta extends widely sometimes."
+
+"Then you have reason to believe that the enemy of this poor fellow
+Santini may be your enemy also?"
+
+"One never knows whom one offends when living in Italy," I laughed, as
+lightly as I could, endeavoring to allay his suspicion. "He may have
+fallen beneath the assassin's knife by giving quite a small and possibly
+innocent offense to somebody. Italian methods are not English, you
+know."
+
+"By Jove, sir, and I'm jolly glad they're not!" he said. "I shouldn't
+think a police officer's life is a very safe one among all those secret
+murder societies I've read about."
+
+"Ah! what you read about them is often very much exaggerated," I assured
+him. "It is the vendetta which is such a stain upon the character of the
+modern Italian; and depend upon it this affair in Rannoch Wood is the
+outcome of some revenge or other--probably over a love affair."
+
+"But you will assist us, sir?" he urged. "You know the Italian language,
+which will be of great advantage; besides, the victim was your servant."
+
+"Be discreet," I said. "And in return I will do my very utmost to assist
+you in hunting down the assassin."
+
+And thus we made our compact. Half-an-hour after I was driving in the
+dog-cart through the pouring rain up the hill out of gray old Dumfries
+to my uncle's house.
+
+As I descended from the cart and gave it over to a groom, old Davis, the
+butler, came forward, saying in a low voice:
+
+"There's Miss Leithcourt waiting to see you, Mr. Gordon. She's in the
+morning-room, and been there an hour. She asked me not to tell anyone
+else she's here, sir."
+
+"Then my aunt has not seen her?" I exclaimed, scenting mystery in this
+unexpected visit.
+
+"No, sir. She wishes to see you alone, sir."
+
+I walked across the big hall and along the corridor to the room the old
+man had indicated.
+
+And as I opened the door and Muriel Leithcourt in plain black rose to
+meet me, I plainly saw from her white, haggard countenance that
+something had happened--that she had been forced by circumstances to
+come to me in strictest confidence.
+
+Was she, I wondered, about to reveal to me the truth?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUDS
+
+
+"Mr. Gregg," exclaimed the girl with agitation, as she put forth her
+black-gloved hand, "I--I suppose you know--you've heard all about the
+discovery to-day up at the wood? I need not tell you anything about it"
+
+"Yes, Miss Leithcourt, I only wish you would tell me about it," I said
+gravely, inviting her to a chair and seating myself. "I've heard some
+extraordinary story about a man being found dead, but I've been in
+Dumfries nearly all day. Who is the man?"
+
+"Ah! that we don't know," she replied, pale-faced and anxious. Her
+attitude was as though she wished to confide in me and yet still
+hesitated to do so.
+
+"You've been waiting for me quite a long time, Davis tells me. I regret
+that you should have done this. If you had left word that you wished to
+see me, I would have come over to you at once."
+
+"No. I wanted to see you alone--that's the reason I am here. They must
+not know at home that I've been over here, so I purposely asked the man
+not to announce me to your aunt."
+
+"You want to see me privately," I said in a low, earnest voice. "Why? Is
+there any service I can render you?"
+
+"Yes. A very great one," she responded with quick eagerness,
+"I--well--the fact is, I have summoned courage to come to you and beg
+of you to help me. I am in great distress--and I have not a single
+friend whom I can trust--in whom I can confide."
+
+"I shall esteem it the highest honor if you will trust me," I said in
+deep earnestness. "I can only assure you that I will remain loyal to
+your interests and to yourself."
+
+"Ah! I believe you will, Mr. Gregg!" she declared with enthusiasm, her
+large, dark eyes turned upon me--the eyes of a woman in sheer and bitter
+despair. Her face was perfect, one of the most handsome I had ever gazed
+upon. The more I saw of her the greater was the fascination she held
+over me.
+
+A silence fell between us as she sat with her gloved hands lying idly in
+her lap. Her lips moved nervously, but no sound came from them, so
+agitated was she, so eager to tell me something; and yet at the same
+time reluctant to take me into her confidence.
+
+"Well?" I asked at last in a low voice. "I am quite ready to render you
+any service, if you will only command me."
+
+"Ah! But I fear what I require will strike you as so unusual--you will
+hesitate to act when I explain what service I require of you," she said
+doubtfully.
+
+"I cannot tell you until I hear your wishes," I said, smiling, and yet
+puzzled at her attitude.
+
+"It concerns the terrible discovery made up in Rannoch Wood," she said
+in a hoarse, nervous voice at last. "That unknown man was
+murdered--stabbed to the heart."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," she said, scarcely above a whisper, "I have suspicions."
+
+"Of the murdered man's identity?"
+
+"No. Of the assassin."
+
+I glanced at her sharply and saw the intense look in her dark, wide-open
+eyes.
+
+"You believe you know who dealt the blow?"
+
+"I have a suspicion--that is all. Only I want you to help me, if you
+will."
+
+"Most certainly," I responded. "But if you believe you know the assassin
+you probably know something of the victim?"
+
+"Only that he looked like a foreigner."
+
+"Then you have seen him?" I exclaimed, much surprised.
+
+My remark caused her to hold her breath for an instant. Then she
+answered, rather lamely, it seemed to me:
+
+"I saw him when the keepers brought the body to the castle."
+
+Now, according to the account I had heard, the police had conveyed the
+dead man direct from the wood into Dumfries. Was it possible, therefore,
+that she had seen Olinto before he met with his sudden end?
+
+I feared to press her for an explanation at that moment, but,
+nevertheless, the admission that she had seen him struck me as a very
+peculiar fact.
+
+"You judge him to be a foreigner?" I remarked as casually as I could.
+
+"From his features and complexion I guessed him to be Italian," she
+responded quickly, at which I pretended to express surprise. "I saw him
+after the keepers had found him."
+
+"Besides," she went on, "the stiletto was evidently an Italian one,
+which would almost make it appear that a foreigner was the assassin."
+
+"Is that your own suspicion?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, then in a low, eager voice she said:
+
+"Because I have already seen that three-edged knife in another person's
+possession."
+
+"That's pretty strong evidence," I declared. "The person in question
+will have to prove that he was not in Rannoch Wood last evening at
+nightfall."
+
+"How do you know it was done at nightfall?" she asked quickly with some
+surprise, half-rising from her chair.
+
+"I merely surmised that it was," I responded, inwardly blaming myself
+for my ill-timed admission.
+
+"Ah!" she said with a slight sigh, "there is more mystery in this affair
+than we have yet discovered, Mr. Gregg. What, I wonder, brought the
+unfortunate young man up into our wood?"
+
+"An appointment, without a doubt. But with whom?"
+
+She shook her head, saying:
+
+"My father often goes to that spot to shoot pigeon in the evening. He
+told us so at luncheon to-day. How fortunate he was not there last
+night, or he might be suspected."
+
+"Yes," I said. "It is a very fortunate circumstance, for it cannot be a
+pleasant experience to be under suspicion of being an assassin. He was
+at home last night, was he?" I added casually.
+
+"Of course. Don't you recollect that when you called he chatted with
+you? I did some typewriting for him in the study, and we were together
+all the afternoon--or at least till nearly five o'clock, when we went
+out into the hall to tea."
+
+"Then what is your theory regarding the affair?" I inquired, rather
+puzzled why she should so decisively prove an alibi for her father.
+
+"It seems certain that the poor fellow went to the wood by appointment,
+and was killed. But have you been up to the spot since the finding of
+the body?"
+
+"No. Have you?"
+
+"Yes. The affair interested me, and as soon as I recognized the old
+Italian knife in the hand of the keeper, I went up there and looked
+about. I am glad I did so, for I found something which seems to have
+escaped the notice of the detectives."
+
+"And what's that?" I asked eagerly.
+
+"Why, about three yards from the pool of blood where the unfortunate
+foreigner was found is another small pool of blood where the grass and
+ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle
+there."
+
+"There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have
+staggered some distance before he fell dead."
+
+"Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall,
+would he not?" she suggested. "No. The police seem very dense, and this
+plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as
+what you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I
+believe that a second person also fell a victim," she added in a low,
+distinct tone.
+
+I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth?
+Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?
+
+"A second person!" I echoed, as though in surprise. "Then do you believe
+that a double murder was committed?"
+
+"I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck
+in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which
+separates the one mark from the other."
+
+"But he might have been slightly wounded--on the hand, or in the
+face--at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck
+fatally," I suggested.
+
+She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her
+confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some
+unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments
+later she said to me:
+
+"It is for this reason, Mr. Gregg, that I have sought you in confidence.
+Nobody must know that I have come here to you, or they would suspect;
+and if suspicion fell upon me it would bring upon me a fate worse than
+death. Remember, therefore, that my future is entirely in your hands."
+
+"I don't quite understand," I said, rising and standing before her in
+the fading twilight, while the rain drove upon the old diamond window
+panes. "But I can only assure you that whatever confidence you repose in
+me, I shall never abuse, Miss Leithcourt."
+
+"I know, I know!" she said quickly. "I trust you in this matter
+implicitly. I have come to you for many reasons, chief of them being
+that if a second victim has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, it
+is, I know, a woman."
+
+"A woman! Whom?"
+
+"At present I cannot tell you. I must first establish the true facts. If
+this woman were really stricken down, then her body lies concealed
+somewhere in the vicinity. We must find it and bring home the crime to
+the guilty one."
+
+"But if we succeed in finding it, could we place our hand upon the
+assassin?" I asked, looking straight at her.
+
+"If we find it, the crime would then tell its own tale--it would convict
+the person in whose hand I have seen that fatal weapon," was her clear,
+bold answer.
+
+"Then you wish me to assist you in this search, Miss Leithcourt?" I
+said, wondering if her suspicions rested upon that mysterious yachtsman,
+Philip Hornby, the man to whom she was engaged.
+
+"Yes, I would beg of you to do your utmost in secret to endeavor to
+discover the body of the second victim. It is a woman--of that I am
+certain. Find her, and we shall then be able to bring the crime home to
+the assassin."
+
+"But my search may bring suspicion upon me," I remarked. "It will be
+difficult to examine the whole wood without arousing the curiosity of
+somebody--the keeper or the police."
+
+"I have already thought of that," she said. "I will pretend to-morrow to
+lose this watch-bracelet in the wood," and she held up her slim wrist to
+show me the little enameled watch set in her bracelet. "Then you and I
+will search for it diligently, and the police will never suspect the
+real reason of our investigation. To-morrow I shall write to you telling
+you about my loss, and you will come over to Rannoch and offer to help
+me."
+
+I was silent for a moment.
+
+"Is Mr. Woodroffe back at the castle? I heard he was to return to-day."
+
+"No. I had a letter from him from Bordeaux a week ago. He is still on
+the Continent. I believe, indeed, he has gone to Russia, where he
+sometimes has business."
+
+"I asked you the question, Miss Muriel, because I thought if Mr.
+Woodroffe were here, he might object to our searching in company," I
+explained, smiling.
+
+Her cheeks flushed slightly, as though confused at my reference to her
+engagement, and she said mischievously:
+
+"I don't see why he should object in the least. If you are good enough
+to assist me to search for my bracelet, he surely ought to be much
+obliged to you."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to explain to that dark-eyed, handsome
+girl the circumstances in which I had met her lover on the sunny
+Mediterranean shore, yet prudence forbade me to refer to the matter, and
+I at once gladly accepted her invitation to investigate the curious
+disappearance of the body of poor Olinto's fellow-victim.
+
+What secret knowledge could be possessed by that smart, handsome girl
+before me? That her suspicions were in the right direction I felt
+confident, yet if the dead woman had been removed and hidden by the
+assassin it must have been after the discovery made by me. The fellow
+must have actually dared to return to the spot and carry off the victim.
+Yet if he had actually done that, why did he allow the corpse of the
+Italian to remain and await discovery? He might perhaps have been
+disturbed and compelled to make good his escape.
+
+"If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some
+assistance," I pointed out. "He could not have carried the body very far
+unaided."
+
+She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had
+been committed alone and unaided.
+
+"Have you any idea as to the motive?" I asked her, eager to hear her
+reply.
+
+"Well," she answered hesitatingly, "if the woman has fallen a victim,
+the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a
+complete mystery."
+
+"You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny
+all knowledge of the murdered man!" I exclaimed in a tone of slight
+reproach.
+
+"Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,"
+was her answer. "I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect
+is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most
+startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the
+life of another."
+
+"Then a man is the assassin, you think?" I exclaimed quickly.
+
+"I believe so. But even of that I am not at all sure. We must first find
+the woman."
+
+She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly
+_misericordia_ that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had
+discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had
+been committed. But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own
+suspicions might become aroused. My own policy was to remain silent and
+to wait. The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.
+
+Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little
+way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her
+departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left
+by one of the servants' entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart
+and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the
+gloom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I
+stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where
+Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless
+sky.
+
+True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking
+me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to
+Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me. The shooting party had gone
+over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll
+together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or
+hindrance. She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high
+shooting-boots and a tam-o'-shanter hat, while I also had on an old
+shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could
+prod likely spots.
+
+On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely
+corner, but she replied:
+
+"I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg. You have known it for years,
+while this is only my first season here."
+
+"Very well," I answered. "Let us place ourselves in the position of the
+murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the
+vicinity without risk of conveying it far. On this, the left side, the
+wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords
+but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the
+valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable. There can therefore
+have been no two courses open to him. He would look for a likely place
+to the right. Let us start here, and first take a small circle,
+examining every bush carefully. The body may have easily been pushed in
+beneath a thicket and well escape observation."
+
+And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our
+way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making
+minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves. In parts, the
+great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations
+very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness
+which showed that the fact of the woman's body being there was no mere
+surmise.
+
+All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.
+Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she
+received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly
+exclaimed:
+
+"Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?"
+
+My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to
+scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of
+any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to
+admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at
+that spot.
+
+More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually
+discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in
+such circumstances silence was best. If I desired to solve the strange
+complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would
+be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and
+watchful.
+
+When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto
+was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end. I might
+find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her. So I
+was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.
+
+Muriel was untiring in her activity. Hither and thither she went,
+beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her
+stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the
+wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.
+
+For my own part, however, I was not too sanguine of success. The portion
+of the wood which we had already exhausted seemed to be the most likely
+point. To carry the body far would require assistance, and in my own
+mind I believed the crime to have been the work of one person. There was
+no path in the wood in that direction, but soon we came to a deep
+wooded ravine of the existence of which I was in ignorance. It was a
+kind of small glen through which a rivulet flowed, but the banks were
+covered with a thick impenetrable undergrowth out of which sprang many
+fine old trees, a place that had apparently existed for centuries
+undisturbed, for here and there a giant trunk that had decayed and
+fallen lay across the bank, or had rolled into the rocky bed far below.
+
+"This is a most likely place," declared my dainty little companion as we
+approached it. "Anything could easily be concealed in that high bracken
+down there. Let us search the whole glen from end to end," she cried
+with enthusiasm.
+
+Acting upon her suggestion and without thought of luncheon, we made a
+descent of the steep bank until we reached the rocky bed of the stream,
+and then by springing from stone to stone--sometimes slipping into the
+water, be it said--we commenced to beat the bracken and carefully
+examine every bush. Progress was not swift. Once the girl, lithe and
+athletic as she was, slipped off a mossy stone into a hole where the
+water was up to her knees. But she only laughed gayly at the accident,
+and wringing out her wet skirt, said:
+
+"It doesn't matter in the least, if we only find what we're in search
+of."
+
+And then, undaunted, she went on, springing from stone to stone and
+steadying herself with her stick. If we could only discover the body of
+the dead woman, then the rest would be clear, she declared. She would
+openly denounce the assassin.
+
+As we went on I revolved within my mind all the curious circumstances in
+connection with the amazing affair, and recollected my old friend Jack
+Durnford's words when we stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Bulwark_
+and I had related to him the visit of the mysterious yacht. I too had
+left one effort untried, and I blamed myself for overlooking it. I had
+not sought of that Bond Street photographer the name and address of the
+original of the photograph that had been mutilated and destroyed--that
+girl with the magnificent eyes that had so attracted me.
+
+The afternoon passed, and yet we were not successful. I was faint with
+hunger and thirst, yet my companion did not once complain. Her energy
+was marvelous--and yet was she not hunting down a criminal? was she not
+determined to obtain such evidence as would enable her to speak the
+truth fearlessly, and with confidence that it would have the effect of
+convicting the guilty one?
+
+Slowly we toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and
+a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken
+save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there
+in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for
+years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the
+tangle of briars and bush it was utterly ungetatable. Indeed, it had
+ruined our clothes to search there, and as we went on with so many
+windings and turns we became utterly out of our bearings. We knew
+ourselves to be in the center of the wood, but that was all.
+
+The sun had set, and the sky above showed the crimson of the distant
+afterglow, warning us that it was time we began to think of how to make
+our exit. We were passing around a sharp bend in the glen where the
+boulders were so thickly moss-grown that our feet fell noiselessly, when
+I thought I heard a voice, and raising my hand we both halted suddenly.
+
+"Someone is there," I whispered quickly. "Behind that rock." She nodded
+in the affirmative, for she, too, had heard the voice.
+
+We listened, but the sound was not repeated. That someone was on the
+other side of the rock I knew, for in a tree in the vicinity a thrush
+was hopping from twig to twig, sounding its alarm-cry and objecting to
+being disturbed.
+
+Therefore we crept silently forward together to ascertain who were the
+intruders. The only manner, however, in which to get a view beyond the
+huge rock that, having fallen across the stream centuries ago, had
+diverted its channel, was to clamber up its mossy sides to the summit.
+This we did eagerly and breathlessly, without betraying our presence by
+the utterance of a single word.
+
+To reach the side of the boulder we were compelled to walk through the
+shallow water, but Muriel, quite undaunted, sprang lithely along at my
+side, and with one accord we swarmed up the steep rock, gripping its
+slippery face with our hands and laying ourselves flat as we came to its
+summit.
+
+Then together we peered over, just, however, in time to see two dark
+figures of men disappearing into the thicket on the opposite side of the
+glen.
+
+"Who are they, I wonder?" I asked. "Do you recognize them?"
+
+"No. They are entire strangers to me," was her answer. "But they seem
+fairly well dressed. Perhaps two sportsmen from some shooting-party in
+the neighborhood. They've lost their way most probably."
+
+"But I don't think they carried guns," I said. "One of them had
+something over his shoulder?"
+
+"Wasn't it a gun? I thought it was."
+
+"No, he wasn't carrying it like he'd carry a gun. It was short--and
+seemed more like a spade."
+
+"A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice. "A spade! Are you certain
+of that?"
+
+"No, not at all certain. We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
+We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face."
+
+"The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was
+broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for
+the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a
+whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
+
+I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief
+that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as
+curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of
+the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been
+recently disturbed.
+
+"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly. "Look down
+there! They've just been burying something!"
+
+Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered:
+
+"I really believe they have concealed something!"
+
+Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped
+down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs
+that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
+
+Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed,
+we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the
+freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
+
+Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work
+with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there. That something
+had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it
+really was we could not surmise. The hole they had dug did not seem
+large enough to admit a human body, yet leaves had been carefully strewn
+over the place which, if approached from any other point than the
+high-up one whence we had seen it, would arouse no suspicion that the
+ground had ever been interfered with.
+
+Digging with a piece of wood was hard and laborious work and it was a
+long time before we removed sufficient earth to make a hole of any size.
+But Muriel exerted all her energy, and both of us worked on in dogged
+silence full of wonder and anticipation. With a spade we should have
+soon been able to investigate, but the earth having apparently been
+stamped down hard prior to the last covering being put upon it, our
+progress was very slow and difficult.
+
+At last, a quarter of an hour or so after we had commenced, Muriel,
+standing in the hole and having dug her stake deeply into the ground,
+suddenly cried:
+
+"Look! Look, Mr. Gregg! Why--whatever is that?"
+
+I bent forward as she indicated, and my eyes met an object so unexpected
+that I was held dumb and motionless.
+
+By what we had succeeded in discovering, the mystery was increased
+rather than diminished.
+
+I gave vent to an ejaculation of complete bewilderment, and looked
+blankly into my companion's face.
+
+The amazing enigma was surely complete!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CONTAINS A SURPRISE
+
+
+The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface,
+was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed,
+proved to be part of a woman's skirt.
+
+With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
+soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
+
+A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
+had dug.
+
+Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
+from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
+woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
+Olinto. Both had been assassinated!
+
+When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
+expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
+she had expected to find.
+
+"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently,
+by her dress and hands."
+
+"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
+own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
+of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
+countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
+were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
+
+Armida had been a particularly good housemaid, a black-haired,
+black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It
+was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her
+dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had
+issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been
+struck an unerring blow that had severed the artery.
+
+"Those men--those men who buried her! I wonder who they were?" my
+companion exclaimed in a hushed voice. "We must follow them and
+ascertain. They are certainly the murderers who have returned in secret
+and concealed the evidence of this second crime."
+
+"Yes," I said. "Let us go after them. They must not escape us."
+
+Then, leaving the exhumed body beneath a tree, I caught Muriel by the
+waist and waded across the deep channel worn by the stream at that
+point, after which we both ascended the steep bank where the pair had
+disappeared in the darkness of the wood.
+
+I blamed myself a thousand times for not following them, yet my
+suspicions had not been aroused until after they had disappeared. The
+back of the man in a snuff-colored suit was, she felt confident,
+familiar to her. She repeated what she had already told me, yet she
+could not remember where she had seen a similar figure before.
+
+We went on through the gloomy forest, for the light had faded and
+evening was now creeping on. From time to time we halted and listened.
+But there was a dead silence, broken only by the shrill cry of a night
+bird and the low rustling of the leaves in the autumn wind. The men knew
+their way, it seemed, even though the wood was trackless. Yet they had
+nearly twenty minutes start of us, and in that time they might be
+already out in the open country. Would they succeed in evading us? Yet
+even if they did, I could describe the dress of one of them, while that
+of his companion was, as far as I made out, dark blue, of a somewhat
+nautical cut. He wore also a flat cap, with a peak.
+
+We went on, striking straight for the open moorland which we knew
+bounded the woods in that direction, and before the light had entirely
+faded we found ourselves out amongst the heather with the distant hills
+looming dark against the horizon. But we saw no sign of the men who had
+so secretly concealed the body of their victim.
+
+"I will take you back to the castle, Miss Leithcourt," I said. "And then
+I'll drive on into Dumfries and see the police. These men must be
+arrested."
+
+"Yes, do," she urged. "I will get into the house by the stable-yard, for
+they must not see me in this terrible plight."
+
+It was rough walking, therefore at my invitation she took my arm, and as
+she did so I felt that she was shivering.
+
+"You are very wet," I remarked. "I hope you won't take cold."
+
+"Oh! I'm used to getting wet. I drive and cycle a lot, you know, and
+very often get drenched," was her reply. Then after a pause she said:
+"We must discover who that woman was. She seems, from her complexion and
+her hair, to be a foreigner, like the man."
+
+"Yes, I think so," was my reply. "I will tell the police all that we
+have found out, and they will go there presently and recover the body."
+
+"If they can only find those two men, then we should know the truth,"
+she declared. "One of them--the one in brown--was unusually
+broad-shouldered, and seemed to walk with a slight stoop."
+
+"You expected to discover another woman, did you not, Miss Leithcourt?"
+I asked presently, as we walked across the moor.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "I expected to find an entirely different person."
+
+"And if you had found her it would have proved the guilt of someone with
+whom you are acquainted?"
+
+She nodded in the affirmative.
+
+"Then what we have found this evening does not convey to you the
+identity of the assassins?"
+
+"No, unfortunately it does not. We must for the present leave the matter
+in the hands of the police."
+
+"But if the identity of the dead woman is established?" I asked.
+
+"It might furnish me with a clue," she exclaimed quickly. "Yes, try and
+discover who she is."
+
+"Who was the woman you expected to find?"
+
+"A friend--a very dear friend."
+
+"Will you not tell me her name?" I inquired.
+
+"No, it would be unfair to her," she responded decisively, an answer
+which to me was particularly tantalizing.
+
+On we plodded in silence, our thoughts too full for words. Was it not
+strange that the mysterious yachtsman should be her lover, and stranger
+still that on recognizing me he should have escaped, not only from
+Scotland, but away to the Continent?
+
+Was not that, in itself, evidence of guilt and fear?
+
+It was quite dark when I took leave of my bright little companion, who,
+tired out and yet uncomplaining, pressed my hand and wished me good
+fortune in my investigations.
+
+"I shall await you to-morrow afternoon. Call and tell me everything,
+won't you?"
+
+I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind
+the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across
+the open fields to my uncle's house.
+
+At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief
+police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair
+Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the
+previous day.
+
+When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related
+my adventure and the result of my investigation.
+
+"What?" he cried, jumping up. "You've unearthed another body--a
+woman's?"
+
+"I have. And what is more, I can identify her," I replied. "Her name is
+Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini."
+
+"Then both husband and wife were killed?"
+
+"Without a doubt--a double tragedy."
+
+"But the two men who concealed the body! Will you describe them?"
+
+I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking--
+
+"We must find them." And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave
+him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all
+the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a
+charge of willful murder.
+
+When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned
+to me and asked--
+
+"What induced you to search the wood? Why did you suspect a second
+crime?"
+
+His question nonplused me for the moment.
+
+"Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him
+to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had
+accompanied him here. It was entirely a vague surmise. I wondered
+whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had
+not also been struck down."
+
+His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction. I knew my
+explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import
+Muriel's name into the affair. I had given her my promise, and I
+intended to keep it.
+
+"Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?"
+
+"Yes. If you wish, I will take you to the spot. I can drive you and your
+assistant up there."
+
+"Certainly. Let us go," he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his
+bell.
+
+"Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this
+gentleman's trap outside," he said to the constable who answered his
+summons. "And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to
+Rannoch Wood."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the man; and the door again closed.
+
+"It's a pity--a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn't stop those
+two men who buried the body."
+
+"They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket
+before I mounted the rock," I explained. "Besides, at the moment I had
+no suspicion of what they'd been doing. I believed them to be stragglers
+from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way."
+
+"Ah, most unfortunate!" he said. "I hope they don't escape us. If
+they're foreigners, they are not likely to get away. But if they're
+English or Scots, then I fear there's but little chance of us coming up
+with them. Yesterday at the inquest the identity of the murdered man was
+strictly preserved, and the inquiry was adjourned for a fortnight."
+
+"Of course my name was not mentioned?" I said.
+
+"Of course not," was the detective's reply. Then he asked: "When do you
+expect to get a telegram from your friend, the Consul at Leghorn? I am
+anxious for that, in order that we may commence inquiries in London."
+
+"The day after to-morrow, I hope. He will certainly reply at once,
+providing the dead man's father can still be found."
+
+And at that moment a tall, thin man, who proved to be Detective
+Campbell, entered, and five minutes later we were all three driving over
+the uneven cobbles of Dumfries and out in the darkness towards Rannoch.
+
+It was cloudy and starless, with a chill mist hanging over the valley;
+but my uncle's cob was a swift one, and we soon began to ascend the hill
+up past the castle, and then, turning to the left, drove along a steep,
+rough by-road which led to the south of the wood and out across the
+moor. When we reached the latter we all descended, and I led the horse,
+for owing to the many treacherous bogs it was unsafe to drive further.
+So, with Mackenzie and Campbell carrying lanterns, we walked on
+carefully, skirting the wood for nearly a mile until we came to the
+rough wall over which I had clambered with Muriel.
+
+I recognized the spot, and having tied up the cob we all three plunged
+into the pitch-darkness of the wood, keeping straight on in the
+direction of the glen, and halting every now and then to listen for the
+rippling of the stream.
+
+At last, after some difficulty, we discovered it, and searching along
+the bank with our three powerful lights, I presently detected the huge
+moss-grown boulder whereon I had stood when the pair of fugitives had
+disappeared.
+
+"Look!" I cried. "There's the spot!" And quickly we clambered down the
+steep bank, lowering ourselves by the branches of the trees until we
+came to the water into which I waded, being followed closely by my two
+companions.
+
+On gaining the opposite side I clambered up to the base of the boulder
+and lowered my lantern to reveal to them the gruesome evidence of the
+second crime, but the next instant I cried--
+
+"Why! It's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" gasped the two men.
+
+"Yes. It was here. Look! this is the hole where they buried it! But they
+evidently returned, and finding it exhumed, they've retaken possession
+of it and carried it away!"
+
+The two detectives gazed down to where I indicated, and then looked at
+each other without exchanging a word.
+
+As we stood there dumbfounded at the disappearance of the body, the
+Highlander's quick glance caught something, and stooping he picked it up
+and examined the little object by the aid of his lantern.
+
+Within his palm I saw lying a tiny little gold cross, about an inch
+long, enameled in red, while in the center was a circular miniature of a
+kneeling saint, an elegant and beautifully executed little trinket which
+might have adorned a lady's bracelet.
+
+"This is a pretty little thing!" remarked the detective. "It may
+possibly lead us to something. But, Mr. Gregg," he added, turning to me,
+"are you quite certain you left the body here?"
+
+"Certain?" I echoed. "Why, look at the hole I made. You don't think I
+have any interest in leading you here on a fool's errand, do you?"
+
+"Not at all," he said apologetically. "Only the whole affair seems so
+very inconceivable--I mean that the men, having once got rid of the
+evidence of their crime, would hardly return to the spot and re-obtain
+possession of it."
+
+"Unless they watched me exhume it, and feared the consequences if it
+fell into your hands," I suggested.
+
+"Of course they might have watched you from behind the trees, and when
+you had gone they came and carried it away somewhere else," he remarked
+dubiously; "but even if they did, it must be in this wood. They would
+never risk carrying a body very far, and here is surely the best place
+of concealment in the whole country."
+
+"The only thing remaining is to search the wood at daylight," I
+suggested. "If the two men came back here during my absence they may
+still be on the watch in the vicinity."
+
+"Most probably they are. We must take every precaution," he said
+decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination
+of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish
+us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate
+Armida had disappeared--a fact which, knowing all that I did, was doubly
+mysterious.
+
+The pair had, without doubt, watched Muriel and myself, and as soon as
+we had gone they had returned and carried off the ghastly remains of the
+poor woman who had been so foully done to death.
+
+But who were the men--the fellow with the broad shoulders whom Muriel
+recognized, and the slim seafarer in his pilot-coat and peaked cap? The
+enigma each hour became more and more inscrutable.
+
+At dawn Mackenzie, with four of his men, made a thorough examination of
+the wood, but although they continued until dusk they discovered
+nothing, neither was anything heard of the mysterious seafarer and his
+companion in brown tweeds.
+
+I called on Muriel as arranged, and explained how the body had so
+suddenly disappeared, whereupon she stared at me pale-faced, saying--
+
+"The assassins must have watched us! They are aware, then, that we have
+knowledge of their crime?"
+
+"Of course," I said.
+
+"Ah!" she cried hoarsely. "Then we are both in deadly peril--peril of
+our own lives! These people will hesitate at nothing. Both you and I are
+marked down by them, without a doubt. We must both be wary not to fall
+into any trap they may lay for us."
+
+Her very words seemed an admission that she was aware of the identity of
+the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them.
+
+We went out and up the drive together to the kennels, where her father,
+a tall, imposing figure in his shooting-kit, was giving orders to the
+keepers.
+
+"Hulloa, Gregg!" he cried merrily, extending his hand. "You'll make one
+of a party to Glenlea to-morrow, won't you? Paton and Phillips are
+coming. Ten sharp here, and the ladies are coming out to lunch with us."
+
+"Thanks," I said, accepting with pleasure, for by so doing I saw that I
+might be afforded an opportunity of being near Muriel. The fact that the
+assassins were aware of our knowledge seemed to have caused her the
+greatest apprehension lest evil should befall us. Then, as we turned
+away to go back to the house, Leithcourt said to me--
+
+"You know all about the discovery up at the wood the other day! Horrible
+affair--a young foreigner found murdered."
+
+"Yes. I've heard about it," I responded.
+
+"And the police are worse than useless," he declared with disgust. "They
+haven't discovered who the fellow is yet. Why, if it had happened
+anywhere else but in Scotland, they'd have arrested the assassin before
+this."
+
+"He's an entire stranger, I hear," I remarked. And then added: "You
+often go up to the wood of an evening after pigeons. It's fortunate you
+were not there that evening, eh?"
+
+He glanced at me quickly with his brows slightly contracted, as though
+he did not exactly comprehend me. In an instant I saw that my remark had
+caused him quick apprehension.
+
+"Yes," he answered with a sickly smile which he intended should convey
+to me utter unconcern. "They might have suspected me."
+
+"It certainly is a disagreeable affair to happen on one's property." I
+said, still watching him narrowly. And then Muriel at his side managed
+with her feminine ingenuity to divert the conversation into a different
+channel.
+
+Next day I accompanied the party over to Glenlea, about five miles
+distant, and at noon at a spot previously arranged, we found the ladies
+awaiting us with luncheon spread under the trees. As soon as we
+approached Muriel came forward quickly, handing me a telegram, saying
+that it had been sent over by one of my uncle's grooms at the moment
+they were leaving the castle.
+
+I tore it open eagerly, and read its contents. Then, turning to my
+companions, said in as quiet a voice as I could command--
+
+"I must go up to London to-night," whereat the men, one and all,
+expressed hope that I should soon return. Leithcourt's party were a
+friendly set, and at heart I was sorry to leave Scotland. Yet the
+telegram made it imperative, for it was from Frank Hutcheson in Leghorn,
+and read--
+
+_"Made inquiries. Olinto Santini married your servant Armida at Italian
+Consulate-General in London about a year ago. They live 64B, Albany
+Road, Camberwell: he is employed waiter Ferrari's Restaurant,
+Westbourne Grove.--British Consulate, Leghorn"_
+
+The lunch was a merry one, as shooting luncheons usually are, and while
+we ate the keepers packed our morning bag--a considerable one--into the
+Perth-cart in waiting. Then, when we could wander away alone together, I
+explained to Muriel that the reason of my sudden journey to London was
+in order to continue my investigations regarding the mysterious affair.
+
+This puzzled her, for I had not, of course, revealed to her that I had
+identified Olinto. Yet I managed to make such excuses and promises to
+return that I think allayed all her suspicions, and that night, after
+calling upon the detective Mackenzie, I took the sleeping-car express to
+Euston.
+
+The restaurant which Hutcheson had indicated was, I found, situated
+about half-way up Westbourne Grove, nearly opposite Whiteley's, a small
+place where confectionery and sweets were displayed in the window,
+together with long-necked flasks of Italian chianti, chump-chops, small
+joints and tomatoes. It was soon after nine o'clock when I entered the
+long shop with its rows of marble-topped tables and greasy lounges of
+red plush. An unhealthy-looking lad was sweeping out the place with wet
+saw-dust, and a big, dark-bearded, flabby-faced man in shirt-sleeves
+stood behind the small counter polishing some forks.
+
+"I wish to see Signor Ferrari," I said, addressing him.
+
+"There is no Ferrari, he is dead," responded the man in broken English.
+"My name is Odinzoff. I bought the place from madame."
+
+"You are Russian, I presume?"
+
+"Polish, m'sieur--from Varsovie."
+
+I had seen from the first moment we had met that he was no Italian. He
+was too bulky, and his face too broad and flat.
+
+"I have come to inquire after a waiter you have in your service, an
+Italian named Santini. He was my servant for some years, and I naturally
+take an interest in him."
+
+"Santini?" he repeated. "Oh I you mean Olinto? He is not here yet. He
+comes at ten o'clock."
+
+This reply surprised me. I had expected the restaurant-keeper to express
+regret at his disappearance, yet he spoke as though he had been at work
+as usual on the previous day.
+
+"May I have a liqueur brandy?" I asked, seeing that I would be compelled
+to take something. "Perhaps you will have one with me?"
+
+"Ach no! But a kuemmel--yes, I will have a kuemmel!" And he filled our
+glasses, and tossed off his own at a single gulp, smacking his lips
+after it, for the average Russian dearly loves his national decoction of
+caraway seeds.
+
+"You find Olinto a good servant, I suppose?" I said, for want of
+something else to say.
+
+"Excellent. The Italians are the best waiters in the world. I am
+Russian, but dare not employ a Russian waiter. These English would not
+come to my shop if I did."
+
+I looked around, and it struck me that the trade of the place mainly
+consisted in chops and steaks for chance customers at mid-day, and tea
+and cake for those swarms of women who each afternoon buzz around that
+long line of windows of the "world's provider." I could see that his was
+a cheap trade, as revealed by the printed notice stuck upon one of the
+long fly-blown mirrors: "Ices _4d_ and _6d_."
+
+"How long has Olinto been with you?" I inquired.
+
+"About a year--perhaps a little more. I trust him implicitly, and I
+leave him in charge when I go away for holidays. He does not get along
+very well with the cook--who is Milanese. These Italians from different
+provinces always quarrel," he added, laughing. "If you live in Italy you
+know that, no doubt."
+
+I laughed in chorus, and then glancing at my watch, said: "I'll wait for
+him, if he will be here at ten. I'd much like to see him again."
+
+The Russian was by no means nonplused, but merely remarked--
+
+"He is late sometimes, but not often. He lives on the other side of
+London--over at Camberwell." His confidence that the waiter would return
+struck me as extremely curious; nevertheless I possessed myself in
+patience, strolled up and down the restaurant, and then stood watching
+the traffic in the Grove outside.
+
+The man Odinzoff seemed a quick, hard-working fellow with a keen eye to
+business, for he fell to polishing the top of the marble tables with a
+pail and brush, at the same time directing the work of the
+pallid-looking youth. Suddenly a side door opened, and the cook put his
+head in to speak with his master in French. He was a typical Italian,
+about forty, with dark mustaches turned upwards, and an easy-going,
+careless manner. Seeing me, however, and believing me to be a customer,
+he turned and closed the door quickly. In that instant I noticed the
+high broadness of his shoulders, and his back struck me as strangely
+similar to that of the man in brown whom we had seen disappearing in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+The suspicion held me breathless.
+
+Was this Russian endeavoring to deceive me when he declared that Olinto
+would arrive in a few minutes? It seemed curious, for the man now dead
+must, I reflected, have been away at least four days. Surely his
+absence from work had caused the proprietor considerable inconvenience?
+
+"That was your cook, wasn't it? The Milanese who is quarrelsome?" I
+laughed, when the side door had closed.
+
+"Yes, m'sieur. But Emilio is a very good workman--and very honest, even
+though I had constantly to complain that he uses too much oil in his
+cooking. These English do not like the oil."
+
+I stood in the doorway again watching the busy throng passing outside
+towards Royal Oak. Ten o'clock struck from a neighboring church, and I
+still waited, knowing only too well that I waited in vain for a man
+whose body had already been committed to the grave outside that far-away
+old Scotch town. But I waited in order to ascertain the motive of the
+bearded Russian in leading me to believe that the young fellow would
+really return.
+
+Presently Odinzoff went outside, carrying with him two boards upon which
+the menu of the "Eight-penny Luncheon! This Day!" was written in scrawly
+characters, and proceeded to affix them to the shop-front.
+
+This was my opportunity, and quick as thought I moved towards where the
+unhealthy youth was at work, and whispered:
+
+"I'll give you half-a-sovereign if you'll answer my questions
+truthfully. Now, tell me, was the cook, the man I've just seen, here
+yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Was he here the day before?"
+
+"No, sir. He's been away ill for four days."
+
+"And your master?"
+
+"He's been away too, sir."
+
+I had no time to put any further question, for the Russian re-entered at
+that moment, and the youth busied himself rubbing the front of the
+counter in pretense that I had not spoken to him. Indeed, I had some
+difficulty in slipping the promised coin into his hand at a moment when
+his master was not looking.
+
+Then I paced up and down the restaurant, waiting patiently and wondering
+whether the absence of Emilio had any connection with the tragedy up in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+While I stood there a rather thin, respectably-dressed man entered, and
+seating himself upon one of the plush lounges at the further end,
+removed his bowler hat and ordered from the proprietor a chop and a pot
+of tea. Then, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he settled himself to
+read, apparently oblivious to his surroundings.
+
+And yet as I watched I saw that over the top of his paper he was
+carefully taking in the general appearance of the place, and his eyes
+were keenly following the Russian's movements. The latter shouted--in
+French--the order for the chop through the speaking-tube to the man
+Emilio, and then returning to his customer he spread out a napkin and
+placed a small cruet, with knife, fork, and bread before him. But the
+customer seemed immersed in his paper, and never looked up until after
+the Russian's back was turned. Then so deep was his interest in the
+place, and so keen those dark eyes of his, that the truth suddenly
+dawned upon me. Mackenzie had telegraphed to Scotland Yard, and the
+customer sitting there was a detective who had come to investigate. I
+had advanced to the counter to chat again with the proprietor, when a
+quick step behind me caused me to turn.
+
+Before me stood the slim figure of a man in a straw hat and rather seedy
+black jacket.
+
+"_Dio Signor Padrone!_" he cried.
+
+I staggered as though I had received a blow.
+
+Olinto Santini in the flesh, smiling and well, stood there before me!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LIFE'S COUNTER-CLAIM
+
+
+No words of mine can express my absolute and abject amazement when I
+faced the man, whom I had seen lying cold and dead upon that gray stone
+slab in the mortuary at Dumfries.
+
+My eye caught the customer who, on the entry of Olinto, had dropped his
+paper and sat staring at him in wonderment. The detective had evidently
+been furnished with a photograph of the dead man, and now, like myself,
+discovered him alive and living.
+
+"Signor Padrone!" cried the man whose appearance was so absolutely
+bewildering. "How did you find me here? I admit that I deceived you when
+I told you I worked at the Milano," he went on rapidly in Italian. "But
+it was under compulsion--my actions that night were not my own--but
+those of others."
+
+"Yes, I understand," I said. "But come out into the street. I don't wish
+to speak before these people. Your padrone knows Italian, no doubt."
+
+"Ah! only a very little," he answered, smiling. "Have no fear of him."
+
+"But there is Emilio, the cook?"
+
+"Then you have met him!" he exclaimed quickly, with a strange look of
+apprehension. "He is an undesirable person, signore."
+
+"So I gather," I answered. "But I desire to speak to you outside--not
+here." And then turning with a smile to the Pole, I apologized for
+taking away his servant for a few minutes. "Recollect, I am his old
+master, I added."
+
+"Of course, m'sieur," answered the Pole, bowing politely. "Speak with
+him where and how long you will. He is entirely at your service."
+
+And when we were outside in Westbourne Grove, Olinto walking by my side
+in wonderment, I asked suddenly:
+
+"Tell me. Have you ever been in Scotland--at Dumfries?"
+
+"Never, signore, in my life. Why?"
+
+"Answer me another question," I said quickly. "You married Armida at the
+Italian Consulate. Where is she now--where is she this morning?"
+
+He turned pale, and I saw a complete change in his countenance.
+
+"Ah, signore!" he responded, "I only wish I could tell."
+
+"It is untrue that she is an invalid," I went on, "or that you live in
+Lambeth. Your address is in Albany Road, Camberwell. You can't deny
+these facts."
+
+"I do not deny them, Signor Commendatore. But how did you learn this?"
+
+"The authorities in Italy know everything," I answered. "Like that of
+all your countrymen, your record is written down at the Commune."
+
+"It is a clean one, at any rate, signore," he declared with some slight
+warmth. "I have a permesso to carry a revolver, which is in itself
+sufficient proof that I am a man of spotless character."
+
+"I cast no reflection whatever upon you, Olinto," I answered. "I have
+merely inquired after your wife, and you do not give me a direct reply."
+
+We had walked to the Royal Oak, and stood talking on the curb outside.
+
+"I give you no reply, because I can't," he said in Italian. "Armida--my
+poor Armida--has left home."
+
+"Why did you tell me such a tale of distress regarding her?"
+
+"As I have already explained, signore, I was not then master of my own
+actions. I was ruled by others. But I saved your life at risk of my own.
+Some day, when it is safe, I will reveal to you everything."
+
+"Let us allow the past to remain," I said. "Where is your wife now?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, looking straight into my face.
+
+"Well, Signor Commendatore, to tell the truth, she has disappeared."
+
+"Disappeared!" I echoed. "And have you not made any report to the
+police?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"For reasons known only to myself I did not wish the police to pry into
+my private affairs."
+
+"I know. Because you were once convicted at Lucca of using a knife--eh?
+I recollect quite well that affair--a love affair, was it not?"
+
+"Yes, Signor Commendatore. But I was a youth then--a mere boy."
+
+"Then tell me the circumstances In which Armida has disappeared," I
+urged, for I saw quite plainly that his sudden meeting with me had upset
+him, and that he was trying to hold back from me some story which he was
+bursting to tell.
+
+"Well, signore," he said at last in a low tone of confidence, "I don't
+like to trouble you with my private affairs after those untruths I told
+you when we last met."
+
+"Go on," I said. "Tell me the truth."
+
+After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined
+to doubt him.
+
+"The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously
+disappeared. Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the
+garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out. She
+apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of
+her."
+
+It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so
+strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon
+his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated
+to relate what I knew.
+
+"She spoke English, I suppose?"
+
+"She could make herself understood very well," he said with a sigh, and
+I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow. That he was really devoted
+to her, I knew. With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is
+all-consuming--it is either perfect love or genuine hatred. The Tuscan
+character is one of two extremes.
+
+I glanced across the road, and saw that the detective who had ordered
+his chop and coffee had stopped to light his pipe and was watching us.
+
+"Have you any idea where your wife is, or what has induced her to go
+away from home? Perhaps you had some words!"
+
+"Words, signore!" he echoed. "Why, we were the happiest pair in all
+London. No unkind word ever passed between us. There seems absolutely no
+reason whatever why she should go away without wishing me a word of
+farewell."
+
+"But why haven't you told the police?"
+
+"For reasons that I have already stated. I prefer to make inquiries for
+myself."
+
+"And in what have your inquiries resulted?"
+
+"Nothing--absolutely nothing," he said gravely.
+
+"You do not suspect any plot? I recollect that night in Lambeth you
+told me that you had enemies?"
+
+"Ah! so I have, signore--and so have you!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Yes,
+my poor Armida may have been entrapped by them."
+
+"And if entrapped, what then?"
+
+"Then they would kill her with as little compunction as they would a
+fly," he said. "Ah! you do not know the callousness of those people. I
+only hope and pray that she may have escaped and is in hiding somewhere,
+and will arrive unexpectedly and give me a startling surprise. She
+delights in startling me," he added with a laugh.
+
+Poor fellow, I thought, she would never again be able to startle him.
+She had actually fallen a victim just as he dreaded.
+
+"Then you think she must have been called away from home by some urgent
+message?" I suggested.
+
+"By the manner in which she left things, it seemed as though she went
+away hurriedly. There were five sovereigns in a drawer that we had saved
+for the rent, and she took them with her."
+
+I paused again, hesitating whether to tell him the terrible truth. I
+recollected that the body had disappeared, therefore what proof had I of
+my allegation that she had been murdered?
+
+"Tell me, Olinto," I said as we moved forward again in the direction of
+Paddington Station, "have you any knowledge of a man named Leithcourt?"
+
+He started suddenly and looked at me.
+
+"I have heard of him," he answered very lamely.
+
+"And of his daughter--Muriel?"
+
+"And also of her. But I am not acquainted with them--nor, to tell the
+truth, do I wish to be."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they are enemies of mine--bitter enemies."
+
+His declaration was strange, for it threw some light upon the tragedy in
+Rannoch Wood.
+
+"And of your wife also?"
+
+"I do not know that," he responded. "My enemies are my wife's also, I
+suppose."
+
+"You have not told me the secret of that dastardly attempt upon me when
+we last met," I said in a low voice. "Why not tell me the truth? I
+surely ought to know who my enemies really are, so as to be warned
+against any future plot."
+
+"You shall know some day, signore. I dare not tell you now."
+
+"You said that before," I exclaimed with dissatisfaction. "If you are
+faithful to me, you ought at least to tell me the reason they wished to
+kill me in secret."
+
+"Because they fear you," was his answer.
+
+"Why should they fear me?"
+
+But he shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture with his hands
+indicative of utter ignorance.
+
+"I ask you one question. Answer yes or no. Is the man Leithcourt my
+enemy?"
+
+The young Italian paused, and then answered:
+
+"He is not your friend. I am quite well aware of that."
+
+"And his daughter? She is engaged, I hear."
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Where did you first meet Leithcourt?"
+
+"I have known him several years. When we first met he was poor."
+
+"Suddenly became rich--eh?"
+
+"Bought a fine house in the country; lives mostly at the Carlton when he
+and his wife and daughter are in London--although I believe they now
+have a house somewhere in the West End--and he often makes long cruises
+on his steam-yacht."
+
+"And how did he make his money?"
+
+Again Olinto elevated his shoulders, without replying.
+
+If he would only betray to me the reason he had been induced to entice
+me to that house, I might then be able to form some conclusion regarding
+the tenants of Rannoch and their friends.
+
+Who was the man who, having represented the man now before me, had been
+struck dead by an unerring hand? Was it possible that Armida had been
+called by telegram to meet her husband, and recognizing the fraud
+perpetrated upon her threatened to disclose it and, for that reason,
+shared the same fate as the masquerader?
+
+This was the first theory that occurred to me; one which I believed to
+be the correct one. The motive was a mystery, yet the facts seemed to me
+plain enough.
+
+As the young Italian had refused to give any satisfactory explanation, I
+resolved within myself to wait until the unfortunate woman's body was
+recovered before revealing to him the ghastly truth. Without doubt he
+had some reason in withholding from me the true facts, either because he
+feared that I might become unduly alarmed, or else he himself had been
+deeply implicated in the plot. Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to
+believe in the latter.
+
+He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with
+all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew
+concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal
+that I had only that morning returned from Scotland. Then at last we
+parted, and he retraced his steps to the little restaurant in Westbourne
+Grove, while I entered a hansom and drove to the well-known
+photographer's in New Bond Street, whose name had been upon the torn
+photograph of the young girl in the white pique blouse and her hair
+fastened with a bow of black ribbon, the picture that I had found on
+board the _Lola_ on that memorable night in the Mediterranean, and a
+duplicate of which I had seen in Muriel's cosy little room up at
+Rannoch.
+
+I recollected that she had told me the name of the original was Elma
+Heath, and that she had been a schoolfellow of hers at Chichester.
+Therefore I inquired of the photographer's lady-clerk whether she could
+supply me with a print of the negative.
+
+For a considerable time she searched in her books for the name, and at
+last discovered it. Then she said:
+
+"I regret, sir, that we can't give you a print, for the customer
+purchased the negative at the time."
+
+"Ah, I'm very sorry for that," I said. "To what address did you send
+it?"
+
+"The customer who ordered it was apparently a foreigner," she said, at
+the same time turning round the ledger so that I could read. And I saw
+that the entry was: "Heath--Miss Elma--3 dozen cabinets and negative.
+Address: Baron Xavier Oberg, Vosnesenski Prospect 48, St. Petersburg,
+Russia."
+
+"Did this gentleman come with the young lady when her portrait was
+taken?" I inquired.
+
+"I can't tell, sir," she replied. "I've only been here a year, and you
+see the date--over two years ago."
+
+"The photographer would know, perhaps?"
+
+"He's a new man, sir. He only came a month ago. In fact, the business
+changed hands a year ago, and none of the previous employees have
+remained."
+
+"Ah! that's unfortunate," I said, greatly disappointed; and having
+copied the address to which the negative and prints had been sent, I
+thanked her and left.
+
+Who, I wondered, was this Baron Oberg, and what relation was he to Elma
+Heath?
+
+The picture of the girl in the white blouse somehow exercised a strange
+attraction for me.
+
+Have you never experienced the fascination of a photograph, inexplicable
+and yet forcible--a kind of magnetism from which you cannot release
+yourself? Perhaps it was the curious fact that some person had taken it
+from its frame on board the _Lola_ and destroyed it that first aroused
+my interest; or it might have been the discovery of it in Muriel's room
+at Rannoch. Anyhow, it had for me an absorbing interest, for I often
+wondered whether the unknown girl who had secretly gone ashore from the
+yacht when I had left it was not Elma Heath herself.
+
+Who was this Baron Oberg? The name was German undoubtedly, yet he lived
+in the Russian capital. From London to Petersburg is a far cry, yet I
+resolved that if it were necessary I would travel there and investigate.
+
+At the German Embassy, in Carlton House Terrace, I found my friend
+Captain Nieberding, the second secretary, of whom I inquired whether the
+name of Baron Oberg was known, but having referred to a number of German
+books in his Excellency's library, he returned and told me that the name
+did not appear in the lists of the German nobility.
+
+"He may be Russian--Polish most probably," added the captain, a tall,
+fair fellow in gold spectacles, whom I had known when he was third
+secretary of Embassy at Rome. His opinion was that it was not a German
+name, for there was a little place called Oberg, he said, on the railway
+between Lodz and Lowicz.
+
+Then, after luncheon, I went to Albany Road, one of those dreary,
+old-fashioned streets that were pleasant back in the early Victorian
+days when Camberwell was a suburb and Walworth Common was still an open
+waste. I found the house where Olinto lived--a small, smoke-blackened,
+semi-detached place standing back in a tiny strip of weedy garden, with
+a wooden veranda before the first floor windows. The house, according to
+the woman who kept a general shop at the corner, was occupied by two
+families. The "Eye-talians," as she termed them, lived above, while the
+Gibbonses rented the ground floor.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. The foreigners are respectable enough. Always pays me
+ready money for everythink, except the milk. That they pays for weekly."
+
+"I understand that the wife has disappeared. What have you heard about
+that?"
+
+"They do say, sir, that they 'ad some words together the other day, and
+that the woman's took herself off in a tantrum. Only you can't believe
+all you 'ear, you know."
+
+"Did they often quarrel?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, sir. They were really very quiet, respectable
+persons for foreigners."
+
+I repassed the house of the dead woman, and then regaining the busy
+Camberwell Road I took an omnibus back to the Hotel Cecil in the Strand
+where I had put up, tired and disappointed.
+
+Next day I ran down to Chichester, and after some difficulty found the
+Cheverton College for Ladies, a big old-fashioned house about
+half-a-mile out of the town on the Drayton Road. The seminary was
+evidently a first-class one, for when I entered I noticed how well
+everything was kept.
+
+To the principal, an elderly lady of a somewhat severe aspect, I said:
+
+"I regret, madam, to trouble you, but I am in search of information you
+can supply. It is with regard to a certain Elma Heath whom you had as
+pupil here, and who left, I believe, about two years ago. Her parents
+lived in Durham."
+
+"I remember her perfectly," was the woman's response as she sat behind
+the big desk, having apparently at first expected that I had a daughter
+to put to school.
+
+"Well," I said, "there has been some little friction in the family, and
+I am making inquiries on behalf of another branch of it--an aunt who
+desires to ascertain the girl's whereabouts."
+
+"Ah, I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you that. The Baron, her uncle,
+came here one day and took her away suddenly--abroad, I think."
+
+"Had she no school-friend to whom she would probably write?"
+
+"There was a girl named Leithcourt--Muriel Leithcourt--who was her
+friend, but who has also left."
+
+"And no one else?" I asked. "Girls often write to each other after
+leaving school, until they get married, and then the correspondence
+usually ceases."
+
+The principal was silent and reflective.
+
+"Well," she said at last, "there was another pupil who was also on
+friendly terms with Elma--a girl named Lydia Moreton. She may have
+written to her. If you really desire to know, sir, I dare say I could
+find her address. She left us about nine months after Elma."
+
+"I should esteem it a great favor if you would give me that young lady's
+address," I said, whereupon she unlocked a drawer in her writing-table
+and took therefrom a thick, leather-bound book which she consulted for a
+few minutes, at last exclaiming:
+
+"Yes, here it is--'Lydia Moreton, daughter of Sir Hamilton Moreton,
+K.C.M.G., Whiston Grange, Doncaster.'" And she scribbled it in pencil
+upon an envelope, and handing it to me, said:
+
+"Elma Heath was, I fear, somewhat neglected by her parents. She remained
+here for five years, and had no holidays like the other girls. Her
+uncle, the Baron, came to see her several times, but on each occasion
+after he had left I found her crying in secret. He was mean and unkind
+to her. Now that I recollect, I remember that Lydia had said she had
+received a letter from her, therefore she might be able to give you some
+information."
+
+And with that I took my leave, thanking her, and returned to London.
+
+Could Lydia Moreton furnish any information? If so, I might find this
+girl whose photograph had aroused the irate jealousy of the mysterious
+unknown.
+
+The ten o'clock Edinburgh express from King's Cross next morning took me
+up to Doncaster, and hiring a musty old fly at the station, I drove
+three miles out of the town on the Rotherham Road, finding Whiston
+Grange to be a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the center of a great
+park, with tall old twisted chimneys, and beautifully-kept gardens.
+
+When I descended at the door and rang, the footman was not aware whether
+Miss Lydia was in. He looked at me somewhat suspiciously, I thought,
+until I gave my card and impressed upon him meaningly that I had come
+from London purposely to see his young mistress upon a very important
+matter.
+
+"Tell her," I said, "that I wish to see her regarding her friend, Miss
+Elma Heath."
+
+"Miss Elma 'Eath," repeated the man. "Very well, sir. Will you walk this
+way?"
+
+And then I followed him across the big old oak-paneled hall, filled with
+trophies of the chase and arms of the civil wars, into a small paneled
+room on the left, the deep-set window with its diamond panes giving out
+upon the old bowling-green and the flower-garden beyond.
+
+Presently the door opened, and a tall dark-haired girl in white entered
+with an enquiring expression upon her face as she halted and bowed to
+me.
+
+"Miss Lydia Moreton, I believe?" I commenced, and as she replied in the
+affirmative I went on: "I have first to apologize for coming to you, but
+Miss Sotheby, the principal of the school at Chichester, referred me to
+you for information as to the present whereabouts of Miss Elma Heath,
+who, I believe, was one of your most intimate friends at school." And I
+added a lie, saying: "I am trying, on behalf of an aunt of hers, to
+discover her."
+
+"Well," responded the girl, "I have had only one or two letters. She's
+in her uncle's hands, I believe, and he won't let her write, poor girl.
+She dreaded leaving us."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ah! she would never say. She had some deep-rooted terror of her uncle,
+Baron Oberg, who lived in St. Petersburg, and who came over at long
+intervals to see her. But possibly you know the whole story?"
+
+"I know nothing," I cried eagerly. "You will be furthering her
+interests, as well as doing me a great personal favor, if you will tell
+me what you know."
+
+"It is very little," she answered, leaning back against the edge of the
+table and regarding me seriously. "Poor Elma! Her people treated her
+very badly indeed. They sent her no money, and allowed her no holidays,
+and yet she was the sweetest-tempered and most patient girl in the whole
+school."
+
+"Well--and the story regarding her?"
+
+"It was supposed that her people at Durham did not exist," she
+explained. "Elma had evidently lived a greater part of her life abroad,
+for she could speak French and Italian better than the professor
+himself, and therefore always won the prizes. The class revolted, and
+then she did not compete any more. Yet she never told us of where she
+had lived when a child. She came from Durham, she said--that was all."
+
+"You had a letter from her after the Baron came and took her away?"
+
+"Yes, from London. She said that she had been to several plays and
+concerts, but did not care for life in town. There was too much bustle
+and noise and study of clothes."
+
+"And what other letters did you receive from her?"
+
+"Three or four, I think. They were all from places abroad. One was from
+Vienna, one was from Milan, and one from some place with an
+unpronounceable name in Hungary. The last----"
+
+"Yes, the last?" I gasped eagerly, interrupting her.
+
+"Well, the last I received only a fortnight ago. If you will wait a
+moment I will go and get it. It was so strange that I haven't destroyed
+it." And she went out, and I heard by the frou-frou of her skirts that
+she was ascending the stairs.
+
+After five minutes of breathless anxiety she rejoined me, and handing me
+the letter to read, said:
+
+"It is not in her handwriting--I wonder why?"
+
+The paper was of foreign make, with blue lines ruled in squares. Written
+in a hand that was evidently foreign, for the mistakes in the
+orthography were many, was the following curious communication:
+
+"My Dear Lydia:
+
+"Perhaps you may never get this letter--the last I shall ever be able to
+send you. Indeed, I run great risks in sending it. Ah! you do not know
+the awful disaster that has happened to me, all the terrors and the
+tortures I endure. But no one can assist me, and I am now looking
+forward to the time when it will all be over. Do you recollect our old
+peaceful days in the garden at Chichester? I think of them always,
+always, and compare that sweet peace of the past with my own terrible
+sufferings of to-day. Ah, how I wish I might see you once again; how
+that I might feel your hand upon my brow, and hear your words of hope
+and encouragement! But happiness is now debarred from me, and I am only
+sinking to the grave under this slow torture of body and of soul.
+
+"This will pass through many hands before it reaches the post. If,
+however, it ever does get despatched and you receive it, will you do me
+one last favor--a favor to an unfortunate girl who is friendless and
+helpless, and who will no longer trouble the world? It is this: Take
+this letter to London, and call upon Mr. Martin Woodroffe at 98 Cork
+Street, Piccadilly. Show him my letter, and tell him from me that
+through it all I have kept my promise, and that the secret is still
+safe. He will understand--and also know why I cannot write this with my
+own hand. If he is abroad, keep it until he returns.
+
+"It is all I ask of you, Lydia, and I know that if this reaches you, you
+will not refuse me. You have been my only friend and confidante, but I
+now bid you farewell, for the unknown beckons me, and from the grave I
+cannot write. Again farewell, and for ever.
+
+"Your loving and affectionate friend,
+
+"Elma."
+
+"A very strange letter, is it not?" remarked the girl at my side. "I
+can't make it out. You see there is no address, but the postmark is
+Russian. She is evidently in Russia."
+
+"In Finland," I said, examining the stamp and making out the post town
+to be Abo. "But have you been to London and executed this strange
+commission?"
+
+"No. We are going up next week. I intend to call upon this person named
+Woodroffe."
+
+I made no remark. He was, I knew, abroad, but I was glad at having
+obtained two very important clues: first, the address of the mysterious
+yachtsman, Woodroffe, alias Hornby, and, secondly, ascertaining that the
+young girl I sought was somewhere in the vicinity of the town of Abo,
+the Finnish port on the Baltic.
+
+"Poor Elma, you see, speaks in her letter of some secret, Mr. Gregg," my
+companion said. "She says she wishes this Mr. Woodroffe, whoever he is,
+to know that she has kept her promise and has not divulged it. This only
+bears out what I have all along suspected."
+
+"What are your suspicions?"
+
+"Well, from her deep, thoughtful manner, and from certain remarks she at
+times made to me, I believe that Elma is in possession of some great and
+terrible secret--a secret which her uncle, Baron Oberg, is desirous of
+learning. I know she holds him in deadly fear--she is in terror that she
+may inadvertently betray to him the truth!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+STRANGE DISCLOSURES ARE MADE
+
+
+The strange letter of Elma Heath, combined with what Lydia Moreton had
+told me, aroused within me a determination to investigate the mystery.
+From the moment I had landed from the _Lola_ on that hot, breathless
+night at Leghorn, mystery had crowded upon mystery until it was all
+bewildering.
+
+It was now proved that the sweet-faced girl, the original of the torn
+photograph, held a secret, and that, by her own words, she knew that
+death was approaching. The incomprehensible attempt upon my life, the
+strange actions of Hornby and Chater--who, by the way, seemed to have
+entirely disappeared--the assassination of the man who by masquerading
+as the Italian waiter had met his death, and the murder of Olinto's wife
+were all problems which required solution.
+
+Had it not been for the mystery of it all--and mystery ever arouses the
+human curiosity--I should have given up trying to get at the truth. Yet
+as a man with some leisure, and knowing by that letter of Elma Heath's
+that she was in sore distress, I redoubled my efforts to ascertain the
+reason of it all.
+
+The mystery of the _Lola_ was still a mystery along the Mediterranean.
+At every French and Italian port the yacht's false name and general
+build was written in the police-books, while at Lloyd's the name _Lola_
+was marked down as among the mysterious craft at sea.
+
+Chater was missing, while Hornby was abroad. Perhaps they were both
+cruising again, with their yacht repainted and bearing a fresh name. But
+why? What had been their motive?
+
+Stirred by the complete mystery which now seemed to enshroud the
+unfortunate girl, I set before myself the task of elucidating it.
+Hitherto I had remained passive rather than active, but I now realized
+by that curious letter that at least one woman's life was at stake--that
+Elma Heath was in possession of some secret.
+
+On leaving Leghorn I had given up all hope of tracing the mysterious
+yachtsman, and had left the matter in the hands of the Italian police.
+But, without any effort on my own part, I seemed to have been drawn into
+a veritable network of strange incidents, all of which combined to form
+the most complete and remarkable enigma ever presented in life. Surely
+no man was ever confronted by so many mysteries at one time as I was at
+this moment.
+
+Fortunately I had been careful not to show my hand to anyone, and this
+perhaps gave me a distinct advantage. On my journey back to London, as
+the train swung through Peterborough and out across the rich level lands
+towards Hitchin, I recollected Jack Durnford's words when I had
+mentioned the _Lola_. What, I wondered, did he know?
+
+Next month, in November, he was due back in London after his three
+years' service on the Mediterranean station. Then we should meet in a
+few weeks I hoped. Would he tell me anything when he became aware of all
+I knew? He held some secret knowledge. Was it possible that his secret
+was the same as that held by the unfortunate girl in far-off, dreary
+Finland?
+
+I called at the house in Cork Street indicated by Elma, and learned
+from the old commissionaire who acted as lift-man and porter, that Mr.
+Woodroffe's chambers were closed.
+
+"'E's nearly always away, sir--abroad, I think," was all I could get out
+of the old soldier, who, like his class, was no doubt well paid to keep
+his mouth closed.
+
+For two days I lounged about Westbourne Grove watching Ferrari's
+restaurant. In such a busy, bustling thoroughfare, with so many shop
+windows as excuses for loitering, the task was easy. I saw that Olinto
+came regularly at ten o'clock in the morning, worked hard all day, and
+left at nine o'clock at night, taking an omnibus home from Royal Oak.
+His exterior was calm and unconcerned, unlike that of a man whose
+devoted wife had disappeared.
+
+I would have approached him and explained the ghastly truth, had it not
+been for the fact that the poor woman's body was missing.
+
+Those September days were full of anxiety for me. Alone and unaided I
+was trying to solve one of the greatest of problems, plunged as I was in
+a veritable sea of mystery. I wanted to see Muriel Leithcourt, and to
+question her further regarding Elma Heath. Therefore again I left
+Euston, and, traveling through the night, took my seat at the
+breakfast-table at Greenlaw next morning.
+
+Sir George, who was sitting alone--it not being my aunt's habit to
+appear early--welcomed me, and then in his bluff manner sniffed and
+exclaimed:
+
+"Nice goings on up at Rannoch! Have you heard of them?"
+
+"No. What?" I cried breathlessly, staring at him.
+
+"Well, my suspicions that those Leithcourts were utter outsiders turns
+out to be about correct."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, it's a very funny story, and there are a dozen different
+distorted versions of it," he said. "But from what I can gather the true
+facts are these: About seven o'clock the night before last, as
+Leithcourt and his house-party were dressing for dinner, a telegram
+arrived. Mrs. Leithcourt opened it, and at once went off into hysterics,
+while her husband, in a breathless hurry, slipped off his evening
+clothes again and got into an old blue serge suit, tossed a few things
+into a bag, and then went along to Muriel's room to urge her to prepare
+for secret flight."
+
+"Flight!" I gasped. "What, have they gone?"
+
+"Listen, and I'll tell you. The servants have described the whole affair
+down in the village, so there's no doubt about it. Leithcourt showed
+Muriel the telegram and urged her to fly. At first she refused, but for
+her father's sake was induced to prepare to accompany him. Of course,
+the guests were in ignorance of all this. The brougham was ordered to be
+ready in the stable-yard and not to go round, while Mrs. Leithcourt's
+maid tried to bring the lady back to her senses. Leithcourt himself, it
+seemed, rushed hither and thither, seizing the jewel-cases of his wife
+and daughter and whatever valuables he could place his hand upon, while
+the mother and daughter were putting on their things. As he rushed down
+the main staircase to the library, where his check-book and some ready
+cash were locked in the safe, he met a stranger who had just been
+admitted and shown into the room. Leithcourt closed the door and faced
+him. What afterwards transpired, however, is a mystery, for two hours
+later, after he and the two women had escaped, leaving the house-party
+to their own diversions, the stranger was found locked in a large
+cupboard and insensible. The sensation was a tremendous one. Cowan, the
+doctor, was called, and declared that the stranger had been drugged and
+was suffering from some narcotic. The servant who admitted him declared
+that the man had said he had an appointment with his master, and that no
+card was necessary. He, however, gave the name of Chater."
+
+"Chater!" I cried, starting up. "Are you certain of that name?"
+
+"I only know what Cowan told me," was my uncle's reply. "But do you know
+him?"
+
+"Not at all. Only I've heard that name before," I said. "I knew a man
+out in Italy of the same name. But where is the visitor now?"
+
+"In the hospital at Dumfries. They took him there in preference to
+leaving him alone at Rannoch."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Of course. Everyone has left, now the host and hostess have slipped off
+without saying good-bye. Scandalous affair, isn't it? But, my boy,
+you'll remember that I always said I didn't like those people. There's
+something mysterious about them, I feel certain. That telegram gave them
+warning of the visit of the man Chater, depend upon it, and for some
+reason they're afraid of him. It would be interesting to know what
+transpired between the two men in the library. And these are people
+who've been taken up by everybody--mere adventurers, I should call
+them!" And old Sir George sniffed again at thought of such scandal
+happening in the neighborhood. "If Gilrae must let Rannoch, then why in
+the name of Fortune doesn't he let it to respectable folk and not to the
+first fellow who answers his advertisement in _The Field?_ It's simply
+disgraceful!"
+
+"Certainly, it is a most extraordinary story," I declared. "Leithcourt
+evidently wished to escape from his visitor, and that's why he drugged
+him."
+
+"Why he poisoned him, you mean. Cowan says the fellow is poisoned, but
+that he'll probably recover. He is already conscious, I hear."
+
+I resolved to call on the doctor, who happened to be well known to me,
+and obtain further particulars. Therefore at eleven o'clock I drove into
+Dumfries and entered his consulting-room.
+
+He was a spare, short, fair man, a trifle bald, and when I was shown in
+he welcomed me warmly, speaking with his pronounced Galloway accent.
+
+"Well, it is a very mysterious case, Mr. Gregg," he said, after I had
+told him the object of my visit. "The gentleman is still in the
+hospital, and I have to keep him very quiet. He was poisoned without a
+doubt, and has had a very narrow escape of his life. The police got wind
+of the affair, and Mackenzie called to question him. But he refused to
+make any statement whatever, apparently treating the affair very
+lightly. The police, however, are mystified as to the reason of Mr.
+Leithcourt's sudden flight, and are anxious to get at the bottom of the
+curious affair."
+
+"Naturally. And more especially after the tragedy up in Rannoch Wood a
+short time ago," I said.
+
+"That's just it," said the doctor, removing his pince-nez and rubbing
+them. "Mackenzie seems to suspect some connection between Leithcourt's
+sudden disappearance and that mysterious affair. It seems very evident
+that the telegram was a warning to Leithcourt of the man Chater's
+intention of calling, and that the last-named was shown in just at the
+moment when the fugitive was on the point of leaving."
+
+"Chater." I echoed. "Do you know his Christian name?"
+
+"Hylton Chater. He is apparently a gentleman. Curious that he will tell
+us nothing of the reason he called, and of the scene that occurred
+between them."
+
+Knowing all that I did, I was not surprised. Leithcourt had undoubtedly
+taken him unawares, but knights of industry never betray each other.
+
+My next visit was to Mackenzie, for whom I had to wait nearly an hour,
+as he was absent in another quarter of the town.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Gregg!" he cried gladly, as he came in to find me seated in a
+chair patiently reading the newspaper. "You are the very person I wish
+to see. Have you heard of this strange affair at Rannoch?"
+
+"I have," was my answer. "Has the man in the hospital made any statement
+yet?"
+
+"None. He refuses point-blank," answered the detective. "But my own idea
+is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries of
+the wood."
+
+"The first mystery--that of the man--proves to be a double mystery," I
+said.
+
+"How? Explain it."
+
+"Well, the waiter Olinto Santini is alive and well in London."
+
+"What!" he gasped, starting up. "Then he is not the person you
+identified him to be?"
+
+"No. But he was masquerading as Santini--made up to resemble him, I
+mean, even to the mole upon his face."
+
+"But you identified him positively?"
+
+"When a person is dead it is very easy to mistake countenances. Death
+alters the countenance so very much."
+
+"That's true," he said reflectively. "But if the man we've buried is not
+the Italian, then the mystery is considerably increased. Why was the
+real man's wife here?"
+
+"And where has her body been concealed? That's the question."
+
+"Again a mystery. We have made a thorough search for four days, without
+discovering any trace of it. Quite confidentially, I'm wondering if this
+man Chater knows anything. It is curious, to say the least, that the
+Leithcourts should have fled so hurriedly on this man's appearance. But
+have you actually seen Olinto Santini?"
+
+"Yes, and have spoken with him."
+
+"I sent up to London asking that inquiries should be made at the
+restaurant in Bayswater, but up to the present I have received no
+report."
+
+"I have chatted with Olinto. His wife has mysteriously disappeared, but
+he is in ignorance that she is dead."
+
+"You did not tell him anything?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Ah, you did well. There is widespread conspiracy here, depend upon it,
+Mr. Gregg. It will be an interesting case when we get to the bottom of
+it all. I only wish this fellow Chater would tell us the reason he
+called upon Leithcourt."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Merely that he has no wish to prosecute, and that he has no statement
+to make."
+
+"Can't you compel him to say something?" I asked.
+
+"No, I can't. That's the infernal difficulty of it. If he don't choose
+to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel
+confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood."
+
+And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective's belief.
+
+The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.
+
+The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on
+everyone's tongue in Dumfries. In the smoke-room of the railway hotel
+three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and
+the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the
+strange goings-on up at the Castle.
+
+As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top
+before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the
+situation. I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet
+when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the
+_Lola_, I naturally hesitated. He was allied with Hornby, apparently
+against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby's friend.
+
+What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle
+which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through
+the rain? How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible
+and hiding him in that cupboard? Did he believe that he had killed him?
+
+If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of
+myself. No. I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so
+affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain
+in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge. Therefore I stayed for
+a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care
+that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.
+
+Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that
+tantalizing silence. The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man
+in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful
+murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public
+had no knowledge, for the body was not discovered.
+
+Time after time I searched the wood alone, on the pretense of shooting
+pigeon, but discovered nothing. When not having sport on my uncle's
+property, I joined various parties in the neighborhood, not because
+Scotland at that time attracted me, but because I desired to watch
+events.
+
+Chater, as soon as he recovered, left the hospital and went south--to
+London, I ascertained--leaving the police utterly in the dark and filled
+with suspicion of the fugitives from Rannoch.
+
+I longed to know the whereabouts of Muriel, hoping to gain from her some
+information regarding their visitor who had so nearly escaped with his
+life. That she was aware of the object of his visit was plain from the
+statements of the servants, all of whom had been left without either
+money or orders.
+
+One day I called at the castle, the front entrance of which I found
+closed. Gilrae, the owner, had come up from London, met his factor
+there, and discharged all the late tenant's servants, keeping on only
+three of his own who had been in service there for a number of years.
+Ann Cameron, a housemaid, was one of these, and it was she whom I met
+when entering by the servants' hall.
+
+On questioning her, I found her most willing to describe how she was in
+the corridor outside the young mistress's room when Mr. Leithcourt
+dashed along in breathless haste with the telegram in his hand. She
+heard him cry: "Look at this! Read it, Muriel. We must go. Put on your
+things at once, my dear. Never mind about luggage. Every minute lost is
+of consequence. What!" he cried a moment later. "You won't go? You'll
+stay here--stay here and face them? Good Heavens! girl, are you mad?
+Don't you know what this means? It means that the secret is out--the
+secret is out, you hear! We must fly!"
+
+The woman told me that she distinctly heard Miss Muriel sobbing, while
+her father walked up and down the room speaking rapidly in a low tone.
+Then he came out again and returned to his dressing-room, while Miss
+Muriel presumably changed from her evening-gown into a dark
+traveling-dress.
+
+"Did she say anything to you?" I inquired.
+
+"Only that they were called away suddenly, sir. But," the domestic
+added, "the young lady was very pale and agitated, and we all knew that
+something terrible had happened. Mrs. Leithcourt gave orders that
+nothing was to be told to the guests, who dined alone, believing that
+their host and hostess had gone down to the village to see an old man
+who was dying. That was the story we told them, sir."
+
+"And in the meantime the Leithcourts were in the express going to
+Carlisle?"
+
+"Yes, sir. They say in Dumfries that the police telegraphed after them,
+but they had reached Carlisle and evidently changed there, and so got
+away."
+
+By the administration of a judicious tip I was allowed to go up to Miss
+Muriel's room, an elegantly furnished little chamber in the front of the
+fine old place, with a deep old-fashioned window commanding a
+magnificent view across the broad Nithsdale.
+
+The room had been tidied by the maids, but allowed to remain just as she
+had left it. I advanced to the window, in which was set the large
+dressing-table with its big swing-mirror and silver-topped bottles, and
+on gazing out saw, to my surprise, it was the only window which gave a
+view of that corner of Rannoch Wood where the double tragedy had taken
+place. Indeed, any person standing at the spot would have a clear view
+of that one distant window while out of sight of all the rest. A light
+might be placed there at night as signal, for instance; or by day a
+towel might be hung from the window as though to dry and yet could be
+plainly seen at that distance.
+
+Another object in the room also attracted my attention--a pair of long
+field-glasses. Had she used these to keep watch upon that spot?
+
+I took them up and focused them upon the boundary of the wood, finding
+that I could distinguish everything quite plainly.
+
+"That's where they found the man who was murdered," explained the
+servant, who still stood in the doorway.
+
+"I know," I replied. "I was just trying the glasses." Then I put them
+down, and on turning saw upon the mantelshelf a small, bright-red
+candleshade, which I took in my hand. It was made, I found, to fit upon
+the electric table-lamp.
+
+"Miss Muriel was very fond of a red light," explained the young woman;
+and as I held it I wondered if that light had ever been placed upon the
+toilet-table and the blind drawn up--whether it had ever been used as a
+warning of danger?
+
+As I expressed a desire to see the young lady's boudoir, the maid
+Cameron took me down to the luxurious little room where, the first
+moment I entered, one fact struck me as peculiar. The picture of Elma
+Heath was no longer there. The photograph had been taken from its frame,
+and in its place was the portrait of a broad-browed, full-bearded man in
+a foreign military uniform--a picture that, being soiled and faded, had
+evidently been placed there to fill the empty frame.
+
+Whose hand had secured that portrait before the Leithcourt's flight?
+Why, indeed, should I, for the second time, discover the unhappy girl's
+picture missing?
+
+"Has the gentleman who called on the evening of Mr. Leithcourt's
+disappearance been back here again since he left the hospital?" I
+inquired as a sudden idea occurred to me.
+
+"Yes, sir. He called here in a fly on the day he came out, and at his
+request I took him over the castle. He went into the library, and spent
+half-an-hour in pacing across it, taking measurements, and examining
+the big cupboard in which he was found insensible. It was a strange
+affair, sir," added the young woman, "wasn't it?"
+
+"Very," I replied.
+
+"The gentleman might have been in there now had I not gone into the
+library and found a lot of illustrated papers, which I always put in the
+cupboard to keep the place tidy, thrown out on to the floor. I went to
+put them back but discovered the door locked. The key I afterwards found
+in the grate, where Mr. Leithcourt had evidently thrown it, and on
+opening the door imagine the shock I had when I found the visitor lying
+doubled up. I, of course, thought he was dead."
+
+"And when he returned here on his recovery, did he question you?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He asked about the Leithcourts, and especially about Miss
+Muriel. I believe he's rather sweet on her, by the way he spoke. And
+really no better or kinder lady never breathed, I'm sure. We're all very
+sorry indeed for her."
+
+"But she had nothing to do with the affair."
+
+"Of course not. But she shares in the scandal and disgrace. You should
+have seen the effect of the news upon the guests when they knew that the
+Leithcourts had gone. It was a regular pandemonium. They ordered the
+best champagne out of the cellars and drank it, the men cleared all the
+cigar-boxes, and the women rummaged in the wardrobes until they seemed
+like a pack of hungry wolves. Everybody went away with their trunks full
+of the Leithcourt's things. They took whatever they could lay their
+hands on, and we, the servants, couldn't stop them. I did remonstrate
+with one lady who was cramming into her trunk two of Miss Muriel's best
+evening dresses, but she told me to mind my own business and leave the
+room. One man I saw go away with four of Mr. Leithcourt's guns, and
+there was a regular squabble in the billiard-room over a set of pearl
+and emerald dress-studs that somebody found in his dressing-room. Crane,
+the valet, says they tossed for them."
+
+"Disgraceful!" I ejaculated. "Then as soon as the host and hostess had
+gone, they simply swept through the rooms and cleared them?"
+
+"Yes, sir. They took away all that was most valuable. They'd have had
+the silver, only Mason had thrown it into the plate-chest, all dirty as
+it was, locked it up and hid the key. The plate was Mr. Gilrae's, you
+know, sir, and Mason was responsible."
+
+"He acted wisely," I said, surprised at the domestic's story. "Why, the
+guests acted like a gang of thieves."
+
+"They were, sir. They rushed all over the house like demons let loose,
+and they even stole some of our things. I lost a silver chain."
+
+"And what did the stranger say when you told him of this?"
+
+"He smiled. It did not seem to surprise him in the least, for after all
+his visit was the cause of the sudden breaking up of the party, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"And did you show him over the whole house?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir," responded the servant. "Curiously enough he had with him
+what seemed to be a large plan of the castle, and as we went from room
+to room he compared it with his plan. He was here for hours, and told me
+he wanted to make a thorough examination of the place and didn't want to
+be disturbed. He also said that he might probably take the place for
+next season, if he liked it. I think, however, he only told me this
+because he thought I would be more patient while he took his
+measurements and made his investigations. He was here from twelve till
+nearly six o'clock, and went through every room, even up to the
+turrets."
+
+"He came into this room, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she responded, with just a slight hesitation, I thought.
+"This was the room where he stayed the longest. There was a photograph
+in that frame over there," she added, indicating the frame that had held
+the picture of Elma Heath, "a portrait of a young lady, which he begged
+me to give him."
+
+"And you gave it to him?" I cried quickly.
+
+"Well--yes, sir. He begged so hard for it, saying that it was the
+portrait of a friend of his."
+
+"And he gave you something handsome for it--eh?"
+
+The young woman, whom I knew could not refuse half-a-sovereign, colored
+slightly and smiled.
+
+"And who put that picture in its place?" I asked.
+
+"I did, sir. I found it upstairs."
+
+"He didn't tell you who the young lady was, I suppose?"
+
+"No, sir. He only said that that was the only photograph that existed,
+and that she was dead."
+
+"Dead!" I gasped, staring at her.
+
+"Yes, sir. That was why he was so anxious for the picture."
+
+Elma Heath dead! Could it be true? That sweet-pictured face haunted me
+as no other face had ever impressed itself upon my memory. It somehow
+seemed to impel me to endeavor to penetrate the mystery, and yet Hylton
+Chater had declared that she was dead! I recollected the remarkable
+letter from Abo, and her own declaration that her end was near. That
+letter was, she said, the last she should write to her friend. Did
+Hylton Chater actually possess knowledge of the girl's death? Had he all
+along been acquainted with her whereabouts? What the young woman told
+me upset all my plans. If Elma Heath were really dead, then she was
+beyond discovery, and the truth would be hidden forever.
+
+"After he had put the photograph in his pocket, the gentleman made a
+most minute search in this room," the domestic went on. "He consulted
+his plan, took several measurements, and then tapped on the paneling all
+along this wall, as though he were searching for some hidden cupboard or
+hiding place. I looked at the plan, and saw a mark in red ink upon it.
+He was trying to discover that spot, and was greatly disappointed at not
+being able to do so. He was in here over an hour, and made a most
+careful search all around."
+
+"And what explanation did he give?"
+
+"He only said, 'If I find what I want, Ann, I shall make you a present
+of a ten-pound note.' That naturally made me anxious."
+
+"He made no other remark about the young lady's death?" I inquired
+anxiously.
+
+"No. Only he sighed, and looked steadily for a long time at the
+photograph. I saw his lips moving, but his words were inaudible."
+
+"You haven't any idea of the reason why he called upon Mr. Leithcourt, I
+suppose?"
+
+"From what he said, I've formed my own conclusions," was her answer.
+
+"And what is your opinion?"
+
+"Well, I feel certain that there is, or was, something concealed in this
+house that he's very anxious to obtain. He came to demand it of Mr.
+Leithcourt, but what happened in the library we don't know. He, however,
+believes that Mr. Leithcourt has not taken it away, and that, whatever
+it may be, it is still hidden here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+I SHOW MY HAND
+
+
+On my return to London next day I made inquiry at the Admiralty and
+learned that the battleship _Bulwark_ was lying at Palermo, therefore I
+telegraphed to Jack Durnford, and late the same afternoon his reply came
+at the Cecil:--
+
+"_Due in London twentieth. Dine with me at club that evening_--Jack."
+
+The twentieth! That meant nearly a month of inactivity. In that time I
+could cross to Abo, make inquiries there, and ascertain, perhaps, if
+Elma Heath were actually dead as Chater had declared.
+
+Two facts struck me as remarkable: Baron Oberg was said to be Polish,
+while the dark-bearded proprietor of the restaurant in Westbourne Grove
+was also of the same nationality. Then I recollected that pretty little
+enameled cross that Mackenzie had found in Rannoch Wood, and it suddenly
+occurred to me that it might possibly be the miniature of one of the
+European orders of chivalry. In the club library at midnight I found a
+copy of Cappelletti's _Storia degli Ordini Cavallereschi_, the standard
+work on the subject, and on searching the illustrations I at length
+discovered a picture of it. It was a Russian order--the coveted Order of
+Saint Anne, bestowed by the Czar only upon persons who have rendered
+eminent services to the State and to the sovereign. One fact was now
+certain, namely, that the owner of that tiny cross, the small replica of
+the fine decoration, must be a person of high official standing.
+
+Next day I spent in making inquiries with a view to discovering the
+house said to be occupied by Leithcourt. As it was not either in the
+Directory or the Blue Book, I concluded that he had perhaps rented it
+furnished, and after many inquiries and considerable difficulties I
+found that such was the fact. He had occupied the house of Lady
+Heathcote, a few doors from Grosvenor Square, for the previous season,
+although he had lived there but very little.
+
+Where the fugitives were in hiding I had no idea. I longed to meet
+Muriel again and tell her what I had discovered, yet it was plain that
+the trio were concealing themselves from Hylton Chater, whom I supposed
+to be now back in London.
+
+The autumn days were dull and rainy, and the streets were muddy and
+unpleasant, as they always are at the fall of the year. Compelled to
+remain inactive, I idled in the club with the recollection of that
+pictured face ever before me--the face of the unfortunate girl who
+wished her last message to be conveyed to Philip Hornby. What, I
+wondered, was her secret? What was really her fate?
+
+This latter question troubled me until I could bear it no longer. I felt
+that it was my duty to go to Finland and endeavor to learn something
+regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me
+declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing
+wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew
+how dull he was when alone. Even his Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer
+from homesickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a
+glass of homely bitter ale.
+
+But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of
+time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and
+how sweet are the recollections of our dear gray old England with her
+green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray,
+grimy cities. You have but one "home," and England Is still your home,
+even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may
+have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year
+through.
+
+Duty--the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
+defenseless woman was a victim--called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
+passport properly vised and my papers all in order, I one night left
+Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
+weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
+capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
+plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
+Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
+those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.
+
+It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
+knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
+perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
+had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
+landing on the half-deserted quay.
+
+In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
+passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
+forgotten to date the vise which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
+It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon
+the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in
+Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly--
+
+"This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before
+you can proceed."
+
+"But it is not my fault," I protested. "It is the fault of the clerk at
+the Consulate-General."
+
+"You should have examined it before leaving. You must send it to London,
+and return to Stockholm by to-night's boat."
+
+"But this is outrageous!" I cried, as he had already taken the papers of
+a passenger behind me and was looking at them with unconcern.
+
+"Enough!" he exclaimed, glaring at me. "You will return to-night, or if
+you choose to stay you will be arrested for landing without a passport."
+
+"I shall not go back!" I declared defiantly. "Your Consul-General vised
+my passport, and I claim, under international law, to be allowed to
+proceed without hindrance."
+
+"The steamer leaves at six o'clock," he remarked without looking up. "If
+you are in Abo after that it will be at your own risk."
+
+"I am English, recollect," I said.
+
+"To me it does not matter what or who you are. Your passport, undated,
+is worthless."
+
+"I shall complain to the Ambassador at Petersburg."
+
+"Your Ambassador does not interest me in the least. He is not Ambassador
+here in Finland. There is no Czar here."
+
+"Oh! Who is ruler in this country, pray?"
+
+"His Excellency the Governor-General, an official who has love for
+neither England nor the pigs of English. So recollect that."
+
+"Yes," I said meaningly, "I shall recollect it." And I turned and went
+out of the little wooden office, replacing my passport in my
+pocket-book.
+
+I had already been directed to the hotel, and walked there, but as I
+did so I saw that I was already under the surveillance of the police,
+for two men in plain clothes who were lounging outside the
+passport-office strolled on after me, evidently to watch my movements.
+Truly Finland was under the iron-heel of autocracy.
+
+After taking my rooms, I strolled about the flat, uninteresting town,
+wondering how best to commence my search. If I had but a photograph to
+show people it would give me a great advantage, but I had nothing. I had
+never, indeed, set eyes upon the unfortunate girl.
+
+Six o'clock came. I heard the steam siren of the departing boat bound
+for Sweden, but I was determined to remain there at whatever cost,
+therefore I returned to the hotel, and at seven dined comfortably in
+company with a German who had been my fellow-passenger across from
+Stockholm.
+
+At eight o'clock, however, just as we were idling over dessert, two
+gray-coated police officers entered and arrested me on the serious
+charge of landing without a passport.
+
+I accompanied them to the police-office, where I was ushered into the
+presence of the big, bristly Russian who held the town of Abo in terror,
+the Chief of Police. The officials which Russia sends into Finland are
+selected for their harsh discipline and hide-bound bureaucracy, and this
+human machine in uniform was no exception. Had he been the Minister of
+the Interior himself, he could not have been more self-opinionated.
+
+"Well?" he snapped, looking up at me as I was placed before him. "Your
+name is Gordon Gregg, English, from Stockholm. No passport, and decline
+to leave even though warned--eh?"
+
+"I have a passport," I said firmly, producing it.
+
+He looked at it, and pointing with his finger, said: "It has no date,
+and is therefore worthless."
+
+"The fault is not mine, but that of a Russian official. If you wish it
+to be dated, you may send it to your Consulate-General in London."
+
+"I shall not," he cried, glaring at me angrily. "And for your insult to
+the law, I shall commit you to prison for one month. Perhaps you will
+then learn Russian manners."
+
+"Oh! so you will commit an Englishman to prison for a month, without
+trial--eh? That's very interesting! Perhaps if you attempt such a thing
+as that they may have something to say about it in Petersburg."
+
+"You defy me!"
+
+"Not in the least. I have presented my passport and demand common
+courtesy."
+
+"Your passport is worthless, I tell you!" he cried. "There, that's how
+much it is worth to me!" And snatching it up he tore it in half and
+tossed the pieces of blue paper in my face.
+
+My blood was up at this insult, yet I bit my lips and remained quite
+calm.
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly tell me who you are?" I asked in as quiet a
+voice as I could command.
+
+"With pleasure. I am Michael Boranski, Chief of Police of the Province
+of Abo-Biornebourg."
+
+"Ah! Well, Michael Boranski, I shall trouble you to pick up my passport,
+stick it together again, and apologize to me."
+
+"Apologize! Me apologize!" And the fellow laughed aloud, while the
+police officers on either side of me grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"Refuse? Certainly I do!"
+
+"Very well, then," I said, re-opening my pocket-book and taking out an
+open letter. "Perhaps you will kindly glance at that. It is in Russian,
+so you can read it."
+
+He snatched it from me with ill-grace, but not without curiosity. And
+then, as he read the lines, his face changed and he went paler. Raising
+his head, he stood staring at me open-mouthed in amazement.
+
+"I apologize to your Excellency!" he gasped, blanched to the lips. "I
+most humbly apologize. I--I did not know. You told me nothing!"
+
+"Perhaps you will kindly mend my passport, and give it a proper vise."
+
+In an instant he was up from his chair, and having gathered the torn
+paper from the floor, proceeded to paste it together. On the back he
+endorsed that it had been torn by accident, and then gave it the proper
+vise, affixing the stamps.
+
+"I trust, Excellency," he said, bowing low as he handed it to me, "I
+trust that this affair will not trouble you further. I assure you I had
+no intention of insulting you."
+
+"Yes, you had!" I said. "You insulted me merely because I am English.
+But recollect in future that the man who insults an Englishman generally
+pays for it, and I do not intend to let this pass. There is a higher
+power in Finland than even the Governor-General."
+
+"But, Excellency," whined the fellow who only ten minutes ago had been
+such an insulting bully, "I shall lose my position. I have a wife and
+six children--my wife is delicate, and my pay here is not a large one.
+You will forgive, won't you, Excellency? I have apologized--I most
+humbly apologize."
+
+And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with
+trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:
+
+"MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD, PALACE OF PETERHOF.
+
+"The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom
+it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey
+through our dominion. And we hereby command all Governors of Provinces
+and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and
+privileges and immunities as Our guest."
+
+The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian,
+while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred
+and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from
+the gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific--"Nicholas."
+
+The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the
+invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry
+into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British
+public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them.
+It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in
+Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in
+European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return
+to Italy to recuperate. The document had therefore remained in my
+possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following
+summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked,
+and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the
+Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given
+me that most valuable document.
+
+Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a
+whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest
+of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He
+begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling
+himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded
+me with awe.
+
+"I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires,"
+declared the official. "I will serve your Excellency in any way he may
+command."
+
+His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he
+feared me.
+
+"Well," I said after some reluctance, "there is a little matter in which
+you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my
+decision of complaining to Petersburg."
+
+"And what is that, Excellency?" he gasped eagerly.
+
+"I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma
+Heath," I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper.
+"Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a
+niece of a certain Baron Oberg."
+
+"Baron Oberg!" he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.
+
+"Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is
+somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she
+is, and I will say nothing more about my passport," I added.
+
+"Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?" he said
+reflectively, with the paper in his hand.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
+Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made," was his answer. "When
+I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
+your Excellency's hotel."
+
+And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
+officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.
+
+On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
+Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
+an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
+south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were so mean and
+meager and the houses for the most part built of wood, I saw on every
+hand the disastrous result of the attempted Russification of the
+country. The hand of the oppressor, that official sent from Petersburg
+to crush and to conquer, was upon the honest Finnish nation. The Russian
+bureaucracy was trying to destroy its weaker but more successful
+neighbor, and in order to do so employed the harshest and most
+unscrupulous officials it could import.
+
+My fellow-traveler from Stockholm, who represented a firm of
+paper-makers in Hamburg, and who paid an annual visit to Abo and
+Helsingfors, acted as my guide around the town, while I awaited the
+information from the humbled Chief of Police. My German friend pointed
+out to me how, since Russia placed her hand upon Finland, progress had
+been arrested, and certainly plain evidences were on every hand. There
+was growing discontent everywhere, for many of the newspapers had
+recently been suppressed and the remainder were under a severe
+censorship; agriculture had already decreased, and many of the
+cotton-spinning and saw mills were silent and deserted. The exploitation
+of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated
+down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners
+were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression
+everywhere. Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the
+more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken,
+artificially isolated and oppressed Russia. The double-headed eagle was
+everywhere, and the people sat silent and brooding beneath its black
+shadow.
+
+"There will be an uprising here before long," declared the German
+confidentially, as we were taking tea one day on the wooden balcony of
+the hotel where the sea and the low-lying islands stretched out before
+us in the pale yellow of the autumn sundown. "The people will revolt, as
+they did in Poland. The Finnish Government can only appeal to the Czar
+through the Governor-General, and one can easily imagine that their
+suggestions never reach the Emperor. It is said here that the harsher
+and more corrupt the official, the greater honor does he receive from
+Petersburg. But trouble is brewing for Russia," he added. "A very
+serious trouble--depend upon it."
+
+I looked upon the gray dismal scene, the empty port, the silent quay,
+the dark line of gloomy pine forest away beyond the town, the broken
+coast and the wide expanse of water glittering in the northern sunset.
+Yes. The very silence seemed to forbode evil and mystery. Truly what I
+saw of Finland impressed me even more than what I had witnessed in the
+far-off eastern provinces of European Russia.
+
+My object, however, was not to inquire into the internal condition of
+Finland, or of her resentment of her powerful conqueror. I was there to
+find that unfortunate girl who had written so strangely to her old
+school friend and whose portrait had, for some hidden reason, been
+destroyed.
+
+On the morning of the third day after my arrival at Abo, while sitting
+on the hotel veranda reading an old copy of the Paris _Journal_, many
+portions of which had been "blacked out" by the censor, the Chief of
+Police, in his dark green uniform, entered and saluted before me.
+
+"Your Excellency, may I be permitted to speak with you in private?"
+
+"Certainly," I responded, rising and conducting him to my bedroom, where
+I closed the door, invited him to a seat, and myself sat upon the edge
+of the bed.
+
+"I have made various inquiries," he said, "and I think I have found the
+lady your Excellency is seeking. My information, however, must be
+furnished to you in strictest confidence," he added, "because there are
+reasons why I should withhold her whereabouts from you."
+
+"What do you mean?" I inquired. "What reasons?"
+
+"Well--the lady is living in Finland in secret."
+
+"Then she is alive!" I exclaimed quickly. "I thought she was dead."
+
+"To the world she is dead," responded Michael Boranski, stroking his red
+beard. "For that reason the information I give you must be treated as
+confidential."
+
+"Why should she be in hiding? She is guilty of no offense--is she?"
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply.
+
+"And this Baron Oberg? You tell me nothing of him," I said with
+dissatisfaction.
+
+"How can I when I know nothing, Excellency?" was his response.
+
+I felt certain that the fellow was not speaking the truth, for I had
+noticed his surprise when I had first uttered the mysterious nobleman's
+name.
+
+"As I have already said, Excellency, I am desirous of atoning for my
+insult, and will serve you in every manner I can. For that reason I had
+sought news of the young English lady--the Mademoiselle Heath."
+
+"But you have all foreigners registered in your books," I said. "The
+search was surely not a difficult one. I know your police methods in
+Russia too well," I laughed.
+
+"No, the lady was not registered," he said. "There was a reason."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have told you, Excellency. She is in hiding."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I regret that much as I desire, I dare not appear to have any
+connection with your quest. But I will direct you. Indeed, I will give
+you instructions to a second person to take you to her."
+
+"Is she in Abo?"
+
+"No. Away in the country. If your Excellency will be down at the end of
+the quay to-morrow at noon you will find a carriage in waiting, and the
+driver will have full instructions how to take you to her and how to
+act. Follow his directions implicitly, for he is a man I can trust."
+
+"To-morrow!" I cried anxiously. "Why not to-day? I am ready to go at any
+moment."
+
+The Chief of Police remained thoughtful for a few moments, then said--
+
+"Well, if I could find the man, you might go to-day. Yet it is a long
+way, and you would not return before to-morrow."
+
+"The roads are safe, I suppose? I don't mind driving in the night."
+
+The official glanced at the clock, and rising exclaimed--
+
+"Very well, I will send for the man. If we find him, then the carriage
+will be at the same spot at the eastern end of the quay in two hours."
+
+"At noon. Very well. I shall keep the appointment."
+
+"And after seeing her, you will of course keep your promise of secrecy
+regarding our little misunderstanding?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I have already given my word," was the response; and the man bowed and
+left, much, I think, to the surprise of the hotel-proprietor and his
+staff. It was an unusual thing for such a high official as the Chief of
+Police to visit one of their guests in person. If he desired to
+interview any of them, he commanded them to attend at his office, or
+they were escorted there by his gray-coated agents.
+
+The day was cold, with a biting wind from the icy north, when after a
+hasty luncheon I put on my overcoat and strolled along the deserted quay
+where I lounged at the further end, watching the approach of a great
+pontoon of pine logs that had apparently floated out of one of the
+rivers and was now being navigated to the port by four men who seemed
+every moment in imminent danger of being washed off the raft into the
+sea as the waves broke over and drenched them. They had, however, lashed
+themselves to their raft, I saw, and now slowly piloted the great
+floating platform towards the quay.
+
+I think I must have waited half an hour, when my attention was suddenly
+attracted by the rattle of wheels over the stones, and turning I saw an
+old closed carriage drawn by three horses abreast, with bells upon the
+harness, approaching me rapidly. When it drew up, the driver, a
+burly-looking, fair-headed Finn in a huge sheepskin overcoat, motioned
+me to enter, urging in broken Russian--
+
+"Quickly, Excellency!--quickly!--you must not be seen!"
+
+And then the instant I was seated, and before I could close the door,
+the horses plunged forward and we were tearing at full gallop out of the
+town.
+
+For five miles or so we skirted the sea along a level, well-made road
+through a barren wind-swept country whence the meager harvest had
+already been garnered. There were no villages. All around was a
+houseless land, rolling miles of brown and green, broken and checkered
+by bits of forest and clumps of dark melancholy pines. The road ran ever
+and anon right down to where the cold, green waves broke upon the rocky
+shore. In a few weeks that coast would be ice-bound and snow-covered,
+and then the silence of the God-forsaken country would be complete.
+
+After five miles or so, the driver pulled up and descended to readjust
+his harness, whereupon I got out and asked him in the best Russian I
+could command:
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+"To Nystad."
+
+"How far is that?"
+
+"Sixty-eight," was his reply.
+
+I took him to imply kilometres, as being a Finn he would not speak of
+versts.
+
+"The Chief of Police has given you directions?" I asked.
+
+"His high Excellency has told me exactly what to do," was the man's
+answer, as he took out his huge wooden pipe and filled it. "You wish to
+see the young lady?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "to first see her, and I do not know whether it will
+be necessary for me to make myself known to her. Where is she?"
+
+"Beyond Nystad," was his vague answer with a wave of his big fat hand in
+the direction of the dark pine forest that stretched before us. "We
+shall be there about an hour after sundown."
+
+Then I re-entered the stuffy old conveyance that rocked and rolled as we
+dashed away over the uneven forest road, and sat wondering to what
+manner of place I was being conducted.
+
+Elma Heath was in hiding. Why? I recollected her curious letter and
+remembered every word of it. She wished Hornby to know that she had
+never revealed her secret. What secret, I wondered?
+
+I lit an abominable cigar, and tried to smoke, but I was too filled with
+anxiety, too bewildered by the maze of mystery in which I now found
+myself. Two hours later we pulled up before a long log-built post-house
+just beyond a small town in a hollow that faced the sea, and I alighted
+to watch the steaming horses being replaced by a trio of fresh ones. The
+place was Dadendal, I was informed, and the proprietor of the place,
+when I entered and tossed off a liqueur-glass of cognac, pointed out to
+me a row of granite buildings fallen much to decay as the ancient
+convent.
+
+Then, resuming our journey, the short day quickly drew to a close, the
+sun sank yellow and watery over the towering pines through which we went
+mile after mile, a dense, interminable forest wherein the wolves lurked
+in winter, often rendering the road dangerous.
+
+The temperature fell, and it froze again. Through the window in front I
+could see the big Finn driver throwing his arms across his shoulders to
+promote circulation, in the same manner as does the London "cabby."
+
+When night drew on we changed horses again at a small, dirty post-house
+in the forest, at the edge of a lake, and then pushed forward again,
+although it was already long past the hour at which he had said we
+should arrive.
+
+Time passed slowly in the darkness, for we had no light, and the horses
+seemed to find their way by instinct. The rolling of the lumbering old
+vehicle after six hours had rendered me sleepy, I think, for I recollect
+closing my eyes and conjuring up that strange scene on board the
+_Lola_.
+
+Indeed, I suppose I must have slept, for I was awakened by a light
+shining into my face and the driver shaking me by the shoulder. When I
+roused myself and, naturally, inquired the reason, he placed his finger
+mysteriously upon my lips, saying:
+
+"Hush, your high nobility, hush! Come with me. But make no noise. If we
+are discovered, it means death for us--death. Come, give me your hand.
+Slowly. Tread softly. See, here is the boat. I will get in first. We
+shall not be heard upon the water. So."
+
+And the fellow led me, half-dazed, down to the bank of a broad, dark
+river which I could just distinguish--he led me to an unknown bourne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CASTLE OF THE TERROR
+
+
+The big Finn had, I found, tied up his horses, and in the heavy old boat
+he rowed me down the swollen river which ran swift and turbulent around
+a sudden bend and then seemed to open out to a great width. In the
+starlight I could distinguish that it stretched gray and level to a
+distance, and that the opposite bank was fringed with pines.
+
+"Where are we going?" I asked my guide in a low voice. But he only
+whispered:
+
+"Hush! Excellency! Remain patient, and you shall see the young
+Englishwoman."
+
+So I sat in the boat, while he allowed it to drift with the current,
+steering it with the great heavy oars. The river suddenly narrowed
+again, with high pines on either bank, a silent, lonesome reach, perhaps
+indeed one of the loneliest spots in all Europe. Once the dismal howl of
+a wolf sounded close to where we passed, but my guide made no remark.
+
+After nearly a mile, the stream again opened out into a broad lake
+where, in the distance, I saw rising sheer and high from the water, a
+long square building of three stories, with a tall round tower at one
+corner--an old medieval castle it seemed to be. From one of the small
+windows of the tower, as we came into view of it, a light was shining
+upon the water, and my guide seeing it, grunted in satisfaction. It had
+undoubtedly been placed there as signal.
+
+With great caution he approached the place, keeping in the deep shadow
+of the bank until we came exactly opposite the flanking-tower. In the
+lighted window I distinctly saw a dark figure of someone appear for a
+moment, and then my guide struck a match and held it in his fingers
+until it was wholly consumed.
+
+Almost instantly the light was extinguished, and then, after waiting
+five minutes or so, he pulled straight across the lake to the high, dark
+tower that descended into the water. The place was as grim and silent as
+any I had ever seen, an impregnable stronghold of the days before siege
+guns were invented, the fortress of some feudal prince or count who had
+probably held the surrounding country in thraldom.
+
+I put my hand against the black, slimy wall to prevent the boat bumping,
+and then distinguished just beyond me a small wooden ledge and
+half-a-dozen steps which led up to a low arched door. The latter had
+opened noiselessly, and the dark figure of a woman stood peering forth.
+
+My guide uttered some reassuring word in Finnish in a low half-whisper,
+and then slowly pushed the boat along to the ledge, saying:
+
+"Your high nobility may disembark. There is at present no danger."
+
+I rose, gripped a big rusty chain to steady myself, and climbed into the
+narrow doorway in the ponderous wall, where I found myself in the
+darkness beside the female who had apparently been expecting our arrival
+and watching our signal.
+
+Without a word she led me through a short passage, and then, striking a
+match, lit a big old-fashioned lantern. As the light fell upon her
+features I saw they were thin and hard, with deep-set eyes and a stray
+wisp of silver across her wrinkled brow. Around her head was a kind of
+hood of the same stuff as her dress, a black, coarse woolen, while
+around her neck was a broad linen collar. In an instant I recognized
+that she was a member of some religious order, some minor order perhaps,
+with whose habit we, in Italy, were not acquainted.
+
+The thin ascetic countenance was that of a woman of strong character,
+and her funereal habit seemed much too large for her stunted, shrunken
+figure.
+
+"The sister speaks French?" I hazarded in that language, knowing that in
+most convents throughout Europe French is known.
+
+"Oui, m'sieur," was her answer. "And a leetle Engleesh, too--a ve-ry
+leetle," she smiled.
+
+"You know why I am here?" I said, gratified that at least one person in
+that lonesome country could speak my own tongue.
+
+"Yes, I have already been told," was her answer with a strong accent, as
+we stood in that small, bare stone room, a semicircular chamber in the
+tower, once perhaps a prison. "But are you not afraid to venture here?"
+she asked.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--because no strangers are permitted here, you know. If your
+presence here was discovered you would not leave this place alive--so I
+warn you."
+
+"I am prepared to risk that," I said, smiling; at the same time my hand
+instinctively sought my hip-pocket to ascertain that my weapon was safe.
+"I wish to see Miss Elma Heath."
+
+The old nun nodded, fumbling with her lantern. I glanced at my watch and
+found that it was already two o'clock in the morning.
+
+"Remember that if you are discovered here you exonerate me of all
+blame?" she said, raising her head and peering into my face with her
+keen gray eyes. "By admitting you I am betraying my trust, and that I
+should not have done were it not compulsory."
+
+"Compulsory! How?"
+
+"The order of the Chief of Police. Even here, we cannot afford to offend
+him."
+
+So the fellow Boranski had really kept faith with me, and at his order
+the closed door of the convent had been opened.
+
+"Of course not," I answered. "Russian officialdom is all-powerful in
+Finland nowadays. But where is the lady?"
+
+"You are still prepared to risk your liberty and life?" she asked in a
+hoarse voice, full of grim meaning.
+
+"I am," I said. "Lead me to her."
+
+"And when you see her you will make no effort to speak with her? Promise
+me that."
+
+"Ah, Sister!" I cried. "You are asking too great a sacrifice of me. I
+come here from England, nay, from Italy in search of her, to question
+her regarding a strange mystery and to learn the truth. Surely I may be
+permitted to speak with her?"
+
+"You wish to learn the truth, sir!" remarked the woman. "I thought you
+were her lover--that you merely wished to see her once again."
+
+"No, I am not her lover," I answered. "Indeed, we have never yet met.
+But I am in search of the truth from her own lips."
+
+"That you will never learn," she said, in a hard, changed voice.
+
+"Because there is a conspiracy to preserve the secret!" I cried. "But I
+intend to solve the mystery, and for that reason I have traveled here
+from England."
+
+The woman with the lantern smiled sadly, as though amused by my
+impetuosity.
+
+"You are on Russian soil now, m'sieur, not English," she remarked in
+her broken English. "If your object were known, you would never be
+spared to return to your own land. Ah!" she sighed, "you do not know the
+mysteries and terrors of Finland. I am a French subject, born in Tours,
+and brought to Helsingfors when I was fifteen. I have been in Finland
+forty-five years. Once we were happy here, but since the Czar appointed
+Baron Oberg to be Governor-General----" and she shrugged her shoulders
+without finishing her sentence.
+
+"Baron Oberg--Governor-General of Finland!" I gasped.
+
+"Certainly. Did you not know?" she said, dropping into French. "It is
+four years now that he has held supreme power to crush and Russify these
+poor Finns. Ah, m'sieur! this country, once so prosperous, is a blot
+upon the face of Europe. His methods are the worst and most unscrupulous
+of any employed by Russia. Before he came here he was the best hated man
+in Petersburg, and that, they say, is why the Emperor sent him to us."
+
+"And he is uncle of this young lady, Elma Heath?"
+
+"Uncle? Ah! I don't know that, m'sieur. I have never been told so. His
+niece--poor young lady!--can that be? Surely not!"
+
+"Why not?" I asked.
+
+But the woman gave me no reason; she only exhibited her palms and
+sighed. She seemed to have compassion upon the girl I sought; her heart
+was really softer than I had believed it to be.
+
+"Where does this Baron live?" I asked, surprised that he should occupy
+so high a place in Russian officialdom--the representative of the Czar,
+with powers as great as the Emperor himself.
+
+"At the Government Palace, in Helsingfors."
+
+"And Elma Heath is here--in this grim fortress! Why?"
+
+"Ah, m'sieur, how can I tell? By reason of family secrets, perhaps. They
+account for so much, you know."
+
+"That is exactly my opinion," I said. "She has been brought here against
+her will."
+
+"Most probably. This is not a cheerful place, as you see. We have five
+months of ice and snow, and for four months are practically cut off from
+civilization and see no new face."
+
+"Terrible!" I gasped, glancing round at those dark stone walls that
+seemed to breathe an air of tragedy and mystery. The old castle had, I
+supposed, been turned into a convent, as many have been in Germany and
+Austria. Back in feudal times it no doubt had been a grand old place.
+"And have you been here long?" I asked.
+
+"Seven years only. But I am leaving. Even I, used as I am to a solitary
+life, can stand it no longer. I feel that its cold silence and
+dreariness will drive me mad. In winter the place is like an ice-well."
+
+The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had
+half-expected him to be some clever adventurer. Yet as the events of the
+past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had
+been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a
+distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him. If
+so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one. I
+questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.
+
+"Ah, m'sieur," she declared, "they call him 'The Strangler of the
+Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until
+four of them died--and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for
+it--he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in
+prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in
+Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the
+officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered
+Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public
+education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the
+mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt. The prisons are
+filled with the innocent; women are flogged; the poor are starving, and
+'The Strangler,' as they call him, reports to the Czar that Finland is
+submissive and is Russianized!"
+
+I had heard something of this abominable state of affairs from time to
+time from the English press, but had never taken notice of the name of
+the oppressor. So the uncle of Elma Heath was "The Strangler of
+Finland," the man who, in four years, had reduced a prosperous country
+to a state of ruin and revolt!
+
+"Cannot I see her?" I asked, feeling that we had remained too long
+there. If my presence in that place was perilous the sooner I escaped
+from it the better.
+
+"Yes, come," she said. "But silence! Walk softly," and holding up the
+old horn lantern to give me light, she led me out into the low stone
+corridor again, conducting me through a number of intricate passages,
+all bare and gloomy, the stones worn hollow by the feet of ages. On we
+crept noiselessly past a number of low arched doors studded with big
+nails in the style of generations ago, then turning suddenly at right
+angles, I saw that we were in a kind of _cul de sac,_ before the door of
+which at the end she stopped and placed her finger upon her lips. Then,
+motioning me to remain there, she entered, closing the door after her,
+and leaving me in the pitch darkness.
+
+I strained my ears, but could hear no sound save that of someone moving
+within. No word was uttered, or if so, it was whispered so low that it
+did not reach me. For nearly five minutes I waited in impatience
+outside that closed door, until again the handle turned and my
+conductress beckoned me in silence within.
+
+I stepped into a small, square chamber, the floor of which was carpeted,
+and where, suspended high above, was a lamp that shed but a faint light
+over the barely-furnished place. It seemed to me to be a kind of
+sitting-room, with a plain deal table and a couple of chairs, but there
+was no stove, and the place looked chill and comfortless. Beyond was
+another smaller room into which the old nun disappeared for a moment;
+then she came forth leading a strange wan little figure in a gray gown,
+a figure whose face was the most perfect and most lovely I had ever
+seen. Her wealth of chestnut hair fell disheveled about her shoulders,
+and as her hands were clasped before her she looked straight at me in
+surprise as she was led towards me.
+
+She walked but feebly, and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress,
+as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her
+beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such
+fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed
+them to be. I stood before her dumbfounded in admiration.
+
+In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with
+astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required
+of her.
+
+"Miss Elma Heath, I presume?" I exclaimed at last. "May I introduce
+myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan
+by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question--a question that
+concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you."
+
+I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.
+
+Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness.
+No sound escaped her.
+
+I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in
+a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.
+
+She was both deaf and dumb!
+
+She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in
+her splendid eyes.
+
+I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.
+
+"What is this place?" I demanded of the woman in the religious habit,
+when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction.
+"Where am I?"
+
+"This is the Castle of Kajana--the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland,"
+was her answer. "The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and
+hearing."
+
+"Deaf and dumb!" I cried, looking at the beautiful original of that
+destroyed photograph on board the _Lola_. "But she has surely not always
+been so!" I exclaimed.
+
+"No. I think not always," replied the sister quietly. "But you said you
+intended to question her, and did I not tell you that to learn the truth
+was impossible?"
+
+"But she can write responses to my questions?" I argued.
+
+"Alas! no," was the old woman's whispered reply. "Her mind is affected.
+She is, unfortunately, a hopeless lunatic."
+
+I looked straight into those sad, wide-open, yet unflinching brown eyes
+utterly confounded.
+
+Those white wrists held in steel, that pale face and blanched lips, the
+inertness of her movements, all told their own tragic tale. And yet that
+letter I had read, dictated in secret most probably because her hands
+were not free, was certainly not the outpourings of a madwoman. She had
+spoken of death, it was true, yet was it not to be supposed that she was
+slowly being driven to suicide? She had kept her secret, and she wished
+the man Hornby--the man who was to marry Muriel Leithcourt--to know.
+
+The room in which we stood was evidently an apartment set apart for her
+use, for beyond was the tiny bedchamber; yet the small, high-up window
+was closely barred, and the cold bareness of the prison was sufficient
+indeed to cause anyone confined there to prefer death to captivity.
+
+Again I spoke to her slowly and kindly, but there was no response. That
+she was absolutely dumb was only too apparent. Yet surely she had not
+always been so! I had gone in search of her because the beauty of her
+portrait had magnetized me, and I had now found her to be even more
+lovely than her picture, yet, alas! suffering from an affliction that
+rendered her life a tragedy. The realization of the terrible truth
+staggered me. Such a perfect face as hers I had never before set eyes
+upon, so beautiful, so clear-cut, so refined, so eminently the
+countenance of one well-born, and yet so ineffably sad, so full of blank
+unutterable despair.
+
+She placed her clasped hands to her mouth and made signs by shaking her
+head that she could neither understand nor respond. I therefore took my
+wallet from my pocket and wrote upon a piece of paper in a large hand
+the words: "_I come from Lydia Moreton. My name is Gordon Gregg_."
+
+When her eager gaze fell upon the words she became instantly filled with
+excitement, and nodded quickly. Then holding her steel-clasped wrists
+towards me she looked wistfully at me, as though imploring me to release
+her from the awful bondage in that silent tomb.
+
+Though the woman who had led me there endeavored to prevent it, I
+handed her the pencil, and placed the paper on the table for her to
+write.
+
+The nun tried to snatch it up, but I held her arm gently and forcibly,
+saying in French:
+
+"No. I wish to see if she is really insane. You will at least allow me
+this satisfaction."
+
+And while we were in altercation, Elma, with the pencil in her fingers,
+tried to write, but by reason of her hands being bound so closely was
+unable. At length, however, after several attempts, she succeeded in
+printing in uneven capitals the response:
+
+"I know you. You were on the yacht. I thought they killed you."
+
+The thin-faced old woman saw her response--a reply that was surely
+rational enough--and her brows contracted with displeasure.
+
+"Why are you here?" I wrote, not allowing the sister to get sight of my
+question.
+
+In response, she wrote painfully and laboriously:
+
+"I am condemned for a crime I did not commit. Take me from here, or I
+shall kill myself."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the old woman. "You see, poor girl, she believes herself
+innocent! They all do."
+
+"But why is she here?" I demanded fiercely.
+
+"I do not know, m'sieur. It is not my duty to inquire the history of
+their crimes. When they are ill I nurse them; that is all."
+
+"And who is the commandant of this fortress?"
+
+"Colonel Smirnoff. If he knew that I had admitted you, you would never
+leave this place alive. This is the Schusselburg of Finland--the place
+of imprisonment for those who have conspired against the State."
+
+"The prison of political conspirators, eh?"
+
+"Alas, m'sieur, yes! The place in which some of the poor creatures are
+tortured in order to obtain confessions and information with as much
+cruelty as in the black days of the Inquisition. These walls are thick,
+and their cries are not heard from the oubliettes below the lake."
+
+I had long ago heard of the horrors of Schusselburg. Indeed who has not
+heard of them who has traveled in Russia? The very mention of the modern
+Bastille on Lake Ladoga, where no prisoner has ever been known to come
+forth alive, is sufficient to cause any Russian to turn pale. And I was
+in the Schusselburg of Finland!
+
+I turned over the sheet of paper and wrote the question--
+
+"Did Baron Oberg send you here?"
+
+In response, she printed the words--
+
+"I believe so. I was arrested in Helsingfors. Tell Lydia where I am."
+
+"Do you know Muriel Leithcourt?" I inquired by the same means, whereupon
+she replied that they were at school together.
+
+"Did you see me on board the _Lola_?" I wrote.
+
+"Yes. But I could not warn you, although I had overheard their
+intentions. They took me ashore when you had gone, to Siena. After three
+days I found myself deaf and dumb--I was made so."
+
+Her allegation startled me. She had been purposely afflicted!
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"A doctor, I suppose. They put me under chloroform."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"People who said they were my friends."
+
+I turned to the woman in the religious habit, and cried--
+
+"Do you see what she has written? She has been maimed by some friends
+who intended that the secret she holds should be kept. They feared to
+kill her, so they bribed a doctor to deliberately operate upon her so
+that she could neither speak nor hear. And now they are driving her to
+suicide!"
+
+"M'sieur, I am astounded!" declared the nun. "I have always believed
+that she was not in her right mind, yet assuredly she seems to be as
+sane as I am, only willfully mutilated by some pretended friend who
+determined that no further word should pass her lips."
+
+"A shameful mutilation has been committed upon this poor defenseless
+girl!" I cried in anger. "And I will make it my duty to discover and
+punish the perpetrators of it."
+
+"Ah, m'sieur. Do not act rashly, I pray of you," the woman said
+seriously, placing her hand upon my arm. "Recollect you are in
+Finland--where the Baron Oberg is all-powerful."
+
+"I do not fear the Baron Oberg," I exclaimed. "If necessary, I will
+appeal to the Czar himself. Mademoiselle is kept here for the reason
+that she is in possession of some secret. She must be released--I will
+take the responsibility."
+
+"But you must not try to release her from here. It would mean death to
+you both. The Castle of Kajana tells no secrets of those who die within
+its walls, or of those cast headlong into its waters and forgotten."
+
+Again I turned to Elma, who stood in anxious wonder of the subject of
+our conversation, and had suddenly taken the old nun's hand and kissed
+it affectionately, perhaps in order to show me that she trusted her.
+
+Then upon the paper I wrote--
+
+"Is the Baron Oberg your uncle?"
+
+She shook her head in the negative, showing that the dreaded
+Governor-General of Finland had only acted a part towards her in which
+she had been compelled to concur.
+
+"Who is Philip Hornby?" I inquired, writing rapidly.
+
+"My friend--at least, I believe so."
+
+Friend! And I had all along believed him to be an adventurer and an
+enemy!
+
+"Why did he go to Leghorn?" I asked.
+
+"For a secret purpose. There was a plot to kill you, only I managed to
+thwart them," were the words she printed with much labor.
+
+"Then I owe my life to you," I wrote. "And in return I will do my utmost
+to rescue you from here, if you do not fear to place yourself in my
+hands."
+
+And to this she replied--
+
+"I shall be thankful, for I cannot bear this awful place longer. I
+believe they must torture the women here. They will torture me some day.
+Do your best to get me out of here and I will tell you everything. But,"
+she wrote, "I fear you can never secure my release. I am confined here
+on a life sentence."
+
+"But you are English, and if you have had no trial I can complain to our
+Ambassador."
+
+"No, I am a Russian subject. I was born in Russia, and went to England
+when I was a girl."
+
+That altered the case entirely. As a subject of the Czar in her own
+country she was amenable to that disgraceful blot upon civilization that
+allows a person to be consigned to prison at the will of a high
+official, without trial or without being afforded any opportunity of
+appeal. I therefore at once saw a difficulty.
+
+Yet she promised to tell me the truth if I could but secure her release!
+
+A flood of recollections of the amazing mystery swept through my mind. A
+thousand questions arose within me, all of which I desired to ask her,
+but there, in that noisome prison-house, it was impossible. As I stood
+there a woman's shrill scream of excruciating pain reached me,
+notwithstanding those cyclopean walls. Some unfortunate prisoner was,
+perhaps, being tortured and confession wrung from her lips. I shuddered
+at the unspeakable horrors of that grim fortress.
+
+Could I allow this refined defenseless girl to remain an inmate of that
+Bastille, the terrors of which I had heard men in Russia hint at with
+bated breath? They had willfully maimed her and deprived her of both
+hearing and the power of speech, and now they intended that she should
+be driven mad by that silence and loneliness that must always end in
+insanity.
+
+"I have decided," I said suddenly, turning to the woman who had
+conducted me there, and having now removed the steel bonds of the
+prisoner with a key she secretly carried, stood with folded hands in the
+calm attitude of the religious.
+
+"You will not act with rashness?" she implored in quick apprehension.
+"Remember, your life is at stake, as well as my own."
+
+"Her enemies intended that I, too, should die!" I answered, looking
+straight into those deep mysterious brown eyes which held me as beneath
+a spell. "They have drawn her into their power because she had no means
+of defense. But I will assume the position of her friend and protector."
+
+"How?"
+
+"The man is awaiting me in the boat outside. I intend to take her with
+me."
+
+"But, m'sieur, why that is impossible!" cried the old woman in a hoarse
+voice. "If you were discovered by the guards who patrol the lake both
+night and day they would shoot you both."
+
+"I will risk it," I said, and without another word dashed into the tiny
+bed chamber and tore an old brown blanket from off the narrow truckle
+bed.
+
+Then, linking my arm in that of the woman whose lovely countenance had
+verily become the sun of my existence, I made a sign, inviting her to
+accompany me.
+
+The sister barred the door, urging me to reconsider my decision.
+
+"Leave her alone in secret, and act as you will, appeal to the Baron, to
+the Czar, but do not attempt, m'sieur, to rescue a prisoner from here,
+for it is an impossibility. The man who brought you here from Abo will
+not dare to accept such responsibility."
+
+"Come," I said to Elma, although, alas! she could not hear my voice.
+"Let us at least make a dash for freedom."
+
+She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be
+conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and
+making no noise.
+
+I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring
+to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone
+corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been
+first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt
+the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her
+faith in me as her deliverer.
+
+I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake
+how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable
+forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt
+the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I
+not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met
+that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though
+fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low
+corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the
+lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses
+awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or
+raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw
+that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my
+side.
+
+Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that
+unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the
+uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep
+voice cried out of the darkness in Russian--
+
+"Halt! or I fire!"
+
+And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded
+carbine.
+
+A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes
+shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder
+within six feet of us.
+
+The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.
+
+My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the
+hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous
+Governor-General--fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very
+cleverly prepared for me.
+
+I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save
+the guards had ever been known to emerge--the Bastille of "The Strangler
+of Finland!"
+
+I saw I was lost.
+
+The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.
+
+"Speak!" cried the fellow. "Who are you?"
+
+At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's
+hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it,
+but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his
+gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close
+with him was my only chance.
+
+Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn
+driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl
+whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a
+single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow,
+she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to
+wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying
+to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old
+trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and
+nearly fell.
+
+An oath escaped him, yet in that moment Elma succeeded in twisting the
+gun from his sinewy hands, which I now held with a strength begotten of
+a knowledge of my imminent peril. My whole future, as well as hers,
+depended upon my success in that desperate encounter. He was huge and
+powerful, with a strength far exceeding my own, yet I had been reckoned
+a good wrestler at Uppingham, and now my knowledge of that most ancient
+form of combat held me in good stead.
+
+The man shouted for help, his deep, hoarse voice sounding along the
+stone corridors. If heard by his comrades-in-arms, then the alarm would
+at once be given.
+
+We struggled desperately, swaying to and fro, he trying to throw me,
+while I, at every turn, practiced upon him the tricks learned in my
+youth. It seemed an even match, however, for he kept his feet by sheer
+brute force, and his muscles seemed hard and unbending as steel.
+
+Suddenly, however, as we were striving so vigorously and desperately,
+the English girl slipped past us with the carbine in her hand, and with
+a quick movement dragged open the heavy door that gave exit to the
+lake.
+
+At that instant I unfortunately made a false move, and his hand closed
+upon my throat like a band of steel. I fought and struggled to loose
+myself, exerting every muscle, but alas! he gained the advantage. I
+heard a splash, and saw that Elma no longer held the sentry's weapon in
+her hands, having thrown it into the water.
+
+Then at the same moment I heard a voice outside cry in a low tone:
+"Courage, Excellency! Courage! I will come and help you."
+
+It was the faithful Finn, who had been awaiting me in the deep shadow,
+and with a few strokes pulled his boat up to the narrow rickety ledge
+outside the door.
+
+"Take the lady!" I succeeded in gasping in Russian. "Never mind me," and
+I saw to my satisfaction that he guided Elma to step into the boat,
+which at that moment drifted past the little platform.
+
+I struggled valiantly, but against such a man of brute strength I was
+powerless. He held my throat, causing me excruciating pain, and each
+moment I felt my chance of victory grow smaller. My strength was
+failing. While I held his arms at his sides, I could keep him secure
+without much effort, but now with his fingers pressing in my windpipe I
+could not breathe.
+
+I was slowly being strangled.
+
+To be vanquished meant imprisonment there, perhaps even death. Victory
+meant Elma's life, as well as my own. Mine was therefore a fight for
+life. A sudden idea flashed across my mind, and I continued to struggle,
+at the same time gradually forcing my enemy backward towards the door.
+He shouted for help, but was unheard. He cursed and swore and shouted
+until, with a sudden and almost superhuman effort, I tripped him,
+bringing his head into such violent contact with the stone lintel of the
+door that the sound could surely be heard a considerable distance. For a
+moment he was stunned, and in that brief second I released his grip from
+my throat and hurled him backwards beyond the door.
+
+There was the sound of the crashing of wood as the rotten platform gave
+way, a loud splash, and next instant the dark waters closed over the
+big, bearded fellow who would have snatched Elma Heath from me, and have
+held me prisoner in that castle of terrors. He sank like a stone, for
+although I stood watching for him to rise, I could only distinguish the
+woodwork floating away with the current.
+
+In a moment, however, even as I stood there in horror at my deed of
+self-defense, the place suddenly resounded with shouts of alarm, and in
+the tower above me the great old rusty bell began to swing, ringing its
+brazen note across the broad expanse of waters.
+
+The fair-bearded Finn again shot the boat across to where I stood,
+crying--
+
+"Jump, Excellency! For your life, jump! The guards will be upon us!"
+
+Behind me in the passage I saw a light and the glitter of arms. A shot
+rang out, and a bullet whizzed past me, but I stood unharmed. Then I
+jumped, and nearly upset the boat, but taking an oar I began to row for
+life, and as we drew away from those grim, black walls the fire belched
+forth from three rifles.
+
+"Row!" I shrieked, turning to see if my fair companion had been hit.
+
+"Keep cool, Excellency," urged the Finn. "See, right away there in the
+shadow. We might trick them, for the patrol-boat will be at the head of
+the river waiting to cut us off."
+
+Again the guards fired upon us, but in the darkness their aim was
+faulty. Lights appeared in the high windows of the castle, and we could
+see that the greatest commotion had been caused by the escape of the
+prisoner. The men at the door in the tower were shouting to the
+patrol-boats, which were nowhere to be seen, calling them to row us down
+and capture us, but by plying our oars rapidly we shot straight across
+the lake until we got under the deep shadow of the opposite shore, and
+then crept gradually along in the direction we had come.
+
+"If we meet the boats, Excellency, we must run ashore and take to the
+woods," explained the Finn. "It is our only chance."
+
+Scarcely had he spoken when out in the center of the lake we could just
+distinguish a long boat with three rowers going swiftly towards the
+entrance to the river, which we so desired to gain.
+
+"Look!" cried our guide, backing water, and bringing the boat to a
+standstill. "They are in search of us! If we are discovered they will
+fire. It is their orders. No boat is allowed upon this lake."
+
+Elma sat watching our pursuers, but still calm and silent. She seemed to
+intrust herself entirely to me.
+
+The guards were rowing rapidly, the oars sounding in the rowlocks,
+evidently in the belief that we had made for the river. But the
+Finlander had apparently foreseen this, and for that reason we were
+lying safe from observation in the deep shadow of an overhanging tree.
+
+A gray mist was slowly rising from the water, and the Finn, noticing it,
+hoped that it might favor us. In Finland in late autumn the mists are
+often as thick as our proverbial London fogs, only whiter, denser, and
+more frosty.
+
+"If we disembark we shall be compelled to make a detour of fully four
+days in the forest, in order to pass the marshes," he pointed out in a
+low whisper. "But if we can enter the river we can go ashore anywhere
+and get by foot to some place where the lady can lie in hiding."
+
+"What do you advise? We are entirely in your hands. The Chief of Police
+told me he could trust you."
+
+"I think it will be best to risk it," he said in Russian after a brief
+pause. "We will tie up the boat, and I will go along the bank and see
+what the guards are doing. You will remain here, and I shall not be
+seen. The rushes and undergrowth are higher further along. But if there
+is danger while I am absent get out and go straight westward until you
+find the marsh, then keep along its banks due south," and drawing up the
+boat to the bank the shrewd, big-boned fellow disappeared into the dark
+undergrowth.
+
+There were no signs yet of the break of day. Indeed, the stars were now
+hidden, and the great plane of water was every moment growing more
+indistinct as we both sat in silence. My ears were strained to catch the
+dipping of an oar or a voice, but beyond the lapping of the water
+beneath the boat there was no other sound. I took the hand of the
+fair-faced girl at my side and pressed it. In return she pressed mine.
+
+It was the only means by which we could exchange confidences. She whom I
+had sought through all those months sat at my side, yet powerless to
+utter one single word.
+
+Still holding her hands in both my own I gripped them to show her that I
+intended to be her champion, while she turned to me in confidence as
+though happy that it should be so. What, I wondered, was her history?
+What was the mystery surrounding her? What could be that secret which
+had caused her enemies to thus brutally maim and mutilate her, and
+afterwards send her to that grim, terrible fortress that still loomed up
+before us in the gloom? Surely her secret must affect some person very
+seriously, or such drastic means would never be employed to secure her
+silence.
+
+Suddenly I heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and next moment a low
+voice spoke which I recognized as that of our friend, the Finn.
+
+"There is danger, Excellency--a grave danger!" he said in a low half
+whisper. "Three boats are in search of us."
+
+And scarcely had he uttered those words when there was the flash of a
+rifle from the haze, a loud report, and again a bullet whizzed past just
+behind my head. In an instant the truth became apparent, for I saw the
+dark shadow of a boat rapidly rowed, bearing full upon us. The shot had
+been fired as a signal that we had been sighted, and were pursued. Other
+shots rang out, mingled with the wild exultant shouts of the guards as
+they bore down full upon us, and then I knew that, notwithstanding our
+escape, we were now lost. They were too close upon us to admit of
+eluding them. The peril we had dreaded had fallen. The Finn's presence
+on the bank had evidently been detected by a boat drawn up at the shore,
+and he had been followed to where we had lain in what we had so
+foolishly believed to be a safe hiding-place. Nought else was to be done
+but to face the inevitable. Three times the red fire of a rifle belched
+angrily in our faces, and yet, by good fortune, neither of us was
+struck. Yet we knew too well that the intention of our pursuers was to
+kill us.
+
+"Quick, Excellency! Fly! while there is yet time!" gasped the Finn,
+grasping my hand and half dragging me from the boat, while, I, in turn,
+placed Elma upon the bank.
+
+"_Hoida!_ This way! Swiftly!" cried our guide, and the three of us,
+heedless of the consequences, plunged forward into the impenetrable
+darkness, just as our fierce pursuers came alongside where we had only a
+moment ago been seated. They shouted wildly as they sprang to land after
+us, but our guide, who had been born and bred in these forests, knew
+well how to travel in a semi-circle, and how to conceal himself. It was
+a race for freedom--nay, for very life.
+
+So dark that we could see before us hardly a foot, we were compelled to
+place our hands in front of us to avoid collision with the big tree
+trunks, while ever and anon we found ourselves entangled in the mass of
+dead creepers and vegetable parasites that formed the dense undergrowth.
+Around us on every side we heard the shouts and curses of our pursuers,
+while above the rest we heard an authoritative voice, evidently that of
+a sergeant of the guard, cry--
+
+"Shoot the man, but spare the woman! The Colonel wants her back. Don't
+let her escape! We shall be well rewarded. So keep on, comrades! _Mene
+edemmaeski!_"
+
+But the trembling girl beside me heard nothing, and perhaps indeed it
+was best that she could not hear. My only fear was that our pursuers, of
+whom there now seemed to be a dozen, had extended, with the intention of
+encircling us. They, no doubt, knew every inch of that giant forest with
+its numerous bogs and marshes, and if they could not discover us would
+no doubt drive us into one or other of the bogs, where escape was
+impossible.
+
+Our gallant guide, on the other hand, seemed to utterly disregard the
+danger and kept on, every now and then stretching out his hand and
+helping along the afflicted girl we had rescued from that living tomb.
+Headlong we went in a straight line, until suddenly we began to feel
+our feet sinking into the soft ground, and then the Finlander turned to
+the left, at right angles, and we found ourselves in a denser
+undergrowth, where in the darkness our hands and faces became badly
+scratched.
+
+Another gun was fired as signal, echoing through the wood, but the sound
+came from the opposite direction to that we were traveling; therefore we
+hoped that we had eluded those whose earnest desire it was to capture us
+for the reward. Suddenly, however, a second gun, an answering signal,
+was fired from straight before us, and that revealed the truth. We were
+actually between the two parties, and they were closing in upon us! They
+had already driven us to the edge of the bog. The Finlander recognized
+our peril as quickly as I did, and halted.
+
+"Let us turn straight back," he urged breathlessly. "We may yet elude
+them."
+
+And then we again turned off at right angles, traveling as quickly as we
+were able back towards the lake shore. It was an exciting chase in the
+darkness, for we knew not whither we were going, nor into what pitfall
+or ravine or treacherous marsh we might fall. Once we saw afar through
+the trees the light of a lantern held by a guard, and already the
+sweet-faced girl beside me seemed tired and terribly fatigued. But we
+hurried on and on, striving to make no noise, and yet the crackling of
+wood beneath our feet seemed to us to sound like the noise of thunder.
+
+At last, breathless, we halted to listen. We were already in sight of
+the gray mist where lay the silent lake that held so many secrets. There
+was not a sound. The guards had gone straight on, believing they had
+driven us into that deadly bog wherein, if we had entered, we must have
+been slowly sucked down and engulfed. They were surrounding it, no
+doubt, feeling certain of their prey.
+
+But we crept along the water's edge, until in the gray light we could
+distinguish two empty boats--that of the guards and our own. We were
+again at the spot where we had disembarked.
+
+"Let us row to the head of the lake," suggested the Finn. "We may then
+land and escape them." And a moment later we were all three in the
+guards' boat, rowing with all our might under the deep shadow of the
+bank northward, in the opposite direction to the town of Nystad.
+
+We kept a sharp look-out for any other boat, but saw none. The signals
+ashore had attracted all the guards to that spot to join in the search,
+and now, having doubled back and again embarked, we were every moment
+increasing the distance between ourselves and our pursuers. I think we
+must have rowed several miles, for ere we landed again, upon a low, flat
+and barren shore, the first gray streak of day was showing in the east.
+
+Elma noticed it, and kept her great brown eyes fixed upon it
+thoughtfully. It was the dawn for her--the dawn of a new life. Our eyes
+met; she smiled at me, and then gazed again eastward, full of silent
+meaning.
+
+Having landed, we drew the boat up and concealed it in the undergrowth
+so that the guards, on searching, should not know the direction we had
+taken, and then we went straight on northward across the low-lying
+lands, to where the forest showed dark against the morning gray. The
+mist had now somewhat cleared, but the air was keen and frosty.
+
+This wood, we found, was of tall high pines, where walking was not
+difficult, a wide wilderness of trees which, hour after hour, we
+traversed in the vain endeavor to find the rough path which our guide
+told us led for a hundred miles from Alavo down to Tammerfors, the
+manufacturing center of the country. But to discover a path in a forest
+forty miles wide is a matter of considerable difficulty, and for hours
+we wandered on and on, but alas! always in vain.
+
+Faint and hungry, yet we still kept courage. Fortunately we found a
+little spring, and all three of us drank eagerly with our hands. But of
+food we had nothing, save a small piece of hard rye bread which the Finn
+had in his pocket, the remains of his evening meal; and this we gave to
+Elma, who, half famished, ate it quickly. We knew quite well that it
+would be an easy matter to die of starvation in that great trackless
+forest, therefore we kept on undaunted, while the yellow autumn sun
+struggled through the dark pines, glinting on the straight gray trunks
+and reflecting a golden light in that dead unbroken silence.
+
+How many miles we trudged I have no idea. It was a consolation to know
+that we now had no pursuers, yet what fate lay before us we knew not. If
+we could only find that forest-road we might come across some
+wood-cutter's hut, where we could obtain rough food of some sort, yet
+our guide, used as he was to those enormous woods of central Finland,
+was utterly out of his bearings, and no mark of civilization attracted
+his quick, experienced eye. The light above gradually faded, and over a
+sharp stone Elma stumbled and ripped her shoe.
+
+I looked at my watch, and found that it was already five o'clock. In an
+hour it would be dark, the beginning of the long northern night. Elma,
+who was weary and footsore, asked by signs to be permitted to lay down
+and rest. Therefore we gathered a bed of dried leaves for her, and she
+lay down, and while we watched she was soon asleep. The Finn, who
+declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and
+placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.
+
+While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined
+features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss
+upon that soft inviting cheek. Yet I had no right to do so--no right to
+take such an advantage.
+
+The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused
+me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and
+notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals,
+we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.
+
+Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write,
+therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner
+of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath
+the spell of her beauty. All the little acts of homage I was able to
+perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep
+luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.
+
+The mist had not cleared, for it was soon after dawn when we again moved
+along, hungry, chill, and yet hopeful. At a spring we obtained some
+water, and then, in silent procession, pressed forward in search of the
+rough track of the woodcutters.
+
+Elma's torn shoe gave her considerable trouble, and noticing her
+limping, I induced her to sit down while I took it off, hoping to be
+able to mend it, but, having unlaced it, I saw that upon her stocking
+was a large patch of congealed blood, where her foot itself had also
+been cut. I managed to beat the nails of the shoe with a stone, so that
+its sole should not be lost, and she readjusted it, allowing me to lace
+it up for her and smiling the while.
+
+Forward we trudged, ever forward, across that enormous forest where the
+myriad treetrunks presented the same dismal scene everywhere, a forest
+untrodden save by wild, half-savage lumbermen. Throughout that dull
+gray day we marched onward, faint with hunger, yet suffering but little
+pain, for the first pangs were now past, and were succeeded by slight
+light-headedness. My only fear was that we should be compelled to spend
+another night without shelter, and what its effect might be upon the
+delicately-reared girl whose hand I held tenderly in mine. Surely my
+position was a strange one. Her terrible affliction seemed to cause her
+to be entirely dependent upon me.
+
+Suddenly, just as the yellow sunlight overhead had begun to fade, the
+flat-faced Finn, whose name he had told me was Felix Estlander, cried
+joyfully--
+
+"_Polushaite!_ Look, Excellency! Ah! The road at last!"
+
+And as we glanced before us we saw that his quick, well-trained eyes had
+detected away in the twilight, at some distance, a path traversing our
+vista among the gray-green tree-trunks. Then, hurrying along, we found
+ourselves upon a track, on which we turned to the right--a track, rough
+and deeply-rutted by the felled trunks that were dragged along it to the
+nearest river.
+
+Elma made a gesture of renewed hope, and all three of us redoubled our
+pace, expecting every moment to come upon some log hut, the owner of
+which would surely give us hospitality for the night. But darkness came
+on quickly, and yet we still pushed forward. Poor Elma was limping, and
+I knew that her injured foot was paining her, even though she could tell
+me nothing.
+
+At last, however, after walking for nearly four hours in the almost
+impenetrable forest gloom, always fearing lest we might miss the path,
+our hearts suddenly beat quickly by seeing before us a light shining in
+a window, and five minutes later Felix was knocking at the door, and
+asking in Finnish the occupant to give hospitality to a lady lost in
+the forest.
+
+We heard a low growl like a muttered imprecation within, and when the
+door opened there stood upon the threshold a tall, bearded, muscular old
+fellow in a dirty red shirt, with a big revolver shining in his hand. A
+quick glance at us satisfied him that we were not thieves, and he
+invited us in while Felix explained that we had landed from the lake,
+and our boat having drifted away we had been compelled to take to the
+woods. The man heard the Finn's picturesque story, and then said
+something to me which Felix translated into Russian.
+
+"Your Excellency is welcome to all the poor fare he has. He gives up his
+bed in the room yonder to the lady, so that she may rest. He is honored
+by your Excellency's presence."
+
+And while he was making this explanation the herculean wood-cutter in
+the red shirt stirred the red embers whereon a big pot was simmering,
+and sending forth an appetizing odor, and in five minutes we were all
+three sitting down to a stew of capercailzie, with a foaming light beer
+as a fitting beverage. We finished the dish with such lightning rapidity
+that our host boiled us a number of eggs, which, I fear, denuded his
+larder.
+
+The place was a poor one of two low rooms, built of rough log-pines,
+with double windows for the winter and a high brick stove. Cleanliness
+was not exactly its characteristic, nevertheless we all passed a very
+comfortable hour, and received a warm welcome from the lonely old fellow
+who passed his life so far beyond European civilization, and whose
+house, he told us, was often snowed up and cut off from all the world
+for three or four months at a time.
+
+After we had finished our meal, I asked the sturdy old fellow for a
+pencil, but the nearest thing he possessed was a stick of thick
+charcoal, and with that it was surely difficult to communicate with our
+fair companion. Therefore she rose, gave me her hand, bowed smilingly,
+and then passed into the inner room and closed the door.
+
+The old wood-cutter gave us some coarse tobacco, and after smoking and
+chatting for an hour we threw ourselves wearily upon the wooden benches
+and slept soundly.
+
+Suddenly, however, at early dawn, we were startled by a loud banging at
+the door, the clattering of hoofs, and authoritative shouts in Russian.
+The old wood-cutter sprang up, and looking through a chink in the heavy
+shutters turned to us with blanched face, whispering breathlessly--
+
+"The police! What can they want of me?"
+
+"Open!" shouted the horsemen outside. "Open in the name of his Majesty!"
+
+Felix and I sprang up facing each other.
+
+"We are entrapped!"
+
+In an instant our guide Felix made a dash for the door of the inner room
+where Elma had retired, but next second he reappeared, gasping in
+Russian--
+
+"Excellency! Why, the door is open! The lady has gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I cried, dismayed, rushing into the little room, where I found
+the truckle couch empty, and the door leading outside wide open. She had
+actually disappeared!
+
+The police again battered at the opposite door, threatening loudly to
+break it in if it were not opened at once, whereupon the old wood-cutter
+drew the bolt and admitted them. Two big, hulking fellows in heavy
+riding-coats and swords strode in, while two others remained mounted
+outside, holding the horses.
+
+"Your names?" demanded one of the fellows, glancing at us as we stood
+together in expectation.
+
+Our host told them his name, and asked why they wished to enter.
+
+"We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana," was the
+reply. "Have you seen any woman here?"
+
+"No," responded the wood-cutter. "We never see any woman out in these
+woods."
+
+The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make
+certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked,
+"Who are you?"
+
+"That is my own affair," I answered.
+
+The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She
+seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some
+warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore
+she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.
+
+"Your identity is my affair," declared the man with the fair, bristly
+beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.
+
+"Who is your chief?" I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.
+
+"Melnikoff, at Helsingfors."
+
+"Then this is not in the district of Abo?"
+
+"No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?"
+
+"Gordon Gregg, British subject," I replied.
+
+"And you are the drosky-driver from Abo," remarked the fellow, turning
+to Felix. "Exactly as I thought. You are the pair who bribed the nun at
+Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman. In the name of the
+Czar, I arrest you!"
+
+The old wood-cutter turned pale as death. We certainly were in grave
+peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron
+Oberg, the Strangler of Finland. Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing
+that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.
+
+"And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?" I inquired as
+coolly as I could.
+
+"For aiding a prisoner to escape."
+
+"Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and,
+secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly
+willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo."
+
+"It is outside my district," growled the fellow, but I saw that his
+hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.
+
+"I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make
+all the explanation necessary. Until we have an interview with him, I
+refuse to give any information concerning myself," I said.
+
+"But you have a passport?"
+
+I drew it from my pocket, saying--
+
+"It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you."
+
+The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.
+
+"Where is the woman?" he demanded. "Tell me."
+
+"I don't know," was my reply.
+
+"Perhaps you will tell me," he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with
+a sinister expression upon his face. "Remember, these fugitives are
+found in your house, and you are liable to arrest."
+
+"I don't know--indeed I don't!" protested the old fellow, trembling
+beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police,
+and held them in dread.
+
+"Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!" he smiled. "Well, perhaps your
+memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also
+arrested."
+
+"But, your Excellency, I--"
+
+"Enough!" blared the bristly officer. "You have given shelter to
+conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?"
+
+"But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!" the poor old man
+protested. "His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot."
+
+"We shall see afterwards," he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of
+police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully,
+an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They
+upset everything and pried everywhere.
+
+"You may find papers or letters," said the officer. "Search thoroughly."
+And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards
+in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.
+
+A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly
+refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted
+on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by
+what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the
+Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom,
+I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared
+that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of
+the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be
+actively making a house-to-house search.
+
+But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her
+own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and
+dastardly plot. That gray dress of hers might, I recollected, betray her
+if she dared to venture near any town, while her affliction would, of
+itself, be plain evidence of identification. All I hoped was that she
+had gone and hidden herself in the forest somewhere in the vicinity to
+wait until the danger of recapture had passed.
+
+For nearly half an hour I argued with the police officer whose intention
+it was to take me under arrest to Helsingfors. Once there, however, I
+knew too well that my liberty would be probably gone for ever. Whatever
+was the Baron's motive in holding the poor girl a prisoner, it would
+also be his motive to silence me. I knew too much for his liking.
+
+"I refuse to go to Helsingfors," I said defiantly. "I am a British
+subject, and demand to be taken back to the port where my passport was
+vised." This argument I repeated time after time, until at length I
+succeeded in convincing him that I really had a right to be taken to
+Abo, and to seek the aid of the British Vice-Consul if necessary.
+
+For as long as possible I succeeded in delaying our departure, but at
+length, just as the yellow sun began to struggle through the gray
+clouds, we were all three compelled to depart in sorrowful procession.
+
+What, we wondered, had really happened to Elma? It was evident that she
+had not fallen into the hands of the police; nevertheless, the fact that
+the door of the inner room was open caused them to look upon the
+statement of the wood-cutter with distinct suspicion and disbelief.
+
+Our captors seemed quite well aware of all the circumstances of our
+escape from Kajana, and were consequently filled with chagrin that Elma,
+the person they so much desired to recapture, had slipped through their
+fingers. While the police rode, we were compelled to walk before them,
+and after trudging ten miles or so through the forest we came across
+another small posse of police, who were apparently in search of us, for
+they expressed delight when they saw us under arrest.
+
+"Where is the woman?" inquired one officer of the other.
+
+"Still at liberty," replied the man who held us as prisoners. "In hiding
+twenty versts back, I think."
+
+"Ah, we shall find her before long," he said confidently. "Within twelve
+hours we shall have searched the whole forest. She cannot escape us."
+
+Our captors explained who we were, and then we were pushed forward
+again, skirting a great wide lake called the Nasjarvi, along the wooded
+shore of which we walked the whole day long until, at sundown, we came
+to a picturesque little log-built town facing the water, called
+Filppula. Here we obtained a hasty meal, and afterwards took the train
+down to Abo, where we arrived next morning, after a very uncomfortable
+and sleepless journey.
+
+At nine o'clock I stood in the big bare office of Michael Boranski,
+where only a few days before we had had such a heated argument. As soon
+as the Chief of Police entered, he recognized me under arrest, and
+dismissed my guards with a wave of the hand--all save the officer who
+had brought me there. The Finnish driver and the old wood-cutter were in
+another room, therefore I stood alone with the police-officer of
+Helsingfors and the Chief of Police at Abo. The latter listened to the
+officer's story of my arrest without saying a word.
+
+"The prisoner, your Excellency, desired to be brought here to you before
+being taken to Helsingfors. He said you would be aware of the facts."
+
+"And so I am," remarked Boranski, with a smile. "There is no conspiracy.
+You must at once release this gentleman and the other two prisoners."
+
+"But, Excellency, the Governor-General has issued orders for the
+prisoner's arrest and deportation to Helsingfors."
+
+"That may be. But I am Chief of Police in Abo, and I release him."
+
+The officer looked at me in such blank astonishment that I could not
+resist smiling.
+
+"I am well aware of the reason of this Englishman's visit to the north,"
+added Boranski. "More need not be said. Has the lady been arrested?"
+
+"No, your Excellency. Every effort is being made to find her. Colonel
+Smirnoff has already been relieved of his post as Governor of Kajana,
+and many of the guards are under arrest for complicity in the plot to
+allow the woman to escape."
+
+"Ah, yes. I see from the despatches that a reward is offered for her
+recapture."
+
+"The Governor-General is determined that she shall not escape," remarked
+the other.
+
+"She is probably hidden in the forest, somewhere or other."
+
+"Of course. They are making a thorough search over every verst of it. If
+she is there, she will most certainly be found."
+
+"No doubt," remarked Boranski, leaning back in his padded chair and
+looking at me meaningly across the littered table. "And now I wish to
+speak to this Englishman privately, so please leave us. Also inform the
+other two prisoners that they are at liberty."
+
+"But your Excellency does this upon his own responsibility," he said
+anxiously. "Remember that I brought them to you under arrest."
+
+"And I release them entirely at my own discretion," he said. "As Chief
+of Police of this province, I am permitted to use my jurisdiction, and I
+exercise it in this matter. You are liberty to report that at
+Helsingfors, if you so desire, but I should suggest that you say nothing
+unless absolutely obliged--you understand?"
+
+The manner in which Boranski spoke apparently decided my captor, for
+after a moment's hesitation he said, saluting:
+
+"If that is really your wish, then I will obey." And he left.
+
+"Excellency!" exclaimed the Chief of Police, rising quickly and walking
+towards me as soon as the door was closed, and we were alone, "you have
+had a very narrow escape--very. I did my best to assist you. I succeeded
+in bribing the water-guards at Kajana in order that you might secure the
+lady's release. But it seems that just at the very moment when you were
+about to get away one of the guards turned informer and roused the
+governor of the castle, with the result that you all three nearly lost
+your lives. The whole matter has been reported to me officially, and,"
+he added with a grim smile, "my men are now searching everywhere for
+you."
+
+"But why is Baron Oberg so extremely anxious to recapture Miss Heath?" I
+asked earnestly.
+
+"I have no idea," was his reply. "The secret orders from Helsingfors to
+me are to arrest her at all hazards--alive or dead."
+
+"Which means that the Baron would not regret if she was dead," I
+remarked, in response to which he nodded in the affirmative.
+
+I told him of the faithful services of Felix, the Finlander, whereupon
+he said simply:
+
+"I told you that you might trust him implicitly."
+
+"But now that you have shown yourself my friend," I said, "you will
+assist Miss Heath to escape this man, who desires to hold her prisoner
+in that awful place. They are driving her mad."
+
+"I will do my best," he answered, but shaking his head dubiously. "But
+you must recollect that Baron Oberg is Governor-General of Finland,
+with all the powers of the Czar himself."
+
+"And if Elma Heath again falls into his unscrupulous hands, she will
+die," I declared.
+
+"Ah!" he sighed, looking me straight in the face, "I fear that what you
+say is only too true. She evidently holds some secret which he fears she
+will reveal. He wishes to rearrest her in order--well--" he added in a
+low tone, "in order to close her lips. It would not be the first time
+that persons have been silenced in secret at Kajana. Many fatal
+accidents take place in that fortress, you know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"THE STRANGLER"
+
+
+Where was Elma? What was the cause of her inexplicable disappearance
+into the gloomy forest while we had slept?
+
+I returned to the hotel where I had stayed on my arrival, a comfortable
+place called the Phoenix, and lunched there alone. Both Felix, the Finn,
+and my host, the wood-cutter, had received their _douceurs_ and left,
+but to the last-named I had given instructions to return home at once
+and report by telegraph any news of my lost one.
+
+A thousand conflicting thoughts arose within me as I sat in that crowded
+_salle-a-manger_ filled with a gobbling crowd of the commercial men of
+Abo. I had, I recognized, now to deal with the most powerful man in that
+country, and I suffered a distinct disadvantage by being in ignorance of
+the reason he held that sweet English girl a prisoner. The tragedy of
+the dastardly manner in which she had been willfully maimed caused my
+blood to boil within me. I had never believed that in this civilized
+twentieth century such things could be.
+
+Michael Boranski had given his pledge to assist me, yet he had most
+plainly explained to me his fears. The Baron was intent upon again
+getting Elma into his power. Was it at his orders, I wondered, that the
+sweet-faced girl had been deprived of speech and hearing? Had she fallen
+an innocent victim to his infamous scheming?
+
+About me men were eating strange dishes and talking in Finnish, while
+others were smoking and drinking their vodka; but I was in no mood for
+observation. My only thought was of she who was now lost to me.
+
+Why had she disappeared without warning I was at loss to imagine, yet I
+could only surmise that her flight had been compulsory. Some women
+possess a mysterious sense of intuition, a curious and indescribable
+faculty of knowing when evil threatens them, that presents a strange and
+puzzling problem to our scientists. It is unaccountable, and yet many
+women possess it in a very marked degree. Was it, therefore, possible
+that Elma had awakened, and being warned of her peril had fled without
+arousing us? The suggestion was possible, but I feared improbable.
+
+Another very curious feature in the affair was the sudden manner in
+which Michael Boranski had exerted his power and influence in order to
+render me that service. He had actually bribed the guards of Kajana; he
+had instructed the faithful Felix, he had provided our boat, and he had
+ordered the nun to open the water-gate to me. Why?
+
+There was, I felt convinced, some hidden motive in all that sudden and
+marked friendliness. That he really hated the English I had seen plainly
+when we had first met, and I had only compelled him to serve me by
+presenting the order signed by the Emperor, which made me his guest
+within the Russian dominions. Even that document did not account for the
+length he had gone to secure the release of the woman I now loved in
+secret. The more I thought it over, the more anxious did I become. I
+could discern no motive for his friendliness, and, truth to tell, I
+always distrust those who are too friendly. What straight and decided
+line of action should I take? Carefully I went over all the strange
+events that had happened in England, and while anxious to obtain some
+solution of the amazing problem, yet I could not bring myself to leave
+Finland, and allow Elma to fall into the clutches of that high official
+who so persistently sought her end. No. I would go to him and face him.
+I was anxious to see what manner of man was "The Strangler of Finland."
+Therefore, that same evening I left Abo, and traveled by rail up to the
+junction Toijala, whence, after a wait of six hours, I resumed by slow
+journey to Helsingfors. I put up at Kamp's, an elegant hotel on the long
+esplanade overlooking the port, and found the town, with its handsome
+streets and spacious squares, to be a much finer place than I had
+believed. When I inquired of the French director of my hotel for the
+residence of his Excellency, the Governor-General, he regarded me with
+some surprise, saying:
+
+"The Baron lives up at the Palace, m'sieur--that great building opposite
+the Salutong. The driver of your drosky will point it out to you."
+
+"Is his Excellency in Helsingfors at the present moment?" I asked.
+
+"The Baron never leaves the Palace, m'sieur," responded the man. "This
+is a strange country, you know," he added, with a grin. "It is said that
+his Excellency is in hourly fear of assassination."
+
+"Perhaps not without cause," I remarked in a low voice, at which he
+elevated his shoulders and smiled.
+
+At noon I descended from a drosky before a long, gray, massive building,
+over the big doorway of which was a large escutcheon bearing the Russian
+arms emblazoned in gold, and on entering where a sentry stood on either
+side, a colossal concierge in livery of bright blue and gold came
+forward to meet me, asking in Russian:
+
+"Whom do you wish to see?"
+
+"His Excellency, the Governor-General."
+
+"Have you an appointment?"
+
+"No."
+
+"His Excellency sees no one without an appointment," the man told me
+somewhat gruffly.
+
+"I am not here on public business, but upon a private matter," I
+explained. "Perhaps I may see his Excellency's secretary?"
+
+"If you wish, but I repeat that his Excellency sees no one without a
+previous appointment."
+
+I knew this quite well, for the "Strangler of Finland," fearful of
+assassination, was as unapproachable as the Czar himself. Following the
+directions of the concierge, however, I crossed a great bare courtyard,
+and, ascending a wide stone staircase, was confronted by a servant, who,
+on hearing my inquiry took me into a waiting-room, and left with my card
+to Colonel Luganski, whom he informed me was the Baron's private
+secretary.
+
+After ten minutes or so the man returned, saying:
+
+"The Colonel will see you if you will please step this way," and
+following him he conducted me into the richly furnished private
+apartments of the Palace, across a great hall filled with fine
+paintings, and then up a long thickly-carpeted passage to a small,
+elegant room, where a tall bald-headed man in military uniform stood
+awaiting me.
+
+"Your name is M'sieur Gregg," he exclaimed in very good French, "and I
+understand you desire audience of his Excellency, the Governor-General.
+I regret, however, that he never gives audience to strangers."
+
+"The matter upon which I desire to see his Excellency is of a purely
+private and confidential nature," I said, for used as I was to the ways
+of foreign officialdom, I spoke with the same firm courtesy as himself.
+
+"I am very sorry, m'sieur, but I fear it will be necessary in that case
+for you to write to his Excellency, and mark your letter 'personal.' It
+will then go into the Governor-General's own hands."
+
+"What I have to say cannot be committed to writing," was my reply. "I
+must see Baron Oberg upon a matter which affects him personally, and
+which admits of no delay."
+
+He glanced at me quickly, and then in a low voice inquired:
+
+"Is it in regard to a--well, a conspiracy?"
+
+His question instantly suggested to me a ruse, and I replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Then you can place the facts before me without the slightest
+hesitation," he said, going to the door and slipping the bolt into its
+socket. "Anything spoken into my ear is as though it were spoken into
+that of his Excellency himself."
+
+"I much regret, M'sieur the Colonel, that I must see the Baron in
+person."
+
+"Has the plot assassination as its object--or revolt?" he asked
+pointedly.
+
+"That I will explain to the Baron only."
+
+"But I tell you he will not see you. We have so many persons here with
+secret information concerning Finnish conspiracies against our Russian
+rule. Why, if his Excellency saw everyone who desired to see him, he
+would be compelled to give audience the whole twenty-four hours round."
+
+At a glance I saw that this elegant Colonel, who seemed to take the
+greatest pride over his exquisitely kept person and his spotless
+uniform, did not intend to allow me the satisfaction of an audience of
+that most hated official of the Czar. The latter was in fear of the
+dagger, the pistol, or the bomb, and consequently hedged himself in by
+persons of the Colonel's type--courteous, diplomatic, but utterly
+unbending. After some further argument, I said at last in a firm tone:
+
+"I wish to impress upon you the extreme importance of the information I
+have to impart, and can only repeat that it is a matter concerning his
+Excellency privately. Will you therefore do me the favor to take my name
+to him?"
+
+"His Excellency refuses to be troubled with the names of strangers," was
+his cold reply, as he turned over my card in his hand.
+
+"But if I write upon it the nature of my business, and enclose it in an
+envelope, will you then take it to him?" I suggested.
+
+He hesitated for a short time, twisting his mustache, and then replied
+with great reluctance:
+
+"Well, if you are so determined, you may write your business upon your
+card."
+
+I therefore took out one, and on the back wrote in French the words
+which I knew must have the effect of obtaining an audience for me:
+
+    "_To give information regarding Miss Elma Heath_."
+
+This I enclosed in the envelope he handed to me, when, ringing a bell,
+he handed it to the footman who appeared, with orders to take it to his
+Excellency and await a reply. The response came in a few minutes.
+
+"His Excellency will give audience to the English m'sieur."
+
+Then I rose and followed the footman through several wide corridors
+filled with palms and flowers, which formed a kind of winter-garden,
+until we crossed a red-carpeted ante-room, where two statuesque sentries
+stood on guard, and the man conducting me rapped at the great polished
+mahogany doors of the room beyond.
+
+A voice responded, the door was opened, and I found myself in a high,
+beautifully-painted room, with long windows hung with pastel-blue silk
+with heavy gilt fringe, a pastel-blue carpet, and upon the opposite wall
+a great canopy of rich purple velvet bearing the double-headed eagle
+embroidered in gold. The apartment was splendidly decorated, and in the
+center of the parquet floor, with his back to the light, was the thin,
+wiry figure of an elderly man in a funereal frock-coat, in the lapel of
+which showed the red and yellow ribbon of the Order of Saint Anne. His
+hands were behind his back, and he stood purposely in such a position
+that when I entered I could not at first see his face against the
+strong, gray light behind.
+
+But when the footman had bowed and retired and we were alone, he turned
+slightly, and I then saw that his bony face, with high cheek-bones,
+slight gray side-whiskers, hard mouth and black eyes set closely
+together, was one that bore the mark of evil upon it--the keen, sinister
+countenance of one who could act without any compunction and without
+regret. Truly one would not be surprised at any cruel, dastardly action
+of a man with such a face--the face of an oppressor.
+
+"Well?" he snapped in French in a high-pitched voice. "You want to see
+me concerning that mad English girl? What picturesque lies do you intend
+to tell me concerning her?"
+
+"I have no intention of telling any untruths concerning her," was my
+quick response, as I faced him unflinchingly. "She has told me
+sufficient to--"
+
+"She has told you something! Ah! I guessed as much. I expected this!"
+And I saw that his thin, crafty face went pale, while his eyes glanced
+evilly upon me. He believed that she had revealed to me her secret. He
+placed his hand upon the back of a chair wherein was concealed an
+electric button, and next instant a little stout man in shabby black
+appeared as though by magic through a secret door hidden in the dark
+paneling of the audience chamber--the man who was his personal guard
+against the plots for his assassination.
+
+His Excellency spoke, and the words he uttered staggered me. I stood
+aghast.
+
+"Seize that man!" he cried, pointing to me. "He is armed! He has just
+threatened to kill me! He is the man against whom we were recently
+warned--the Englishman!"
+
+"Ah!" I cried, standing before the thin-faced official of the Czar, the
+unscrupulous man who had crushed Finland beneath the iron heel of
+Russia, and who, by his lying allegation, now held me in his power. "I
+see your object, Baron Oberg! You intend to arrest me as a conspirator!"
+
+"Search the fellow. He has a revolver there in his hip-pocket," declared
+the Governor-General, and in an instant the short, ferret-eyed little
+man had run his hands down me and felt my weapon.
+
+I drew it forth and handed it to him, saying:
+
+"You are quite welcome to it if you fear that I am here with any
+sinister motive."
+
+"He obtained admission by a clever ruse," the Baron explained to the
+police agent. "And then he threatened me."
+
+"It's untrue," I protested hotly. "I have merely called to see you
+regarding the young English lady, Elma Heath--the unfortunate lady whom
+you consigned to the fortress of Kajana."
+
+"The mad woman, you mean!" he laughed.
+
+"She is not mad," I cried, "but as sane as you yourself. It is you who
+intended that the horrors of the castle should drive her insane, and
+thus your secret should be kept!"
+
+"What do you suggest?" he demanded, stepping a few paces towards me.
+
+"I mean, Xavier Oberg, that you would kill Elma Heath if you dared to
+do so," I answered plainly, as I faced him unflinchingly.
+
+"You see?" he laughed, turning to the stout man at my side. "The fellow
+is insane. He does not know what he is talking about. Ah, my dear
+Malkoff, I've had a narrow escape! He came here intending to shoot me."
+
+"I did not," I protested. "I am here to demand satisfaction on behalf of
+Miss Heath."
+
+"Oh!--well, if the lady cares to come here herself, I will give her the
+satisfaction she desires," was his crafty reply.
+
+"The lady has escaped you, and it is therefore hardly likely she will
+willingly return to Helsingfors," I said.
+
+"It was you who succeeded, by throwing the guard into the water, in
+abducting her from the castle," he remarked. "But," he added sneeringly,
+with a sinister smile, "I presume your gallantry was prompted by
+affection--eh?"
+
+"That is my own affair."
+
+"A deaf and dumb woman is surely not a very cheerful companion!"
+
+"And who caused her that affliction?" I cried hotly. "When she was at
+Chichester she possessed speech and hearing as other girls. Indeed, she
+was not afflicted when on board the _Lola_ in Leghorn harbor only a few
+months ago. Perhaps you recollect the narrow escape the yacht had on the
+Meloria sands?"
+
+His eyes met mine, and I saw by his drawn face and narrow brows that my
+words were causing him the utmost consternation. My object was to make
+him believe that I knew more than I really did--to hold him in fear, in
+fact.
+
+"Perhaps the man whom some know as Hornby, or Woodroffe, could tell an
+interesting story," I went on. "He will, no doubt, when he meets Elma
+Heath, and finds the terrible affliction of which she has been the
+victim."
+
+His thin, bony countenance was bloodless, his mouth twitched and his
+gray brows contracted quickly.
+
+"I haven't the least idea what you mean, my dear sir," he stammered.
+"All that you say is entirely enigmatical to me. What have I to do with
+this mad Englishwoman's affairs?"
+
+"Send out this man," I said, pointing to the detective Malkoff, who had
+appeared from behind the paneling of the audience-chamber. "Send him
+out, and I will tell you."
+
+But the representative of the Czar, always as much in dread of
+assassination as his imperial master, refused. I saw that what I had
+said had upset him, and that he was not at all clear as to how much or
+how little of the true facts I knew.
+
+The connection between the little miniature cross of the Order of St.
+Anne and that red and yellow ribbon in his button-hole struck me
+forcibly at that moment, and I said:
+
+"I have no desire to make any statements before a second person. I came
+here to see you privately, and in private will I speak. I have certain
+information that will, I feel confident, be of the utmost interest to
+you--concerning another woman, Armida Santini."
+
+His lips were pressed together, and I noticed how he started when I
+uttered the name of that woman whom I had found dead in Rannoch Wood,
+and whose body had so mysteriously disappeared.
+
+"And what on earth can the woman concern me?" he asked, with a brave
+attempt to remain cool, still speaking in French.
+
+"Only that you knew her," was my brief reply. Then, with my eyes still
+fixed upon his, I asked: "Will you not now request this gentleman to
+retire?"
+
+He hesitated a moment, and then with a wave of his hand dismissed the
+man he had summoned to his aid. A moment later the "Strangler's"
+personal protector had disappeared through that secret door in the
+paneling by which he had entered.
+
+"Well?" asked the Baron, turning quickly to me again, his dark, evil
+eyes trying to fathom my intentions.
+
+"Well?" I asked. "And what, pray, can you profit by denouncing me as an
+assassin? Remember, Baron, that your secret is mine," I said in a clear
+voice full of meaning.
+
+"And your intention is blackmail--eh?" he snapped, walking to the window
+and back again. "How much do you want?"
+
+"My intention is nothing of the kind. My object is to avenge the
+outrageous injury to Elma Heath."
+
+"Of course. That is only natural, m'sieur, if you have fallen in love
+with her," he said. "But are not your intentions somewhat ill-advised
+considering her position as a criminal lunatic?"
+
+"She is neither," I protested quickly.
+
+"Very well. You know better than myself," he laughed. "The offense for
+which she was condemned to confinement in a fortress was the attempted
+assassination of Madame Vakuroff, wife of the General commanding the
+Uleaborg Military Division."
+
+"Assassination!" I cried. "Have you actually sent her to prison as a
+murderess?"
+
+"I have not. The Criminal Court of Abo did so," he said dryly. "The
+offense has since been proved to have been the outcome of a political
+conspiracy, and the Minister of the Interior in Petersburg last week
+signed an order for the prisoner's transportation to the island of
+Saghalien."
+
+"Ah!" I remarked with set teeth. "Because you fear lest she shall write
+down your secret."
+
+"You are insulting! You evidently do not know what you are saying," he
+exclaimed resentfully.
+
+"I know what I am saying quite well. You have requested her removal to
+Saghalien in order that the truth shall be never known. But Baron
+Oberg," I added with mock politeness, "you may do as you will, you may
+send Elma Heath to her grave, you may hold me prisoner if you dare, but
+there are still witnesses of your crime that will rise against you."
+
+In an instant he went ghastly pale, and I knew that my blind shot had
+struck its mark. The man before me was guilty of some crime, but what it
+was only Elma herself could tell. That he had had her arrested for an
+attempted political assassination only showed how ingeniously and
+craftily the heartless ruler of that ruined country had laid his plans.
+He feared Elma, and therefore had conspired to have her sent out to that
+dismal penal island in the far-off Pacific.
+
+"You do not fear arrest, m'sieur?" he asked, as though with some
+surprise.
+
+"Not in the least--at least, not arrest by you. You may be the
+representative of the Emperor in Finland, but even here there is justice
+for the innocent."
+
+A sinister smile played around the thin, gray lips of the man whose very
+name was hated through the great empire of the Czar, and was synonymous
+of oppression, injustice, and heartless tyranny.
+
+"All I can repeat," he said, "is that if you bring the young
+Englishwoman here I shall be quite prepared to hear her appeal." And he
+laughed harshly.
+
+"You ask that because you know it is impossible," I said, whereat he
+again laughed in my face--a laugh which made me wonder whether Elma had
+not already fallen into his hands. The uncertainty of her fate held me
+in terrible suspense.
+
+"I merely wish to impress upon you the fact that I have not the
+slightest interest whatsoever in the person in question," he said
+coldly. "You seem to have formed some romantic attachment towards this
+young woman who attempted to poison Madame Vakuroff, and to have
+succeeded in rescuing her from Kajana. You afterwards disregard the fact
+that you are liable to a long term of imprisonment yourself, and
+actually have the audacity to seek audience of me and make all sorts of
+hints and suggestions that I have held the woman a prisoner for my own
+ends!"
+
+"Not only do I repeat that, Baron Oberg," I said quickly. "But I also
+allege that it was at your instigation that in Siena an operation was
+performed upon the unfortunate girl which deprived her of speech and
+hearing."
+
+"At my instigation?"
+
+"Yes, at yours!"
+
+He laughed again, but uneasily, a forced laugh, and leaned against the
+edge of the big writing-table near the window.
+
+"Well, what next?" he inquired, pretending to be interested in my
+allegations. "What do you want of me?"
+
+"I desire you to give the Mademoiselle Heath her complete freedom," I
+said.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All--for the present."
+
+"But her future is not in my hands. The Minister in Petersburg has
+decreed her removal to Saghalien as a person dangerous to the State."
+
+"Which means that she will be ill-treated--knouted to death, perhaps."
+
+"We do not use the knout in the Russian prisons nowadays," he said
+briefly. "His Majesty has decreed its abolition."
+
+"But you adopt torture in Kajana and Schusselburg instead."
+
+"My time is too limited to discuss our penal system, m'sieur," he
+exclaimed impatiently, while I could well see that he was anxious to
+escape before I made any further charges against him. I had already
+shown him that Elma had spoken, and he feared that she had told the
+truth. While this would embitter him against her and cause him to seek
+to silence her at all hazards, it was of course in my own interests that
+he should fear any revelations that I might make.
+
+"You have posed in England as the uncle of Elma Heath, and yet you here
+hold her prisoner. For what reason?" I demanded.
+
+"She is held prisoner by the State--for conspiracy against Russian
+rule--not by herself personally."
+
+"Who enticed her here? Why you, yourself. Who conspired to throw the
+guilt of this attempted murder of the general's wife upon her? You--you,
+the man whom they call 'The Strangler of Finland'! But I will avenge the
+cruel and abominable affliction you have placed upon her. Her
+secret--your secret, Baron Oberg--shall be published to the world. You
+are her enemy--and therefore mine!"
+
+"Very well," he growled between his teeth, advancing towards me
+threateningly, his fists clenched in his rage. "Recollect, m'sieur, that
+you have insulted me. Recollect that I am Governor-General of Finland."
+
+"If you were Czar himself, I should not hesitate to denounce you as the
+tyrant and mutilator of a poor defenseless woman."
+
+"And to whom, pray, will you tell this romantic story of yours?" he
+laughed hoarsely. "To your prison walls below the lake at Kajana? Yes,
+M'sieur Gregg, you will go there, and once within the fortress you shall
+never again see the light of day. You threaten me--the Governor-General
+of Finland!" he laughed in a strange, high-pitched key as he threw
+himself into a chair and scribbled something rapidly upon paper,
+appending his signature in his small crabbed handwriting.
+
+"I do not threaten," I said in open defiance, "I shall act."
+
+"And so shall I," he said with an evil grin upon his bony face as he
+blotted what he had written and took it up, adding: "In the darkness
+and silence of your living tomb, you can tell whatever strange stories
+you like concerning me. They are used to idiots where you are going," he
+added grimly.
+
+"Oh! And where am I going?"
+
+"Back to Kanaja. This order consigns you to confinement there as a
+dangerous political conspirator, as one who has threatened me--it
+consigns you to the cells below the lake--for life!"
+
+I laughed aloud, and my hand sought my wallet wherein was that
+all-powerful document--the order of the Emperor which gave me, as an
+imperial guest, immunity from arrest. I would produce it as my
+trump-card.
+
+Next second, however, I held my breath, and I think I must have turned
+pale. My pocket was empty! My wallet had been stolen! Entirely and
+helplessly I had fallen into the hands of the tyrant of the Czar.
+
+His own personal interest would be to consign me to a living tomb in
+that grim fortress of Kajana, the horrors of which were unspeakable. I
+had seen enough during my inspection of the Russian prisons as a
+journalist to know that there, in strangled Finland, I should not be
+treated with the same consideration or humanity as in Petersburg or
+Warsaw. The Governor-General consigned me to Kajana as a "political,"
+which was synonymous with a sentence of death in those damp, dark
+_oubliettes_ beneath the water-dungeons every whit as awful as those of
+the Paris Bastile.
+
+We faced each other, and I looked straight into his gray, bony face, and
+answered in a tone of defiance:
+
+"You are Governor-General, it is true, but you will, I think, reflect
+before you consign me, an Englishman, to prison without trial. I know
+full well that the English are hated by Russia, yet I assure you that in
+London we entertain no love for your nation or its methods."
+
+"Yes," he laughed, "you are quite right. Russia has no use for an effete
+ally such as England is."
+
+"Effete or powerful, my country is still able to present an ultimatum
+when diplomacy requires it," I said. "Therefore I have no fear. Send me
+to prison, and I tell you that the responsibility rests upon yourself."
+And folding my arms I kept my eyes intently upon his, so that he should
+not see that I wavered.
+
+"As for the responsibility, I certainly do not fear that, m'sieur," he
+said.
+
+"But the exposure that will result--are you prepared to face that?" I
+asked. "Perhaps you are not aware that others beside myself--one other,
+indeed, who is a diplomatist--is aware of my journey here? If I do not
+return, your Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Petersburg will be pressed
+for a reason."
+
+"Which they will not give."
+
+"Then if they do not, the truth will be out," I said laughing harshly,
+for I saw how determined he had become to hold me prisoner. "Come, call
+up your myrmidon and send me to Kajana. It will be the first step
+towards your own downfall."
+
+"We shall see," he growled.
+
+"Ah! you surely do not think that I, after ten years' service in the
+British diplomatic service, would dare to come to Finland upon this
+quest--would dare to face the rotten and corrupt officialdom which
+Russia has placed within this country--without first taking some
+adequate precaution? No, Baron. Therefore I defy you, and I leave
+Helsingfors to-night."
+
+"You will not. You are under arrest."
+
+I laughed heartily and snapped my fingers, saying:
+
+"Before you give me over to your police, first telegraph to your
+Minister of Finance, Monsieur de Witte, and inquire of him who and what
+I am."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"You have merely to send my name and description to the Minister and ask
+for a reply," I said. "He will give you instructions--or, if you so
+desire, ask his Majesty yourself."
+
+"And why, pray, does his Majesty concern himself about you?" he asked,
+at once puzzled.
+
+"You will learn later, after I am confined in Kajana and your secret is
+known in Petersburg."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," I said, "I mean that I have taken all the necessary steps to
+be forearmed against you. The day I am incarcerated by your order, the
+whole truth will be known. I shall not be the sufferer--but you will."
+
+My words, purposely enigmatical, misled him. He saw the drift of my
+argument, and being of course unaware of how much I knew, he was still
+in fear of me. My only uncertainty was of the actual fate of poor Elma.
+My wallet had been stolen--with a purpose, without a doubt--for the
+thief had deprived me of that most important of all documents, the open
+sesame to every closed door, the ukase of the Czar.
+
+"You defy me!" he said hoarsely, turning back to the window with the
+written order for my imprisonment as a political still in his hand. "But
+we shall see."
+
+"You rule Finland," I said in a hard tone, "but you have no power over
+Gordon Gregg."
+
+"I have power, and intend to exert it."
+
+"For your own ruin," I remarked with a self-confident smile. "You may
+give your torturers orders to kill me--orders that a fatal accident
+shall occur within the fortress--but I tell you frankly that my death
+will neither erase nor conceal your own offenses. There are others, away
+in England, who are aware of them, and who will, in order to avenge my
+death, speak the truth. Remember that although Elma Heath has been
+deprived of both hearing and of speech, she can still write down the
+true facts in black and white. The Czar may be your patron, and you his
+favorite, but his Majesty has no tolerance of officials who are guilty
+of what you are guilty of. You talk of arresting me!" I added with a
+smile. "Why, you ought rather to go on your knees and beg my silence."
+
+He went white with rage at my cutting sarcasm. He literally boiled over,
+for he saw that I was quite cool and had no fear of him or of the
+terrible punishment to which he intended to consign me. Besides which,
+he was filled with wonder regarding the exact amount of information
+which Elma had imparted to me.
+
+"There are certain persons," I went on, "to whom it would be of intense
+interest to know the true reason why the steam-yacht _Lola_ put into
+Leghorn; why I was entertained on board her; why the safe in the
+British Consulate was rifled, and why the unfortunate girl, kept a
+prisoner on board, was taken on shore just before the hurried sailing of
+the vessel. And there are other mysteries which the English police are
+trying to solve, namely, the reason Armida Santini and a man disguised
+as her husband died in Scotland at the hand of an assassin. But surely I
+need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the
+truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward."
+
+"For whom?" he asked, opening his eyes.
+
+"For you. Come, Baron," I said, "can we not yet speak frankly?"
+
+But he was silent for a moment, a fact which was in itself proof that my
+pointed argument had caused him to reconsider his intention of sending
+me under escort back to that castle of terror.
+
+If my journey there was in order to meet my love, I would not have
+cared. It was the ignorance of her whereabouts or of her fate that held
+me in such deep, all-consuming anxiety. Each hour that passed increased
+my fond and tender affection for her. And yet what irony of
+circumstance! She had been cruelly snatched from me at the very moment
+that freedom had been ours.
+
+I think it was well that I assumed that air of defiance with the man who
+had ground Finland beneath his heel. He was unused to it. No one dared
+to go against his will, or to utter taunt or threat to him. He was
+paramount, with all the powers of an emperor--the power, indeed, of life
+and death. Therefore he was not in the habit of being either thwarted or
+criticised, and I could see that my words had aroused within him a
+boiling tumult of resentment and of rage. I told him nothing of the loss
+of my wallet or of the precious document that it had contained. My
+defiance was merely upon principle.
+
+"Arrest me if you like. Denounce me by means of any lie that arises to
+your lips, but remember that the truth is known beyond the confines of
+the Russian Empire, and for that reason traces will be sought of me and
+full explanation demanded. I have taken precaution, Xavier Oberg," I
+added, "therefore do your worst. I repeat again that I defy you!"
+
+He paced the big room, his thin claw-like hands still clenched, his
+yellow teeth grinding, his dark, deep-set eyes fixed straight before
+him. If he had dared, he would have struck me down at his feet. But he
+did not dare. I saw too plainly that even though my wallet was gone I
+still held the trump-card--that he feared me.
+
+The mention I had made of the Minister of Finance, however, seemed to
+cause him considerable hesitation. That high official had the ear of the
+Emperor, and if I were a friend there might be inquiries. As I stood
+before him leaning against a small buhl table, I watched all the complex
+workings of his mind, and tried to read the mysterious motive which had
+caused him to consign poor Elma to Kajana.
+
+He was a proud bully, possessing neither pity nor remorse, an average
+specimen of the high Russian official, a hide-bound bureaucrat, a slave
+to etiquette and possessing a veneer of polish. But beneath it all I saw
+that he was a coward in deadly fear of assassination--a coward who
+dreaded lest some secret should be revealed. That concealed door in the
+paneling with the armed guard lurking behind was sufficiently plain
+evidence that he was not the fearless Governor-General that was
+popularly supposed. He, "The Strangler of Finland," had crushed the
+gallant nation into submission, ruining their commerce, sapping the
+country by impressing its youth into the Russian army, forbidding the
+use of the Finnish language, and taxing the people until the factories
+had been compelled to close down while the peasantry starved. And now,
+on the verge of revolt, there had arisen a band of patriots who resented
+ruin, and who had already warned his Majesty by letter that if Baron
+Oberg were not removed from his post he would die.
+
+These and other thoughts ran through my mind in the silence that
+followed our heated argument, for I saw well that he was in actual fear
+of me. I had led him to believe that I knew everything, and that his
+future was in my hands, while he, on his part, was anxious to hold me
+prisoner, and yet dared not do so.
+
+My wallet had probably been stolen by some lurking police-spy, for
+Russian agents abound everywhere in Finland, reporting conspiracies that
+do not exist and denouncing the innocent as "politicals."
+
+The Baron had halted, and was looking through one of the great windows
+down upon the courtyard below where the sentries were pacing. The palace
+was for him a gilded prison, for he dared not go out for a drive in one
+or other of the parks or for a blow on the water across to Hogholmen or
+Dagero, being compelled to remain there for months without showing
+himself publicly. People in Abo had told me that when he did go out into
+the streets of Helsingfors it was at night, and he usually disguised
+himself in the uniform of a private soldier of the guard, thus escaping
+recognition by those who, driven to desperation by injustice, sought his
+life.
+
+A long silence had fallen between us, and it now occurred to me to take
+advantage of his hesitation. Therefore I said in a firm voice, in
+French--
+
+"I think, Baron, our interview is at an end, is it not? Therefore I wish
+you good-day."
+
+He turned upon me suddenly with an evil flash in his dark eyes, and a
+snarling imprecation in Russian upon his lips. His hand still held the
+order committing me to the fortress.
+
+"But before I leave you will destroy that document. It may fall into
+other hands, you know," and I walked towards him with quick
+determination.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind!" he snapped.
+
+Without further word I snatched the paper from his thin white fingers
+and tore it up before his face. His countenance went livid. I do not
+think I have ever seen a man's face assume such an expression of
+fiendish vindictiveness. It was as though at that instant hell had been
+let loose within his heart.
+
+But I turned upon my heel and went out, passing the sentries in the
+ante-room, along the flower-filled corridors and across the courtyard to
+the main entrance where the gorgeous concierge saluted me as I stepped
+forth into the square.
+
+I had escaped by means of my own diplomacy and firmness. The Czar's
+representative--the man who ruled that country--feared me, and for that
+reason did not hold me prisoner. Yet when I recalled that evil look of
+revenge on my departure, I could not help certain feelings of grave
+apprehension arising within me.
+
+Returning to my hotel, I smoked a cigar in my room and pondered. Where
+was Elma? was the chief question which arose within my mind. By
+remaining in Helsingfors I could achieve nothing further, now that I had
+made the acquaintance of the oppressor, whereas if I returned to Abo I
+might perchance be able to obtain some clue to my love's whereabouts. I
+call her my love because I both pitied and loved the poor afflicted girl
+who was so helpless and defenseless.
+
+Therefore I took the midnight train back to Abo, arriving at the hotel
+next morning. After an hour's rest I set out anxiously in search of
+Felix, the drosky-driver. I found him in his log-built house in the
+Ludno quarter, and when he asked me in I saw, from his face, that he had
+news to impart.
+
+"Well?" I inquired. "And what of the lady? Has she been found?"
+
+"Ah! your Excellency. It is a pity you were not here yesterday," he said
+with a sigh.
+
+"Why? Tell me quickly. What has happened?"
+
+"I have been assisting the police as spy, Excellency, as I often do, and
+I have seen her."
+
+"Seen her! Where?" I cried in quick anxiety.
+
+"Here, in Abo. She arrived yesterday morning from Tammerfors accompanied
+by an Englishman. She had changed her dress, and was all in black. They
+lunched together at the Restaurant du Nord opposite the landing stage,
+and an hour later left by steamer for Petersburg."
+
+"An Englishman!" I cried. "Did you not inform the Chief of Police,
+Boranski?"
+
+"Yes, your Excellency. But he said that their passports being in order
+it was better to allow the lady to proceed. To delay her might mean her
+rearrest in Finland," he added.
+
+"Then their passports were vised here on embarking?" I exclaimed. "What
+was the name upon that of the Englishman?"
+
+"I have it here written down, Excellency. I cannot pronounce your
+difficult English names." And he produced a scrap of dirty paper whereon
+was written in a Russian hand the name--
+
+"Martin Woodroffe."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A DOUBLE GAME AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+
+I went to the railway station, and from the time-table gathered that if
+I left Abo by rail at noon I could be in Petersburg an hour before noon
+on the morrow, or about four hours before the arrival of the steamer by
+which the silent girl and her companion were passengers. This I decided
+upon doing, but before leaving I paid a visit to my friend, Boranski,
+who, to my surprise and delight, handed me my wallet with the Czar's
+letter intact, saying that it had been found upon a German thief who had
+been arrested at the harbor on the previous night. The fellow had, no
+doubt, stolen it from my pocket believing I carried my paper money in
+the flap.
+
+"The affair of the English lady is a most extraordinary one," remarked
+the Chief of Police, toying with his pen as he sat at his big table.
+"She seems to have met this Englishman up at Tammerfors, or at some
+place further north, yet it is curious that her passport should be in
+order even though she fled so precipitately from Kajana. There is a
+mystery connected with her disappearance from the wood-cutter's hut that
+I confess I cannot fathom."
+
+"Neither can I," I said. "I know the man who is with her, and cannot
+help fearing that he is her bitterest enemy--that he is acting in
+concert with the Baron."
+
+"Then why is he taking her to the capital--beyond the jurisdiction of
+the Governor-General?"
+
+"I am going straight to Petersburg to ascertain," I said. "I have only
+come to thank you for your kindness in this matter. Truth to tell, I
+have been somewhat surprised that you should have interested yourself on
+my behalf," I added, looking straight at the uniformed official.
+
+"It was not on yours, but on hers," he answered, somewhat enigmatically.
+"I know something of the affair, but it was my duty as a man to help the
+poor girl to escape from that terrible place. She has, I know, been
+unjustly condemned for the attempted assassination of the wife of a
+General--condemned with a purpose, of course. Such a thing is not
+unusual in Finland."
+
+"Abominable!" I cried. "Oberg is a veritable fiend."
+
+But the man only shrugged his shoulders, saying--
+
+"The orders of his Excellency the Governor-General have to be obeyed,
+whatever they are. We often regret, but we dare not refuse to carry them
+out."
+
+"Russian rule is a disgrace to our modern civilization," I declared
+hotly. "I have every sympathy with those who are fighting for freedom."
+
+"Ah, you are not alone in that," he sighed, speaking in a low whisper,
+and glancing around. "His Majesty would order reforms and ameliorate the
+condition of his people, if only it were possible. But he, like his
+officials, are powerless. Here we speak of the great uprising with bated
+breath, but we, alas! know that it must come one day--very soon--and
+Finland will be the first to endeavor to break her bonds--and the Baron
+Oberg the first to fall."
+
+For nearly an hour I sat with him, surprised to find how, although his
+exterior was so harsh and uncouth, yet his heart really bled for the
+poor starving people he was so constantly forced to oppress.
+
+"I have ruined this town of Abo," he declared, quite frankly. "To my
+own knowledge five hundred innocent persons have gone to prison, and
+another two hundred have been exiled to Siberia. Yet what I have done is
+only at direct orders from Helsingfors--orders that are stern, pitiless
+and unjust. Men have been torn from their families and sent to the
+mines, women have been arrested for no offense and shipped off to
+Saghalien, and mere children have been cast into prison on charges of
+political conspiracy with their elders--in order to Russify the
+province! Only," he added anxiously, "I trust you will never repeat what
+I tell you. You have asked me why I assisted the English Mademoiselle to
+escape from Kajana, and I have explained the reason."
+
+We ate a hearty meal in company at the _Sampalinna_, a restaurant built
+like a Swiss chalet, and at noon I entered the train on the first stage
+of my slow, tedious journey through the great silent forests and along
+the shores of the lakes of Southern Finland, by way of Tavestehus and
+Viborg, to Petersburg.
+
+I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of
+wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended
+the steep gradients. I had not even a newspaper with which to while away
+the time, only my own apprehensive thoughts of whither my helpless love
+was being conducted.
+
+
+Surely to no man was there ever presented such a complicated problem as
+that which I was now trying so vigorously to solve. I loved Elma Heath.
+The more I reflected, the deeper did her sweet countenance and tender
+grace impress themselves upon my heart. I loved her, therefore I was
+striving to overtake her.
+
+The steamer, I learned, would call at Hango and Helsingfors. Would they,
+I wonder, disembark at either of those places? Was the man whom I had
+known as Hornby, the owner of the _Lola_, taking her to place her again
+in the fiendish hands of Xavier Oberg? The very thought of it caused me
+to hold my breath.
+
+Daylight came at last, cold and gray, over those dreary interminable
+marshes where game, especially snipe, seemed abundant, and at a small
+station at the head of a lake called Davidstadt I took my morning glass
+of tea; then we resumed our journey down to Viborg, where a short,
+thick-set Russian of the commercial class, but something of a dandy,
+entered my compartment, and we left express for Petersburg.
+
+We had passed by a small station called Galitsina, near which were many
+villas occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, and were
+traveling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveler,
+having asked permission to smoke, commenced to chat affably. He seemed a
+pleasant fellow, and told me that he was a wool merchant, and that he
+had been having a pleasant vacation trout fishing in the Vuoski above
+the falls of the Imatra, where the pools between the rapids abound with
+fish.
+
+He had told me that on account of the shore being so full of weeds and
+the clearness of the water, fishing from the banks was almost an
+impossibility, and how they had to accustom themselves to troll from a
+boat so small as to only accommodate the rower and the fisherman.
+
+Then he remarked suddenly--
+
+"You are English, I presume--possibly from Helsingfors?"
+
+"No," I answered. "From Abo. I crossed from Stockholm, and am going to
+Petersburg."
+
+"And I also. I live in Petersburg," he added. "We may perhaps meet one
+day. Do you know the capital?"
+
+I explained that I had visited it once before, and had done the usual
+round of sight-seeing. His manner was brisk and to the point, as became
+a man of business, but when we stopped at Bele-Ostrof, on the opposite
+side of the small winding river that separates Finland from Russia
+proper, the Customs officer who came to examine our baggage exchanged a
+curious meaning look with him.
+
+My fellow-traveler believed that I had not observed, yet, keenly on the
+alert as I now was, I was shrewd to detect the least sign or look, and I
+at once resolved to tell the fellow nothing further of my own affairs.
+He was, no doubt, a spy of "The Strangler's," who had followed me all
+the way from Abo, and had only entered my carriage for the final stage
+of the journey.
+
+This revelation caused me some uneasiness, for even though I was able to
+evade the man on arrival in Petersburg, he could no doubt quickly obtain
+news of my whereabouts from the police to whom my passport must be sent.
+I pretended to doze, and lay back with my eyes half-closed watching him.
+When he found me disinclined to talk further, he took up the paper he
+had bought and became engrossed in it, while I, on my part, endeavored
+to form some plan by which to mislead and escape his vigilance.
+
+The fellow meant mischief--that I knew. If Elma was flying in secret and
+he watched me, he would know that she was in Petersburg. At all hazards,
+for my love's sake as well as for mine, I saw that I must escape him.
+The ingeniousness and cleverness of Oberg's spies was proverbial
+throughout Finland, therefore he might not be alone, or in any case, on
+arrival in Petersburg would obtain assistance in keeping observation
+upon me. I knew that the Baron desired my death, and that therefore I
+could not be too wary of pitfalls. That fatal chair so cunningly
+prepared for me in Lambeth was still vividly within my memory.
+
+As we passed Lanskaya, and ran through the outer suburbs of Petersburg,
+my fellow-traveler became inquisitive as to where I was going, but I was
+somewhat unresponsive, and busied myself with my bag until we entered
+the great echoing terminus whence I could see the Neva gleaming in the
+pale sunlight and the city beyond. The fellow made no attempt to follow
+me--he was too clever a secret agent for that. He merely wished me
+"_sdravstvuite_" raised his hat politely and disappeared.
+
+A porter carried my bag out of the station, and I drove across the
+bridge to the large hotel where I had stopped before, the Europe, on the
+corner of the Nevski Prospect and the Michael Street. There I engaged a
+front room looking down into the broad Nevski, had a wash, and then
+watched at the window for the appearance of the spy. I had already a
+good four hours before the steamer from Abo was due, and I intended to
+satisfy myself whether or not I was being followed.
+
+Within twenty minutes the fellow lounged along on the opposite side of
+the road, just as I had expected. He had changed his clothes, and
+presented such a different appearance that at first sight I failed to
+recognize him. He knew that I had driven there, and intended to follow
+me if I came forth. My position was one of extreme difficulty, for if I
+went down to the quay he would most certainly follow me.
+
+Having watched his movements for ten minutes or so I descended to the
+big _salle-a-manger_ and there ate my luncheon, chatting to the French
+waiter the while. I sat purposely in an alcove, so as to be away from
+the other people lunching there, and in order that I might be able to
+talk with the waiter without being overheard.
+
+Just as I had finished my meal, and he was handing me my bill, I bent
+towards him and asked--
+
+"Do you want to earn twenty roubles?"
+
+"Well, m'sieur," he answered, looking at me with some surprise. "They
+would be acceptable. I am a married man."
+
+"Well, I want to escape from this place without being observed. There is
+a disagreeable little matter regarding a lady, and I fear a fracas with
+a man who is awaiting me outside in the Nevski." Then, seeing that he
+hesitated, I assured him that I had committed no crime, and that I
+should return for my baggage that evening.
+
+"You could pass through the kitchen and out by the servants' entrance,"
+he said, after a moment's reflection. "If m'sieur so desires, I will
+conduct him out. The exit is in a back street which leads on to the
+Catherine Canal."
+
+"Excellent!" I said. "Let us go. Of course you will say nothing?"
+
+"Not a word, m'sieur," and he gathered up the notes plus twenty roubles
+with which I paid my bill, and taking my hat I followed him to the end
+of the _salle-a-manger_ behind a high wooden screen, across the huge
+kitchen, and then through a long stone corridor at the end of which sat
+a gruff old doorkeeper. My guide spoke a word to him, and then the door
+opened and I found myself in a narrow back slum with the canal beyond.
+
+My first visit was to a clothier's, where I purchased and put on a new
+light overcoat and then to a hatter's for a hat of different shape to
+that I was wearing. I carried the hat back to a quiet alley which I had
+noticed, and quickly exchanged the one I was wearing for it, leaving my
+old hat in a corner. Then I entered a _cafe_ in order to while away the
+hours until the vessel from Finland was due.
+
+At four o'clock I was out upon the quay, straining my eyes seaward for
+any sign of smoke, but could see nothing. The sun was sinking, and the
+broad expanse of water westward danced like liquid gold. The light died
+out slowly, the cold gray of evening crept on. A chill wind sprang up
+and swept the quay, causing me to shiver. I asked of a dock laborer
+whether the steamer was usually late, whereupon he told me that it was
+often five or six hours behind time, depending upon the delay at
+Helsingfors.
+
+Twilight deepened into night, and the rain fell heavily, yet I still
+paced the wet flags in patience, my eyes ever seaward for the light of
+the vessel which I hoped bore my love. My presence there aroused some
+speculation among the loungers, I think; nevertheless, I waited in
+deepest anxiety whether, after all, Elma and Hornby had not disembarked
+at Helsingfors.
+
+Soon after ten o'clock a light shone afar off, and the movement of the
+police and porters on the quay told me that it was the vessel. Then
+after a further anxious quarter of an hour it came, amid great shouting
+and mutual imprecations, slowly alongside the quay, and the passengers
+at last began to disembark in the pelting rain.
+
+One after another they walked up the gangway, filing into the
+passport-office and on into the Custom House, people of all sorts and
+all grades--Swedes, Germans, Finns, and Russians--until suddenly I
+caught sight of two figures--one a man in a big tweed traveling-coat and
+a golf-cap, and the other the slight figure of a woman in a long dark
+cloak and a woolen tam-o'-shanter. The electric rays fell upon them as
+they came up the wet gangway together, and there once again I saw the
+sweet face of the silent woman whom I had grown to love with such
+fervent desperation. The man behind her was the same who had
+entertained me on board the _Lola_--the man who was said to be the
+lover of the fugitive Muriel Leithcourt.
+
+Without betraying my presence I watched them pass through the
+passport-office and Custom House, and then, overhearing the address
+which Martin Woodroffe gave the _isvoshtchik_, I stood aside, wet to the
+skin, and saw them drive away.
+
+At eleven o'clock on the following day I found myself installed in the
+Hotel de Paris, a comfortable hostelry in the Little Morskaya, having
+succeeded in evading the vigilance of the spy who had so cleverly
+followed me from Abo, and in getting my suit-case round from the Hotel
+Europe.
+
+I was beneath the same roof as Elma, although she was in ignorance of my
+presence. Anxious to communicate with her without Woodroffe's knowledge,
+I was now awaiting my opportunity. He had, it appeared, taken for her a
+pleasant front room with sitting-room adjoining on the first floor,
+while he himself occupied a room on the third floor. The apartments he
+had engaged for her were the most expensive in the hotel, and as far as
+I could gather from the French waiter whom I judiciously tipped, he
+appeared to treat her with every consideration and kindness.
+
+"Ah, poor young lady!" the man exclaimed as he stood in my room
+answering my questions, "What an affliction! She writes down all her
+orders--for she can utter no word."
+
+"Has the Englishman received any visitors?" I asked.
+
+"One man--a Russian--an official of police, I think."
+
+"If he receives anyone else, let me know," I said. "And I want you to
+give Mademoiselle a letter from me in secret."
+
+"Bien, m'sieur."
+
+I turned to the little writing-table and scribbled a few hasty lines to
+my love, announcing my presence, and asking her to grant me an interview
+in secret as soon as Woodroffe was absent. I also warned her of the
+search for her instigated by the Baron, and urged her to send me a line
+in reply.
+
+The note was delivered into her hand, but although I waited in suspense
+nearly all day she sent no reply. While Woodroffe was in the hotel I
+dared not show myself lest he should recognize me, therefore I was
+compelled to sham indisposition and to eat my meals alone in my room.
+
+Both the means by which she had met Martin Woodroffe and the motive were
+equally an enigma. By that letter she had written to her schoolfellow it
+was apparent that she had some secret of his, for had she not wished to
+send him a message of reassurance that she had divulged nothing? This
+would seem that they were close friends; yet, on the other hand,
+something seemed to tell me that he was acting falsely, and was really
+an ally of the Baron's.
+
+Why had he brought her to Petersburg? If he had desired to rescue her he
+would have taken her in the opposite direction--to Stockholm, where she
+would be free--whereas he took her, an escaped prisoner, into the very
+midst of peril. It was true that her passport was in order, yet I
+remembered that an order had been issued for her transportation to
+Saghalien, and now once arrested she must be lost to me for ever. This
+thought filled me with fierce anxiety. She was in Petersburg, that city
+where police spies swarm, and where every fresh arrival is noted and his
+antecedents inquired into. No attempt had been made to disguise who she
+was, therefore before long the police would undoubtedly come and arrest
+her as the escaped criminal from Kajana.
+
+For several hours I sat at my window watching the life and movement
+down in the street below, my mind full of wonder and dark forebodings.
+Was Martin Woodroffe playing her false?
+
+Just after half-past six o'clock the waiter entered, and handing me a
+note on a salver, said--
+
+"Mademoiselle has, I believe, only this moment been able to write in
+secret."
+
+I tore it open and read as follows:--
+
+DEAR FRIEND.--_I am so surprised. I thought you were still in Abo.
+Woodroffe has an appointment at eight o'clock on the other side of the
+city, therefore come to me at 8.15. I must see you, and at once. I am in
+peril_.--ELMA HEATH.
+
+My love was in peril! It was just as I had feared. I thanked Providence
+that I had been sent to help her and extricate her from that awful fate
+to which "The Strangler of Finland" had consigned her.
+
+At the hour she named, after the waiter had come to me and announced the
+Englishman's departure, I descended to her sitting-room and entered
+without rapping, for if I had rapped she could not, alas! have heard.
+
+The apartment was spacious and comfortable, thickly carpeted, with heavy
+furniture and gilding. Before the long window were drawn curtains of
+dark green plush, and on one side was the high stove of white porcelain
+with shining brass bands, while from her low lounge-chair a slim wan
+figure sprang up quickly and came forward to greet me, holding out both
+her hands and smiling happily.
+
+I took her hands in mine and held them tightly in silence for some
+moments, as I looked earnestly into those wonderfully brilliant eyes of
+hers. She turned away laughing, a slight flush rising to her cheeks in
+her confusion. Then she led me to a chair, and motioned me to be
+seated.
+
+Ours was a silent meeting, but her gestures and the expression of her
+eyes were surely more eloquent than mere words. I knew well what
+pleasure that re-encounter caused her--equal pleasure with that it gave
+to me.
+
+Until that moment I had never really loved. I had admired and flirted
+with women. What man has not? Indeed, I had admired Muriel Leithcourt.
+But never until now had I experienced in my heart the real flame of true
+burning affection. The sweetness of her expression, the tender caress of
+those soft, tapering hands, the deep mysterious look in those
+magnificent eyes, and the incomparable grace of all her movements,
+combined to render her the most perfect woman I had ever met--perfect in
+all, alas! save speech and hearing, of which, with such dastard
+wantonness, she had been deprived.
+
+She touched her red lips with the tip of her forefinger, opened her
+hands, and shrugged her shoulders with a sad gesture of regret. Then
+turning quickly to some paper on the little table at her side she wrote
+something with a gold pencil and handed to me. It read--
+
+"Surely Providence has sent you here! Mr. Woodroffe must have followed
+you from England. He is my enemy. You must take me from here and hide
+me. They intend to send me into exile. Have you ever been in Petersburg
+before? Do you know anyone here?"
+
+Then when I had read, she handed me her pencil and below I wrote--
+
+"I will do my best, dear friend. I have been once in Petersburg. But is
+it not best that we should escape at once from Russia?"
+
+"Impossible at present," she wrote. "We should both be arrested at the
+frontier. It would be best to go into hiding here in Petersburg. I
+believed Woodroffe to be my friend, but I have found only this day that
+he is my enemy. He knew that I was in Kajana, and was in Abo when he
+learned of my escape. He went with two other men in search of us, and
+discovered us that night when we sought shelter at the wood-cutter's
+hut. Without making his presence known he waited outside until you were
+asleep, and then he came and looked in at my window. At first I was
+alarmed, but quickly I saw that he was a friend. He told me that the
+police were in the vicinity and intended to raid the hut, therefore I
+fled with him, first down to Tammerfors and then to Abo, and on here. At
+that time I did not see the dastardly trap he had laid in order to get
+me out of the Baron's clutches and wring from me my secret. If I
+confess, he intends to give me up to the police, who will send me to the
+mines."
+
+"Does your secret concern him?" I asked in writing.
+
+"Yes," she wrote in response. "It would be equally in his interests as
+well as those of Baron Oberg if I were sent to Saghalien and my identity
+effaced. I am a Russian subject, as I have already told you, therefore
+with a Ministerial order against me I am in deadliest peril."
+
+"Trust in me," I scribbled quickly. "I will act upon any suggestion you
+make. Have you any female friend in whom you could trust to hide you
+until this danger is past?"
+
+"There is one friend--a true friend. Will you take a note to her?" she
+wrote, to which I instantly nodded in the affirmative.
+
+Then rising, she obtained some ink and pen and wrote a letter, the
+contents of which she did not show me before she sealed it. I sat
+watching her beautiful head bent beneath the shaded lamplight, catching
+her profile and noticing how eminently handsome it was, superb and
+unblemished in her youthful womanhood.
+
+I watched her write the superscription upon the envelope: "Madame Olga
+Stassulevitch, modiste, Scredni Prospect, 231, Vasili Ostroff." I knew
+that the district was on the opposite side of the city, close to the
+Little Neva.
+
+"Take a drosky at once, see her, and await a reply. In the meantime, I
+will prepare to be ready when you return," she wrote. "If Olga is not at
+home, ask to see the Red Priest--in Russian, '_Krasny-pastor_.' Return
+quickly, as I fear Woodroffe may come back. If so, I am lost."
+
+I assured her I would not lose a single instant, and five minutes later
+I was tearing down the Morskaya in a drosky along the canal and across
+the Nicholas Bridge to the address upon the envelope.
+
+The house was, I found, somewhat smaller than its neighbors, but not let
+out in flats as the others. Upon the door was a large brass plate
+bearing the name, "Olga Stassulevitch: modes." I pressed the electric
+button, and in answer a tall, clean-shaven Russian servant opened the
+door.
+
+"Madame is not at home," was his brief reply to my inquiry.
+
+"Then I will see the Red Priest," I said in a lower tone. "I come from
+Elma Heath." Thereupon, without further word, the man admitted me into
+the long, dark hall and closed the door with an apology that the gas was
+not lighted. But striking a match he led me up the broad staircase and
+into a small, cosy, well-furnished room on the second floor, evidently
+the sitting-room of some studious person, judging from the books and
+critical reviews lying about.
+
+For a few minutes I waited there, until the door reopened, and there
+entered a man of medium height, with a shock of long snow-white hair
+and almost patriarchal beard, whose dark eyes that age had dimmed
+flashed out at me with a look of curious inquiry, and whose movements
+were those of a person not quite at his ease.
+
+"I have called on behalf of Mademoiselle Elma Heath, to give this letter
+to Madame Stassulevitch, or if she is absent to place it in the hands of
+the Red Priest," I explained in my best Russian.
+
+"Very well, sir," the old man responded in quite good English. "I am the
+person you seek," and taking the letter he opened it and read it
+through.
+
+I saw by the expression on his furrowed face that its contents caused
+him the utmost consternation. His countenance, already pale, blanched to
+the lips, while in his eyes there shot a fire of quick apprehension. The
+thin, almost transparent hand holding the letter trembled visibly.
+
+"You know Mademoiselle--eh?" he asked in a hoarse, strained voice as he
+turned to me. "You will help her to escape?"
+
+"I will risk my own life in order to save hers," I declared.
+
+"And your devotion to her is prompted by what?" he inquired
+suspiciously.
+
+I was silent for a moment. Then I confessed the truth.
+
+"My affection."
+
+"Ah!" he sighed deeply. "Poor young lady! She, who has enemies on every
+hand, sadly needs a friend. But can we trust you--have you no fear?"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of being implicated in the coming revolution in Russia? Remember I am
+the Red Priest. Have you never heard of me? My name is Otto Kampf."
+
+Otto Kampf!
+
+I stood before him open-mouthed. Who in Russia had not heard of that
+mysterious unknown person who had directed a hundred conspiracies
+against the Imperial Autocrat, and yet the identity of whom the police
+had always failed to discover. It was believed that Kampf had once been
+professor of chemistry at Moscow University, and that he had invented
+that most terrible and destructive explosive used by the revolutionists.
+The ingredients of the powerful compound and the mode of firing it was
+the secret of the Nihilists alone--and Otto Kampf, the mysterious
+leader, whose personality was unknown even to the conspirators
+themselves, directed those constant attempts which held the Emperor and
+his Government in such hourly terror.
+
+Rewards without number had been offered by the Ministry of the Interior
+for the betrayal and arrest of the unseen man whose power in Russia,
+permeating every class, was greater than that of the Emperor himself--at
+whose word one day the people would rise in a body and destroy their
+oppressors.
+
+The Emperor, the Ministers, the police, and the bureaucrats knew this,
+yet they were powerless--they knew that the mysterious professor who had
+disappeared from Moscow fifteen years before and had never since been
+seen was only waiting his opportunity to strike a blow that would
+stagger and crush the Empire from end to end--yet of his whereabouts
+they were in utter ignorance.
+
+"You are surprised," the old man laughed, noticing my amazement. "Well,
+you are not one of us, yet I need not impress upon you the absolute
+necessity, for Mademoiselle's sake, to preserve the secret of my
+existence. It is because you are not a member of 'The Will of the
+People,' that you have never heard of 'The Red Priest'--red because I
+wrote my ultimatum to the Czar in the blood of one of his victims
+knouted in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and priest because I preach
+the gospel of freedom and justice."
+
+"I shall say nothing," I said, gazing at the strangely striking figure
+before me--the unknown man who directed the great upheaval that was to
+revolutionize Russia. "My only desire is to save Mademoiselle Heath."
+
+"And you are prepared to do so at risk of your own liberty--your own
+life? Ah! you said you love her. Would not this be a test of your
+affection?"
+
+"I am prepared for any test, as long as she escapes the trap which her
+enemies have set for her. I succeeded in saving her from Kajana, and I
+intend to save her now."
+
+"Was it you who actually entered Kajana and snatched her from that
+tomb!" he exclaimed, and he took my hand enthusiastically, adding--"I
+have no further need to doubt you." And turning to the table he wrote an
+address upon a slip of paper, saying, "Take Mademoiselle there. She will
+find a safe place of concealment. But go quickly, for every moment
+places you both in more deadly peril. Hide yourself there also."
+
+I thanked him and left at once, but as I stepped out of the house and
+re-entered the drosky I saw close by, lurking in the shadow, the spy of
+"The Strangler of Finland," who had traveled with me from Abo.
+
+Our eyes met, and he recognized me, notwithstanding my light overcoat
+and new hat.
+
+Then, with heart-sinking, the ghastly truth flashed upon me. All had
+been in vain. Elma was lost to me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HER HIGHNESS IS INQUISITIVE
+
+
+Instantly the danger was apparent, and instead of driving back to the
+hotel, I called out to the man to take me to the Moscow railway station,
+in order to put the spy off the scent. I knew he would follow me, but as
+he was on foot, with no drosky in sight, I should be able to reach the
+station before he could, and there elude him.
+
+Over the stones we rattled, leaving the lurking agent standing in the
+deep shadow, but on turning back I saw him dash across the road to a
+by-street, where, in all probability, he had a conveyance in waiting.
+
+Then, after we had crossed the Neva, I countermanded my order to the
+man, saying--
+
+"Don't go right up to the station. Turn into the Liteinoi Prospect to
+the left, and put me down there. Drive quickly, and I'll pay double
+fare."
+
+He whipped his horses, and we turned into that maze of dark, ill-lit,
+narrow streets that lies between the Vosnesenski and the Nevski, turning
+and winding until we emerged at last into the main thoroughfare again,
+and then at last we turned into the street I had indicated--a wide road
+of handsome buildings where I knew I was certain to be able to instantly
+get another drosky. I flung the man his money, alighted, and two minutes
+later was driving on towards the Alexander Bridge, traveling in a circle
+back to the hotel. Time after time I glanced behind, but saw nothing of
+the Baron's spy, who had evidently gone to the station with all speed,
+expecting that I was leaving the capital.
+
+I found Elma in her room, ready dressed to go out, wearing a long
+traveling-cloak, and in her hand was a small dressing-case. She was pale
+and full of anxiety until I showed her the slip of paper which Otto
+Kampf had given me with the address written upon it, and then together
+we hurried forth.
+
+The house to which we drove was, we discovered, a large one facing the
+Fontanka Canal, one of the best quarters of the town, and on descending
+I asked the liveried _dvornick_ for Madame Zurloff, the name which the
+"Red Priest" had written.
+
+"You mean the Princess Zurloff," remarked the man through his red beard.
+"Whom shall I say desires to see her?"
+
+"Take that," I said, handing to him the piece of paper which, beside the
+address, bore a curious cipher-mark like three triangles joined.
+
+He closed the door, leaving us in the wide carpeted hall, the statuary
+in which showed us that it was a richly-furnished place, and when a few
+minutes later he returned, he conducted us upstairs to a fine gilded
+salon, where an elderly gray-haired lady in black stood gravely to
+receive us.
+
+"Allow me to present Mademoiselle Elma Heath, Princess," I said,
+speaking in French and bowing, and afterwards telling her my own name.
+
+Our hostess welcomed my love in a graceful speech, but I said--
+
+"Mademoiselle unfortunately suffers a terrible affliction. She is deaf
+and dumb."
+
+"Ah, how very, very sad!" she exclaimed sympathetically. "Poor girl!
+poor girl!" and she placed her hand tenderly upon Elma's shoulder and
+looked into her eyes. Then, turning to me, she said: "So the Red Priest
+has sent you both to me! You are in danger of arrest, I suppose--you
+wish me to conceal you here?"
+
+"I would only ask sanctuary for Mademoiselle," was my reply. "For
+myself, I have no fear. I am English, and therefore not a member of the
+Party."
+
+"The Mademoiselle fears arrest?"
+
+"There is an order signed for her banishment to Saghalein," I said. "She
+was imprisoned at Kajana, the fortress away in Finland, but I succeeded
+in liberating her."
+
+"She has actually been in Kajana!" gasped the Princess. "Ah! we have all
+heard sufficient of the horrors of that place. And you liberated her!
+Why, she is the only person who has ever escaped from that living tomb
+to which Oberg sends his victims."
+
+"I believe so, Princess."
+
+"And may I take it, m'sieur, that the reason you risked your life for
+her is because you love her? Pardon me for suggesting this."
+
+"You have guessed correctly," I answered. Then, knowing that Elma could
+not hear, I added: "I love her, but we are not lovers. I have not told
+her of my affection. Hers is a long and strange story, and she will
+perhaps tell you something of it in writing."
+
+"Well," exclaimed the gray-haired lady smiling, leading my love across
+the luxurious room, the atmosphere of which was filled with the scent of
+flowers, and taking off her cloak with her own hands, "you are safe
+here, my poor child. If spies have not followed you, then you shall
+remain my guest as long as you desire."
+
+"I am sure it is very good of you, Princess," I said gratefully. "Miss
+Heath is the victim of a vile and dastardly conspiracy. When I tell you
+that she has been afflicted as she is by her enemies--that an operation
+was performed upon her in Italy while she was unconscious--you will
+readily see in what deadly peril she is."
+
+"What!" she cried. "Have her enemies actually done this? Horrible!"
+
+"She will perhaps tell you of the strange romance that surrounds her--a
+mystery which I have not yet been able to fathom. She is a Russian
+subject, although she has been educated in England. Baron Oberg himself
+is, I believe, her worst and most bitter enemy."
+
+"Ah! the Strangler!" she exclaimed with a quick flash in her dark eyes.
+"But his end is near. The Movement is active in Helsingfors. At any
+moment now we may strike our blow for freedom."
+
+She was an enthusiastic revolutionist, I could see, unsuspected,
+however, by the police on account of her high position in Petersburg
+society. It was she who, as I afterwards discovered, had furnished the
+large sums of money to Kampf for the continuation of the revolutionary
+propaganda, and indeed secretly devoted the greater part of her revenues
+from her vast estates in Samara and Kazan to the Nihilist cause. Her
+husband, himself an enthusiast of freedom, although of the high
+nobility, had been killed by a fall from his horse six years before, and
+since that time she had retired from society and lived there quietly,
+making the revolutionary movement her sole occupation. The authorities
+believed that her retirement was due to the painful loss she had
+sustained, and had no suspicion that it was her money that enabled the
+mysterious "Red Priest" to slowly but surely complete the plot for the
+general uprising.
+
+She compelled me to remove my coat, and tea was served by a Tartar
+footman, whose family she explained had been serfs of the Zurloffs for
+three centuries, and then Elma exchanged confidences with her by means
+of paper and pencil.
+
+"Who is this man Martin Woodroffe, of whom she speaks?" asked the
+Princess presently, turning to me.
+
+"I have met him twice--only twice," I replied, "and under strange
+circumstances." Then, continuing, I told her something concerning the
+incidents of the yacht _Lola_.
+
+"He may be in love with her, and desires to force her into marriage,"
+she suggested, expressing amazement at the curious narrative I had
+related.
+
+"I think not, for several reasons. One is because I know she holds some
+secret concerning him, and another because he is engaged to an English
+girl named Muriel Leithcourt."
+
+"Leithcourt? Leithcourt?" repeated the Princess, knitting her brows with
+a puzzled air. "Do you happen to know her father's name?"
+
+"Philip Leithcourt."
+
+"And has he actually been living in Scotland?"
+
+"Yes," I answered in quick anxiety. "He rented a shoot called Rannoch,
+near Dumfries. A mysterious incident occurred on his estate--a double
+murder, or murder and suicide; which is not quite clear--but shortly
+afterwards there appeared one evening at the house a man named Chater,
+Hylton Chater, and the whole family at once fled and disappeared."
+
+Princess Zurloff sat with her lips pressed close together, looking
+straight at the silent girl before her. Elma had removed her hat and
+cloak, and now sat in a deep easy chair of yellow silk, with the
+lamplight shining on her chestnut hair, settled and calm as though
+already thoroughly at home. I smiled to myself as I thought of the
+chagrin of Woodroffe when he returned to find his victim missing.
+
+"Your Highness evidently knows the Leithcourts," I hazarded, after a
+brief silence.
+
+"I have heard of them," was her unsatisfactory reply. "I go to England
+sometimes. When the Prince was alive, we were often at Claridge's for
+the season. The Prince was for five years military _attache_ at the
+Embassy under de Staal, you know. What I know of the Leithcourts is not
+to their credit. But you tell me that there was a mysterious incident
+before their flight. Explain it to me."
+
+At that moment the long white doors of the handsome salon were thrown
+open by the faithful Tartar servitor, and there entered a man whose hair
+fell over the collar of his heavy overcoat, but whom, in an instant, I
+recognized as Otto Kampf.
+
+Both Elma and I sprang to our feet, while advancing to the Princess he
+bent and gallantly kissed the hand she held forth to him. Then he shook
+hands with Elma, and acknowledging my own greetings, took off his coat
+and threw it upon a chair with the air of an accustomed visitor.
+
+"I come, Princess, in order to explain to you," he said. "Mademoiselle
+fears rearrest, and the only house in Petersburg that the police never
+suspect is this. Therefore I send her to you, knowing that with your
+generosity you will help her in her distress."
+
+"It is all arranged," was her Highness's response. "She will remain
+here, poor girl, until it is safe for her to get out of Russia." Then,
+after some further conversation, and after my well-beloved had made
+signs of heartfelt gratitude to the man known from end to end of the
+Russian empire as "The Red Priest," the Princess turned to me, saying:
+
+"I would much like to know what occurred before the Leithcourts left
+Scotland."
+
+"The Leithcourts!" exclaimed Kampf in utter surprise. "Do you know the
+Leithcourts--and the English officer Durnford?"
+
+I looked into his eyes in abject amazement. What connection could Jack
+Durnford, of the Marines, have with the adventurer Philip Leithcourt?
+I, however, recollected Jack's word, when I had described the visit of
+the _Lola_ to Leghorn, and further I recollected that very shortly he
+would be back in London from his term of Mediterranean service.
+
+"Well," I said after a pause, "I happen to know Captain Durnford very
+well, but I had no idea that he was friendly with Leithcourt."
+
+The Red Priest smiled, stroking his white beard.
+
+"Explain to her Highness what she desires to know, and I will tell you."
+
+My eyes met Elma's, and I saw how intensely eager and interested she
+was, watching the movement of my lips and trying to make out what words
+I uttered.
+
+"Well," I said, "a mysterious tragedy occurred on the edge of a wood
+near the house rented by Leithcourt--a tragedy which has puzzled the
+police to this day. An Italian named Santini and his wife were found
+murdered."
+
+"Santini!" gasped Kampf, starting up. "But surely he is not dead?"
+
+"No. That's the curious part of the affair. The man who was killed was a
+man disguised to represent the Italian, while the woman was actually the
+waiter's wife herself. I happen to know the man Santini well, for both
+he and his wife were for some years in my employ."
+
+The Princess and the director of the Russian revolutionary movement
+exchanged quick glances. It was as though her Highness implored Kampf to
+reveal to me the truth, while he, on his part, was averse to doing so.
+
+"And upon whom does suspicion rest?" asked her Highness.
+
+"As far as I can make out, the police have no clue whatever, except one.
+At the spot was found a tiny miniature cross of one of the Russian
+orders of chivalry--the Cross of Saint Anne."
+
+"There is no suspicion upon Leithcourt?" she asked with some undue
+anxiety I thought.
+
+"No."
+
+"Did he entertain any guests at the shooting-box?"
+
+"A good many."
+
+"No foreigners among them?"
+
+"I never met any. They seemed all people from London--a smart set for
+the most part."
+
+"Then why did the Leithcourts disappear so suddenly?"
+
+"Because of the appearance of the man Chater," I replied. "It is evident
+that they feared him, for they took every precaution against being
+followed. In fact, they fled leaving a big party of friends in the
+house. The man Woodroffe, now at the Hotel de Paris, is a friend of
+Leithcourt as well as of Chater."
+
+"He was not a guest of Leithcourt when this man representing Santini was
+assassinated?" asked Kampf, again stroking his beard.
+
+"No. As soon as Woodroffe recognized me as a visitor he left--for
+Hamburg."
+
+"He was afraid to face you because of the ransacking of the British
+Consul's safe at Leghorn," remarked the Princess, who, at the same
+moment, took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then,
+turning to me, she said: "What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg,
+throws a new light upon certain incidents that had hitherto puzzled us.
+The mystery of it all is a great and inscrutable one--the mystery of
+this poor unfortunate girl, greatest of all. But both of us will
+endeavor to help you to elucidate it; we will help poor Elma to crush
+her enemies--these cowardly villains who had maimed her."
+
+"Ah, Princess!" I cried. "If you will only help and protect her, you
+will be doing an act of mercy to a defenseless woman. I love her--I
+admit it. I have done my utmost: I have striven to solve the dark
+mystery, but up to the present I have been unsuccessful, and have only
+remained, even till to-day, the victim of circumstance."
+
+"Let her stay with me," the kindly woman answered, smiling tenderly upon
+my love. "She will be safe here, and in the meantime we will endeavor to
+discover the real and actual truth."
+
+And in response I took the Princess's hand and pressed it fervently.
+Although that striking, white-headed man and the rather stiff, formal
+woman in black were the leaders of the great and all-powerful movement
+in Russia known through the civilized world as "The Terror," yet they
+were nevertheless our friends. They had pledged themselves to help us
+thwart our enemies.
+
+I scribbled a few hasty words upon paper and handed it to Elma. And for
+answer she smiled contentedly, looking into my eyes with an expression
+of trust, devotion and love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+JUST OFF THE STRAND
+
+
+A week had gone by. The Nord Express had brought me posthaste across
+Europe from Petersburg to Calais, and I was again in London. I had left
+Elma in the care of the Princess Zurloff, whom I knew would conceal her
+from the horde of police-agents now in search of her.
+
+The mystery had so increased until now it had become absolutely
+bewildering. The more I had tried to probe it, the more inexplicable had
+I found it. My brain was awhirl as I sat in the _wagon-lit_ rushing
+across those wide, never-ending plains that lie between the Russian
+capital and Berlin and the green valleys between the Rhine-lands and the
+sea. The maze of mystery rendered me utterly incapable of grasping one
+solid tangible fact, so closely interwoven was each incident of the
+strange life-drama in which, through mere chance, I was now playing a
+leading part. I was aware of one fact only, that I loved Elma with all
+my soul, even though I knew not whom she really was--or her strange life
+story. Her sweet face, with those soft, brown eyes, so tender and
+intense, stood out ever before me, sleeping or waking. Each moment as
+the express rushed south increased the distance between us, yet was I
+not on my way back to England with a clear and distinct purpose? I
+snatched at any clue, however small, with desperate eagerness, as a
+drowning man clutches at a straw.
+
+The spy from Abo had seen me on the railway platform on my departure
+from Petersburg. He had overheard me buy a ticket for London, and
+previous to stepping into the train I had smiled at him in glad triumph.
+My journey was too long a one for him to follow, and I knew that I had
+at last outwitted him. He had expected to see Elma with me, no doubt,
+and his disappointment was plainly marked. But of Woodroffe I had
+neither seen nor heard anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a cold but dry November night in London, and I sat dining with
+Jack Durnford at a small table in the big, well-lit room of the Junior
+United Service Club. Easy-going and merry as of old, my friend was
+bubbling over with good spirits, delighted to be back again in town
+after three years sailing up and down the Mediterranean, from Gib. to
+Smyrna, maneuvering always, yet with never a chance of a fight. His
+well-shaven face bore the mark of the southern suns, and the backs of
+his hands were tanned by the heat and the sea. He was, indeed, as smart
+an officer as any at the Junior, for the Marines are proverbial for
+their neatness, and his men on board the _Bulwark_ had received many a
+pleasing compliment from the Admiral.
+
+"Glad to be back!" he exclaimed, as he helped himself to a "peg." "I
+should rather think so, old chap. You know how awfully wearying the life
+becomes out there. Lots going on down at Palermo, Malta, Monte Carlo, or
+over at Algiers, and yet we can never get a chance of it. We're always
+in sight of the gay places, and never land. I don't blame the youngsters
+for getting off from Leghorn for two days over here in town when they
+can. Three years is a bigger slice out of a fellow's life than anyone
+would suppose. But, by the way, I saw Hutcheson the other day. We put
+into Spezia, and he came out to see the Admiral--got despatches for
+him, I think. He seems as gay as ever. He lunched at mess, and said how
+sorry he was you'd deserted Leghorn."
+
+"I haven't exactly deserted it," I said. "But I really don't love it
+like he does."
+
+"No. A year or two of the Mediterranean blue is quite sufficient to last
+any fellow his lifetime. I shouldn't live in Leghorn if I had my choice.
+I'd prefer somewhere up in the mountains, beyond Pisa, or outside
+Florence, where you can have a good time in winter."
+
+Then a silence fell between us, and I sat eating on until the end of the
+meal, wondering how to broach the question I so desired to put to him.
+
+"I shall try if I can get on recruiting service at home for a bit," he
+said presently. "There's an appointment up in Glasgow vacant, and I
+shall try for it. It'll be better, at any rate, than China or the
+Pacific."
+
+I was just about to turn the conversation to the visit of the mysterious
+_Lola_ to Leghorn, when two men he knew entered the dining-room, and,
+recognizing him, came across to give him a welcome home. One of the
+newcomers was Major Bartlett, whom I at once recollected as having been
+a guest of Leithcourt's up at Rannoch, and the other a younger man whom
+Durnford introduced to me as Captain Hanbury.
+
+"Oh, Major!" I cried, rising and grasping his hand. "I haven't seen you
+since Scotland, and the extraordinary ending to your house-party."
+
+"No," he laughed. "It was an amazing affair, wasn't it? After the
+Leithcourts left it was like pandemonium let loose; the guests collared
+everything they could lay their hands upon! It's a wonder to me the
+disgraceful affair didn't get into the papers."
+
+"But where's Leithcourt now?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Haven't the ghost of an idea," replied the Major, standing astride with
+his hands in his pockets. "Young Paget of ours told me the other day
+that he saw Muriel driving in the Terminus Road at Eastbourne, but she
+didn't notice him. They were a queerish lot, those Leithcourts," he
+added.
+
+"Hulloa! What are you saying about the Leithcourts, Charley?" exclaimed
+Durnford, turning quickly from Hanbury. "I know some people of that
+name--Philip Leithcourt, who has a daughter named Muriel."
+
+"Well, they sound much the same. But if you know them, my dear old chap,
+I really don't envy you your friends," declared the Major with a laugh.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, Gregg will tell you," he said. "He knows, perhaps, more than I
+do. But," he added, "they may not, of course, be the same people."
+
+"I first met them yachting over at Algiers," Jack said. "And then again
+at Malta, where they seemed to have quite a lot of friends. They had a
+steam-yacht, the _Iris_, and were often up and down the Mediterranean."
+
+"Must be the same people," declared the Major. "Leithcourt spoke once or
+twice of his yacht, but we all put it down as a non-existent vessel,
+because he was always drawing the long bow about his adventures."
+
+"And how did you first come to know him?" I asked of the Major eagerly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Somebody brought him to mess, and we struck up an
+acquaintance across the table. He seemed a good chap, and when he asked
+me to shoot I accepted. On arrival up at Rannoch, however, one thing
+struck me as jolly strange, and that was that among the people I was
+asked to meet was one of the very worst blacklegs about town. He called
+himself Martin Woodroffe up there--although I'd known him at the old
+Corinthian Club as Dick Archer. He was believed then to be one of a
+clever gang of international thieves."
+
+"When I first met him he gave me the name of Hornby," I said. "It was in
+Leghorn, where he was on board a yacht called the _Lola_, of which he
+represented himself as owner."
+
+"He left Rannoch very suddenly," remarked Bartlett. "We understood that
+he was engaged to marry Muriel. If so, I'm sorry for her, poor girl."
+
+"What!" cried Durnford, starting up. "That man to marry Muriel
+Leithcourt?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Why?"
+
+But his countenance had turned pale, and he gave no answer to my
+question.
+
+"If these same Leithcourts are really friends of yours, Durnford, old
+fellow, I'm sorry I've said anything against them," the Major exclaimed
+in an apologetic tone. "Only the end of my visit was so abrupt and so
+extraordinary, and the company such a mixed one, that--well, to tell you
+the truth, the people are a mysterious lot altogether."
+
+"Perhaps our Leithcourts are not the same as those Jack knows," I
+remarked, in order to escape from a rather difficult situation;
+whereupon Durnford, as though eager to conceal his surprise, said with a
+forced laugh, "Oh! probably not," and reseated himself at table. Then
+the Major quickly changed the topic of conversation, and afterwards he
+and his friend passed along to their table and sat down to eat.
+
+I could not help noticing that Jack Durnford was upset at what he had
+learnt, yet I hesitated just then to put any question to him. I resolved
+to approach the subject later, so as to allow him time to question me
+if he wished to do so.
+
+After smoking an hour we went across to the Empire, where we spent the
+evening in the grand circle, meeting many men we knew and having a
+rather pleasant time among old acquaintances. If a man who had lived the
+club life of London returns from abroad, he can always run across
+someone he knows in the circle of the Empire about ten o'clock at night.
+Jack was, however, not his old self that he had been before dinner. His
+brow was now heavy and thoughtful, and he appeared deeply immersed in
+some intricate problem, for his eyes were fixed vacantly when
+opportunity was afforded him to think, and he appeared to desire to
+avoid his friends rather than to greet them.
+
+After the theater I induced him to come round to the Cecil, and in the
+wicker chair in the big portico before the entrance we sat to smoke our
+final cigars. It is a favorite spot of mine when in London, for at
+afternoon, when the string band plays and the Americans and other
+cosmopolitans drink tea, there is a continual coming and going, a little
+panorama of life that to a student of men like myself is intensely
+interesting. And at night it is just as amusing to sit there in the
+shadow and watch the people returning from the theaters or dances and to
+speculate as to whom and what they are. At that one little corner of
+London just off the Strand you see more variety of men and women than
+perhaps at any other spot. All grades pass before you, from the pushful
+American commercial man interested in a patent medicine, to the proud
+Indian Rajah with his turbaned suite; from the variety actress to the
+daughter of a peer, or the wife of a millionaire pork-butcher doing
+Europe.
+
+"You've been a bit down in the mouth to-night, Jack," I said presently,
+after we had been watching the cabs coming up, depositing the
+home-coming revelers from the Savoy or the Carlton.
+
+"Yes," he sighed. "And surely I have enough to cause me--after what I've
+heard from Bartlett."
+
+"What! Did the facts he told us convey any bad news to you?" I inquired
+with pretended ignorance.
+
+"Yes," he said hoarsely, after a brief pause. Then he added: "Bartlett
+said you could tell me what happened up in Scotland, where Leithcourt
+had shooting. Tell me everything," he added with the air of a man in
+whom all hope is dead.
+
+"Well," I began, "the Leithcourts took Rannoch Castle, close to my
+uncle's place, near Dumfries. I got to know them, of course, and often
+shot with his party. One day, however, I was amazed to notice in one of
+the rooms the photograph of a lady, the exact counterpart of that
+picture which, I recollect, I told you when in Leghorn I had found torn
+up on board the _Lola_. You recollect what I narrated about my strange
+adventure, don't you?"
+
+"I remember every word," was his answer. "Go on. What did you do?"
+
+"Nothing. I held my tongue. But when I discovered that the fellow who
+called himself Woodroffe--the man who had represented himself as the
+owner of the _Lola_, and who, no doubt, had had a hand in breaking open
+Hutcheson's safe in the Consulate--was engaged to Muriel, I became full
+of suspicion."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Woodroffe, after meeting me, disappeared--went to Hamburg, they said,
+on business. Then other things occurred. A man and woman were found
+murdered up in the wood about a mile and a half from the castle. The man
+was made up to represent my man Olinto--I believe you've seen him in
+Leghorn?"
+
+"What! They've killed Olinto?" he gasped, starting from his chair.
+
+"No. The fellow was made up very much like him. But his wife Armida was
+killed."
+
+"They killed the woman, and believed they had also killed her husband,
+eh?" he said bitterly through his teeth, and I saw that his strong hands
+grasped the arms of his chair firmly. "And Martin Woodroffe is engaged
+to Muriel Leithcourt. Are you certain of this?"
+
+"Yes; quite certain."
+
+"And is there no suspicion as to who is the assassin of the woman
+Santini and this mysterious man who posed as her husband?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+For some time Jack Durnford smoked in silence, and I could just
+distinguish his white, hard face in the faint light, for it was now
+late, and the big electric lamps had been turned out and we were in
+semi-darkness.
+
+"That fellow shall never marry Muriel," he declared in a fierce, hoarse
+voice. "What you have just told me reveals the truth. Did you meet
+Chater?"
+
+"He appeared suddenly at Rannoch, and the Leithcourts fled precipitately
+and have not since been heard of."
+
+"Ah, no wonder!" he remarked with a dry laugh. "No wonder! But look
+here, Gordon, I'm not going to stand by and let that scoundrel Woodroffe
+marry Muriel."
+
+"You love her, perhaps?" I hazarded.
+
+"Yes, I do love her," he admitted. "And, by heaven!" he cried, "I will
+tell the truth and crush the whole of their ingenious plot. Have you met
+Elma Heath?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I said in quick anxiety.
+
+"Then listen," he said in a low, earnest voice. "Listen, and I'll tell
+you something.
+
+"There is a greater mystery surrounding that yacht, the _Lola_, than you
+have ever imagined, my dear old chap," declared Jack Durnford, looking
+me straight in the face. "When you told me about it on the quarter-deck
+that day outside Leghorn, I was half a mind to tell you what I knew.
+Only one fact prevented me--my disinclination to reveal my own secrets.
+I loved Muriel Leithcourt, yet, afloat as I was, I could never see
+her--I could not obtain from her own lips the explanation I desired. Yet
+I would not prejudge her--no, and I won't now!" he added with a fierce
+resolution.
+
+"I love her," he went on, "and she reciprocates my love. Ours is a
+secret engagement made in Malta two years ago, and yet you tell me that
+she has pledged herself to that fellow Woodroffe--the man known here in
+London as Dick Archer. I can't believe it--I really can't, old fellow.
+She could never write to me as she has done, urging patience and secrecy
+until my return."
+
+"Unless, of course, she desired to gain time," I suggested.
+
+But my friend was silent; his brows were deep knit.
+
+"Woodroffe is at the present moment in Petersburg," I said. "I've just
+come back from there."
+
+"In St. Petersburg!" he gasped, surprised. "Then he is with that
+villainous official, Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland."
+
+"No; Oberg is living shut up in his palace at Helsingfors, fearing to go
+out lest he shall be assassinated," was my answer.
+
+"And Elma? What has become of her?"
+
+"She is in hiding in Petersburg, awaiting such time as I can get her
+safely out of Russia," and then, continuing, I explained how she had
+been maimed and rendered deaf and dumb.
+
+"What!" he cried fiercely. "Have they actually done that to the poor
+girl? Then they feared that she should reveal the nature of their plot,
+for she had seen and heard."
+
+"Seen and heard what?"
+
+"Be patient; we will elucidate this mystery, and the motive of this
+terrible infliction upon her. Muriel wrote to me saying that poor Elma,
+her friend, had disappeared, and she feared that some evil had also
+happened to her. So Oberg had sent her to his fortress--his own private
+Bastille--the place to which, on pretended charges of conspiracy against
+Russia, he sends those who thwart him to a living tomb."
+
+"I have seen him, and I have defied him," I said.
+
+"You have! Man alive! be careful. He's not a fellow who sticks at
+trifles," said Jack warningly.
+
+"I don't fear," I replied. "Elma's enemies are also mine."
+
+"Then I take it, old fellow, that notwithstanding her affliction, you
+are actually in love with her?"
+
+"I intend to rescue, and to marry her," I answered quite frankly.
+
+"But first we must tear aside this veil of mystery and ascertain all the
+facts concerning her," he said. "At present I only know one or two very
+vague details. The baron is certainly not her uncle, as he represents
+himself to be, but it seems certain that she is the daughter of
+Anglo-Russian parents, and was born in Russia and brought to England
+when a child."
+
+"But from whom do you expect I can obtain the true facts concerning her,
+and the reason of the baron's desire to keep her silent?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, twisting his mustache thoughtfully. "That's just the
+question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive
+of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow
+Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot,
+whatever it may be, I feel convinced. She may be the victim of that
+blackleg Woodroffe, who, as Bartlett has told you, is one of the most
+expert swindlers in London, and who has already done two terms of penal
+servitude."
+
+"But what was the motive in breaking open the Consul's safe, if not to
+obtain the Foreign Office or Admiralty ciphers? Perhaps they wanted to
+steal them and sell them to a foreign government?"
+
+"No; that was not their object. I've thought over it many, many times
+since you told me, and I feel convinced that Woodroffe is too shrewd a
+fellow not to have known that no Consul goes away on leave and allows
+his ciphers to remain behind. When he leaves his post he always deposits
+those precious books either at the Foreign Office here or with his
+Consul-General, or with a Consul at another port. They'd surely
+ascertain all that before they made the raid, you bet. The affair was a
+risky one, and Dick Archer is known as a man of many precautions."
+
+"But he is on extremely friendly terms with Elma. It was he who
+succeeded in finding her in Finland, and taking her beyond Oberg's
+sphere of influence to Petersburg."
+
+"Then it is certainly only an affected friendship, with some sinister
+motive underlying it."
+
+"She wrote a letter from her island prison to an old schoolfellow named
+Lydia Moreton, asking her to see Woodroffe at his rooms in Cork Street,
+and tell him that through all she was suffering she had kept her promise
+to him, and that the secret was still safe."
+
+"Exactly. And now the fellow fears that as you are so actively searching
+out the truth, she may yield to your demands and explain. He therefore
+intends to silence her."
+
+"What! to kill her, you mean?" I gasped, in quick apprehension.
+
+"Well, he might do so, in order to save himself, you see," Jack replied,
+adding: "He certainly would have no compunction if he thought that it
+would not be brought home to him. Only he, no doubt, fears you, because
+you have found her, and are in love with her."
+
+I admitted the force of his argument, but recollected that my dear one
+was safe in concealment, and that the Princess was our friend, even
+though I, as an Englishman, had no sympathy with the doctrine of the
+bomb and the knife.
+
+I tried to get from him all that he knew concerning Elma, but he seemed,
+for some curious reason, disinclined to tell. All I could gather was
+that Leithcourt was in league with Chater and Woodroffe, and that Muriel
+had acted as an entirely innocent agent. What the conspiracy was, or
+what was its motive, I could not discern. I was as far off the solution
+of the problem as ever.
+
+"We must first find Muriel," he declared, when I pressed him to tell me
+everything he knew. "There are facts you have told me which negative my
+own theories, and only from her can we obtain the real truth."
+
+"But surely you know where she is? She writes to you," I said.
+
+"The last letter, which I received at Gib. ten days ago, was from the
+Hotel Bristol, at Botzen, in the Tyrol, yet Bartlett says she has been
+seen down at Eastbourne."
+
+"But you have an address where you always write to her, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, a secret one. I have written and made an appointment, but she has
+not kept it. She has been prevented, of course. She may be with her
+parents, and unable to come to London."
+
+"You did not know that they had fled, and were in hiding?"
+
+"Of course not. What I've heard to-night is news to me--amazing news."
+
+"And does it not convey to you the truth?"
+
+"It does--a ghastly truth concerning Elma Heath," he answered in a low
+voice, as though speaking to himself.
+
+"Tell me. What? I'm dying, Jack, to know everything concerning her. Who
+is that fellow Oberg?"
+
+"Her enemy. She, by mere accident, learned his secret and Woodroffe's,
+and they now both live in deadly fear of her."
+
+"And for that reason she was taken to Siena, where some villainous
+Italian doctor was bribed to render her deaf and dumb."
+
+He nodded in the affirmative.
+
+"But Chater?"
+
+"I know very little concerning him. He may have conspired with them, or
+he may be innocent. It seems as though he were antagonistic to their
+schemes, if Leithcourt and his family really fled from him."
+
+"And yet he was on board the _Lola_. Indeed, he may have helped to
+commit the burglary at the Consulate," I said.
+
+"Quite likely," he answered. "But our first object must be to rediscover
+Muriel. Paget says she is in Eastbourne. If she is there, we shall
+easily find her. They publish visitors' lists in the papers, don't they,
+like they do at Hastings?" Then he added: "Visitors' lists are most
+annoying when you find your name printed in them when you are supposed
+officially to be somewhere else. I was had once like that by the
+Bournemouth papers, when I was supposed to be on duty over at
+Queenstown. I narrowly escaped a terrible wigging."
+
+"Shall we go to Eastbourne?" I suggested eagerly. "I'll go there with
+you in the morning."
+
+"Or would it not be best to send an urgent wire to the address where I
+always write? She would then reply here, no doubt. If she's in
+Eastbourne, there may be reasons why she cannot come up to town. If her
+people are in hiding, of course she won't come. But she'll make an
+appointment with me, no doubt."
+
+"Very well. Send a wire," I said. "And make it urgent. It will then be
+forwarded. But as regards Olinto? Would you like to see him? He might
+tell you more than he has told me."
+
+"No; by no means. He must not know that I have returned to London,"
+declared my friend quickly. "You had better not see him--you
+understand."
+
+"Then his interests are--well, not exactly our own?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But why don't you tell me more about Elma?" I urged, for I was eager to
+learn all he knew. "Come, do tell me!" I implored.
+
+"I've told you practically everything, my dear old fellow," was his
+response. "The revelation of the true facts of the affair can be made
+only by Muriel. I tell you, we must find her."
+
+"Yes, we must--at all hazards," I said. "Let's go across to the
+telegraph office opposite Charing Cross. It's open always." And we rose
+and walked out along the Strand, now nearly deserted, and despatched an
+urgent message to Muriel at an address in Hurlingham Road, Fulham.
+
+Afterwards we stood outside on the curb, still talking, I loth to part
+from him, when there passed by in the shadow two men in dark overcoats,
+who crossed the road behind us to the front of Charing Cross station,
+and then continued on towards Trafalgar Square.
+
+As the light of the street lamp fell upon them, I thought I recognized
+the face of one as that of a person I had seen before, yet I was not at
+all certain, and my failure to remember whom the passer-by resembled
+prevented me from saying anything further to Jack than:
+
+"A fellow I know has just gone by, I think."
+
+"We seem to be meeting hosts of friends to-night," he laughed. "After
+all, old chap, it does one good to come back to our dear, dirty old town
+again. We abuse it when we are here, and talk of the life in Paris, and
+Vienna, and Brussels, but when we are away there is no place on earth so
+dear to us, for it is 'home.' But there!" he laughed, "I'm actually
+growing romantic. Ah! if we could only find Muriel! But we must
+to-morrow. Ta-ta! I shall go around to the club and sleep, for I haven't
+fixed on any diggings yet. Come in at ten to-morrow, and we will decide
+upon some plan. One thing is plainly certain; Elma must at once be got
+out of Russia. She's in deadly peril of her life there."
+
+"Yes," I said. "And you will help me?"
+
+"With all my heart, old fellow," answered my friend, warmly grasping my
+hand, and then we parted, he strolling along towards the National
+Gallery on his way back to the "Junior," while I returned to the _Cecil_
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MARKED MEN
+
+
+"Captain Durnford?" I inquired of the hall-porter of the club next
+morning.
+
+"Not here, sir."
+
+"But he slept here last night," I remarked. "I have an appointment with
+him."
+
+The man consulted the big book before him, and answered:
+
+"Captain Durnford went out at 9:27 last night, sir, but has not
+returned."
+
+Strange, I thought, but although I waited in the club nearly an hour, he
+did not put in an appearance. I called again at noon, and he had not
+come in, and again at two o'clock, but he had not even then made his
+appearance. Then I began to be anxious. I returned to the hotel,
+resolved to wait for a few hours longer. He might have altered his mind
+and gone to Eastbourne in search of Muriel; yet, had he done so, he
+would surely have telegraphed to me.
+
+About four o'clock, as I was passing through the big hall of the hotel,
+I heard a voice behind me utter a greeting in Italian, and turning in
+surprise, found Olinto, dressed in his best suit of black, standing hat
+in hand.
+
+In an instant I recollected what Jack had told me, and regarded him with
+some suspicion.
+
+"Signor Commendatore," he said in a low voice, as though fearing to be
+overheard, "may I be permitted to speak in private with you?"
+
+"Certainly," I said, and I took him in the lift up to my room.
+
+"I have come to warn you, signore," he said, when I had given him a
+seat. "Your enemies mean harm to you."
+
+"And who are they, pray?" I asked, biting my lips. "The same, I suppose,
+who prepared that ingenious trap in Lambeth?"
+
+"I am not here to reveal to you who they are, signore, only to warn you
+to have a care of yourself," was the Italian's reply.
+
+"Look here, Olinto!" I exclaimed determinedly, "I've had enough of this
+confounded mystery. Tell me the truth regarding the assassination of
+your poor wife up in Scotland."
+
+"Ah, signore!" he answered sadly in a changed voice, "I do not know. It
+was a plot. Someone represented me--but he was killed also. They
+believed they had struck me down," he added, with a bitter laugh. "Poor
+Armida's body was found concealed behind a rock on the opposite side of
+the wood. I saw it--ah!" he cried shuddering.
+
+"Then you are ignorant of the identity of your wife's assassin?"
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"Tell me one thing," I said. "Did Armida possess any trinket in the form
+of a little enameled cross--like a miniature cross of cavaliere?"
+
+"Yes; I gave it to her. I found it on the floor at the Mansion House,
+where I was engaged as odd waiter for a banquet. I know I ought to have
+given it up to the Lord Mayor's servants, but it was such a pretty
+little thing that I was tempted to keep it. It probably had fallen from
+the coat of one of the diplomatists dining there."
+
+I was silent. The faint suspicion that Oberg had been at that spot was
+now entirely removed. The only clue I had was satisfactorily accounted
+for.
+
+"Why do you ask, Signor Commendatore?" he added.
+
+"Because the cross was found at the spot, and was believed to have been
+dropped by the assassin," I said.
+
+The police had, it seemed, succeeded in discovering the unfortunate
+woman after all, and had found that she was his wife.
+
+"You know a man named Leithcourt?" I asked a few moments later. "Now,
+tell the truth. In this affair, Olinto, our interests are mutual, are
+they not?"
+
+He nodded, after a moment's hesitation.
+
+"And you know also a man named Archer--who is sometimes known as Hornby,
+or Woodroffe--as well as a friend of his called Chater."
+
+"Si, signore," he said. "I have met them all--to my regret."
+
+"And have you ever met a Russian--a certain Baron Oberg--and his niece,
+Elma Heath?"
+
+"His niece? She isn't his niece."
+
+"Then who is she?" I demanded.
+
+"How do I know? I have seen her once or twice. But she's dead, isn't
+she? She knew the secret of those men, and they intended to kill her. I
+tried to prevent them taking her away on the yacht, and I would have
+gone to the police--only I dare not."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, because my own hands were not quite clean," he answered after a
+pause, his eyes fixed upon mine the while. "I knew they intended to
+silence her, but I was powerless to save her, poor young lady. They took
+her on board Leithcourt's yacht, the _Iris_, and they sailed for the
+Mediterranean, I believe."
+
+"Then the name and appearance of the yacht was altered on the voyage,
+and it became the _Lola_," I said.
+
+"No doubt," he smiled. "The _Iris_ was a steamer of many names, and had,
+I believe, been painted nearly all the colors of the rainbow at various
+times. It was a mysterious vessel, but she exists no more. They scuttled
+her somewhere up in the Baltic, I've heard."
+
+"And who is this Oberg?" I inquired, urging him to reveal to me all he
+knew concerning him.
+
+"He stands in great fear of the poor young lady, I believe, for it was
+at his instigation that Leithcourt and his friends took her on that
+fatal yachting cruise."
+
+"And what was your connection with them?"
+
+"Well, I was Leithcourt's servant," was his reply. "I was steward on the
+_Iris_ for a year, until I suppose they thought that I began to see too
+much, and then I was placed in a position ashore."
+
+"And what did you see?"
+
+"More than I care to tell, signore. If they were arrested I should be
+arrested, too, you see."
+
+"But I mean to solve this mystery, Olinto," I said fiercely, for I was
+in no trifling mood. "I'll fathom it if it costs me my life."
+
+"If the signore solves it himself, then I cannot be charged with
+revealing the truth," was the man's diplomatic reply. "But I fear that
+they are far too wary."
+
+"Armida has lost her life. Surely that is sufficient incentive for you
+to bring them all to justice?"
+
+"Of course. But if the law falls upon them, it will also fall upon me."
+
+I explained the terrible affliction to which my love had been subjected
+by those heartless brutes, whereupon he cried enthusiastically:
+
+"Then she is not dead! She can tell us everything!"
+
+"But cannot you tell us?"
+
+"No; not all. The secret she knows has never been revealed. They feared
+she might be incautious, and for that reason Oberg made the villainous
+suggestion of the yachting trip. She was to be drowned--accidentally, of
+course."
+
+"She is in St. Petersburg now. I left her a week ago."
+
+"In Russia! Ah, signore, for her sake, don't allow the young lady to
+remain there. The Baron is all-powerful. He does what he wishes in
+Russia, and the more merciless he is to the people he governs, the
+greater rewards he receives from the Czar. I have never been in Russia,
+but surely it must be a strange country, signore!"
+
+"Well," I said, sitting upon the edge of the bed and looking at him.
+"Are you prepared to denounce them if I bring the Signorina Heath here,
+to England?"
+
+"But what is the use, if we have no clear proof?" was his evasive reply.
+I could see plainly that he feared being himself implicated in some
+extraordinary plot, the exact nature of which he so steadfastly refused
+to reveal to me.
+
+We talked on for fully half an hour, and from his conversation I
+gathered that he was well acquainted with Elma.
+
+"Ah, signore, she was such a pleasant and kind-hearted young lady. I
+always felt very sorry for her. She was in deadly fear of them."
+
+"Because they were thieves?" I hazarded.
+
+"Ah, worse!"
+
+"But why did they induce you to entice me to that house in Lambeth? Why
+did they so evidently desire that I should be killed?"
+
+"By accident," he interrupted, correcting me. "Always by accident," and
+he smiled grimly.
+
+"Surely you know their secret motive?" I remarked.
+
+"At the time I did not," he declared. "I acted on their instructions,
+being compelled to, for they hold my future in their hands. Therefore I
+could not disobey. You knew too much, therefore you were marked down for
+death--just as you are now."
+
+"And who is it who is now seeking my life?" I inquired gravely. "I only
+returned from Russia yesterday."
+
+"Your movements are well known," answered the young Italian. "You cannot
+be too careful. Woodroffe has been in Russia with you, has he not?"
+
+I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:
+
+"I thought so, but was not quite sure."
+
+"And Chater?" I inquired; "where is he?"
+
+"In London."
+
+"And the Leithcourts?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of ignorance, adding: "The
+Signorina Muriel returned to London from Eastbourne this morning."
+
+"Where can I find her?" I inquired eagerly. "It is of the utmost
+importance that I should see her."
+
+"She is with a relation, a cousin, I think, at Bassett Road, Notting
+Hill. The house is called 'Holmwood.'"
+
+"You have seen her?"
+
+"No. I heard she had returned."
+
+"And her father is still in hiding from Chater?"
+
+"He is still in hiding, but Chater is his best friend."
+
+"That is curious," I remarked, recollecting the hurried departure from
+Rannoch. "They've made it up, I suppose?"
+
+"They never quarreled, to my knowledge."
+
+"Then why did Leithcourt leave Scotland so hurriedly on Chater's
+arrival? You know all about the affair, of course?"
+
+He nodded, saying with a grim smile, "Yes; I know. The party up there
+must have been a very interesting one. If the police could have made a
+raid on the place they would have found among the guests certain persons
+long 'wanted.' But the arrival of Chater and the flight of Leithcourt
+had an ulterior object. Chater had never been Leithcourt's enemy."
+
+"But I can't understand that," I said. "Why should Leithcourt have
+attacked Chater, rendered him unconscious, and shut him up in the
+cupboard in the library?"
+
+"Was it Leithcourt who did that?" he asked dubiously. "I think not. It
+was another of the guests who was Chater's bitterest enemy. But Philip
+Leithcourt took advantage of the fracas in order to make believe that he
+had fled because of Chater's arrival. Ah!" he added, "you haven't any
+idea of their ruses. They are amazing!"
+
+"So it seems," I said, nevertheless only half convinced that the Italian
+was telling me the truth. If it was really, as he had said, that the
+arrival of Chater and the flight was merely a "blind," then the mystery
+was again deepened.
+
+"Then who was the man who attacked Chater?" I asked.
+
+"Only Chater himself knows. It was one of the guests, that is quite
+evident."
+
+"And you say that the flight had been prearranged?" I remarked.
+
+"Yes, with a distinct motive," he said; then, after a pause, he added,
+with a strange, earnest look in his dark eyes, "Pardon me, Signor
+Commendatore, if I presume to suggest something, will you not?"
+
+"Certainly. What do you suggest?"
+
+"That you should remain here, in this hotel, and not venture out."
+
+"For fear of something unfortunate happening to me!" I laughed. "I'm
+really not afraid, Olinto," I added. "You know I carry this," and I drew
+out my revolver from my hip-pocket.
+
+"I know, signore," he said anxiously. "But you might not be afforded
+opportunity for using it. When they lay a trap they bait it well."
+
+"I know. They're a set of the most ingenious scoundrels in London, it is
+very evident. Yet I don't fear them in the least," I declared. "I must
+rescue the Signorina Heath."
+
+"But, signore, have a care for yourself," cried the Italian, laying his
+hand upon my arm. "You are a marked man. Ah! do I not know," he
+exclaimed breathlessly. "If you go out you may run right into--well, the
+fatal accident."
+
+"Never fear, Olinto," I said reassuringly. "I shall keep my eyes well
+open. Here, in London, one's life is safer than anywhere else in the
+world, perhaps--certainly safer than in some places I could name in your
+own country, eh?" at which he grinned.
+
+The next moment he grew serious again, and said:
+
+"I only warn the signore that if he goes out it is at his own peril."
+
+"Then let it be so," I laughed, feeling self-confident that no one could
+lead me into any trap. I was neither a foreigner nor a country cousin. I
+knew London too well. He was silent and shook his head; then, after
+telling me that he was still at the same restaurant in Westbourne Grove,
+he took his departure, warning me once more not to go forth.
+
+Half an hour later, disregarding his words, I strode out into the
+Strand, and again walked round to the "Junior." The short wintry day had
+ended, the gas-lamps were lit, and the darkness of night was gradually
+creeping on.
+
+Jack had not been to the club, and I began now to grow thoroughly
+uneasy. He had parted from me at the corner of the Strand with only a
+five minutes' walk before him, and yet he had apparently disappeared. My
+first impulse was to drive to Notting Hill to inquire of Muriel if she
+had news of him, but somehow the Italian's warning words made me wonder
+if he had met with foul play.
+
+I suddenly recollected those two men who had passed by as we had talked,
+and how that the features of one had seemed strangely familiar.
+Therefore I took a cab to the police-station down at Whitehall, and made
+inquiry of the inspector on duty in the big bare office with its flaring
+gas-jets in wire globes. He heard me to the end, then turning back the
+book of "occurrences" before him, glanced through the ruled entries.
+
+"I should think this is the gentleman, sir," he said. And he read to me
+the entry as follows:
+
+"P.C. 462A reports that at 2.07 a.m., while on duty outside the National
+Gallery, he heard a revolver shot, followed by a man's cry. He ran to
+the corner of Suffolk Street, where he found a gentleman lying upon the
+pavement suffering from a serious shot-wound in the chest and quite
+unconscious. He obtained the assistance of P.C.'s 218A and 343A, and the
+gentleman, who was not identified, was taken to the Charing Cross
+Hospital, where the house-surgeon expressed a doubt whether he could
+live. Neither P.C.'s recollect having noticed any suspicious-looking
+person in the vicinity.
+                         "JOHN PERCIVAL, _Inspector_."
+
+I waited for no more, but rushed round to the hospital in the cab, and
+was, five minutes later, taken along the ward, where I identified poor
+Jack lying in bed, white-faced and unconscious.
+
+"The doctor was here a quarter of an hour ago," whispered the sister.
+"And he fears he is sinking."
+
+"He has uttered no words?" I asked anxiously. "Made no statement?"
+
+"None. He has never regained consciousness, and I fear, sir, he never
+will. It is a case of deliberate murder, the police told me early this
+morning."
+
+I clenched my fists and swore a fierce revenge for that dastardly act.
+And as I stood beside the narrow bed, I realized that what Olinto had
+said regarding my own peril was the actual truth. I was a marked man.
+Was I never to penetrate that inscrutable and ever-increasing mystery?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE TRUTH ABOUT THE "LOLA"
+
+
+Throughout the long night I called many times at the hospital, but the
+reply was always the same. Jack had not regained consciousness, and the
+doctor regarded his case as hopeless.
+
+In the morning I drove in hot haste to Bassett Road, Notting Hill, and
+at the address Olinto had given me found Muriel. When she entered the
+room with folding doors into which I had been shown, I saw that she was
+pale and apprehensive, for we had not met since her flight, and she was,
+no doubt, at a loss for an explanation. But I did not press her for one.
+I merely told her that the Italian Santini had given me her address and
+that I came as bearer of unfortunate news.
+
+"What is it?" she gasped quickly.
+
+"It concerns Captain Durnford," I replied. "He has been injured in the
+street, and is in Charing Cross Hospital."
+
+"Ah!" she cried. "I see. You do not explain the truth. By your face I
+can tell there is something more. He's dead! Tell me the worst."
+
+"No, Miss Leithcourt," I said gravely, "not dead, but the doctors fear
+that he may not recover. His wound is dangerous. He has been shot by
+some unknown person."
+
+"Shot!" she echoed, bursting into tears. "Then they have followed him,
+after all! They have deceived me, and now, as they intend to take him
+from me, I will myself protect him. You, Mr. Gregg, have been in peril
+of your life, that I know, but Jack's enemies are yours, and they shall
+not go unpunished. May I see him?"
+
+"I fear not, but we will ask at the hospital." And after the exchange of
+some further explanations, we took a hansom back to Charing Cross.
+
+At first the sister refused to allow Muriel to see the patient, but she
+implored so earnestly that at last she consented, and the distressed
+girl in the black coat and hat crept on tiptoe to the bedside.
+
+"He was conscious for a quarter of an hour or so," whispered the nurse
+who sat there, "He asked after some lady named Muriel."
+
+The girl at my side burst into low sobbing.
+
+"Tell him," she said, "that Muriel is here--that she has seen him, and
+is waiting for him to recover."
+
+We were not allowed to linger there, and on leaving the hospital I took
+her back again to Notting Hill, promising to keep her well informed of
+Jack's condition. He had returned to consciousness, therefore there was
+now a faint hope for his recovery.
+
+Day succeeded day, and although I was not allowed to visit my friend, I
+was told that he was very slowly progressing. I idled at the Hotel Cecil
+longing daily for news of Elma. Only once did a letter come from her, a
+brief, well-written note from which it appeared that she was quite well
+and happy, although she longed to be able to go out. The Princess was
+very kind indeed to her, and, she added, was making secret arrangements
+for her escape across the Russian frontier into Germany.
+
+I knew what that meant. Use was to be made of certain Russian officials
+who were secretly allied with the Revolutionists in order to secure her
+safe conduct beyond the power of that order of exile of the tyrant de
+Plehve. I wrote to her under cover to the Princess, but there had been
+no time yet for a reply.
+
+I saw Muriel many times, but never once did she refer to Rannoch or
+their sudden departure. Her only thought was of the man she loved.
+
+"I always believed that you were engaged to Mr. Woodroffe," I said one
+day, when I called to tell her of Jack's latest bulletin.
+
+"It is true that he asked me to marry him," she responded. "But there
+were reasons why I did not accept."
+
+"Reasons connected with his past, eh?"
+
+She smiled, and then said:
+
+"Ah, Mr. Gregg, it is all a strange and very tragic story. I must see
+Jack. When do you think they will allow me to go to him?"
+
+I explained that the doctor feared to cause the patient any undue
+excitement, but that in two or three days there was hope of her being
+allowed to visit him. Several times the police made inquiry of me, but I
+could tell them nothing. I could not for the life of me recollect where
+I had before seen the face of that man who had passed in the darkness.
+
+One afternoon, ten days after the attempt upon Jack, I was allowed to
+sit by his bedside and question him.
+
+"Ah, Gordon, old fellow!" he said faintly, "I've had a narrow escape--by
+Jove! After I left you I walked quickly on towards the club, when, all
+of a sudden, two scoundrels sprang out of Suffolk Street, and one of
+them fired a revolver full at me. Then I knew no more."
+
+"But who were the men? Did you recognize them?"
+
+"No, not at all. That's the worst of it."
+
+"But Muriel knows who they were!" I said.
+
+"Ah, yes! Bring her here, won't you?" the poor fellow implored, "I'm
+dying to see her once again."
+
+Then I told him how she had looked upon him while unconscious, and how I
+had taken the daily bulletin to her. For an hour I talked with him,
+urging him to get well soon, so that we could unite in probing the
+mystery, and bringing to justice those responsible for the dastardly
+act.
+
+"Muriel knows, and if she loves you she will no doubt assist us," I
+said.
+
+"Oh, she does love me, Gordon, I know that," said the prostrate man,
+smiling contentedly, and when I left I promised to bring her there on
+the morrow.
+
+This I did, but having conducted her to the bed at the end of the ward I
+discreetly withdrew. What she said to him I am not, of course, aware.
+All I know is that an hour later when I returned I found them the
+happiest pair possible to conceive, and I clearly saw that Jack's trust
+in her was not ill-placed.
+
+But of Elma? No further word had come from her, and I began to grow
+uneasy. The days went on. I wrote twice, but no reply was forthcoming.
+At last I could bear the suspense no longer, and began to contemplate
+returning to Russia.
+
+Jack, when at last discharged from the hospital, came across to the
+Cecil and lived with me in preference to the "Junior." He was very weak
+at first, and I looked after him, while every day Muriel came and ate
+with us, brightening our lives by her smart and merry chatter. She knew
+that I loved Elma and was also aware of the exciting events in Russia,
+Jack having told her of them during their long drives in hansoms when he
+went out with her to take the air.
+
+One day I received a brief note from the Princess in Petersburg, urging
+me to remain patient and saying Elma was quite safe and well. There
+were reasons, however, why she was unable to write, she added. What were
+they, I wondered? Yet I could only wait until I received word to travel
+back to Russia and fetch her home. The Princess had promised to arrange
+everything.
+
+December came, and we still remained on at the hotel. Once Olinto had
+written me repeating his warning, but I did not heed it. I somehow
+distrusted the fellow.
+
+Jack, now thoroughly recovered, called almost daily at Bassett Road, and
+would often bring Muriel to the Cecil to tea or to luncheon. Often I
+inquired the whereabouts of her father and of Hylton Chater, but she
+declared herself in entire ignorance, and believed they were abroad.
+
+One afternoon, shortly before Christmas, as we were idling in the
+American bar of the hotel, my friend told me that Muriel had invited us
+to tea at her cousin's that afternoon, and accordingly we went there in
+company.
+
+The drawing-room into which we were ushered was familiar to me as the
+apartment wherein I had told Muriel of the attempt upon her lover's
+life.
+
+As we sat together Muriel, a smart figure in a pale blue gown, poured
+tea for us and chatted more merrily, I thought, than ever before. She
+seemed quick and nervous and yet full of happiness, as she should indeed
+have been, for Jack Durnford was one of the best fellows in the world,
+and his restoration to health little short of miraculous.
+
+"Gordon," he said to me with a sudden seriousness when tea had ended and
+we had placed down our cups. "I want to tell you something--something
+I've been longing always to tell you, and now I have got dear Muriel's
+consent. I want to tell you about her father and his friends."
+
+"And about Elma, too?" I said in quick eagerness. "Yes, tell me
+everything."
+
+"No, not everything, for I don't know it myself. But what I know I will
+explain as briefly as I can, and leave you to form your own conclusions.
+It is," he went on, "a strange--most amazing story. When I myself became
+first cognizant of the mystery I was on board the flagship the _Renown_,
+under Admiral Sir John Fisher. We were lying in Malta when there arrived
+the English yacht _Iris_, owned by Mr. Philip Leithcourt, and among
+those on board cruising for pleasure were Mr. Martin Woodroffe, Mr.
+Hylton Chater, and the owner's wife and daughter Muriel.
+
+"Muriel and I met first at a tennis-party, and afterwards frequently at
+various houses in Malta, for anyone who goes there and entertains is
+soon entertained in return. A mutual attachment sprang up between Muriel
+and myself," he said, placing his hand tenderly upon hers and smiling,
+"and we often met in secret and took long walks, until quite suddenly
+Leithcourt said that it was necessary to sail for Smyrna to pick up some
+friends who had been traveling in Palestine. The night they sailed a
+great consternation was caused on the island by the news that the safe
+in the Admiral Superintendent's office had been opened by expert
+safe-breakers, and certain most important secret documents stolen."
+
+"Well?" I asked, much interested.
+
+"Again, two months later, when the villa of the Prince of Montevachi, at
+Palmero, was broken into and the whole of the famous jewels of the
+Princess stolen, it was a very strange fact that the _Iris_ was at the
+moment in that port. But it was not until the third occasion, when the
+yacht was at Villefranche, and our squadron being at Toulon I got four
+days' leave to go along the Riviera, that my suspicions were aroused,
+for at the very hour when I was dining at the London House at Nice with
+Muriel and a schoolfellow of hers, Elma Heath--who was spending the
+winter there with a lady who was Baron Oberg's cousin--that a great
+robbery was committed in one of the big hotels up at Cimiez, the wife of
+an American millionaire losing jewels valued at thirty thousand pounds.
+Then the robberies, coincident with the visit of the yacht, aroused my
+strong suspicion. I remarked the nature of those documents stolen from
+Malta, and recognized that they could only be of service to a foreign
+government. Then came the Leghorn incident of which you told me. The
+yacht's name had been changed to the _Lola_, and she had been repainted.
+I made searching inquiry, and found that on the evening she was
+purposely run aground in order to strike up a friendship at the
+Consulate, a Russian gunboat was lying in the vicinity. The Consul's
+safe was rifled, and the scheme certainly was to transfer anything
+obtained from it to the Russian gunboat."
+
+"But what was in the safe?" I asked.
+
+"Fortunately nothing. But you see they knew that our squadron was due in
+Leghorn, and that some extremely important despatches were on the way to
+the Admiral--secret orders based upon the decision of the British
+Cabinet as to the vexed question of Russian ships passing the
+Dardanelles--they expected that they would be lodged in the safe until
+the arrival of the squadron, as they always are. They were, however,
+bitterly disappointed because the despatches had not arrived."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Well, the only Russian who appeared to have any connection with them
+was Baron Oberg, the Governor-General of Finland, whose habit it was to
+spend part of the winter in the Mediterranean. From Elma Heath's
+conversation at dinner that evening at Nice I gathered that she and her
+uncle had been guests on the _Iris_ on several occasions, although I
+must say that Muriel was extremely reticent regarding all that concerned
+the yacht."
+
+"Of course," she said quickly. "Now that I have told you the truth,
+Jack, don't you think it was only natural?"
+
+"Most certainly, dear," he answered, still holding her hand. "Yours was
+not a secret that you could very well tell to me until you could
+thoroughly trust me, especially as your father had been implicated in
+the theft of those documents from Malta. The truth is," he said, turning
+to me, "Philip Leithcourt has all along been the catspaw of Baron Oberg.
+A few years ago he was a well-known money-lender in the city, and in
+that capacity met the Baron, who, being in disgrace, required a loan. He
+was also in the habit of having certain shady transactions with that
+daring gang of continental thieves of whom Dick Archer and Hylton Chater
+were leaders. For this reason he purchased a yacht for their use, so
+that they might not only use it for the purpose of storing the stolen
+goods, but for the purpose of sailing from place to place under the
+guise of wealthy Englishmen traveling for pleasure. Upon that vessel,
+indeed, was stored thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of jewels
+and objects of value, the proceeds of many great robberies in England,
+France and Belgium. Sometimes they traveled for the purpose of disposing
+of the jewels in various inland towns where the gems, having been recut,
+were not recognized, while at other times, Chater and Archer, assisted
+by Mackintosh, the captain, and Olinto Santini, the steward, sailed for
+a port, landed, committed a robbery, and then sailed away again, quite
+unsuspected, as rich Englishmen."
+
+"And the crew?" I asked, after a pause.
+
+"They were, of course, well paid, and were kept in ignorance of what
+the supposed owner and his friends did ashore."
+
+"But Oberg's connection with it?" I asked, surprised at those
+revelations.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Muriel. "The ingenuity of that crafty villain is
+fiendish. Before he got into the Czar's favor he owed my father a large
+sum, and then sought how to evade repayment. By means of his spies he
+discovered the real purpose of the cruises of the _Iris_--for I was
+often taken on board with a maid in order to allay any suspicion that
+might arise if only men were cruising. Then he not only compelled my
+father to cancel the debt, but he impressed the vessel and those who
+owned and navigated it into the secret service of Russia. A dozen times
+did we make attempts to obtain secret papers from Italian, French and
+English dockyards, but only once in the case of Malta and once at Toulon
+did we succeed. Ah! Mr. Gregg," she added, "you do not know all the
+anxiety I suffered, how at every hour we were in danger of betrayal or
+capture, and of the hundred narrow escapes we have had of Custom House
+officers rummaging the yacht for contraband. You will no doubt recollect
+the sensation caused by the theft of the jewels of the Princess
+Wilhelmine of Schaumbourg-Lippe from the lady's-maid in the rapide
+between Cannes and Les Arcs, the robbery from the Marseilles branch of
+the Credit Lyonnais, and the great haul of plate from the chateau of
+Bardon, the Paris millionaire, close to Arcachon."
+
+"Yes," I said, for they were all robberies of which I had read in the
+newspapers a couple of years before.
+
+"Well," she said, "they were all committed by Archer or Woodroffe and
+his gang--with accomplices ashore, of course--and never once did it seem
+that any suspicion fell upon us. While the police were frantically
+searching hither and thither, we used to weigh anchor and calmly steam
+away with our booty on board. We had with us an old Dutch lapidary, and
+one of the cabins was fitted as a workshop, where he altered the
+appearance of the stones, and prepared them ready for sale, while the
+gold was melted in a crucible and put ashore to be sent to agents in
+Hamburg."
+
+"But that night in Leghorn?" I said. "What happened to poor Elma?"
+
+"I do not know," was Muriel's reply. "We were both on board together,
+and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that
+evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against
+your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the
+proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. Oberg himself was also on
+board, locked in his own cabin. Elma must have overheard some
+conversation between the Baron and one of the others, for she was in
+great fear the whole time lest they might injure you. Yet it seemed,
+after all, as though their idea was the same as always, to worm
+themselves into your confidence. The instant, however, you went ashore,
+Chater, Woodroffe--whom you called Hornby--and Mackintosh, the
+captain--who, by the way, was an old ticket-of-leave man--went ashore,
+and, of course, broke into the Consulate. Then, as soon as they
+returned, Elma came to my cabin, awoke me, and said that the Baron was
+taking her ashore, and that they were to travel overland back to London.
+She was ready dressed to go, therefore I kissed her, and promising to
+meet her soon, we parted. That was the last I saw of her. What happened
+to her afterwards only she alone can tell us."
+
+"But she is not the Baron's niece?" I said.
+
+"No. There is some mystery," declared Muriel. "She holds some secret
+which he fears she may divulge. But of what nature, I am in ignorance."
+
+"Then you say that your father has never taken any active part in the
+robberies?" I remarked.
+
+"No. He commenced by lending money, and amassed a considerable fortune.
+Then avarice seized him, as it does so many men, and coming into contact
+with Archer and his friends, he saw that the idea of the yacht was a
+safe and profitable one. Therefore he purchased the vessel, and ran it
+at the disposition of the thieves, and subsequently under compulsion in
+the secret service of Russia, as I have already described to you. The
+profits were colossal. In one year my father's share was eighty thousand
+pounds."
+
+"And where is your father now?" I asked.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed sadly, her face pale and haggard.
+
+"I have heard that the vessel was scuttled somewhere in the Baltic."
+
+"That is true. Oberg's purpose having been served, he demanded half the
+property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval
+authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail
+my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was
+frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma,
+defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors,
+telegraphed to the admiral of the Russian fleet in the Baltic. The crew
+from the _Iris_ were at once landed at Riga, and only Mackintosh and my
+father put to sea again. Ah! my father was desperate, for he knew the
+merciless character of that man whose victim he had been for so long.
+They watched a Russian cruiser bearing down upon them, when, just as it
+drew near, they got off in a boat and blew up the yacht, which sank in
+three minutes with its ill-obtained wealth on board."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+She was silent, and I saw tears standing in her eyes.
+
+"There was a tragedy," Jack explained in a low, hoarse voice. "He and
+the captain did not, unfortunately, get sufficiently far from the yacht
+when they blew her up, and they went down with her."
+
+And I looked in silence at Muriel, who stood with her head bent and her
+white face covered with her hands.
+
+Almost at the same moment there was a low tap at the door, and the
+servant-maid announced:
+
+"Mr. Santini, miss."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Jack quickly, as Olinto entered the room. "Then you had
+my note! We have asked you here to reveal to us this dastardly plot
+which seemed to have been formed against Mr. Gregg and myself. As you
+know, I've had a narrow escape."
+
+"I know, signore. And the Signor Commendatore is also threatened."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"By those who killed my poor wife, and who intended also to silence me,"
+was his answer.
+
+"The same who compelled you take me to that house where the fatal chair
+was prepared, eh?"
+
+"It was Archer, who, fearing that you came to London in search of them,
+devised that devilish contrivance," he said in his broken English. Then
+continuing, he went on fiercely: "Now that I have discovered why my poor
+Armida was killed, I will tell the truth, and not spare them. Since you
+left Scotland, signore, I have been up in Dumfries, and have discovered
+several facts which prove that for some reason known only to himself,
+Leithcourt, while at Rannoch, wrote to both Armida and myself
+separately, making an appointment to see us at the same time at that
+spot on the edge of the wood, as he had some secret commission to
+entrust to us. The letter addressed to me apparently fell into someone
+else's hands--probably one of the secret agents of Baron Oberg, who were
+always watching Leithcourt's doings, and he, anxious to learn what was
+intended, made himself up to look like me, and kept the appointment in
+my place. Armida, having received the letter unknown to me, went up to
+Scotland, and was also there at the appointed time. What actually
+transpired can only be surmised, yet it seems that Leithcourt was in the
+habit of going up to that spot and loitering there in the evening in
+order to meet Chater in secret, as the latter was in hiding in a small
+hotel in Dumfries. Therefore those who formed the plot must have
+endeavored to throw suspicion upon Leithcourt. It is plain, however, as
+both myself and Armida knew the gang, it was to their interest to get
+rid of us, because the suspicions of the police had at last become
+aroused. Poor Armida was therefore deliberately enticed there to her
+death, while the inquisitive man whom the assassin took to be myself was
+also struck down."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Not by Chater, for he was in London on that night."
+
+"Then by Woodroffe?" Durnford said.
+
+"Without a doubt. It was all most cleverly thought out. It was to his
+advantage alone to close our lips, because in that same fatal chair in
+Lambeth old Jacob Moser, the Jew bullion-broker of Hatton Garden, met
+his death--a most dastardly crime, with which none of his friends were
+associated, and of which we alone held knowledge. He therefore wrote to
+us as though from Leithcourt, calling us up to Rannoch, in order to
+strike the blows in the darkness," he added in his peculiar Italian
+manner. "Besides, he feared we would tell the signore the truth."
+
+"You have not told the police?"
+
+"I dare not, signore. Surely the less the police know about this matter
+the better, otherwise the Signorina Leithcourt must suffer for her
+father's avarice and evil-doing."
+
+"Yes," cried Jack anxiously. "That's right, Olinto. The police must know
+nothing. The reprisals we must make ourselves. But who was it who shot
+me in Suffolk Street?"
+
+"The same man, Martin Woodroffe."
+
+"Then the assassin is back from Russia?"
+
+"He followed closely behind the Signor Commendatore. Markoff, a clever
+secret agent of Baron Oberg's, came with him."
+
+Then for the first time I recollected that the man I had recognized in
+the Strand was a fellow I had seen lounging in the ante-room of the
+palace of the Governor-General of Finland. The pair, fearing that I
+should reveal what I knew, were undoubtedly in London to take my life in
+secret. Now that Leithcourt was dead, Woodroffe had united forces with
+Oberg, and intended to silence me because they feared that Elma, besides
+escaping them, had also revealed her secret.
+
+"I trust that the Signorina Leithcourt has explained the story of the
+yacht and its crew," Olinto remarked. "And has also shown you how I was
+implicated. You will therefore discern the reason why I have hitherto
+feared to give you any explanation."
+
+"Yes," I said, "Miss Leithcourt has told me a great deal, but not
+everything. I cannot yet gather for what reason she and her father fled
+from Rannoch."
+
+"Then I will tell you," said Muriel quickly. "My father suspected
+Woodroffe of being the assassin in Rannoch Wood, for he knew that he had
+broken away from the original compact, and had now allied himself with
+Oberg. Yet it was also my father's object to appear in fear of them,
+because he was only awaiting an opportunity to lay plans for poor Elma's
+rescue from Finland. Therefore one evening Woodroffe called, and my
+father encountered him in the avenue, and admitted him with his own
+latchkey by one of the side doors of the castle, afterwards taking him
+up to the study. He knew that he had come to try and make terms for
+Oberg, therefore he saw that he must fly at once to Newcastle, where the
+_Iris_ was lying, get on board, and sail away.
+
+"With some excuse he left him in the study, and then warned my mother
+and myself to prepare to leave. But while we were packing, it appeared
+that Chater, who had followed, was shown into the study by the butler,
+or rather he entered there himself, being well acquainted with the
+house. Thus the two men, now bitter enemies, met. A fierce quarrel must
+have ensued, and Chater was poisoned and concealed, Woodroffe, of
+course, believing he had killed him. My father entered the study again,
+and seeing only Woodroffe there, did not know what had occurred. Some
+words probably arose, when my father again turned and left. Then we fled
+to Carlisle and on to Newcastle, and next morning were on board the
+yacht out in the North Sea, afterwards landing at Rotterdam. Those," she
+added, "are briefly the facts, as my poor father related them to me."
+
+"And what of poor Elma--and of her secret? When, I wonder, shall I see
+her?" I cried in despair.
+
+"You will see her now, signore," answered Olinto. "A servant of the
+Princess Zurloff brought her to London this afternoon, and I have just
+conveyed her from the station. She is in the next room, in ignorance,
+however, that you are here."
+
+And without another word I fled forward joyfully, and threw open the
+folding-doors which separated me from my silent love.
+
+Silent, yes! But she could, nevertheless, tell her story--surely the
+strangest that any woman has ever lived to tell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+CONTAINS ELMA'S STORY
+
+
+Before me stood my love, a slim, tragic, rather wan figure in a heavy
+dark traveling-coat and felt toque, her sweet lips parted and a look of
+bewildered amazement upon her countenance as I burst in so suddenly upon
+her.
+
+In silence I grasped her tiny black-gloved hand, and then, also in
+silence, raised it passionately to my eager lips. Her soft, dark
+eyes--those eyes that spoke although she was mute--met mine, and in them
+was a look that I had never seen there before--a look which as plainly
+as any words told me that my wild fevered passion was reciprocated.
+
+She gazed beyond into the room where the others had assembled, and then
+looked at me inquiringly, whereupon I led her forward to where they
+were, and Muriel fell upon her and kissed her with tears streaming from
+her eyes.
+
+"I prepared this surprise for you, Mr. Gregg," Muriel said, laughing
+through her tears of joy. "Olinto learnt that she was on her way to
+London, and I sent him to meet her. The Princess has managed
+magnificently, has she not?"
+
+"Yes. Thank God she is free!" I exclaimed. "But we must induce her to
+tell us everything."
+
+Muriel was already helping my love out of her heavy Russian coat, a
+costly garment lined with sable, and when, after greeting Jack and
+Olinto, she was comfortably seated, I took some notepaper from the
+little writing-table by the window and scribbled in pencil the words:
+
+"I need not write how delighted I am that you are safe--that the
+Almighty has heard my prayers for you. Jack and Muriel have told me all
+about Leithcourt and his scoundrelly associates. I know, too, dear--for
+I may call you that, may I not?--how terribly you must have suffered in
+silence through it all. Leithcourt is dead. He sank the yacht with all
+the stolen property on board, but by accident was himself engulfed."
+
+Bending and watching intently as I wrote, she drew back in horror and
+surprise at the words. Then I added: "We are all four determined that
+the guilty shall not go unpunished, and that the affliction placed upon
+you shall be adequately avenged. You are my own love--I am bold enough
+to call you so. Some strong but mysterious bond of affinity between us
+caused me to seek you out, and your pictured face seemed to call me to
+your side although I was unaware of your peril. I was sent to you by the
+unseen power to extricate you from the hands of your enemies. Therefore
+tell us everything--all that you know--without fear, for now that we are
+united no harm can assail us."
+
+She took the pencil, and holding it in her white fingers sat staring
+first at us, and then looking hesitatingly at the white paper before
+her. Her position, amid a hundred conflicting emotions, was one of
+extreme difficulty. It seemed as though even now she was loth to reveal
+to us the absolute truth.
+
+Muriel, standing behind her chair, tenderly stroked back the wealth of
+chestnut hair from her white brow. Her complexion was perfect, even
+though her face was pale and jaded, and her eyes heavy, consequent upon
+her long, weary journey from the now frozen North.
+
+Presently, when by signs both Jack and Olinto had urged her to write,
+she bent suddenly, and her pencil began to run swiftly over the paper.
+
+All of us stood exchanging glances in silence, neither looking over her,
+but each determined to wait in patience until the end. Once started,
+however, she did not pause. Sheet after sheet she covered. The silence
+for a long time was complete, broken only by the rapid running of the
+pencil over the rough surface of the paper. She had apparently become
+seized by a sudden determination to explain everything, now that she saw
+we were in real, dead earnest.
+
+I watched her sweet face bent so intently, and as the firelight fell
+across it found it incomparable. Yes; she was afflicted by loss of
+speech, it was true, yet she was surely inexpressibly sweet and womanly,
+peerless above all others.
+
+With a deep-drawn sigh she at last finished, and, her head still bowed
+in an attitude of humiliation, it seemed, she handed what she had
+written to me.
+
+In breathless eagerness I read as follows:
+
+"Is it true, dear love--for I call you so in return--that you were
+impelled towards me by the mysterious hand that directs all things? You
+came in search of me, and you risked your life for mine at Kajana,
+therefore you have a right to know the truth. You, as my champion, and
+the Princess as my friend, have contrived to effect my freedom. Were it
+not for you, I should ere this have been on my way to Saghalien, to the
+tomb to which Oberg had so ingeniously contrived to consign me. Ah! you
+do not know--you never can know--all that I have suffered ever since I
+was a girl."
+
+Here the statement broke off, and recommenced as follows:
+
+"In order that you should understand the truth, I had better begin at
+the beginning. My father was an English merchant in Petersburg, and my
+mother, Vera Bessanoff, who, before her marriage with my father, was
+celebrated at Court for her beauty, and was one of the maids-of-honor to
+the Czarina. She was the only daughter of Count Paul Bessanoff,
+ex-Governor of Kharkoff, and before marrying my father she had, with her
+mother, been a well-known figure in society. Immediately after her
+marriage her father died, leaving her in possession of an ample fortune,
+which, with my father's own wealth, placed them among the richest and
+most influential in Petersburg.
+
+"Among my father's most intimate friends was Baron Xavier Oberg--who, at
+that time, held a very subordinate position in the Ministry of the
+Interior--and from my earliest recollections I can remember him coming
+frequently to our house and being invited to the brilliant
+entertainments which my mother gave. When I was thirteen, however, my
+father died of a chill contracted while boar-hunting on his estate in
+Kiev, and within a few months a further disaster happened to us. One
+night, while I was sitting alone reading aloud to my mother, two
+strangers were announced, and on being shown in they arrested my dear
+mother on a charge of complicity in a revolutionary plot against the
+Czar which had been discovered at Peterhof. I stood defiant and
+indignant, for my mother was certainly no Nihilist, yet they said that
+the bomb had been introduced into the palace by the Countess Anna
+Shiproff, one of the ladies-in-waiting, who was an intimate friend of my
+mother's and often used to visit her. They alleged that the conspiracy
+had been hatched in our house, color being lent to that theory by the
+fact that a year before a well-known Russian with whom my father had had
+many business dealings had been proved to be the author of the plot by
+which the Czar's train was blown up near Lividia. They tore my mother
+away from me and placed her in that gray prison-van, the sight of which
+in the streets of Petersburg strikes terror into the heart of every
+Russian, for a person once in that rumbling vehicle is, as you know,
+lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed
+in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted, for I
+recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the
+gray dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth came back to me. My
+mother was gone from me for ever!
+
+"In sheer desperation I went to the Ministry of the Interior and sought
+an interview with the Baron, who, when I told him of the disaster,
+appeared greatly concerned, and went at once to the Police Department to
+make inquiry. Next day, however, he came to me with the news that the
+charge against my mother had been proved by a statement of the woman
+Shiproff herself, and that she had already started on her long journey
+to Siberia--she had been exiled to one of those dreaded Arctic
+settlements beyond Yakutsk, a place where it is almost eternal winter,
+and where the conditions of life are such that half the convicts are
+insane. The Baron, however, declared that, as my father's friend, it was
+his duty to act as guardian to me, and that as my father had been
+English I ought to be put to an English school. Therefore, with his
+self-assumed title of uncle, he took me to Chichester. For years I
+remained there, until one day he came suddenly and fetched me away,
+taking me over to Helsingfors--for the Czar had now appointed him
+Governor-General to Finland. There, for the first time, he introduced me
+to his son Michael, a pimply-faced lieutenant of cavalry, and said in a
+most decisive manner that I must marry him. I naturally refused to marry
+a man of whom I knew so little, whereupon, finding me obdurate, he
+quickly altered his tactics and became kindness itself, saying that as I
+was young he would allow me a year in which to make up my mind.
+
+"A week later, while living in the palace at Helsingfors, I overheard a
+conversation between the Governor-General and his son, which revealed to
+me a staggering truth that I had never suspected. It was Oberg himself
+who had denounced my mother to the Minister of the Interior, and had
+made those cruel, baseless charges against her! Then I discerned the
+reason. She being exiled, her fortune, as well as that of my father,
+came to me. The reason they were scheming for Michael to marry me was in
+order to obtain control of my money. I saw at once how helpless I was in
+the hands of that unscrupulous pair, and I recognized, too, sufficient
+of the Baron's methods as 'The Strangler of Finland,' to show me what
+kind of character he was beneath that calm, eminently respectable
+black-coated exterior. After deliberately sending my poor mother to
+Siberia, he had assumed the role of my guardian in order that he might,
+when I came of age, obtain control of my inheritance, the idea no doubt
+being that I should marry Michael, and then, after the necessary legal
+formalities, I should, on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy, share the
+same fate as my mother had done."
+
+"The infernal scoundrel!" I ejaculated, when I read her words, while
+from Jack, who had been looking over my shoulder, escaped a fierce and
+forcible vow of vengeance.
+
+"The Baron took me with him to Petersburg when he went on official
+business, and we remained there nearly a month," the narrative went on.
+"While there I received a secret message from 'The Red Priest,' the
+unseen and unknown power of Nihilism, who has for so many years baffled
+the police. I went to see him, and he revealed to me how Oberg had
+contrived to have my mother banished upon a false charge. He warned me
+against the man who had pretended to be my father's friend, and also
+told me that he had known my father intimately, and that if I got into
+any further difficulty I was to communicate with him and he would assist
+me. Oberg took me back to Helsingfors a few months later, and in summer
+we went to England. He was a marvelously clever diplomatist. His tactics
+he could change at will. When I was at school he was rough and brutal in
+his manner towards me, as he was to all; but now he seemed to be
+endeavoring to inspire my confidence by treating me with kindly regard
+and pleasant affability.
+
+"In London, at Claridge's, we met my old schoolfellow Muriel and her
+father--a friend of Oberg's--and in response to their invitation went
+for a cruise on their yacht, the _Iris_, from Southampton. Our party was
+a very pleasant one, and included Woodroffe and Chater, while our cruise
+across the Bay of Biscay and along the Portuguese coast proved most
+delightful. One night, while we were lying outside Lisbon, Woodroffe and
+Chater, together with Olinto, went ashore, and when they returned in the
+early hours of the morning they awoke me by crossing the deck above my
+head. Then I heard someone outside my cabin-door working as though with
+a screwdriver, unscrewing a screw from the woodwork. This aroused my
+interest, and next day I made a minute examination of the paneling,
+where, in one part, I found two small brass screws that had evidently
+been recently removed. Therefore I succeeded in getting hold of a
+screwdriver from the carpenter's shop, and next night, when everyone was
+asleep, I crept out and unscrewed the panel, when to my surprise I saw
+that the secret cavity behind was filled with beautiful jewelry, diamond
+collars, tiaras, necklets, fine pearls, emeralds and turquoises, all
+_thrown_ in indiscriminately.
+
+"I replaced the panel and kept careful watch. At Marseilles, where we
+called, more jewelry and a heavy bagful of plate was brought aboard and
+secreted behind another panel. Then I knew that the men were thieves.
+
+"But surely," continued the strange story my mute love had written, "I
+need not describe all that occurred upon that eventful voyage, except to
+tell you of one very curious incident which occurred. I had spoken
+confidentially with Muriel regarding my suspicions of the men who were
+our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on
+board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced
+that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some
+unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that
+since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and
+that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however,
+never suspected the truth until I pointed it out to her. Well, one hot
+summer's night we were lying off Naples, and as it was a grand festa
+ashore and there was to be a gala performance at the theater, Leithcourt
+took a box and the whole party were rowed ashore. The crew were also
+given shore-leave for the evening, but as the great heat had upset me I
+declined to accompany the theater-party, and remained on board with one
+sailor named Wilson to constitute the watch. We had anchored about half
+a mile from land, and earlier in the evening the Baron had gone ashore
+to send telegrams to Russia, and had not returned.
+
+"About ten o'clock I went below to try and sleep, but I had a slight
+attack of fever, and was unable. Therefore I redressed and sat with the
+light still out, gazing across the starlit bay. Presently from my
+port-hole I saw a shore-boat approaching, and recognized in it the Baron
+with a well-dressed stranger. They both came on board, and the boatman,
+having been paid, pulled back to the shore. Then the Baron and his
+friend--a dark, middle-aged, full-bearded man, evidently a person of
+refinement--went below to the saloon, and after a few moments called to
+the man Wilson who was on the watch, and gave him a glass of whisky and
+water, which he took up on deck to drink at his leisure.
+
+"The unusual character of my fellow-guests on board that craft was such
+that my suspicion was constantly on the alert, therefore curiosity
+tempted me to creep along and peep in at the crack of the door standing
+ajar. A closer view revealed the fact that the stranger was a high
+Russian official to whom I had once been introduced at the Government
+Palace at Helsingfors, the Privy-Councillor and Senator Paul Polovstoff.
+They were smoking together, and were discussing in Russian the means by
+which he, Polovstoff, had arranged to obtain plans of some new British
+fortifications at Gibraltar. From what he said, it seemed that some
+Russian woman, married to an Englishman, a captain in the garrison, had
+been impressed into the secret service against her will, but that she
+had, in order to save herself, promised to obtain the photographs and
+plans that were required. I heard the Englishman's name, and I resolved
+to take some steps to inform him in secret of the intentions of the
+Russian agent.
+
+"Presently the two men took fresh cigars, ascended on deck, and cast
+themselves in the long cane chairs amidships. Still all curiosity to
+hear further details on the ingenious piece of espionage against my own
+nation, I took off my shoes and crept up to a spot where I could crouch
+concealed and overhear their conversation, for the Italian night was
+calm and still. They talked mainly about affairs in Finland, and with
+some of Oberg's expressions of opinion Polovstoff ventured to differ.
+This aroused the Baron's anger, and I knew from the cold sarcasm of his
+remarks, and the peculiarly hard tone of his voice, that he was more
+incensed than he outwardly showed himself to be. He rose and stood with
+his back to the bulwarks facing his friend, who still sat leaning back
+in his deck-chair insisting upon his own views. He was quite calm, and
+not in the least perturbed by the evil glint in the Baron's eye. Perhaps
+he did not know him so well as I did. He did not know what that look
+meant. Suddenly, while the Privy-Councillor lay back in his chair
+pulling thoughtfully at his cigar, there was a bright, blood-red flash,
+a dull report, and a man's short agonized cry. Startled, I leaned around
+the corner of the deck-house, when, to my abject horror, I saw under the
+electric rays the Czar's Privy-Councillor lying sideways in his chair
+with part of his face blown away. Then the hideous truth in an instant
+became apparent. The cigar which Oberg had pressed upon him down in the
+saloon had exploded, and the small missile concealed inside the
+diabolical contrivance had passed upwards into his brain. For a moment I
+stood utterly stupefied, yet as I looked I saw the Baron, in a paroxysm
+of rage, shake his fist in the dead man's face, and cry with a fearful
+imprecation: 'You hound! You have plotted to replace me in the Czar's
+favor. You intended to become Governor-General of Finland! You knew
+certain facts which you intended to put before his Majesty, knowing
+that the revelations would result in my disgrace and downfall. But, you
+infernal cur, you did not know that those who attempt to thwart Xavier
+Oberg either die by accident or go for life to Kajana or the mines!' And
+he spurned the body with his foot and laughed to himself as he gloated
+over his dastardly crime.
+
+"I watched his rage, unable to utter a single word. I saw him, after he
+had searched the dead man's pockets, raise the inert body with its awful
+featureless face and drag it to the bulwarks. Then I rushed forward and
+faced him.
+
+"In an instant he sprang at me, and I screamed. But no aid came. The man
+Wilson was sleeping soundly in the bows, for the whisky he had given him
+had been doctored," went on the narrative. "Upon his face was a fierce,
+murderous look such as I had never seen before. 'You!' he screamed, his
+dark eyes starting from their sockets as he realized that I had been a
+witness of his cowardly crime. 'You have spied upon me, girl!' he
+hissed, 'and you shall die also!' I sank upon my knees imploring him to
+spare me, but he only laughed at my entreaty. 'See!' he cried, 'as you
+saw how he enjoyed his cigar, you may as well see this!' And with an
+effort he raised the dead body in his arms, poised it for a moment on
+the vessel's side, and then, with a hoarse laugh of triumph, heaved it
+into the sea. There was a splash, and then we were alone. 'And you!' he
+cried in a fierce voice--'you who have spied upon me--you will follow!
+The water there will close your chattering mouth!' I shrieked, begged,
+and implored, but his trembling hands were upon my throat. First he
+dragged me to my feet, then he threw me upon my knees, and at last, with
+that grim brutality which characterizes him, he directed me to go and
+get a mop and bucket from the forecastle and remove the dark red stains
+from the chair and deck. This he actually forced me to do, gloating over
+my horror as I removed for him the traces of his cowardly crime. Then,
+with his hand upon my shoulder, he said, 'Girl! Recollect that you keep
+to-night's work secret. If not, you shall die a death more painful than
+that dog has died--one in which you shall experience all the tortures of
+the damned. Recollect, not a single word--or death! Now, go to your
+cabin, and never pry into my affairs again.'
+
+"I went back to my cabin as I was bid, and sat speechless in abject
+horror. The fiendish actions of the man who was my guardian frightened
+me. And yet I was utterly helpless. What could I do? Who in holy Russia
+would hear me? Oberg was a power in the Empire; the Czar himself trusted
+him. If I spoke, who would believe me; who would heed the words of a
+defenseless girl whom he would at once declare to be hysterical? Thus I
+waited alone in the darkness, watching the lights of the port gleaming
+across the placid waters until nearly one o'clock, when the gay party
+returned, and the Baron greeted them merrily as though nothing had
+happened. But my heart was frozen within me by the recollection of the
+awful crime that had been committed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Why! Now I remember!" cried Muriel, amazed. "I remember that night
+quite well, how white you were when you came to my cabin and asked to be
+allowed to sleep in my spare berth. You would tell me nothing, and only
+said you were ill. None of us had any idea that such a terrible tragedy
+had been enacted. But of course the Baron had arranged it all, for it
+was at his instigation, I recollect, that the crew had been given
+shore-leave. Mackintosh suggested that only half the crew should go,
+but he declared that if Wilson alone were left it would be sufficient."
+
+"I, too, recollect the affair quite well," Jack declared, tugging at his
+mustache, utterly amazed at my love's strange story. It was a plain
+statement of hard, astounding facts, and she now stood clinging to me,
+looking eagerly into my eyes, reading every thought that passed through
+my mind. "A great sensation was caused when the body was discovered. The
+squadron was lying off Naples about a week after the _Iris_ had left,
+and while we were there the body was washed up near Sorrento. At first
+but little notice was taken of it, but by the marks on the dead man's
+linen it was discovered that he was Polovstoff, one of the highest
+Russian officials who had, it was said, been warned on several occasions
+by the Nihilists. It was, therefore, concluded that his death had been
+due to Nihilist vengeance."
+
+Elma pointed to the paper, and made a sign that I was to read on. This I
+did, and the statement ran as follows:
+
+"The real reason why the Baron spared my life was because, if I died, my
+fortune would pass to a distant cousin living at Durham. Yet his manner
+towards me was now most polite and pleasant--a change that I felt boded
+no good. He intended to obtain my money by marrying me to his son
+Michael, whose evil reputation as a gambler was well known in
+Petersburg. We traveled back to Finland in the autumn, and in the winter
+he took me to stay with his sister in Nice. Yet almost daily he referred
+to that tragedy at Naples, and threatened me with death if ever I
+uttered a single word, or even admitted that I had ever seen the man who
+was his rival and his victim."
+
+"Last June," commenced another paragraph, "we were in Helsingfors, when
+one day the Baron called me suddenly and told me to prepare for a
+journey. We were to cross to Stockholm and thence to Hull, where the
+_Iris_ was awaiting us, for Mr. Leithcourt and Muriel had invited us for
+a summer cruise to the Greek Islands. We boarded the yacht much against
+my will, yet I was powerless, and dare not allege the facts that I had
+already established concerning our fellow-guests. Muriel and I, it
+seems, were taken merely in order to blind the shore-guards and Customs
+officials as to the real nature of the vessel, which when safely out of
+the Channel, was repainted and renamed the _Lola_, until her exterior
+presented quite a different appearance from the _Iris_.
+
+"The port of Leghorn was our first place of call, and for some reason we
+ran purposely upon a sandbank and were towed off by Italian
+torpedo-boats. Next evening you came on board and dined, Muriel and
+myself having strict orders not to show ourselves. We, however, watched
+you, and I saw you pick up my photograph which I had that day torn up.
+Then immediately after you had left, Woodroffe, Chater and Mackintosh
+went ashore and were away a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
+Just before they returned the Baron rapped at the door of my cabin
+saying that he must go ashore, and telling me to dress and accompany
+him. He would never allow me the luxury of a maid, fearing, I suppose,
+that she might learn too much. In obedience I rose and dressed, and when
+I went forth he told me to get my traveling-cloak and dressing-bag,
+adding that he was compelled to go north, as to continue the cruise
+would occupy too much time. He was due back at his official duties, he
+said. As soon as I had finished packing, the three men returned to the
+vessel, all of them looking dark-faced and disappointed. Woodroffe
+whispered some words to the Baron, after which I went to Muriel's cabin
+and wished her good-bye, and we went ashore, taking the train first to
+Colle Salvetti, thence to Pisa, and afterwards to the beautiful old city
+of Siena, which I had so longed to see. One of my teeth gave me pain,
+and the Baron, after a couple of days at the Hotel de Sienne, took me to
+a queer-looking little old Italian--a dentist who, he said, enjoyed an
+excellent reputation. I was quick to notice that the two men had met
+before, and as I sat in the chair and gas was given to me I saw them
+exchange meaning glances. In a few moments I became insensible, but when
+I awoke an hour later I was astounded to feel a curious soreness in my
+ears. My tongue, too, seemed paralyzed, and in a few moments the awful
+truth dawned upon me. I had been rendered deaf and dumb!
+
+"The Baron pretended to be greatly concerned about me," it went on, "but
+I quickly realized that I had been the victim of a foul and dastardly
+plot, and that he had conceived it, fearing lest I might speak the truth
+concerning the Privy-Councillor Polovstoff, for of exposure he lived in
+constant fear. To encompass my end would be against his own interests,
+as he would lose my fortune, so he had silenced me lest I should reveal
+the terrible truth concerning both him and his associates. He was not
+rich, and I have reason to believe that from time to time he gave
+information as to persons who possessed valuable jewels, and thus shared
+in the plunder obtained by those on the yacht.
+
+"From Italy we traveled on to Berlin, thence to Petersburg, and back to
+dreary Helsingfors, journeying as quickly as we could, yet never
+allowing me opportunity of being with strangers. Both my ears and tongue
+were very painful, but I said nothing. He was surely a fiend in a black
+coat, and my only thought now was how to escape him. From the moment
+when that so-called dentist had ruined my hearing and deprived me of
+power of speech, he kept me aloof from everyone. The fear that I should
+reveal everything had apparently grown to haunt him, and he had
+conceived that terrible mode of silencing my lips. But the true depth of
+his villainy was not yet apparent until I was back in Finland.
+
+"On the night of our arrival he called in his son, who had traveled with
+us from Petersburg, and in writing again demanded that I should marry
+him. I wrote my reply--a firm refusal. He struck the table angrily with
+his fist and wrote saying that I should either marry his son or die.
+Then next day, while walking alone out beyond the town of Helsingfors,
+as I often used to do, I was arrested upon the false charge of an
+attempt upon the life of Madame Vakuroff and transported, without trial,
+to the terrible fortress of Kajana, some of the horrors of which you
+have yourself experienced. The charge against me was necessary before I
+could be incarcerated there, but once within, it was the scheme of the
+Governor-General to obtain my consent to the marriage by threats and by
+the constant terrors of the place. He even went so far as to obtain a
+ministerial order for my banishment to Saghalien and brought it to me to
+Kajana, declaring that if in one month I did not consent he should allow
+me to be sent to exile. While I was in Kajana he knew that his secret
+was safe, therefore by every means in his power he urged me to consent
+to the odious union.
+
+"All the rest is known to you--how Providence directed you to me as my
+deliverer, and how Woodroffe followed you in secret, and pretending to
+be my friend took me with him to Petersburg. He had learnt of my fortune
+from the Baron, and intended to marry me himself. But now that all is
+over it appears to me like some terrible dream. I never believed that so
+much iniquity existed in the world, or that men could fight a
+defenseless woman with such double-dealing and cruel ingenuity. Ah! the
+tortures I endured in Kajana are beyond human conception. Yet surely
+Oberg and Woodroffe will obtain their well-merited deserts--if not in
+this world, then in the world to come. Are we not taught by Holy Writ to
+forgive our enemies? Therefore, let us forgive."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There my silent love's strange story ended. A bald, straightforward
+narrative that held us all for some moments absolutely speechless--one
+of the strangest and most startling stories ever revealed.
+
+She watched every expression of my countenance, and then, when I had
+finished reading and placed my arm tenderly about her slim waist, she
+raised her beautiful face to mine to receive the passionate kiss I
+imprinted upon those soft, full lips.
+
+"This, of course, makes everything plain," exclaimed Jack. "Polovstoff
+was a very liberal-minded and upright official who was greatly in the
+favor of the Czar, and a serious rival to Oberg, whose drastic and
+merciless methods in Finland were not exactly approved by the Emperor.
+The Baron was well aware of this, and by ingeniously enticing him on
+board the _Iris_ he succeeded by handing that small bomb concealed in a
+cigar--a Nihilist contrivance that had probably been seized by his
+police in Finland--in freeing himself from the rival who was destined to
+occupy his post."
+
+"Yes," I said with a sigh. "The mystery is cleared up, it is true, yet
+my poor Elma is still the victim." And I kissed my love passionately
+again and again upon the lips.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+Nearly two years have now gone by.
+
+There have been changes in holy Russia--many great and amazing changes
+consequent upon war and its disasters. Russia is no longer the great
+power that she once was supposed to be. Many events that have startled
+the world have occurred since that day when I first enfolded my silent
+love within my arms. One of them is known to you all.
+
+You read in the newspapers, without a doubt, how the Baron Xavier Oberg,
+the persecutor of Finland, the enemy of education, the relentless foe of
+the defenseless, the man who ordered women to be knouted to death in
+Kajana, the heartless official whom the Finns called "The Strangler,"
+was blown to pieces by a bomb thrown beneath his carriage as he drove to
+the railway station at Helsingfors on his way to have audience with the
+Emperor.
+
+The secret truth was that the "Red Priest" decreed that Oberg should
+die, and the plot was swiftly put into execution, and although five
+hundred arrests were made the police are unaware to this day of the
+identity of the person who directed it, or of who threw the fatal
+missile. From pillar to post the revolutionists have been hunted by the
+bloodhounds of police, yet the "Red Priest" still lives on quietly in
+Petersburg, and the Princess Zurloff, still unsuspected, devotes the
+greater part of her enormous income to the cause of freedom.
+
+Of Jack and Muriel I need only say they were married about three months
+after Elma's return from Russia, and at the present time they are
+living on the outskirts of Glasgow, where Jack has secured the shore
+appointment which he so long coveted.
+
+By some means--exactly how is not quite certain--the police discovered
+that Dick Archer, alias Woodroffe, alias Hornby, was concerned in the
+clever robbery of a dressing-bag, containing the Dowager Lady
+Lancashire's jewels, from her footman on Euston platform, and after a
+long search they found him hiding at an hotel in Liverpool. When,
+however, they went to arrest him, he laughed in the faces of the
+detectives, placed something swiftly in his mouth and swallowed it
+before they could prevent him--then ten minutes later he fell dead. He
+knew what terrible revelations must be made if we gave evidence against
+him, and he therefore preferred death by his own hand to that following
+a judicial sentence.
+
+Chater, although one of the most expert jewel thieves in Europe, had
+never been actually guilty of any graver offense, and when we heard that
+he was in San Francisco, where he had opened a small bar and was trying
+to live honestly, we resolved to allow him to remain there. Indeed, Jack
+wrote to him about nine months ago warning him never to set foot on
+English soil again on pain of arrest.
+
+Olinto Santini has recently opened a small restaurant in Western Road,
+Brighton, and is, I believe, doing very well.
+
+And ourselves! Well, what can I really tell you? Mere words fail to tell
+you of the completeness of our happiness. It is idyllic--that is all I
+can say.
+
+My proposal of marriage was made to Elma a very few days after she wrote
+down her startling and romantic story, and a year ago at a little
+village church in Hertfordshire we became man and wife, there being
+present at our wedding Madame Heath, my bride's mother, to whom, by my
+exertions in official quarters in Petersburg, the Czar's clemency was
+extended, and she was released from that far-off Arctic prison to which
+she had been sent with such cruel injustice.
+
+Two of the greatest London specialists have continually treated my dear
+wife, and under them she has already recovered her speech--so far,
+indeed, that she can now whisper in a low, soft voice. But they tell me
+they are hopeful that ere long her voice will become stronger, and
+speech practically restored. Already, too, she can begin to hear.
+
+After all the storms and perils of the past, our lives are now indeed
+full of a calm, sweet peace. In our own comfortable little house, with
+its trellised porch covered with roses and honeysuckle, that faces the
+blue Channel at St. Margaret's Bay, beyond Dover, we lead a life of
+mutual trust and boundless love. We are supremely content--the happiest
+pair in all the world, we think.
+
+Often as we sit together at evening, gazing out upon the great ships
+passing darkly away into the mysterious afterglow, our hands clasp
+mutually in a silence more eloquent than words, and as we gaze into each
+other's eyes there occurs to us the Divine injunction: "WHOM GOD HATH
+JOINED, LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
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