The Intriguers

“Precisely, Signor. Is it not a great idea?”

“It sounds pretty well, my friend, but there are one or two little things that might confound your scheme. Has it occurred to you that, since the Prince might communicate with me by signs, I might not be able to understand the alphabet.”

“I have arranged for all that, Signor,” replied the big man, who was pretty full of resource. “There is a fair-sized cupboard in the vestibule in which Stepan can hide himself while you are listening. You pull open the cupboard and he can change places with you when you please. You can do this as often as you like in the twinkling of an eye.”

Corsini smiled. “Admirably thought out, Ivan, but there will be no need. I know the alphabet perfectly; I learned it when a boy, and since my short sojourn here I have picked up a fair amount of Russian. Of course Zouroff speaks Russian to Stepan.”

The outlaw smiled gleefully. “No, Signor; everything, I see, is working most smoothly for our plans. Zouroff had the boy very well educated; he can speak French as well as you can, and the Prince always expresses himself to him in that language.”

“Then all should go very smoothly, Ivan. When do you want me to take up my rôle; in other words, when does the next meeting at the villa take place?”

“To-morrow night or the night after, I cannot be sure. But I shall hear from Stepan to-morrow, who will be informed by Madame Quéro. I will send you round a note to your hotel,” answered the outlaw.

“And at what hour do they assemble?”

“Shortly after midnight, Signor. Here, by the way, is a list of the names which you might like to show. I take it, after our conversation, you will go at once to General Beilski and tell him what you have learned.”

Corsini nodded. It was not, however, his idea to repair to that somewhat pompous functionary. He proposed to seek the astute secretary, Golitzine, at his own house; failing that, at the Winter Palace.

“And you will not forget the free pardon, Signor, for the poor outlaw who was driven to a life of crime through the wrongs perpetrated upon him and his by the Zouroffs, father and son.”

“No, Ivan, I will not forget that. I shall also press for a substantial reward, if things come off as we hope. Now, supposing I want to communicate with you? Will you let me have your address, or not?”

Ivan pointed his hand in the direction of the four waiting men.

“I am rather fearful of this sort of gentry, Signor, as you can well imagine. But I trust you; I proved your metal that night when I found you in front of the ikon. I know you will not betray me. Still, do not write to me unless absolutely necessary, and be very careful of your messenger. Anyway, address me under an assumed name.”

He drew a dirty piece of paper out of his pocket and scribbled upon it the address of his mean lodging, in one of the commonest quarters of the town; also the assumed name by which he was to be addressed.

Corsini held out his hand. “Well, Ivan, if this all turns out well, you will have more than repaid your obligation. Good-night; I will get that free pardon for you, rely upon it. I shall hear from you to-morrow or next day at the latest.”

He watched the big figure of the outlaw well out of sight. Then he beckoned to the leader of the four men.

“A most fortunate meeting,” he said, in a cheerful voice. “I am now going straight on to Count Golitzine. I will try his house first.”

CHAPTER XIX

But Golitzine was not at his house. Corsini exchanged a few words with the Countess, who informed him that her husband was at the Winter Palace, closeted with the Emperor on important matters. She did not expect him to return till very late.

Under ordinary circumstances, Nello would have refrained from intruding himself on the Secretary when engaged with his Imperial Master, but the information which Ivan had given him was genuine: of that he felt assured.

Delay might be dangerous. The failure of Zouroff’s scheme to entrap the young director, the knowledge that there must have been treachery amongst his associates, would render the Prince a very desperate man. Whatever coup he meditated would be brought off swiftly, before the other side had time to strike.

He sent up a short note to Golitzine, stating that he had come into the receipt of most important information, obtained from a most unexpected quarter.

The Count showed the note to the Emperor, who read it, and said immediately:

“Have him up at once and let us know what it is. I have always had a notion that this young fellow would be useful to us. I believe he is born to be lucky himself and to bring luck to those with whom he is associated.”

So Corsini was shown at once into the august presence.

The autocrat welcomed him most graciously. Any protégé of his staunch old friend and supporter, Salmoros, would have been sure of his good graces in any case; but he liked the young man personally, for his modest, but assured bearing. And, moreover, Corsini was free from the cringing arts of the professional courtier. In his demeanour there was proper respect, but no servility.

“Welcome back to St. Petersburg, Signor. I hear you have had a trying time. I have had a full report of the occurrence from the Count and General Beilski. I hope it will not be long before we give you your revenge.”

“I am in hopes that very shortly I may take a hand in that revenge myself, your Majesty,” answered the young Italian with a low bow. “Something very extraordinary has happened to-night. I was taking one of my evening strolls, shadowed by men whom the General has kindly instructed to look after my safety, when I was accosted by a man whom I met under strange circumstances, on my first entrance into this country.”

“His name? but perhaps we don’t know him,” interrupted the Count.

Corsini looked a little troubled. He remembered his promise to the outlaw. He must secure that free pardon in advance.

“May I first be permitted to retail to your Majesty and your Excellency the information he gave me?”

“We are in your hands, Signor Corsini,” answered the Emperor graciously, and the Count nodded his head in assent.

Briefly the young man told them what Ivan had communicated to him – the secret meetings of certain well-known nobles, whose names he imparted, at the villa of Madame Quéro; the attendance in the vestibule of the deaf servant, Stepan, whom he almost exactly resembled; the suggestion that he should take Stepan’s place and listen to the conversation of the conspirators, whose chief was Prince Zouroff. He added that the next meeting would be to-morrow night, or, at latest, the night after.

“It will be to-morrow night, of that we may be certain,” said the Emperor in a decided tone, when the young man had finished. “Zouroff cannot be very happy at the present moment, after the failure of his attempt to put the Signor out of the way. He is also pretty certain to know that General Beilski has visited his sister; that fact will give him some food for thought. Besides, although these two scoundrels, whom we have secured, have not confessed yet, at any moment they may open their mouths to denounce him. If Zouroff has got his plans pretty well matured, he will strike with as little delay as possible. Do you agree, Count?”

The Count agreed, and then addressed Corsini.

“And now, Signor, I think it is time you gave us the name of this mysterious informant. I do not know whether his action is dictated by loyalty, or the hope of reward. But anyway, he must be rewarded, and handsomely too.”

The Emperor concurred warmly. “Whoever serves us will not find us niggardly or ungrateful,” he said.

“Alas! I have great hesitation in mentioning it to your Excellency, for my strange friend is by no means an estimable person. Speaking plainly, he is a malefactor, and has escaped from the mines of Siberia.”

“In other words, the price of this very important information is a handsome reward and a free pardon. Well,” the Count looked towards the Emperor, “I suppose I have your Majesty’s permission to promise both.”

“We do not go back on our word,” was the autocrat’s grave answer. “A deed like this, performed from whatever motive, purges his offences, whatever they may be.”

And then, reassured, Corsini gave the name. “A big, bearded man, born on the Prince’s estates, known as Ivan the outlaw, nicknamed Ivan the Cuckoo.”

“I know of him by reputation – a desperate fellow, according to his record,” remarked the Count. “And how did you first become acquainted with him, Signor Corsini? But if you prefer to keep it a secret, I will not press the question.”

Corsini took advantage of Golitzine’s generosity. He did not want to confess that he had helped a notorious criminal to escape from justice. “I think I would prefer to guard it as a secret, your Excellency, since you give me permission to do so.”

“Yet, if I may venture to relate a little history to you,” he added a moment later, “I think I might be able to convince you that this wretched man, brutal and degraded as he became, was more sinned against than sinning.” In a few words he told him of the offences of the Zouroffs, father and son, against the outlaw’s family.

The Count made no comment. After a few moments he rose, to intimate that the interview was at an end.

“With your assistance, Signor – I am, of course, assuming that the scheme will go through as this unfortunate man has planned – I think and hope we shall soon get the evidence we want. I fear I cannot give you any more time now, as his Majesty has still some very important matters to discuss with me. By the way, I know that General Beilski is sending for you early to-morrow morning, as he has something of importance to communicate to you. I shall have an interview with him also, but in case you see him first, tell him everything you have told us. He may be able to assist your plans. You will, of course, report to us as soon as you have discovered anything.”

Corsini promised that he would. He had a strong presentiment that his changing places with the deaf Stepan would be productive of stupendous events.

On arriving back at his hotel, he found a sealed note from the General, summoning him to his office at an early hour the following morning.

“I have not been idle since we last met, Signor,” was Beilski’s greeting. “I have no doubt I have got to the bottom of your affair. I will give you just an outline of how I propose to act.”

But here Nello broke in. “Excuse me a moment, your Excellency, but before you enter into this matter, may I put a question to you? Have you seen or heard from Count Golitzine between now and last night?”

The General answered in the negative. “It is now only nine o’clock; there has not been much time. Why do you ask?”

The young man explained. “Late last night I went to see the Count, whom I found closeted with his Majesty. My reasons for disturbing him at such a moment were of the greatest urgency. As I left he told me you would be sending for me, and that if I saw you first I was to tell you everything that I had told to him and the Emperor.”

For the second time he related in full the details of that momentous interview with Ivan the outlaw.

The General smiled triumphantly when the narrative was concluded. “So this fellow has been lying hid in St. Petersburg all this time, has he? Well, I think my spies ought to have hunted him out. Still, as it turns out, it is better they didn’t. Desperado and robber as he has been, I frankly admit he has fully earned the free pardon which you were shrewd enough to get for him.”

He mused a few moments before he proceeded. “The information you have given me may materially alter our plans. I cannot decide positively till I have talked with his Excellency. But I doubt if we shall move till we get some positive information from you. In the meantime, I will tell you to what extent I have unravelled the plot against yourself.”

Needless to say that Nello was all attention. He had his own suspicions, which were very close to the truth, but Beilski was probably on the track of the truth itself.

“On the afternoon of the day that you were kidnapped, I received a letter couched in cautious and guarded language to the effect that a carriage, starting from St. Petersburg somewhere about midnight or later, would halt at Pavlovsk. There was a plot on hand to deport a certain person well known in artistic circles. That person would be found in the carriage when it stopped at the first stage on the road to Moscow.”

Nello shuddered. How well he recalled the incidents of that memorable evening – the Prince’s apparent cordiality, the Princess’s almost officious offer of a carriage to convey him home, the short walk through the silent streets, the sudden appearance out of the dark of the four sinister figures, the waking in a room of the little country inn.

“There was a certain significance in the fact that the writer of that anonymous letter, evidently a woman, had not told us where the carriage was to start from. It was evident that while she wished to protect the victim, she also wanted to shield, so far as she could, the perpetrators of the outrage.”

“It was Madame Quéro who wrote that letter?” suggested Nello quickly.

“No, my friend, it was not, although it would be quite correct to say that she was the cause of that letter being written. Of course, I had no clue; the note was left by a young woman whom the porter took very little notice of: he was not at all sure that he would remember her. That night I was dining with the Count – of course, treating the note as a genuine one, I had already acted upon it and despatched the police to Pavlovsk. Just as I was about to leave, a sudden idea occurred to me to show it to Golitzine and ask him if he could help me. His Excellency is a very wonderful man. Above all men that I have met, he possesses, in the highest degree, the qualities of genius and intuition.”

Beilski was not a man who underrated himself, but he was not mean or petty. In this particular matter he was disposed to give to the Count all the credit that was his due, even although it compelled him to play second fiddle.

“With the rapidity of lightning, he jumped at the conclusion that you were the person threatened. We made sure that you were neither at the Zouroff Palace, where you had told him you were going to play, nor at your hotel. Surmise, under such circumstances, became certainty. The rest you can guess almost yourself.”

“All the same, I would like you to tell me, General,” said Corsini.

“The letter served its purpose admirably,” pursued General Beilski. “You were rescued and brought back to St. Petersburg. One significant fact you revealed to us was that La Belle Quéro had strongly dissuaded you from playing at the Palace. Another one, equally significant in our eyes, was that the Princess Nada had urged you not to walk home that night. We put two and two together.”

“The letter, then, might have been sent by either of the two women? That, I take it, is your Excellency’s meaning?” commented Nello.

“Precisely. I had the two maids brought before me. The singer’s I soon dismissed. She did not correspond in the slightest degree to my porter’s rather hazy recollections of the young woman who had brought the note. The second shot was more successful.”

“The maid of the Princess Nada, of course?”

“Yes, a slim young thing – I forgot to say the other was short and plump – frightened out of her wits by the sudden turn of events. Terrified by myself, the forbidding aspect of her surroundings, the unknown terrors of the law, she made no pretence of a fight. She fell upon her knees, imploring my clemency.”

“So it was the Princess Nada who sent that note with the object of saving me?” asked Nello. There was a very tender look in his eyes as he spoke her name.

“I have known the Princess Nada from her childhood,” said Beilski, speaking with some emotion. “Her mother, father, and I were of the same generation. The Princess Zouroff is a sweet woman – generous, kind-hearted, charitable; the daughter is the same. The old Prince was a ruffian in every sense of the word – drunken, dissolute, vicious. The son is a ruffian also, but he has missed a few of the paternal vices. He is not a confirmed drunkard, although he takes more than is good for him, as is well known to his family and his intimates. And he is only moderately dissolute. He has one superiority over his father: he has got brains and ambition.”

“How did such a fair flower spring from such a contaminated soil?” asked Corsini wonderingly.

Beilski shrugged his shoulders. “Who can tell? A freak of nature, I suppose. But remember the mother is pure, and comes from a family without a taint. Well, to resume. When the maid had stammered forth her confession, for an instant a horrible suspicion assailed my mind. We know Zouroff to be a traitor whom we have not yet succeeded in unmasking. Was his innocent-looking sister involved in his schemes?”

Nello leaned forward in a state of agitation. For an instant, on hearing that it was the Princess and not La Belle Quéro who had sent that letter, a similar doubt had occurred to him.

“I took the bull by the horns. I sent a message by the maid that I would call upon her mistress that same day, that she was to inform her of what she had confessed.”

“And you went and interviewed the Princess?” asked Corsini.

“Yes; fortunately I found her alone; her mother was in bed with a feverish cold. She was nervous and agitated, as was to be expected, but one moment’s glance at her face convinced me that she was no guilty woman, enmeshed with her own consent in her brother’s vile schemes.”

The young man drew a deep breath of relief. He had always held the highest opinion of her character. There would be some satisfactory explanation forthcoming of her actions.

A little note of pomposity and self-congratulation crept into Beilski’s voice. “I need hardly tell you that an innocent and inexperienced girl like this was as wax in my hands. With a woman of Madame Quéro’s experience, my task might have been more difficult.”

“I can quite believe it,” murmured Corsini.

“In five minutes I had the whole truth out of her. Well, perhaps, not quite the whole truth,” admitted the General reluctantly, “for, woman-like, although she has no love for her brother, she did not want to give him away, to render certain the punishment which he richly deserves.”

“And her story, your Excellency?” asked the young man eagerly.

“Briefly it was this. Madame Quéro called upon her to report that there was a plot to decoy you and convey you to an unknown destination – she did not know, or pretended she did not know, your ultimate fate, neither did she know where the carriage was to start from; she was only sure that the first stoppage was to be at Pavlovsk. This of course was Nada’s version. It at once occurred to me that these ladies, if they knew so much, would know a little more. They were not both of them ignorant, but, of course, one might be. Which was the ignorant one?”

“The Princess, of course,” said Corsini at once. “La Belle Quéro knew where the carriage started from, but did not want to implicate Zouroff, as it was drawn up so close to his residence. She pretended ignorance.”

The General leaned back in his chair and laughed genially. He was very pleased with himself, for what he was about to relate was really his own master-stroke. It owed nothing to the more inventive genius of Golitzine.

“That is, of course, what would occur to you, what would occur to, I dare say, ninety-nine persons out of a hundred. I am the hundredth, and I have had great experience.” The General spoke with an air of profound wisdom. “La Belle Quéro had only certain suspicions, fostered by some random remark dropped by Zouroff in a moment of intense rage and irritation. As a matter of fact, she knew no details. She did not know of a carriage at all, and consequently she was ignorant of where it started from or where it was going to.”

“The Princess, then – !” interrupted Nello, in a voice of the most intense surprise.

“The Princess, then – !” repeated Beilski. “I saw that poor little Nada’s story was lame and halting; of course I guessed the reason why. I pressed her with the question why, if La Belle Quéro, from whom she got her information, knew where the carriage was going to, she did not know where it started from. Both her answer and demeanour were too evasive to deceive me. I could not break her any more on the wheel; I saw she had had about as much as she could stand. I selected another victim.”

“Madame Quéro, of course,” cried Corsini.

“Wrong again, my friend; you have not yet quite got the analytical faculty that makes a great detective. I had the maid before me again, this time more terrified than before. If I had stretched her on the rack, she could not have poured it forth more fully.”

“And the outcome?” was Corsini’s eager question.

“What I had made up my mind was the fact. Zouroff is not the man to impart the details of his plans to any but his immediate instruments. He imparted them neither to Quéro nor his sister.”

He related to Corsini what the reader already knows. The visit of the singer to the Princess, of her suspicion that a plot was on foot against the Italian, of her suggestion that Nada should institute some inquiries in the Zouroff household, of the valet, Peter’s, confidence to Katerina, the Princess’s swift deductions from these revelations.

“I have gone farther,” concluded the General. “I have interrogated that scoundrel, Peter, as to what he knows about his master’s general projects, and more especially your abduction. But I have not given poor little Katerina away, or the young Princess. I have led him to infer that I was acting on the confession of the two scoundrels we have got in custody.”

“And what attitude did he take?”

“At first, one of stupidity, complicated with sullen defiance. But towards the end of the interview, I could see that his heart was being softened. I told him to consider it carefully; full confession and a full pardon, or – the utmost rigour of the law.”

“And he will at once tell Zouroff,” suggested Corsini. “That is, if he is really loyal to the Prince.”

Beilski shrugged his shoulders. “He may and he may not. I expect he will be thinking chiefly of his own skin. On the other hand, ruffians like the Prince have a remarkable knack of attracting loyalty. At any rate, it does not matter. In a couple of days I should have laid my hands on him for this matter alone – I have no doubt they would have taken you to some lonely place and finished you off – but I shall wait, if necessary, a little longer for the report of your visit to the villa. If that is what we expect it to be, we will have done with this gentleman, once and for all.”

“Amen!” cried Corsini, fervently. In spite of his English upbringing, he had in him the true spirit of Italian revenge. He loved the Princess Nada, but for her brother, who would have taken his life, he had no mercy.

He walked home to his hotel, followed at an unobtrusive distance by his guards. His heart was singing happily within him, as a result of his interview with the bluff, but genial General.

He was grateful to La Belle Quéro for her unselfish interference on his behalf: she had braved detection, Zouroff’s vengeance, on his account. When his lips were unsealed he would express to the singer his thanks.

But it was the Princess who had more fully schemed and plotted, set to work her woman’s wit, and ultimately triumphed on his behalf. Was it due to a kind pure woman’s compassion only, or – delicious thought – was she attracted to him as he was to her? Was it love that had stimulated her brain, urged her to that desperate measure of the anonymous note to the Chief of Police?

A letter was handed to him by the hall-porter as he entered the hotel. He was told that it had been delivered by a shabbily-dressed man, who would not wait for his return.

It was from Ivan, no longer an outlaw, and ran as follows:

“Come to my lodging with your guards at twelve-thirty to-night. The meeting is an hour later. I will give you full instructions. Your Friend.”

CHAPTER XX

Peter the valet was a man of criminal instincts, cunning, avaricious, and unscrupulous. Perhaps his sole remaining qualities were his devotion to his master, Zouroff, and his ardent love for the Princess’s maid, Katerina.