The International Spy

CHAPTER XV

THE ADVISER OF NICHOLAS II

By the second week in March I was back in Petersburg.

On the long journey across Asia, I had had time to mature my plans, with the advantage of knowing that the real enemy I had to fight was neither M. Petrovitch nor the witching Princess Y – , but the Power which was using them both as its tools.

It was a frightful thing to know that two mighty peoples, the Japanese and Russians, neither of which really wished to fight each other, had been locked in strife in order to promote the sinister and tortuous policy of Germany.

So far, the German Kaiser had accomplished one-half of his program. The second, and more important, step would be to bring about a collision between the Russians and the English.

Thus the situation resolved itself into an underground duel between Wilhelm II. and myself, a duel in which the whole future history of the world, and possibly the very existence of the British Empire, hung in the balance.

And the arbiter was the melancholy young man who wandered through the vast apartments of his palace at Tsarskoe-Selo like some distracted ghost, wishing that any lot in life had been bestowed on him rather than that of autocrat of half Europe and Asia.

It was to Nicholas that I first repaired, on my return, to report the result of my mission.

I obtained a private audience without difficulty, and found his majesty busily engaged in going through some papers relating to the affairs of the Navy.

“So they have not killed you, like poor Menken,” he said with a mixture of sympathy and sadness.

“Colonel Menken killed!” I could not forbear exclaiming.

“Yes. Did you not hear of it? A Japanese spy succeeded in assassinating him, and stealing the despatch, just before Mukden. A lady-in-waiting attached to the Dowager Czaritza happened to be on the train, and brought me the whole story.”

I shook my head gravely.

“I fear your majesty has been misinformed. Colonel Menken committed suicide. I saw him put the pistol to his head and shoot himself. His last words were a message to your majesty.”

The Czar raised his hand to his head with a despairing gesture.

“Will these contradictions never end!” he exclaimed. “Really, sir, I hope you have made a mistake. Whom can I trust!”

I drew myself up.

“I have no desire to press my version on you, sire,” I said coldly. “It is sufficient that the Colonel was robbed, and that he is dead. Perhaps Princess Y – has also given you an account of my own adventures?”

Nicholas II. looked at me distrustfully.

“Let us leave the name of the Princess on one side,” he said in a tone of rebuke. “I have every reason to feel satisfied with her loyalty and zeal.”

I bowed, and remained silent.

“You failed to get through, I suppose,” the Czar continued, after waiting in vain for me to speak.

“I beg pardon, sire, I safely delivered to the Emperor of Japan your majesty’s autograph on the cigarette paper. I was robbed of the more formal letter in the house of M. Petrovitch, before starting.”

Nicholas frowned.

“Petrovitch again! Another of the few men whom I know to be my real friends.” He fidgeted impatiently.

“Well, what did the Mikado say?”

I had intended to soften the reply of the Japanese Emperor, but now, being irritated, I gave it bluntly:

“His majesty professed to disbelieve in your power to control your people. He declared that he could not treat a letter from you seriously unless you were able to send it openly, without your messengers being robbed or murdered on the way across your own dominions.”

The young Emperor flushed darkly.

“Insolent barbarian!” he cried hotly. “The next letter I send him shall be delivered by the commander of my army on the soil of Japan.”

I was secretly pleased by this flash of spirit, which raised my respect for the Russian monarch.

A recollection seemed to strike him.

“I hear that you were blown up in attempting to bring some coal into Port Arthur,” he said in a more friendly tone. “I thank you, Monsieur V – .”

I bowed low.

“Some of my admirals seem to have been caught napping,” Nicholas II. added. “I have here a very serious report about Admiral Stark at Vladivostok.”

“You surprise me, sire,” I observed incautiously. “Out in Manchuria I heard the Admiral praised on all hands for his carefulness and good conduct.”

“Carefulness! It is possible to be too careful,” the Czar complained. “Admiral Stark is too much afraid of responsibility. We have information that the English are taking all kinds of contraband into the Japanese ports, and he does nothing to stop them, for fear of committing some breach of international law.”

I began to see what was coming. The Emperor, who seemed anxious to justify himself, proceeded:

“The rights of neutrals have never been regarded by the British navy, when they were at war. However, I have not been satisfied with taking the opinion of our own jurists. I have here an opinion from Professor Heldenberg of Berlin, who of course represents a neutral Power, and he says distinctly that we are entitled to declare anything we please contraband, and to seize English ships – I mean, ships of neutrals – anywhere, even in the English Channel itself, and sink them if it is inconvenient to bring them into a Russian port.”

The insidious character of this advice was so glaring that I wondered how the unfortunate young monarch could be deceived by it.

But I saw that comment would be useless just then. I must seek some other means of opening his eyes to the pitfalls which were being prepared for him.

I came from the Palace with a heavy heart. The next day, Petersburg was startled by the publication of a ukase recalling Vice-Admiral Stark and Rear-Admiral Molas, his second in command, from the Pacific.

Immediately on hearing this news I sent a telegram in cipher to Lord Bedale. For obvious reasons I never take copies of my secret correspondence, but to the best of my recollection the wire ran as follows:

Germany instigating Russian Navy to raid your shipping on the pretext of contraband. Object to provoke reprisals leading to war.

As the reader is aware, this warning succeeded in defeating the Kaiser’s main design, the British Government steadily refusing to be provoked.

Unfortunately this attitude of theirs played into German hands in another way, as English shippers were practically obliged to refuse goods for the Far East, and this important and lucrative trade passed to Hamburg, to the serious injury of the British ports.

But before this development had been reached, I found myself on the track of a far more deadly and dangerous intrigue, one which is destined to live in history as the most audacious plot ever devised by one great Power against another with which it proposed to be on terms of perfect friendship.

CHAPTER XVI

A STRANGE CONFESSION

I had last seen the strange, beautiful, wicked woman known as the Princess Y – bending in a passion of hysterical remorse over the body of the man she had driven to death, on the snow-clad train outside Mukden.

I have had some experience of women, and especially of the class which mixes in the secret politics of the European Courts. But Sophia Y – was an enigma to me. There was nothing about her which suggested the adventuress. And there was much which tended to support the story which had won the belief of her august mistress – that she was an involuntary agent, who had been victimized by an unscrupulous minister of police, by means of a false charge, and who genuinely loathed the tasks she was too feeble to refuse.

I had not been back in Petersburg very long when one afternoon the hotel waiter came to tell me that a lady desired to see me privately. The lady, he added, declined to give her name, but declared that she was well known to me.

I had come back to the hotel, I should mention, in the character of Mr. Sterling, the self-appointed agent of the fraternity of British peace-makers. It was necessary for me to have some excuse for residing in Petersburg during the war, and under this convenient shelter I could from time to time prepare more effectual disguises.

I was not altogether surprised when my mysterious visitor raised her veil and disclosed the features of the Princess herself.

But I was both surprised and shocked by the frightened, grief-stricken look on the face of this woman whom I had come to dread as my most formidable opponent in the Russian Court.

“Mr. Sterling! – Monsieur V – ?” she cried in an agitated voice that seemed ready to break down into a sob. “Can you forgive me for intruding on you? I dare not speak to you freely in my own house. I am beset by spies.”

“Sit down, Princess,” I said soothingly, as I rolled forward a comfortable chair. “Of course I am both charmed and flattered by your visit, whatever be its cause.”

With feminine intuition she marked the reserve in my response to her appeal.

“Ah! You distrust me, and you are quite right!” she exclaimed, casting herself into the chair.

She fixed her luminous eyes on me in a deep look, half-imploring, half-reproachful.

“It is true, then, what they have been telling me? You were the man, dressed as an inspector of the Third Section who traveled on the train with me? And you saw the death” – her words were interrupted by a shudder – “of that unhappy man?”

It was not very easy to preserve my composure in the face of her emotion. Nevertheless, at the risk of appearing callous, I replied:

“I cannot pretend to understand your question. However, even if I did it would make no difference.

“Since you know my name is A. V – , you must know also that I never allow myself to talk about my work.”

The Princess winced under these cold words almost as though she had been physically rebuffed. She clasped her delicately-gloved hands together, and murmured as though to herself:

“He will not believe in me! He will not be convinced!”

I felt myself in a very difficult position. Either this woman was thoroughly repentant, and sincerely anxious to make some genuine communication to me, or else she was an actress whose powers might have excited envy in the Bernhardt herself.

I concluded that I could lose nothing by encouraging her to speak.

“You must pardon me if I seem distrustful,” I said with a wholly sympathetic expression. “I have my principles, and cannot depart from them. But I have every wish to convince you of my personal friendship.”

She interrupted me with a terrible glance.

“Personal friendship! Monsieur, do you know what I have come here to tell you?”

And rising wildly to her feet, she spread out her hands in a gesture of utter despair:

“They have ordered me to take your life!”

I am not a man who is easily surprised.

The adventures I have passed through, some of them far more extraordinary than anything I have recorded in my public revelations, have accustomed me to meet almost any situation with diplomatic presence of mind.

But on this occasion I am obliged to admit that I was fairly taken aback.

As the lovely but dangerous woman whom I had cause to regard as the most formidable instrument in the hands of the conspirators, avowed to my face that she had been charged with the mission to assassinate me, I sprang from my chair and confronted her.

She stood, swaying slightly, as though the intensity of her emotion was about to overpower her.

“Do you mean what you say? Do you know what you have said?” I demanded.

The Princess Y – made no answer, but she lifted her violet eyes to mine, and I saw the big tears welling up and beginning to overflow.

I was dismayed. My strength of mind seemed to desert me. I have looked on without a tear when men have fallen dead at my feet, but I have never been able to remain calm before a woman in tears.

“Madame! Princess!” I was on the point of addressing her by a yet more familiar name. “At least, sit down and recover yourself.”

Like one dazed, I led her to a chair. Like one dazed, she sank into it in obedience to my authoritative pressure.

“Come,” I said in a tone which I strove to render at once firm and soothing, “it is clear that we must understand each other. You have come here to tell me this, I suppose?”

“At the risk of my life,” she breathed. “What must you think of me!”

I recalled the fate of poor Menken, whom the woman before me had led to his doom, though she had not struck the blow.

In spite of myself, a momentary shudder went through me.

The sensitive woman saw or felt it, and shook in her turn.

“Believe me or not, as you will,” she exclaimed desperately. “I swear to you that I have never knowingly been guilty of taking life.

“Never for one moment did I anticipate that that poor man would do what he did,” the Princess went on with passionate earnestness. “I tempted him to give me the Czar’s letter, and I destroyed it – I confess that. Are not such things done every day in secret politics? Have you never intercepted a despatch?”

It was a suggestive question. I thought of more than one incident in my own career which might be harshly received by a strict moralist. It is true that I have always been engaged on what I believed was a lawful task; but the due execution of that task had sometimes involved actions which I should have shrunk from in private life.

“I will not excuse myself, Madame,” I answered slowly. “Neither have I accused you.”

“Your tone is an accusation,” she returned with a touch of bitterness. “Oh, I know well that men are ready to pardon many things in one another which they will not pardon in us.”

“I am sorry if I have wounded you,” I said with real compunction. “Let us say no more about the tragedy that is past. Am I right in thinking that you have come to me for aid?”

“I do not know. I do not know why I am here. Perhaps it is because I am mad.”

I gazed at her flushed face and trembling hands, unable to resist the feeling of compassion which was creeping over me.

What was I to think? What was this woman’s real purpose in coming to me?

Had her employers, had the unscrupulous Petrovitch, or the ruthless Minister of Police, indeed charged her to remove me from their path; and had her courage broken down under the hideous burden?

Or was this merely a ruse to win my confidence; or, perhaps, to frighten me into resigning my task and leaving the Russian capital?

Did she wish to save my life, or her own?

I sat regarding her, bewildered by these conjectures.

I saw that I must get her to say more.

“At least you have come to aid me,” I protested. “You have given me a warning for which I cannot be sufficiently grateful.”

“If you believe it is a genuine one,” she retorted. Already she had divined my difficulties and doubts.

“I do not doubt that you mean it genuinely,” I hastened to respond. “There is, of course, the possibility that you yourself have been deceived.”

“Ah!”

She looked up at me in what I could not think was other than real surprise.

“You think so?” she cried eagerly. The next moment her head drooped again. “No, no. I have known them too long. They have never trifled with me before. Believe me, Monsieur, when they told me that you were to be murdered they were not joking with me.”

“But they might have meant to use you for the purpose of terrifying me.”

She stared at me in unaffected astonishment.

“Terrify —you!” She pronounced the words with an emphasis not altogether unflattering. “You are better known in Russia than you imagine, M. V – .”

I passed over the remark.

“Still they must have foreseen the possibility that you would shrink from such a task; that your womanly instincts would prove too much for you. At least they have never required such work of you before?”

Against my will the last words became a question. I was anxious to be assured that the hands of the Princess were free from the stain of blood.

“Never! They dared not! They could not!” she cried indignantly. “You do not know my history. Perhaps you do not care to know it?”

Whatever I knew or suspected, I could make only one answer to such an appeal. Indeed, I was desirous to understand the meaning of one word which the Princess Y – had just used.

“Listen,” she said, speaking with an energy and dignity which I could not but respect, “while I tell you what I am. I am a condemned murderess!”

“Impossible!”

“Impossible in any other country, I grant you, but very possible in Russia. You have heard, I suppose, everybody has heard, of the deaths of my husband and his children. The first two deaths were natural, I swear it. I, at all events, had no more to do with them than if they had occurred in the planet Saturn. Prince Y – committed suicide. And he did so because of me; I do not deny it. But it was not because he suspected me of any hand in the deaths of his children. It was because he knew I hated him!

“The story is almost too terrible to be told. That old man had bought me. He bought me from my father, who was head over ears in debt, and on the brink of ruin. I was sold – the only portion of his property that remained to be sold. And from the first hour of the purchase I hated, oh, how I loathed and hated that old man!”

There was a wild note in her voice that hinted at unutterable things.

“And he,” she continued with a shiver, “he loved me, loved me with a passion that was like madness. He could hardly bear me out of his sight.

“I killed him, yes, morally, I have no doubt I killed him. He lavished everything on me, jewels, wealth, all the forms of luxury. He made a will leaving me the whole of his great fortune. But I could not endure him, and that killed him. I think,” she hesitated and lowered her voice to a whisper, “I think he killed himself to please me.”

Hardened as I am, I felt a thrill of horror. The Princess was right; the story was too terrible to be told.

“Then the police came on the scene. From the first they knew well enough that I was innocent. But they were determined to make me guilty. The head of the secret service at that time was Baron Kratz. He had had his eye on me for some time. The Czar, believing in my guilt, had ordered him not to spare me, and that fatal order gave him a free hand.

“How he managed it all, I hardly know. The servants were bullied or bribed into giving false evidence against me. But one part of their evidence was true enough; even I could not deny that I had hated Prince Y – , and that his death came as a welcome relief.

“There was a secret trial, and I was condemned. They read out my sentence. And then, when it was all over, Kratz came to me, and offered me life and liberty in return for my services as an agent of the Third Section.”

“And to save your life you consented. Well, I do not judge you,” I said.

The Princess glanced at me with a strange smile.

“To save my life! I see you do not yet know our Holy Russia. Shall I tell you what my sentence was?”

“Was it not death, then?”

“Yes, death – by the knout!”

“My God!”

I gazed at her stupified. Her whole beauty seemed to be focussed in one passionate protest. Knouted to death! I saw the form before me stripped, and lashed to the triangles, while the knotted thong, wielded by the hangman’s hands, buried itself in the soft flesh.

I no longer disbelieved. I no longer even doubted. The very horror of the story had the strength of truth.

For some time neither of us spoke.

“But now, surely, you have made up your mind to break lose from this thraldom?” I demanded. “And, if so, and you will trust me, I will undertake to save you.”

“You forget, do you not, that you yourself are not free? You surely do not mean that you would lay aside your work for my sake?”

It was a question which disconcerted me in more ways than one. In a secret service agent, suspicion becomes second nature. I caught myself asking whether all that had gone before was not merely intended to lead up to this one question, and I cursed myself for the doubt.