Alban took the outstretched hand and, having exchanged a word with the stranger, would have left the place instantly. This, however, Count Zamoyski himself forbade. Speaking rapidly to Gessner in the German tongue, he turned to the lad presently and asked him to remain.

"Young heads are wise heads sometimes," he said in excellent English, "you may be able to help us, Mr. Kennedy. Please wait until we have discussed the matter a little more fully."

To this the banker assented by a single inclination of his head.

"As you say, Count—we shall know presently. Please tell me the story from the beginning."

The Count lighted a cigarette, and sinking down into the depths of a monstrous arm-chair, he began to speak in smooth low tones—a tragedy told almost in whispers; for thus complacently, as the great Frenchman has reminded us, do we bear the misfortunes of our neighbors.

"I bring news both of failure and of success," he began, "but the failure is of greater moment to us. Your instructions to my Government, that the Boriskoffs, father and daughter, were an embarrassment to you which must be removed, have been faithfully interpreted and acted upon immediately. The father was arrested at Alexandrovf Station, as I promised that he should be—the police have visited the school in Warsaw where the daughter was supposed to reside—this also as I promised you—but their mission has been in vain. So you see that while Paul Boriskoff is now in the old prison at Petersburg, the daughter is heaven knows where, which I may say is nowhere for our purpose. That we did not complete the affair is our misfortune. The girl, we are convinced, is still in Warsaw, but her friends are hiding her. Remember that the police knew the father, but that the daughter is unknown to them. These Polish girls—pardon me, I refer to the peasant classes—are as alike as two roses on a bush. We shall do nothing until we establish identity—and how that is to be done, I do not pretend to say. If you can help us—and it is very necessary for your own safety to do so—you have not a minute to lose. We should act at once, I say, without the loss of a single hour."

Thus did this man of affairs, one who had been deep in many a brave intrigue, make known to the man who had employed him the supreme misfortune of their adventure. Had he said, "Your life is in such peril that you may not have another hour to live," it would have been no more than the truth. Their plot had failed and the story of it was abroad. This had he come from Paris to tell—this was the news that Richard Gessner heard with less apparent emotion than though one had told him of the pettiest event of a common day.

"The matter has been very badly bungled," he said. "I shall write to General Trepoff and complain of it. Do you not see how inconvenient this is? If the girl has escaped, she will be sheltered by the Revolutionaries, and if she knows my story, she will tell it to them. I may be followed here—to this very house. You know that these people stick at nothing. They would avenge this man's liberty whatever the price. What remains to discover is the precise amount of her knowledge. Does she know my name, my story? You must find that out, Zamoyski—there is not an hour to lose, as you say."

He repeated his fears, pacing the room and smoking incessantly. The whole danger of a situation is not usually realized upon its first statement, but every instant added to this man's apprehensions and brought the drops of sweat anew to his forehead. He had planned to arrest both Boriskoff and his daughter. The Russian Government, seeking the financial support of his house, fell in readily with his plans and commanded the police to assist him. Paul Boriskoff himself had been arrested at the frontier station upon an endeavor to return to Poland. His daughter Lois, warned in some mysterious manner, had fled from the school where she was being educated and put herself beyond the reach of her father's enemies. This was the simple story of the plot. But God alone could tell what the price of failure might be.

"It is very easy to say what we must do," the Count observed, "the difficulties remain. Identify this girl for us among the twenty thousand who answer to her description in Warsaw, and I will undertake that the Government shall deal well by her. But who is to identify her? Where is your agent to be found? Name him to me and the task begins to-night. We can do nothing more. I say again that my Government has done all in its power. The rest is with you, Herr Gessner, to direct us where we have failed."

Gessner made no immediate answer. Perhaps he was about to admit the difficulties of the Count's position and to agree that identification was impossible, when suddenly his glance fell upon Alban, waiting, as he had asked, until the interview should be done. And what an inspiration was that—what an instantaneous revelation of possibilities. Let this lad go to Warsaw and he would discover Lois Boriskoff quickly enough. The girl had been in love with him and would hold her tongue at his bidding. As in a flash, he perceived this spar which should save him, and clutched at it. Let the lad go to Warsaw—let him be the agent. If the police arrested the girl after all—well, that would be an accident which he might regret, but certainly would not seek to prevent. A man whose life is imperilled must be one in ten thousand if any common dictates of faith or conduct guide him. Richard Gessner had a fear of death so terrible that he would have dared the uttermost treachery to save himself.

"Count," he exclaimed suddenly, "your agent is here, in this room. He will go to Warsaw at your bidding. He will find the girl."

The Count, who knew something of Alban's story already, received the intimation as though he had expected it.

"It was for that I asked him to wait. I have been thinking of it. He will go to Warsaw and tell the lady that she may obtain her father's liberty upon a condition. Let her make a direct appeal to the Government—and we will consider it. Of course you intend an immediate departure—you are not contemplating a delay, Herr Gessner?"

"Delay—am I the man to delay? He shall go to-morrow by the first train."

A smile hovered upon the Count's face in spite of himself.

"In a week," he was saying to himself, "Lois Boriskoff shall be flogged in the Schusselburg."

In truth, the whip was the weapon he liked best—when women were to be schooled.



CHAPTER XX

ALBAN GOES TO WARSAW

Alban had never been abroad, and it would have been difficult for him to give any good account of his journey to Warsaw. The swiftly changing scenes, the new countries, the uproar and strife of cities, the glamour of the sea, put upon his ripe imagination so heavy a burden that he lived as one apart, almost as a dreamer who had forgotten how to dream. If he carried an abiding impression it was that of the miracle of travel and the wonders that travel could work. In twenty hours he had almost forgotten the existence of the England he had left. Chains of bondage fell from his willing shoulders. He felt as one released from a prison house to all the freedom of a boundless world.

And so at last he came to the beautiful city of Warsaw and his sterner task began. Here, as in London, that pleasant person Count Sergius Zamoyski reminded him how considerable was the service he could confer, not alone upon his patron but upon the friends of his evil days.

"It has all been a mistake," the Count would say with fine protestation of regret; "my Government arrested that poor old fellow Boriskoff, but it would gladly let him go. To begin with, however, we must have pledges. You know perfectly well that the man is a fanatic and will work a great mischief unless some saner head prevents it. We must find his daughter and see that she promises to hold her tongue concerning our friend at Hampstead. When that is done, we shall pack off the pair to London and they will carry a good round sum in their pockets. Herr Gessner is not the man to deal ungenerously with them—nor with you to whom he may owe so much."

He was a shrewd man of the world, this amiable diplomat, and who can wonder that so simple a youth as Alban Kennedy proved no match for him. Alban honestly believed that he would be helping both Gessner and his old friends, the Boriskoffs, should he discover little Lois' whereabouts and take her back to London. A very natural longing to see her once more added to the excitements of the journey. He would not have been willing to confess this interest, but it prompted him secretly so that he was often reminding himself of the old days when Lois had been his daily companion and their mutual confidences had been their mutual pleasure. Just as a knight-errant of the old time might set out to seek his mistress, so did Alban go to Warsaw determined to succeed. He would find Lois in this whirling wonderland of delight, and, finding her, would return triumphant to their home.

Now, they arrived in Warsaw upon the Thursday evening after the memorable interview at Hampstead; and driving through the crowded streets of that pleasant city, by its squares, its gardens, and its famous Palaces, they descended at last at the door of the Hotel de France; and there they heard the fateful news which the city itself had discussed all day and would discuss far into the night.

General Trubenoff, the new Dictator, had been shot dead at the gate of the Arsenal that very afternoon, men said, and the Revolutionaries were already armed and abroad. What would happen in the next few hours, heaven and the Deputy Governor alone could tell. Were this not sufficiently significant, the aspect of the great Square itself was menacing enough to awe the imagination even of the least impressionable of travellers. Excited crowds passed and repassed; Cossacks were riding by at the gallop—even the reports of distant rifle shots were to be heard and, from time to time, the screams and curses of those upon whose faces and shoulders the soldiers' whips fell so pitilessly.

In the great hall of the hotel itself pandemonium reigned. Afraid of the streets and of their homes, the wives and daughters of many officials fled hither as to a haven of refuge which would never be suspected. They crowded the passages, the staircases, the reception-rooms. They besieged the officers for news of that which befell without. Their terrified faces remained a striking tribute to the ferocity of their enemies and the reality of the peril.

Let it be said in justice that this majestic spectacle of tragedy found Alban Kennedy well prepared to understand its meaning. Had he told the truth he would have said that the mob orators of Union Street had prepared him for such a state of things as he now beheld. The Cossacks, were they not the Cossacks whom old Paul had called "the enemies of the human race?" The gilt-belarded generals, had he not seen them cast upon the screen in England and there heard their names with curses? Just as they had told him would be the case, so now he had stumbled upon autocracy face to face with its ancient enemy, the people. He saw the brutal Cossacks with their puny horses and their terrible whips parading beneath his balcony and treating all the poor folk with that insolence for which they are famous. He beheld the huddled crowds lifting white faces to the sky and cowering before the relentless lash. Not a whit had the patriot exiles in London exaggerated these things or misrepresented them. Men, and women too, were struck down, their faces ripped by the thongs, their shoulders lacerated before his very eyes. And all this, as he vaguely understood, that freedom might be denied to this nation and justice withheld from her citizens. Truly had he travelled far since he left England a few short days ago.

Sergius Zamoyski had engaged a handsome suite of rooms upon the first floor of the magnificent modern hotel which looks down upon the Aleja Avenue, and to these they went at once upon their arrival. It was something at least to escape from the excited throngs below and to stand apart, alike from the rabble and the soldiers. Nor was the advantage of their situation to be despised; for they had but to step out upon the veranda before their sitting-rooms to command the whole prospect of the avenue, and there, at their will, to be observers of the conflict. To Sergius Zamoyski, familiar with such scenes, Warsaw offered no surprises whatever. To Alban it remained a city of whirlwind, and of human strife and suffering beyond all imagination terrible. He would have been content to remain out there upon that high balcony until the last trooper had ridden from the street and the last bitter cry been raised. The Count's invitation to dinner seemed grotesque in its reversion to commonplace affairs.

"All this is an every-day affair here now," that young man remarked with amazing nonchalance; "since the workmen began to shoot the patrols, the city has had no peace. I see that it interests you very much. You will find it less amusing when you have been in Russia for a month or two. Now let us dress and dine while we can. Those vultures down below will not leave a bone of the carcass if we don't take care."

He re-entered the sitting-room and thence the two passed to their respective dressing-rooms. An obsequious valet offered Alban a cigarette while he made his bath, and served a glass of an American cocktail. The superb luxury of these apartments did not surprise the young English boy as much as they might have done, for he had already stayed one night at an almost equally luxurious hotel in Berlin and so approached them somewhat familiarly; but the impression, oddly conceived and incurable, that he had no right to enjoy such luxuries and was in some way an intruder, remained. No one would have guessed this, the silent valet least of all; but in truth, Alban dressed shyly, afraid of the splendor and the richness; and his feet fell softly upon the thick Persian carpets as though some one would spy him out presently and cry, "Here is the guest who has not the wedding garment." In the dining-room, face to face with the gay Count, some of these odd ideas vanished; so that an observer might have named them material rather than personal.

They dined with open windows, taking a zakuska in the Russian fashion in lieu of hors d'oeuvre, and nibbling at smoked fish, caviar and other pickled mysteries. The Count's ability to drink three or four glasses of liquor with this prefatory repast astonished Alban not a little—which the young Russian observed and remarked upon.

"I am glad that I was born in the East," he said lightly, "you English have no digestions. When you have them, your climate ruins them. Here in Russia we eat and drink what we please—that is our compensation. We are Tartars, I admit—but when you remember that a Tartar is a person who owns no master, rides like a jockey, and drinks as much as he pleases with impunity, the imputation is not serious. None of you Western people understand the Russian. None of you understand that we are men in a very big sense of the word—men with none of your feminine Western weaknesses—great fighters, splendid lovers, fine drinkers. You preach civilization instead—and we point to your Whitechapel, your Belleville, your Bowery. Just think of it, your upper classes, as you yourselves admit, are utterly decadent, alike in brains and in morals; your middle classes are smug hypocrites—your lower classes starve in filthy dens. This is what you desire to bring about in Russia under the name of freedom and liberty. Do you wonder that those of us who have travelled will have none of it. Are you surprised that we fight your civilization with the whip—as we are fighting it outside at this moment. If we fail, very well, we shall know how to fail. But do not tell me that it would be a blessing for this country to imitate your institutions, for I could not believe you if you did."

He laughed upon it as though disbelieving his own words and, giving Alban no opportunity to reply, fell to talk of that which they must do and of the task immediately before them.

"We are better in this hotel than at the Palace Zamoyski, my kinsman's house," he said, "for here no inquisitive servants will trouble us. Naturally, you think it a strange thing to be brought to a great city like this and there asked to identify a face. Let me say that I don't think it will be a difficult matter. The Chief of the Police will call upon me in the morning and he will be able to tell us in how many houses it would be possible for the girl Lois Boriskoff to hide. We shall search them and discover her—and then learn what Herr Gessner desires to learn. I confess it amazes me that a man with his extraordinary fortune should have dealt so clumsily with these troublesome people. A thousand pounds paid to them ten years ago might have purchased his security for life. But there's your millionaire all over. He will not pay the money and so he risks not only his fortune but his life. Let me assure you that he is not mistaken when he declares that there is no time to lose. These people, should they discover that he has been aiding my Government, would follow him to the ends of the earth. They may have already sent an assassin after him—it would be in accord with their practice to lose no time, and as you see they are not in a temper to procrastinate. The best thing for us to do is to speak of our business to no one. When we have discovered the girl, we will promise her father's liberty in return for her silence. Herr Gessner must now deal with these people once and for all—generously and finally. I see no other chance for him whatever."

Alban agreed to this, although he had some reservations to make.

"I know the Boriskoffs very well," he said, "and they are kindly people. We have always considered old Paul a bit of a madman, but a harmless one. Even his own countrymen in London laugh when he talks to them. I am sure he would be incapable of committing such a crime as you suggest; and as for his daughter, Lois, she is quite a little schoolgirl who may know nothing about the matter at all. Mr. Gessner undoubtedly owes Paul a great deal, and I should be pleased to see the poor fellow in better circumstances. But is it quite fair to keep him in prison just because you are afraid of what his daughter may say?"

"It is our only weapon. If we give him liberty, will he hold his tongue then? By your own admissions a louder talker does not exist. And remember that it may cost Herr Gessner many thousand pounds and many weeks of hard work to secure his liberty at all. Is he likely to undertake this while the daughter is at liberty and harbored among the ruffians of this city? He would be a madman to do so. I, who know the Poles as few of them know themselves, will tell you that they would sooner strike at those whom they call 'traitors in exile' than at their enemies round about us. If the girl has told them what she knows of Herr Gessner and his past, I would not be in his shoes to-night for a million of roubles heaped up upon the table. No, no, we have no time to lose—we owe it to him to act with great dispatch."

Alban did not make any immediate reply. Hopeful as the Count was, the difficulties of tracking little Lois down in such a city at such a time seemed to him well-nigh insuperable. He had seen hundreds of faces like hers as they drove through Warsaw that very afternoon. The monstrous crowd showed him types both of Anna and of Lois, and he wondered no longer at the resemblance he had detected between them when he first saw Richard Gessner's daughter on the balcony of the house in St. James' Square. None the less, the excitements of the task continued to grow upon him. How would it all end, he asked impulsively. And what if they were too late after all and his friend and patron were to be the victim of old Boriskoff's vengeance? That would be terrible indeed—it would drive him from Lois' friendship forever.

All this was in his mind as the dinner drew toward a conclusion and the solemn waiters served them cigars and coffee. There had been some cessation of the uproar in the streets during the latter moments; but a new outcry arising presently, the Count suggested that they should return to the balcony and see what was happening.

"I would have taken you to the theatre," he said laughingly, "but we shall see something prettier here. They are firing their rifles, it appears. Do not let us miss the play when we can have good seats for nothing. And mind you bring that kummel, for it is the best in Europe."

They were just lighting the great arc lamps upon the avenue as the two emerged from the dining-room and took up their stations by the railing of the balcony. In the roadway below the spectacle had become superb in its weird drama and excited ferocity. Great crowds passed incessantly upon the broad pavements and were as frequently dispersed by the fiery Cossacks who rode headlong as though mad with the lust of slaughter. Holding all who were abroad to be their enemies, these fellows slashed with their brutal whips at every upturned face and had no pity even for the children. Alban saw little lads of ten and twelve years of age carried bleeding from the streets—he beheld gentle women cut and lashed until they fell dying upon the pavement—he heard the death-cry from many a human throat. Just as the exiles had related it, so the drama went, with a white-faced, terror-stricken mob for the people of its scene and these devils upon their little horses for the chief actors. When the troopers fell (and from time to time a bullet would find its billet and leave a corpse rolling in a saddle) this was but the signal for a new outburst, surpassing the old in its diabolical ferocity. A very orgy of blood and slaughter; a Carnival of whips cutting deep into soft white flesh and drawing from their victims cries so awful that they might have risen up from hell itself.

And in this crowd, among this people perhaps, little Lois Boriskoff must be looked for. Her friends would be the people's friends. Wayward as she was, a true child of the streets, Alban did not believe that she would remain at home this night or consent to forego the excitements of a spectacle so wonderful. Nor in this was he mistaken, for he had been but a very few minutes upon the balcony when he perceived Lois herself looking up to him from the press below and plainly intimating that she had both seen and recognized him.



CHAPTER XXI

THE BOY IN THE BLUE BLOUSE

A sharp exclamation brought the Count to Alban's side.

"Lois is down there," Alban said, "I am sure of it—she waved to me just now. She was walking with a man in a dark blue blouse. I could not have been mistaken."

He was quite excited that he should have discovered her thus, and Sergius Zamoyski did not lag behind him in interest.

"Do you still see her?" he asked—"is she there now?"

"I cannot see her now—the soldiers drove the people back. Perhaps if we went down—"

The Count laughed.

"Even I could not protect you to-night," he exclaimed dryly, "no—whatever is to be done must be done to-morrow. But does not that prove to you what eyes and ears these people have. Here we left London as secretly as a man on a love affair. With the single exception of our friend at Hampstead, not a human being should have known of our departure or our destination. And yet we are not three hours in this place before this girl is outside our hotel, as well aware that we have arrived as we are ourselves. That is what baffles our police. They cannot contend with miracles. They are only human, and I tell you that these people are more than human."

Alban, still peering down into the press in the hope that he might see Lois' face again, confessed that he could offer no explanation whatever.

"They told me the same thing in London," he said, "but I did not believe them. Old Boriskoff used to boast that he knew of things which had happened in Warsaw before the Russian Government. They seem to have spies in every street and every house. If Lois' presence is not a coincidence—"

"My dear fellow, are you also a believer in coincidence—the idle excuse of men who will not reason. Forgive me, but I think very little of coincidence. Just figure the chances against such a meeting as this. Would it not run into millions—your first visit to Warsaw; nobody expecting you; nobody knowing your name in the city—and here is the girl waiting under your window before you have changed your clothes. Oh, no, I will have nothing to do with coincidence. These people certainly knew that we had left England—they have been expecting us; they will do their best to baffle us. Yes, and that means that we run some danger. I must think of it—I must see the Chief of the Police to-night. It would be foolish to neglect all reasonable precautions."

Alban looked at him with surprise.

"None of those people will do me an injury," he exclaimed, "and you, Count, why should you fear them?"

The Count lighted a cigarette very deliberately. "There may be reasons," he said—and that was all.

Had he told the whole truth, revealed the secrets of his work during the last three years, Alban would have understood very well what those reasons were. A shrewder agent of the Government, a more discreet zealous official of the secret service, did not exist. His very bonhomie and good-fellowship had hitherto been his surest defence against discovery. Men spoke of him as the great gambler and a fine sportsman. The Revolutionaries had been persuaded to look upon him as their friend. Some day they would learn the truth—and then, God help him. Meanwhile, the work was well enough. He found it even more amusing than making love and a vast deal more exciting than big-game hunting.

"Yes," he repeated anon, "There may be reasons, but it is a little too late to remember them. I am sending over to the Bureau now. If the Chief is there, he will be able to help me. Of course, you will see or hear from this girl again. These people would deliver a letter if you locked yourself up in an iron safe. They will communicate with you in the morning and we must make up our minds what to do. That is why I want advice."

"If you take mine," said Alban quietly, "you will permit me to see her at once. I am the last person in all Warsaw whom Lois Boriskoff will desire to injure."

"Am I to understand, then—but no, it would be impossible. Forgive me even thinking of it. I had really imagined for a moment that you might be her lover."

Alban's face flushed crimson.

"She was my little friend in London—she will be the same in Warsaw, Count."

Count Sergius bowed as though he readily accepted this simple explanation and apologized for his own thoughts. A shrewd man of the world, he did not believe a word of it, however. These two, boy and girl together, had been daily associates in the slums of London. They had shared their earnings and their pleasures and passed for those who would be man and wife presently. This Richard Gessner had told him when they discussed the affair, and he remembered it to his great satisfaction. For if Alban were Lois Boriskoff's lover, then might he venture even where the police were afraid to go.

"I will talk it all over with the Chief," the Count exclaimed abruptly; "you have had a long day and are better in bed. Don't stand on any ceremony, but please go directly you feel inclined."

Alban did not demur for he was tired out and that was the truth of it. In his own room he recalled the question the Count had put to him and wondered that it had so distressed him. Why had his cheeks tingled and the words stumbled upon his lips because he had been called Lois Boriskoff's lover? It used not to be so when they walked Union Street together and all the neighbors regarded the engagement as an accomplished fact. He had never resented such a charge then—what had happened that he should resent it now? Was it the long weeks of temptation he had suffered in Anna Gessner's presence? Had the world of riches so changed him that any mention of the old time could make him ashamed? He knew not what to think—the blood rushed to his cheeks again and his heart beat quickly when he remembered that but for Count Sergius's visit to Hampstead, he might have been Anna's betrothed to-day.

In this he was, as ever, entirely candid with himself, neither condoning his faults nor accusing himself blindly. There had been nothing of the humbler realities of love in his relations with Richard Gessner's daughter; none of the superb spirit of self-sacrifice; none of those fine ideals which his boyhood had desired to set up. He had worshipped her beauty—so much he readily admitted; her presence had ever been potent to quicken his blood and claim the homage of his senses; but of that deeper understanding and mutual sympathy by which love is born she had taught him nothing. Why this should have been so, he could not pretend to say. Her father's riches and the glamour of the great house may have had not a little to do with it. Alban had always seemed to stand apart from all which the new world showed to him. He felt that he had no title to a place there, no just claim at all to those very favors his patron thrust upon him so lavishly.

He was as a man escaped from a prison whose bars were of gold—a prison whereof the jailer had been a beautiful and capricious woman. Here in Warsaw he discovered a new world; but one that seemed altogether familiar. All this clamor of the streets, this going to and fro of people, the roar of traffic, the shriek of whistles, the ringing of bells—had he not known them all in London when Lois was his friend and old Paul his neighbor? There had been many Poles by Thrawl Street and the harsh music of their tongue came to him as an old friend. It is true that he was housed luxuriously, in a palace built for millionaires; but he had the notion that he would not long continue there and that a newer and a stranger destiny awaited him. This thought, indeed, he carried to his bedroom and slept upon at last. He would find Lois to-morrow and she would be his messenger.

There had still been excited crowds in the streets when he found his bedroom and a high balcony showed him the last phases of a weird pageant. Though it was then nearly midnight, Cossacks continued to patrol the avenue and the mob to deride them. By here and there, where the arc lamps illuminated the pavement, the white faces and slouching figures of the more obstinate among the Revolutionaries spoke of dogged defiance and an utter indifference to personal safety. Alban could well understand why the people had ventured out, but that they should have taken women and even young children with them astonished him beyond measure. These, certainly, could vindicate no principle when their flesh was cut by the brutal whips and the savage horses rode them down to emphasize the majesty of the Czar. Such sights he had beheld that afternoon and such were being repeated, if the terrible cries which came to his ears from time to time were true harbingers. Alban closed his windows at last for very shame and anger. He tried to shut the city's terrible voice from his ears. He wished to believe that his eyes had deceived him.

This would have been about one o'clock in the morning. When he awoke from a heavy sleep (and youth will sleep whatever the circumstance) the sun was shining into his rooms and the church-bells called the people to early Mass. An early riser, long accustomed to be up and out when the clock struck six, he dressed himself at once and determined to see something of Warsaw before the Count was about. This good resolution led him first to the splendid avenue upon which the great hotel was built, and here he walked awhile, rejoicing in his freedom and wondering why he had ever parted with it. Let a man have self-reliance and courage enough and there is no city in all the world which may not become a home to him, no land among whose people he may not find friends, no government whose laws shall trouble him. Alban's old nomadic habits brought these truths to his mind again as he walked briskly down the avenue and filled his lungs with the fresh breezes of that sunny morning. Why should he return to the Count at all? What was Gessner's money to him now? He cared less for it than the stones beneath his feet; he would not have purchased an hour's command of a princely fortune for one of these precious moments.

He was not alone in the streets. The electric cars had already commenced to run and there were many soberly dressed work-people hurrying to the factories. It was difficult to believe that this place had been the scene of a civic battle yesterday, or to picture the great avenues, with their pretty trees, tall and stately houses and fine broad pavements, as the scene of an encounter bloody beyond all belief. Not a sign now remained of all this conflict. The dead had already been carried to the mortuaries; the prisoners were safe at the police-stations where, since sundown, the whips had been so busy that their lashes were but crimson shreds. True there were Cossacks at many a street corner and patrols upon some of the broader thoroughfares—but of Revolutionaries not a trace. These, after the patient habits of their race, would go to work to-day as though yesterday had never been. Not a tear would be shed where any other eye could see it—not a tear for the children whose voices were forever silent or the mothers who had perished that their sons might live. Warsaw had become schooled to the necessity of sacrifice. Freedom stood upon the heights, but the valley was the valley of the shadow of death.

Alban realized this in a dim way, for he had heard the story from many a platform in Whitechapel. Perhaps he had enough selfishness in his nature to be glad that the evil sights were hidden from his eyes. His old craving for journeying amid narrow streets came upon him here in Warsaw and held him fascinated. Knowing nothing of the city or its environment, he visited the castle, the barracks, the Saxon gardens, watched the winding river Vistula and the Praga suburb beyond, and did not fail to spy out the old town, lying beneath the guns of the fortress, a maze of red roofs and tortuous streets and alleys wherein the outcasts were hiding. To this latter he turned by some good instinct which seemed to say that he had an errand there. And here little Lois Boriskoff touched him upon the shoulder and bade him follow her—just as imagination had told him would be the case. She had come up to him so silently that even a trained ear might not have detected her footstep. Whence she came or how he could not say. The street wherein they met was one of the narrowest he had yet discovered. The crazy eaves almost touched above his head—the shops were tenanted by Jews already awake and crying their merchandise. Had Alban been a traveller he would have matched the scene only in Nuremberg, the old German town. As it was, he could but stare open-mouthed.

Lois—was it Lois? The voice rang familiarly enough in his ears, the eyes were those pathetic, patient eyes he had known so well in London. But the black hair cut in short and silky curls about the neck, the blue engineer's blouse reaching to the knees, the stockings and shoes below—was this Lois or some young relative sent to warn him of her hiding-place? For an instant he stared at her amazed. Then he understood.

"Lois—it is Lois?" he said.

The girl looked swiftly up and down the street before she answered him. He thought her very pale and careworn. He could see that her hands were trembling while she spoke.

"Go down to the river and ask for Herr Petermann," she said almost in a whisper. "I dare not speak to you here, Alb dear. Go down to the river and find out the timber-yard—I shall be there when you come."

She ran from him without another word and disappeared in one of the rows which diverged from the narrow street and were so many filthy lanes in the possession of the scum of Warsaw. To Alban both her coming and her going were full of mystery. If Count Sergius had told him the truth, the Russian Government wished well not only to her but also to her father, the poor old fanatic Paul who was now in the prison at Petersburg. Why, then, was it necessary for her to appear in the streets of Warsaw disguised as a boy and afraid to exchange a single word with a friend from England. The truth astounded him and provoked his curiosity intolerably. Was Lois in danger then? Had the Count been lying to him? He could come to no other conclusion.

It was not difficult to find Herr Petermann's timber-yard, for many Englishmen found their way there and many a ship's captain from Dantzig had business with the merry old fellow whom Alban now sought out at Lois' bidding. The yard itself might have covered an acre of ground perhaps, bordering the river by a handsome quay and showing mighty stacks of good wood all ready for the barges or seasoning against next year's shipment. Two gates of considerable size admitted the lorries that went in from the town, and by them stood the wooden hut at whose window inquiries must be made. Here Alban presented himself ten minutes after Lois had left him.

"I wish to see Herr Petermann," he said in English.

A young Jew clerk took up a scrap of paper and thrust it forward.

"To write your name, please, mein Herr."

Alban wrote his name without any hesitation whatever. The clerk called a boy, who had been playing by a timber stack, and dispatched him in quest of his chief.

"From Dantzig, mein Herr?" he asked.

"No," said Alban civilly, "from London."

"Ah," said the clerk, "I think it would be Dantzig. Lot of Englishes from Dantzig—you have not much of the woods in Engerland, mein Herr."

He did not expect a reply and immediately applied himself to the useful occupation of killing a blue-bottle with the point of his pen. Two or three lorries rolled in and out while Alban waited. He could see ships passing upon the river and hear the scream of a steam-saw from a shed upon his left hand. A soldier passed the gate, but hardly cast a glance at the yard. Five minutes must have elapsed before Herr Petermann appeared. He held the paper in a thin cadaverous hand as though quite unacquainted with his visitor's name and not at all curious to be enlightened.

"You are Mr. Kennedy," he said in excellent English.

"Yes," said Alban, "a friend of mine told me to come here."

"It would be upon the business of the English ship—ah, I should have remembered it. Please come to my office. I am sorry to have kept you waiting."

He was a short man and very fat, clean shaven and a thorough German in appearance. Dressed in a very dirty white canvas suit, he shuffled rather than walked across the yard, never once looking to the right hand or to the left and apparently oblivious of the presence of a stranger. This manner had befriended him through all the stormy days Warsaw had lately known. Even the police had no suspicion of him. Old fat Petermann, who hobnobbed with sailors—what had revolution to do with him!

"This way, mein Herr—yonder is my office. When I go to Dantzig by water my books go with me. That is very good for the health to live upon the water. Now please to cross the plank carefully, for what shall you say to me if you fall in? This is my bureau de travail—you will tell me how you like him by and by."

There were two barges of considerable size moored to the quay and a substantial plank bridged the abyss between the stone and the combings of the great hatchway. Herr Petermann went first, walking briskly in spite of his fat; Alban, no less adroit, followed with a lad's nimble foot and was upon the old fellow's heels when they stepped on board. The barges, he perceived, were fully laden and covered by heavy tarpaulins. Commodious cabins at the stern accommodated the crew—and into one of these Herr Petermann now turned, stooping as he went and crying to his guest to take care.

"It is rather dark, my friend, but you soon shall be accustomed to that. This is my private room, you see. In England you would not laugh at a man who works afloat, for you are all sailors. Now, tell me how you like it?"

The cabin certainly was beautifully furnished. Walls of polished wood had their adornment of excellent seascapes, many of them bought at the Paris salon. A bureau with delightful curves and a clock set at the apex above the writing-shelf pleased Alban immensely—he thought that he had seen nothing more graceful even at "Five Gables"; while the chair to match it needed no sham expert to declare its worth. The carpet was of crimson, without pattern but elegantly bordered. There were many shelves for books, but no evidence of commercial papers other than a great staring ledger which was the one eyesore.

"I like your room very much indeed," said Alban upon his swift survey—"not many people would have thought of this. We are all afraid of the damp in England, and if we talked of a floating office, people would think us mad." And then he added—"But you don't come here in winter, Herr Petermann—this place is no use to you then?"

Herr Petermann smiled as though he were well pleased.

"Every place has its uses sometimes," he rejoined a little vaguely, "we never know what is going to happen to us. That is why we should help each other when the occasion arises. You, of course, are visiting Warsaw merely as a tourist, Mr. Kennedy?"

"Indeed, no—I have come here to find a very old friend, the daughter—"

"No names, if you please, Mr. Kennedy. You have come here, I think you said, to find the son of a very old friend. What makes you suppose that I can help you?"

His change of tone had been a marvellous thing to hear—so swift, so masterful that Alban understood in a moment what strength of will and purpose lay hidden by this bland smile and benevolent manner. Herr Petermann was far from being the simple old fellow he pretended to be. You never could have named him that if you had heard him speak as he spoke those few stern words. Alban, upon his part, felt as though some one had slapped him upon the cheek and called him a fool.

"I am very sorry," he blundered—and then recovering himself, he said as honestly—"Is there any need to ask me for reasons? Are not our aims the same, Herr Petermann?"

"To sell wood, Mr. Kennedy?"

Alban was almost angry.

"I was walking down from the Castle," he began, but again the stern voice arrested him.

"Neither names nor history, if your please, Mr. Kennedy. We are here to do business together as two honest merchants. All that I shall have to ask you is your word, the word of an English gentleman, that nothing which transpires upon my premises shall be spoken of outside under any circumstances whatever."

"That is very readily given, Herr Petermann."

"Your solemn assurance?"

"My solemn assurance."

The old fellow nodded and smiled. He had become altogether benevolent once more and seemed exceedingly pleased with himself and everybody else.

"It is fortunate that you should have applied to me," he exclaimed very cheerily—"since you are thinking of taking a Polish servant—please do not interrupt me—since you are thinking of taking a Polish servant and of asking him to accompany you to England, by boat, if you should find the journey otherwise inconvenient—I merely put the idea to you—there is a young man in my employment who might very honestly be recommended to your notice. Is it not lucky that he is here at this moment—on board this very barge, Mr. Kennedy?"

Alban looked about him astonished. He half expected to see Lois step out of one of the cupboards or appear from the recess beneath Herr Petermann's table. The amiable wood merchant enjoyed his perplexity—as others of his race he was easily amused.

"Ah, I see that I am troubling you," he exclaimed, "and really there is not much time to be lost. Let me introduce this amiable young man to you without delay, Mr. Kennedy. I am sure he will be very pleased to see you."

He stood up and went to the wall of the cabin nearest to the ship's bow. A panel cut in this gave access to the lower deck; he opened it and revealed a great empty hold, deftly covered by the tarpaulin and made to appear fully loaded to any one who looked at the barge from the shore.

"Here is your friend," he cried with huge delight of his own cleverness, "here is the young servant you are looking for, Mr. Kennedy. And mind," he added this in the same stern voice which had exacted the promise, "and mind, I have your solemn promise."



CHAPTER XXII

A FIGURE IN THE STRAW

A little light filtered down through the crevices and betrayed the secrets of that strange refuge in all their amazing simplicity. Here was neither costly furniture nor any adornment whatsoever. A thick carpet of straw, giving flecks of gold wherever the sunlight struck down upon it, had been laid to such a depth that a grown man might have concealed himself therein. A few empty bales stood here and there as though thrown down at hazard; there were coils of rope and great blocks of timber used by the stevedores who loaded the barges. But of the common things of daily life not a trace. No tables, no chairs, neither bed nor blanket adorn this rude habitation. Let a sergeant of police open his lantern there and the tousled straw would answer him in mockery. This, for a truth, had been the case. Little Lois could tell a tale of Cossacks on the barge, even of rifles fired down into the hold, and of a child's heart beating so quickly that she thought she must cry out for very pain of it. But that was before the men were told that the ship belonged to merry Herr Petermann. They went away at once then—to drink the old fellow's beer and to laugh with him.

That had been a terrible day and Lois had never forgotten it. Whenever old Petermann opened the door of his office now, she would start and tremble as though a Cossack's hand already touched her shoulder. Sometimes she lay deep down in the straw, afraid to declare herself even though a friend's voice called her. And so it was upon that morning of Alban's visit.

Old Petermann had shut the cabin door behind him and discreetly left the young people together. Seeing little in the deep gloom and his eyes blinking wherever he turned them, Alban stood almost knee-deep in straw and cried Lois' name aloud.

"Lois—where are you, Lois—why don't you answer me?"

She crept from the depths at his very feet and shaking the straw from her pretty hair, she stood upright and put both her hands upon his shoulders.

"I am here, Alb dear, just waiting for you. Won't you kiss me, Alb dear?"

He put his arms about her neck and kissed her at her wish—just as a brother might have kissed a sister in the hour of her peril.

"I came at once, Lois," he said, "of course I did not understand that it would be like this. Why are you here? Whatever has happened—what does it all mean? Will you not teach me to understand, Lois?"

"Sit by my side, Alb dear, sit down and listen to me. I want you to know what your friends have been doing. Oh, I have been so lonely, so frightened, and I don't deserve that. You know that my father is in prison, Alb—the Count told you that?"

"I heard it before I left England, Lois. You did not answer my letters?"

"I was ashamed to, dear. That was the first thing they taught me at the school—to be ashamed to write to you until you would not be ashamed to read my letters. Can't you understand, Alb? Wasn't I right to be ashamed?"

She buried her head upon his breast and put a little hot hand into his own. A great tenderness toward her filled his whole being and brought a sense of happiness very foreign to him lately. How gentle and kindly this little waif of fortune had ever been. And how even those few weeks of a better schooling had improved her. She had shed all the old vulgarities—she was just a simple schoolgirl as he would have wished her to be.

"We are never right to be ashamed before those who love us," Alban said kindly; "you did not write to me and how was I to know what had happened? Of course, your father told you what I had been doing and why I went away from Union Street? It was all his kindness. I know it now and I have come to Russia to thank him—when he is free. That won't be very long now that I have found you. They were frightened of you, Lois—they thought you were going to betray their secrets to the Revolutionary party. I knew that you would not do so—I said so all along."

She looked up at him with glowing eyes, and putting her lips very close to his ear she said:

"I loved you, Alb—I never could have told them while I loved you—not even to save my father, and God knows how much I love him. Did not they say that you were very happy with Mr. Gessner? There would have been no more happiness if I had told them."

"And that is what kept you silent, Lois?"

She would not answer him, but hiding her face again, she asked him a question which surprised him greatly.

"Do you know why the police wished to arrest me, Alb dear?"

"How could I know that, Lois?"

"It was the Count who told them to do so. He is only deceiving you, dear. He does not want to release my father and will never do so. If I were in prison too, he thinks that Mr. Gessner would be quite safe. Do not trust the Count if you would help us. My people understand him and they will punish him some day. He has done a great wrong to many in Warsaw, and he deserves to be punished. You must remember this, dear, when he promises my father's freedom. He is not telling you the truth—he is only asking you to punish me."

"But, Lois, what have you done, what charge can they bring against a little schoolgirl?"

"I am my father's daughter," she said proudly, "that is why they would punish me. Oh, you don't know, dear. Even the little children are criminals in Warsaw. My father escaped from Saghalen and I have no right to live in Russia. When he sent me to school here, I did not come under my own name, they called me Lois Werner and believed I was a German. Then my people heard that Count Sergius wished to have me arrested, and they took me away from the school and brought me here. Herr Petermann is one of my father's oldest friends. He has saved a great many who would be in prison but for his kindness. We can trust Herr Petermann, dear—he will never betray us."

Alban understood, but he had no answer ready for her. All that she had told him filled him with unutterable contempt toward the men he had but lately considered as his patrons and his friends. The polished, courtly Sergius, his master Richard Gessner—to what duplicity had they not stooped, nay, to what treachery? For they had sent him into Russia, not to befriend this child, but to put the ultimate shame of a Russian prison upon her—the cell, the lash, the unnamable infamy. As in a flash he detected the whole conspiracy and laid it bare. He, Alban Kennedy, had been chosen as their instrument—he had been sent to Poland to condemn this little friend of the dreadful years to the living death in a Russian prison. The blood raced in his veins at the thought. Perhaps for the first time in his life he knew the meaning of the word anger.

"Lois," he exclaimed presently, "if Mr. Gessner does not set your father free, I myself will tell your people. That is the message I am going to send to him to-day. Count Sergius will not lie to me again—I shall tell him so when I return."

She started up in wild alarm.

"You must not do it—I forbid it," she cried, closing her white arms about his neck as though to protect him already from his enemies. "Oh, my dear, you do not know the Russian people, you do not know what it means to stand against the police here and have them for your enemies. Mr. Gessner is their friend. The Government would do a great deal to serve him—my father says so. If Count Sergius heard that you had met me, we should both be in prison this night—ah, dear God, what a prison, what suffering—and I have seen it myself, the women cowering from the lash, the men beaten so that they cut the flesh from their faces. That's what happens to those who go against the Government, dear Alb—but not to you because you love me."

She clung to him hysterically, for this long vigil had tried her nerves and the shadow of discovery lay upon her always. It had been no surprise to her to find Alban in Warsaw, for the Revolutionary Committee in London had informed her friends by cable on the very day that Count Sergius had left. She knew exactly how he had come, where he had stopped, and when to seek him out. But now that his arms were about her, she dreaded a new separation and was almost afraid to release his hand from hers.

"You will not leave me, Alban," she said—a new dignity coming to her suddenly as though some lesson, not of the school, but of life, had taught it to her—"you will take me to London with you—yes, yes, dear, as your servant. That is what my friends wish, they have thought it all out. I am to go as your servant and you must get a passport for me—for Lois Werner, and then if you call me by my own name no one will know. There we can see Mr. Gessner together and speak of my father. I will promise him that his secret shall never be known. He will trust me, Alban, because I promise him."

Alban stooped and kissed her upon the lips.

"No," he said, "the work must be done here in Russia, Lois. I am called to do it and I go now. Let me find you at the same time to-morrow, and I will tell you what I have done. God bless you, Lois. It is happiness to be with you again."

Their lips met, their arms unclasped reluctantly. A single tap upon the panel of the cabin brought that merry old fellow, Herr Petermann, to open to them. Alban told him in a sentence what had happened and hastened back to the hotel.



CHAPTER XXIII

AN INSTRUCTION TO THE POLICE

Count Sergius was a little more than uneasy when Alban returned—he was suspicious. A highly trained agent of Government himself, he rarely permitted any circumstance, however trifling, to escape him; and this circumstance of tardiness was not trifling.

"He has met the girl," the argument went, "and she is detaining him with a fine story of her wrongs. He may learn that we have tricked him and that would be troublesome. Certainly I was a fool not to have had him watched—but, then, his first night in Warsaw and he a stranger! We shall make up for lost time at once. I will see the Chief and give instructions. A dove does not go but once to the nest. We will take wings ourselves next time."

By which it will be perceived that he blamed himself for having lost a great opportunity and determined not to do so a second time. His whole purpose in coming to Warsaw had been to track down Boriskoff's daughter and to hand her over to the police. This he owed to his employers, the Government, and to his friend, Richard Gessner—than whom none would pay a better price for the service. And when it were done, then he imagined that nothing in the world would be easier than to excuse himself to this amiable lad and to take him back to England without any loss of time whatever. In all a pretty plan, lacking only the finer judgment to discern the strength of the enemy's force and not to despise them.

Alban entered the sitting-room just as the Count had determined to have his breakfast. It was nearly twelve o'clock then and the fierce heat of the day made the streets intolerable. Few people were abroad in the great avenue—there was no repetition of the disturbance of yesterday, nor any Cossack going at a gallop. Down below in the restaurant a bevy of smartly dressed women ate and gossiped to the music of a good Hungarian band. From distant streets there came an echo of gongs and the muffled hum of wheels; the sirens of the steam-tugs screamed incessantly upon the sleepy river.

Whatever the Count's curiosity may have been, he had the wit to hide it when Alban appeared. Adopting a well-feigned tone of raillery, he spoke as men speak when another has been absent and has no good excuse to make.

"I will ask no questions," he said with mock solemnity—"A man who forgets how to breakfast is in a bad way. That is to suppose that you have not breakfasted—ah, forgive me, she makes coffee like a chef, perhaps, and there is no Rhine wine to match the gold of her hair. Let us talk politics, history, the arts—anything you like. I am absolutely discreet, Mr. Kennedy, I have forgotten already that you were late."

Alban drew a chair to the table and began to eat with good appetite. His sense of humor was strong enough to lead him to despise such talk at any time, but to-day it exasperated him. Understanding perfectly well what was in the Count's mind, he was not to be trapped by any such artifice. Honesty is a card which a diplomatist rarely expects an opponent to hold. Alban held such a card and determined to play it without loss of time.

"I have seen Lois Boriskoff," he said.

"Again—that is quick work."

The Count looked up, still smiling.

"I told you that we should have no difficulties," he exclaimed.

Alban helped himself to some superb bisque soup and permitted the waiter to fill his glass from a flask of Chablis.

"It was quite an accident upon my part. I went up to the Castle as you advised me and then down into the old town. Lois is with her friends there. I have had a long talk to her and now I understand everything."

The Count nodded his head and sipped his wine. The frankness of all this deceived him but not wholly. The boy had discovered something—it remained to be seen how much.

"You are successful beyond hope," he exclaimed presently, "this will be great news for Mr. Gessner. Of course, you asked her plainly what had happened?"

"She told me without my asking, Count. Now I understand everything—for the first time."

The tone of the reply arrested Sergius' attention and brought a frown to his face. He kept his eyes upon Alban when next he spoke.

"Those people are splendid liars," he remarked as though he had been expecting just such a story—"of course she spoke about me. I can almost imagine what she said."

"It was a very great surprise to me," Alban rejoined, and with so simple an air that any immediate reply seemed impossible. For five minutes they ate and drank in silence. Then Count Sergius, excusing himself, stood up and went to the window.

"Is she to come to this hotel?" he asked anon.

"She would be very foolish to do so, Count."

"Foolish, my dear fellow, whatever do you mean?"

"I mean what I say—that she would be mad to put herself into your power."

The Count bit his lip. It had been many years since so direct an insult had been offered to him, and yet he did not know how to answer it.

"I see that these people have been lying to you as I thought," he rejoined sharply, "is it not indiscreet to accept the word of such a person?"

"You know perfectly well that it is not, Count. You brought me to Warsaw to help you to arrest Lois Boriskoff. Well, I am not going to do so and that is all."

"Are you prepared to say the same to your friend in London—will you cable that news to Mr. Gessner?"

"I was going to do so without any loss of time. You can send the message for me if you like."

"Nothing will be easier. Let me take it down at your dictation. Really I am not offended. You have been deceived and are right to say what you think. Our friend at Hampstead shall judge between us."

He lighted a cigarette with apparent unconcern and sat down before the writing-table near the window.

"Now," he asked, "how shall we put it to him?"

Alban came over and stood by his side.

"Say that Paul Boriskoff must be released by his intervention without any condition whatever."

"He will never consent to that."

"He will have to consent, Count Sergius. His personal safety depends upon it."

"But, my dear boy, what of the girl? Are you going to leave her here to shout our friend's secret all over Warsaw?"

"She has not spoken and she will not speak, Count."

"Ah, you are among the credulous. Your confidence flatters her, I fear."

"It is just—she has never lied to me."

The Count shrugged his shoulders.

"I will send your message," he said.

He wrote the cable in a fine pointed hand and duly delivered it to the waiter. His own would follow it ten minutes later—when he had made up his mind how to act. A dangerous thought had come to him and begun to obsess his mind. This English boy, he was saying, might yet be a more dangerous enemy than the girl they had set out to trap. It might yet be necessary to clap them both in the same prison until the whole truth were known. He resolved to debate it at his leisure. There was plenty of time, for the police were watching all the exits from the city, and if Lois Boriskoff attempted to pass out, God help her.

"We must not expect an answer to this before dinner," he said, holding out the message for the waiter to take it. "If you think it all right, we can proceed to amuse ourselves until the reply comes. Warsaw is somewhat a remarkable city as you will already have seen. Some of its finest monuments have been erected to celebrate the execution of its best patriots. Every public square stands for an insurrection. The castle is fortified not against the stranger but the citizen—those guns you tell me about were put there by Nicolas to remind us that he would stand no nonsense. We are the sons of a nation which, officially, does not exist—but we honor our dead kings everywhere and can show you some of Thorwaldsen's finest monuments to them. Let us go out and see these wonders if you are willing."

The apparent digression served him admirably, for it permitted him to think. As many another in the service of the autocracy, he had a sterling love for Poland in its historical aspect, and was as proud as any man when he uttered the name of a Sobieski, a Sigismund or a Ladislaus. Revolution as a modern phase he despised. To him there were but people and nobles, and the former had become vulgar disturbers of the Czar's peace who must be chastened with rods. His own career depended altogether upon his callous indifference to mere human sympathies.

Alban could offer no objection to visit Warsaw under such a pleasant guide and he also welcomed the hours of truce. It came to him that the Count might honestly doubt Lois' word and that, knowing nothing of her, he would have had little reason to trust her. The morning passed in a pleasant stroll down the Senatorska where are the chief shops of Moscow. Here the Count insisted upon buying his English friend a very beautiful amber and gold cigarette-case, to remind him, as he said, of their quarrel.

"It was very natural," he admitted, "I know these people so well. They talk like angels and act like devils. You will know more about them in good time. If I have interfered, it was at my friend Gessner's wish. I shall leave the matter in his hands now. If he accepts the girl's word, he is perfectly at liberty to do so. To me it is a matter of absolute indifference."

Alban took the cigarette-case but accepted it reluctantly. He could not resist the charm of this man's manner nor had he any abiding desire to do so. As far as that went, there was so much to see in these bright streets, so many odd equipages, fine horses, prettily dressed women, magnificent soldiers, that his interest was perpetually enchained and he uttered many exclamations of surprised delight very foreign to his usual manner.

"I cannot believe that this is the city we saw yesterday," he declared as the Count called a drosky and bade the driver make a tour of the avenues and the gardens—"you would think the people were the happiest in the world. I have never seen so many smiling faces before."

The Count understood the situation better.

"Life is sweet to them because of its uncertainty. They live while they can. When I used to fish in your English waters, they sent me to a river where the Mayfly was out—ah, that beautiful, fluttering creature which may live one minute or may live five. He struggles up from the bottom of the river, you remember, and then, just as he has extended his splendid wings, up comes a great trout and swallows him—the poor thing of ten or twenty or a hundred seconds. Here we struggle up through the social ranks, and just when the waters of intrigue fascinate us and we go to play Narcissus to them, up comes the official trout and down his throat we go. Some day there will be so many of us that the trout will be gorged and unable to move. Then he will go to the cooking-pot—but not in our time, I think."

Alban remained silent. That "not in our time" seemed so strange a saying when he recalled the threats and the promises of the fanatics of Union Street. Was this fine fellow deceiving himself, or was he like the Russian bureaucracy, simply ignorant? The lad of twenty could not say, but he made a shrewder guess at the truth than the diplomatist by his side.

They visited the Lazienki Park, passing many of Warsaw's famous people as they went, and so affording the Count many opportunities for delightful little histories in which such men excel. No pretty woman escaped his observation, few the rigors of his tongue. He could tell you precisely when Madame Latienski began to receive young Prince Nicolas at her house and the exact terms in which old Latienski objected to the visits. Priests, jockeys, politicians, actors—for these he had a distinguishing gesture of contempt or pity or gracious admiration. The actresses invariably recognized him with alluring smiles, which he received condescendingly as who should say—well, you were fortunate. When they arrived at the Moktowski barracks, a group of officers quickly surrounded them and conducted them to a place where champagne corks might pop and cigarettes be lighted. This was but the beginning of a round of visits which Alban found tiresome to the last degree. How many glasses of wine he sipped, how many cigarettes he lighted, he could not have told you for a fortune. It was nearly five o'clock when they returned to the hotel and the Count proposed an hour's repose "de travail."

"There is no message from your friend," he said candidly, "no doubt your telegram has troubled him. Perhaps we shall get it by dinner-time. You must be very tired and perhaps you would like to lie down."

Alban did not demur and he went to his own room, and taking off his boots he lay upon his bed and quickly fell fast asleep. Count Sergius, however, had no intention of doing any such thing. He was closeted with the Chief of the Police ten minutes after they had returned, and in twenty he had come to a resolution.

"This young Englishman will meet the girl Lois Boriskoff to-morrow morning," he said. "Arrest the pair of them and let me know when it is done. But mind you—treat him as though he were your own son. I have my reasons."

The Chief merely bowed. He quite understood that such a man as Sergius Zamoyski would have very good reasons indeed.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE DAWN OF THE DAY

Count Sergius believed that he had settled the affaire Gessner when he gave his instructions to the Chief of the Police, and the subsequent hours found him exceedingly pleased with himself. An artist in his profession, he flattered himself that it had all come about in the manner of his own anticipations and that he would be able to carry back to London a story which would not only win upon a rich man's gratitude, but advance him considerably in the favor of those who could well reward his labors.

This was an amiable reflection and one that ministered greatly to his self-content. No cloud stood upon the horizon of his self-esteem nor did shadows darken his glowing hopes. He had promised Richard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boriskoff, and arrested she would be before twelve o'clock to-morrow. As for this amiable English lad, so full of fine resolutions, so defiant, so self-willed, it would be a good jest enough to clap him in a police-station for four-and-twenty hours and to bow him out again, with profuse apologies, when the girl was on her way to Petersburg to join her amiable father in the Schlusselburg.

For Alban personally he had a warm regard. The very honesty of his character, his habit of saying just what he meant (so foreign to the Count's own practice), his ingenuous delight in all that he saw, his modern knight-errantry based upon an absurdly old-fashioned notion of right and wrong and justice and all such stuff as that, these were the very qualities to win the admiration of a man of the world who possessed none of them. Count Sergius said that the lad must suffer nothing. His intrigues with the daughter of a Polish anarchist were both dangerous and foolish. And was he not already the acknowledged lover of Anna Gessner, whom he must marry upon his return to London. Certainly, it would be very wrong not to lock him up, and he, Sergius, was not going to take the responsibility of any other course upon his already over-burdened shoulders.

These being his ideas, he found it amusing enough to meet Alban at the dinner-table and to speak of to-morrow and its programme. The reply to the cable they had dispatched to London lay already warm in his pocket, sent straight to him from the post-office as the police had directed. It was fitting that he should open the ball with a lie about this, and add thereto any other pleasant fancy which a fertile imagination dictated.

"Gessner does not cable us," he said at that moment of the repast when the glasses are first filled and the tongue is loosed. "I suppose he has gone over to Paris again as he hinted might be the case. If there is no news to-morrow, we must reconsider the arguments and see how we stand. You know that I am perfectly willing to be guided by him and will do nothing of my own initiative. If he can procure the old man's freedom, I will be the first to congratulate you. Meanwhile, I am not to forget that we have a box at the opera and that Huguenots is on the bill. When I am not in musical circles, I confess my enjoyment of Huguenots. Meyerbeer always seemed to me a grand old charlatan who should have run a modern show in New York. He wrote one masterpiece and some five miles of rubbish—but why decry a great work because there are also those which are not great. Besides, I am not musician enough really to enjoy the Ring. If it were not for the pretty women who come to my box to escape ennui, I would find Wagner intolerable."

Alban, very quiet and not a little excited to-night, differed from this opinion altogether.

"My father was a musician," he said. "I believe that if he had not been a parson, he would have been a great musician. I don't know very much about music myself, but the first time that Mr. Gessner took me to hear one of Wagner's operas, I seemed to live in a new world. It could not have been just the desire to like it, for I had made up my mind that it would be very dry. There is something in such music as that which is better than all argument. I shall never forget the curious sensation which came to me when first I heard the overture to Tannhaeuser played by a big orchestra. You will not deny that it is splendid?"

"Undoubtedly it's fine—especially where the clarinets came in and you seem to have five hundred mice running up your back. I am not going to be drawn into an argument on the point—these likes and dislikes are purely individual. To me it seems perfectly ridiculous that one man should quarrel with another because a third person has said or written something about which they disagree. In politics, of course, there is justification. The Have-Nots want to get money out of the Haves and the pockets supply the adjectives. But in the arts, which exist for our pleasure,—why, I might as well fall foul of you because you do not like caviar and are more partial to brunettes than to blondes. My taste is all the other way—I dote upon caviar; golden-haired women are to me just a little more attractive than the angels. But, of course, that does not speak for their tempers."

He laughed at the candor of it, and looking round the brilliant restaurant where they dined to-night, he began to speak in a low tone of Russian and Polish women generally.

"The Polish ladies are old-fashioned enough to love one man at a time—in their own country, at any rate. The Russians, on the contrary, are less selfish. A Russian woman is often the victim of three centuries, of suppressed female ambitions. She has large ideas, fierce passions, an excellent political sense—and all these must be cooled by the wet blanket of a very ordinary domesticity. In reality, she is not domesticated at all and would far sooner be following her lover—the one chosen for the day—down the street with a flag. Here you have the reason why a Russian woman appeals to us. She is rarely beautiful—some of them would themselves admit the deficiency—but she is never an embarrassment. Tell her that you are tired of her and you will discover that she was about to stagger your vanity by a similar confidence. In these days of revolution, she is seen at her best. Fear neither of God nor man will restrain her. We have more of the show of religion and less of the spirit in Russia than in any other country in the world. Here in Poland, it is a little different. Some of our women are as the idealists would have them to be. But there are others—or the city would be intolerable."

Alban had lived too long in a world of mean cynics that this talk should either surprise or entertain him. Men in Union Street spoke of women much as this careless fellow did, rarely generous to them and often exceedingly unjust. His own ideals he had confessed wholly to none, not even to Anna Gessner in the moment of their greatest intimacy. That fine old-world notion of the perfect womanhood, developed to the point of idolatry by the Celts of the West, but standing none the less as a witness to the whole world's desire, might remain but as a memory of his youth—he would neither surrender it nor admit that it was unworthy of men's homage. When Sergius spoke of his own countrywomen, Alban could forgive him all other estimates. And this was as much as to say that the image of Lois was with him even in that splendid place, and that some sentiment of her humble faith and sacrifice had touched him to the quick.

They went to the opera as the Count had promised and there heard an indifferent rendering of the Huguenots. A veritable sisterhood of blondes, willing to show off Count Sergius to some advantage, came from time to time to his box and was by him visited in turn. Officers in uniform crowded the foyers and talked in loud tones during the finest passages. A general sense of unrest made itself felt everywhere as though all understood the danger which threatened the city and the precarious existence its defenders must lead. When they quitted the theatre and turned into one of the military clubs for supper, the common excitement was even more marked and ubiquitous enough to arrest the attention even of such a flaneur as Sergius.

"These fellows are sitting down to supper with bombs under their chairs," he said sotto voce. "That is to say, each thinks that a bomb is there and hopes that it will kill his neighbor. We have no sympathy in our public life here—the conditions are altogether against it. Imagine five hundred men upon the deck of a ship which has struck a rock, and consider what opportunities there would be to deplore the drowned. In Russia each plays for his own safety and does not care a rouble what becomes of the man next door. Such a fact is both our strength and our weakness—our strength because opportunities make men, and our weakness because we have no unity of plan which will enable us to fight such a combination as is now being pitted against us. I myself believe that the old order is at an end. That is why I have a villa in the south of France and some excellent apartments in Paris."

"You believe that the Revolutionaries will be victorious?" Alban asked in his quiet way.

"I believe that the power is passing from the hands of all autocratic governments, and that some phase of socialism will eventually be the policy of all civilized nations."

"Then what is the good of going to England, Count, if you believe that it will be the same story there?"

"It is only a step on the road. You will never have a revolution in your country, you have too much common sense. But you will tax your bourgeois until you make him bankrupt, and that will be your way of having all things in common. In America the workingman is too well off and the country is too young to permit this kind of thing yet. Its day will be much later—but it will come all the same, and then the deluge. Let us rejoice that we shall not see these things in our time. It is something to know that our champagne is assured to us."

He lifted a golden glass and drank a vague toast heartily. Others in the Club were frankly intoxicated and many a heated scene marked the progress of unceremonious and impromptu revels. Young officers, who carried their lives in their hands every hour, showed their contempt of life in many bottles. Old men, stern and gray at dawn, were so many babbling imbeciles at midnight. The waiters ran to and fro ceaselessly, their faces dripping with perspiration and their throats hoarse with shouting. The musicians fiddled as though the end of all things was at hand and must not surprise them at a broken bar. In Russia the scene was familiar enough, but to the stranger incomprehensible and revolting. Alban felt as one released from a pit of gluttony when at three in the morning Sergius staggered to his feet and bade a servant call him in a drosky.

"We have much to do to-morrow," he muttered, "much to do—and then, ah, my friend, if we only knew what we meant when we say 'and then.'"



CHAPTER XXV

COUNT ZAMOYSKI SLEEPS

A glimmer of wan daylight in the Count's bedroom troubled him while he undressed and he drew the curtains with angry fingers. Down there in the dismal streets the Cossacks watched the night-birds going home to bed and envied them alike their condition and its consequences. If Sergius rested a moment at the window, it was to mark the presence of these men and to take heart at it. And this is to say that few who knew him in the social world had any notion of the life he lived apart or guessed that authority stood to him for his shield and buckler against the unknown enemies his labors had created. Perhaps he rarely admitted the truth himself. Light and laughter and music were his friends in so far as they permitted him to forget the inevitable or to deride it.

Here in this room of eloquent shadows he was a different man indeed from the fine fellow of the opera and the barracks—a haunted secret man looking deep into the mysteries and weary for the sun. The brilliant scene he had but just quitted could now be regretted chiefly because he needed the mental anaesthetic with which society alone could supply him. Pale and gaunt and inept in his movements, few would have recognized the Sergius Zamoyski of the dressing-room or named him for the diplomatist whose successes had earned the warmest encomiums of harassed authority. Herein lay a testimony to his success which his bitterest enemy would not have denied him. None knew better than he that the day of reckoning had come for all who opposed revolution in Russia, none had anticipated that day with a greater personal dread.

He closed the curtains, thankful that the Cossacks stood sentinels without, and hungering for sleep which had been denied to him so often lately. If he had any consolation of his thoughts, it lay in the comparative secrecy of his present mission and the fact that to-day would accomplish its purpose. The girl Lois had not confessed Richard Gessner's secret and she would stand presently where confession would not help her. As for this agreeable youth, who certainly had been her lover, he must be coerced into silence, threatened, cajoled, bought. Sergius remembered Alban's fine gospel of life and laughed when he recalled it. This devotion to humanity, this belief in great causes, what was it worth when a woman laughed and her rosy lips parted for a kiss? The world is too busy for the pedants who would stem the social revolution, was his argument—the rich men have too much to do to hide their common frailties that they should put on the habits of the friars. Let this hot gospeller acquire a fortune and he would become as the others before a month had passed. The women would see to that—for were not two of them already about the business?

He closed his curtains and undressed with a clumsy hand upon the buttons and many a curse at the obstinate things. The intense silence of the morning hour depressed him and he wondered that the hotel should sleep so soundly. His own door was both locked and bolted—he had a pistol in his travelling-bag and would finger it with grim satisfaction at such moments as these. Hitherto he had owed much to his very bravado, to a habit of going in and out among the people freely, and deriding all politics as a fool's employment. Latterly he had been wondering how far this habit would protect him, had made shrewd guesses at the truth and had come to the stage of question. Yesterday's work helped him to confirm these vague suspicions. How came it that Lois Boriskoff was able to warn this young Englishman, why had she come immediately to his hotel and followed him to the old quarters of the city? This could only mean that her friends had telegraphed the information from London, that every step of the journey had been reported and that a promising plan of action had been decided upon. Sergius dreaded this more than anything that could have happened to him. They will ask what share I had in it, he told himself; and he knew what the answer to that must be. Let them but suspect a hundredth part of the truth and he might not have twenty hours to live.

It had been a splendid life so far and a sufficient atonement for the dreaded hours apart. There in his own room he gave battle to the phantoms by recalling the faces of the pretty women he had cajoled and defeated, the houses of pride he had destroyed, the triumphs he had numbered and the recompense he had enjoyed. To be known to none save as a careless idler, to pass as a figure of vengeance unrecognized across the continents, to be the idol of the police in three cities, to have men running to and fro at his command though they knew not by whose order they were sent, here was wine of life so intoxicating that a man might sell his very soul to possess it. Sergius did not believe that there was any need for such a bargain as this—he had been consistently successful hitherto in eluding even the paltriest consequences of his employment—but the dark hours came none the less, and coming, they whispered a word which even the bravest may shudder to hear.

He slept but fitfully, listening for any sounds from the city without and anxious for the hotel to awaken to its daily routine. The cooler argument of the passing hour declared it most unlikely that any plan would be ventured until Lois Boriskoff's fate were known and Alban had visited her this morning. If there were danger to be apprehended, the moment of it would arrive when the girl was arrested and the story of Alban Kennedy's misadventure made known to her friends. Sergius began to perceive that he must not linger an hour in Warsaw when this were done. He could direct operations as easily from Paris or London as from this conspicuous hotel, and with infinitely less risk to himself and his empire. Sometimes he wondered that he had been so foolish as to enter Russia at all. Why could he not have telegraphed to the Chief of the Police to arrest the girl as soon as might be and to flog her into a confession. The whip would have purchased her secret readily enough, then the others could have been arrested also and Gessner left reassured beyond question. Sergius blamed himself very much that he had permitted a finer chivalry to guide his acts. "I came because this young man persuaded me to come," he admitted, and added the thought that he had been a fool for his pains.

This would have been about four o'clock of the morning. He slept a little while upon it, but woke again at five and sat up in bed to mark a step on the landing without and to ask himself who had the right to be there at such an hour. When he had waited a little while, he came to the conclusion that two people were approaching his door and making little secret of their coming. Presently a knock informed him that he had nothing whatever to fear; and upon asking the question "What do you want?" a voice answered immediately, "From the bureau, your excellency, with a letter." This he concluded to mean that the Chief of the Police had some important news to convey to him and had sent his own messenger to the hotel.

"Wait a moment and I will let you in," he replied, and asked, "I suppose you can wait a little while?"

"It is very urgent, excellency—you had better open at once."

The Count sprang up from his bed and drew the curtains back from the window. A warm glow of sunlight instantly suffused the cold room and warmed it with welcome beams. Down there in the streets the Cossacks still nodded upon patient horses as though no event of the night had disturbed them. A drosky passed, driving an old man to the railway station—there were porters at the doors of some of the houses and a few wagons going down toward the river. All this Sergius perceived instantly in one swift vision. Then he opened the door and admitted the officer.

"There were two of you," he exclaimed, peering down the passage.

"It is true, excellency, myself and the night-porter, but he has gone to sleep again."

"And you?"

"From the Chief, excellency, with this letter."

He held out a great square document, grotesquely sealed and carefully folded. A small man with a pockmarked face, he wore the uniform of an ordinary gendarme and aped that role to perfection. Saluting gravely, he permitted the letter to pass from his hands. Then he closed the door and leaned his back against it.

"I am to take an answer to the bureau, excellency."

The Count read a few lines of the document and looked up uneasily.

"You say that you were commanded to wake me up—for this?"

"Those are my orders."

"Zaniloff must have lost his wits—there was nothing else?"

The man took one stride forward.

"Yes," he cried in a low voice, "there was this, excellency."

* * * * *

Alban slept no better than his friend; in truth he hardly closed his eyes until they waked him and told him of the tragedy. He had said little to Sergius during the evening, but the perplexities of the long day remained with him and were not to be readily silenced.

That his patron sent no reply to their urgent telegram he thought a little strange. Mr. Gessner's silence could only mean that he had left London suddenly, perhaps had set out to join them in Warsaw. Meanwhile Alban perceived very clearly in what a position of danger Lois stood and how difficult it would be to help her if others did not come to his assistance.

Accustomed to regard all the Revolutionaries from the standpoint of the wild creatures who talked nonsense in the East End of London, he could not believe in old Herr Petermann's optimism or pay much attention to the wild plan of escape he had devised. It must be absurd to think that Lois could leave Poland disguised as a servant. Alban himself would readily have recognized her in her disguise if he had been seeking her at the time, and the police would very soon detect it when their minds were set upon the purpose. In his own opinion, and this was shrewd enough, their hope of salvation lay in Richard Gessner's frank acceptance of the position. The banker had influence enough with the Russian authorities to release both Lois and her father. He must do so or accept the consequences of his obstinacy.

All this and much more was in Alban's head while he tossed restlessly upon his strange bed and waited impatiently for the day. The oddest fancies came to him, the most fantastic ideas. Now he would be living in London again, a drudge at the works, the nightly companion of little Lois, the adventurer of the streets and the slums. Then, as readily, he would recall the most trifling incidents of his life in Richard Gessner's house, the days of the miracles, the wonderful hours when he had worshipped Anna Gessner and believed almost in her divinity. This had been a false faith, surely. He knew now that he would never marry Anna, and that must mean return to the wilderness, the bitter days of poverty and all the old-time strife with circumstance. It would have been easier, he thought, if those weeks of wonderland had never been. Richard Gessner had done him no service—rich men rarely help those whom they patronize for their own ends.

Alban thought of all this, and still being unable to sleep, he fell to numbering the hours which stood between him and his meeting with Lois. He was sure that she would be ready for him however early his visit might be—and he said that he would ring for his coffee at seven o'clock and try to go down to the river at eight. If there were no message from Mr. Gessner before he left, he thought it would be wise to counsel patience for this day at least. In plain truth he was less concerned about the diplomatic side of the affair than the personal. An overmastering desire for Lois' companionship, the wish to hear her voice, to speak to her, to talk as they had talked in the dark days of long ago, prevailed above the calm reckoning of yesterday. His resolution to defeat Count Sergius at his own game seemed less heroic than it had done twelve hours ago. Alban had conceit enough not to fear the Count. That incurable faith in British citizenship still upheld him.

Seven had been the hour named by his intention—it was a little after six o'clock when he heard a knock upon his bedroom door and started up wondering who called him at such an hour.

"Who is there, what do you want?" he cried, with the bedclothes still about his shoulders. No one answered this, but the knock was repeated, a decisive knock as of one who meant to win admittance.

"All right, I will come in a minute," was now his answer; to which he added the question—"Is that you, Count? Do you know it's only just six o'clock?"

He opened the door and found himself face to face with the hotel valet, an amiable young Frenchman by the name of Malette.

"Monsieur," said the man, "will you please come at once? There has been an accident—his excellency is very ill."

"An accident to the Count? Is it serious, Malette?"

"It is very serious, monsieur. They say that he will not live. The doctors are with him—I thought that you would wish to know immediately."

Alban turned without a word and began to put on his clothes. His hands were quite cold and he trembled as though stricken by an ague. When he had found a dressing-gown, he huddled it on anyhow and followed Malette down the corridor.

"When did this happen, Malette?"

"I do not know, monsieur. One of the servants chanced to pass his excellency's door and saw something which frightened him. He called the concierge and they waked the Herr Director. Afterwards they sent for the police."

"Do they think that the Count was assassinated, then?"

"Ah, that is to find out. The officers will help us to say. Will you go in at once, monsieur, or shall I tell the Herr Director?"

Alban said that he would go at once. The young fear to look upon the face of death and he was no braver than others of his age. A terrible sense of dread overtook him while he stood before the door and heard the hushed whispers of those about it. Here a giant police officer had already taken up his post as sentinel and he cast a searching glance upon all who approached. There were two or three privileged servants standing apart and discussing the affair; but a stain upon a crimson carpet was more eloquent of the truth than any word. Alban came near to swooning as he stepped over it and entered the room without word or knock.

They had laid the Count upon the bed and dragged it to the window to husband the light. Two doctors, hastily summoned from a neighboring hospital, worked like heroes in their shirt sleeves—a nurse in a gray dress stood behind them holding sponge and bandages. At the first glance, the untrained onlooker would have said that Sergius Zamoyski was certainly dead. The intense pallor of his face, the set eyes, the stiffened limbs, spoke of the rigor mortis and the finality of tragedy. None the less, the surgeons went to work as though all might yet be saved. Uttering their orders in the calm and measured tones of those whom no scene of death could unnerve, they were unconscious of all else but the task before them and its immediate achievement. When they had need of anything, they spoke to the Herr Director of the hotel who passed on his commands in a sharp decisive tone to a porter who stood at his heels. Near by him stood the Chief of the Police, Zaniloff, a short burly man who wore a dark green uniform and held his sheathed sword lightly in his left hand. These latter looked up when the door opened, but the doctors took no notice whatever. There was an overpowering odor of anaesthetics in the room although the windows had been thrown wide open.